Here comes Spring

The weather has been great here!  We're certainly trying to make the most of being somewhere where it's not already dreadfully hot.  A few days ago we started up our first garden to try to grow some vegetables

Henry and Elliot check on the plants daily and my biggest challenge is preventing them from watering them too often.

A few days ago, to our complete surprise, we found Elliot on top of the dresser next to his crib when we walked in the boys' bedroom when they were playing.  We had sensed for awhile that he could probably climb out, but now we had evidence.  We also had the motivation needed to convert his crib to a bed.  We were so worried that it would take many nights for Elliot to learn to stick to his bed at bedtime - luckily it just took ~3 nights with hour long bedtime routines.

Perfect timing, the first night we had to get Elliot to fall asleep in his new bed was the same night our good friend from the Desh stayed over. It was such a treat to have Jamal in town!

And just in case you were wondering, Henry continues to love his swimming lessons.  We're looking forward to this summer when Elliot will start lessons, albeit with Scott or I in the pool with him.  Soon enough he'll be in lessons all by himself too.

The joys of working

Scott and I are excited to have no work travel for the next few weeks, especially after a 5 week spell with one of us being gone.  I travelled for 2 weeks to Mozambique and Scott for 3 weeks to Afghanistan, leaving the day I got back.

This was my first trip to Mozambique, let alone Africa, and I had a great time.  My two supervisors and I traveled there to hammer out the details of a project we're going to evaluate that is designed to improve the nutritional status of children 6 to 59 months old, namely through increasing their consumption of micronutrient powders.  What we didn't know until our third day in Maputo is that we were allowed to cross the boarder into South Africa on our official passport. Usually we're not allowed to use the passport for anything other than the trip that was planned and approved a number of weeks prior.  By Friday evening we booked a weekend trip to Kruger National Park!
Breakfast and some dinners by the beach - what a hotel!

 A view from the office where we often worked.  It's no Dhaka!

Photos from our 1.5 days in Kruger. It was a WHIRLWIND of a trip - definitely a successful whirlwind.  We saw The Big Five within 1.5 hours on an evening drive, we were chased (literally) by a rhino (luckily while we were in a car), and we camped out on top of our car...

 Working hard...NOT! - but it might be a fun EIS recruiting photo :)

 My two supervisors and I

 This is the rhino that chased us. He was marking his territory...

 Then stared at us as we slowly drove by and then...I'm not joking when I say that the next time I looked out of the car to see him he was less than 6 feet off the back of the car and angry.  That was a life changing experience.

 Another rhino from a safe distance

 Once we had calmed down after the rhino experience, we went on a short walk with this lovely man to look at some cave drawings

Scott went to Kabul and Kandahar to enjoy all inclusive excitement behind armed guards within fortified compounds.  On his actual birthday he went out in Kandahar in an armored convoy to meet with local businessmen, including a raisin factory manager and a pomegranate trader, and conducted the most surreal interviews he's ever conducted because he was in a flak jacket and had men with guns all around him.

Has it been too long?

It's better late than never, right?  At this point there doesn't seem to be a point to commenting on the highlights since the last post since it's just been so long.  Instead, I'll show a few photos to put us in the present day and hope that the brick wall holding me back from posting will crumble away.

Back in January, before any of the snows came to Atlanta, we motivated to finally build the fire pit we had told Henry about for weeks....at 10am on one of the coldest days of the winter, as of that day.  Of course we had to complete the task with some smores

We continue to spend weekend mornings roaming around the nearby park

We had PLENTY of snow days...

and went on a road trip to South Carolina when Scott was in Afghanistan to visit friends from when we were in Bangladesh. Henry and Elliot loved our friend's car and drove it around and around and around their back yard.

Henry is in swim lessons at my old alma mater.  If you remember how much he loved swimming before we moved back then you can imagine how much he loves these lessons. He talks often about how he wants to go over to the American Club as swim.

And lastly, for now, Elliot will still smile on command and when he sees himself doing so he tries to smile even bigger. This is a photo stream that still cracks me up.

Enjoying the sunshine

After the hecticness and pollution of Bangladesh, just a walk down the street in Atlanta feels like a peaceful hike in the wilderness.  Life gets that much better when we take the time to get a bit out of Atlanta for a hike.  On this one day we went to Sweetwater Creek Park with our friends who just moved here from Bangladesh as well.  As you'll see from the backdrop for the photos, we lingered at the access point to the river.

Lieutenant Merrill at your service

In conjunction with my current fellowship at CDC, I joined the US Public Health Service, one of the 7 uniformed services along with the Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and serve in the Ready Reserve of the Commissioned Corps during these two training years.  The Public Health Service (along with the last two of the others listed) is an unarmed service.  At the end of a training month for my fellowship, those of use who joined the PHS had a "pinning" ceremony to which the Surgeon General came to perform the actual pinning (act of putting our military rank pin on our lapel).

Our group of newly PHS commissioned corps officers saying our oath, led by the Surgeon General:

My moment - initially the Surgeon General ceremonially salutes me to which I respond with a salute

Then he "pins" me:

Then I, as a junior officer, formally salute him 

 In this group picture at the end, I'm standing with three other people in my EIS class who are Emory alumni - the two women from 2003 and the man from 2005.  One of the women even took a course from my dad!