best of all

The winner for  the 2014 "Outstanding Doctoral Student Award" for the University of Maryland School of Business is . . .
Brady Firth!

The Business school had a fancy-shmancy dinner to present him with the honor this past week. The 96 doctoral students at the business school are an impressive, highly polished, bunch so to receive this award was a great achievement.  Brady has two enviable first-author "A" journal pubs to his name and has done a lot to help out the program; organizing seminars and workshops, helping younger students with papers. . . This little video clip is half way through his bio.

What a great way to round-off his Phd!

Everyone should carve out a few years to visit DC, sometime or another. It's energetic, fascinating, and just the right amount of buzz. In my opinion DC's distinct flavor is more palatable than other big cities- it's clean, not too dense, metro-friendly, and you could stroll around all day and never get swallowed-up by tall buildings. 

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By  the time we arrived at the beach all 3 kids were crying.  Not just whimpering, howling. They'd been that way for at least an hour. Traffic had hijacked our plans and the drive to the bay had ruined the momentum of Liam's birthday. This, coming here, was a mistake.

But when we got to the uninhabited beach the sun was yellow, the air was warm and slightly breezy.  The waves were too inviting. 

As soon as we dipped our feet into the sand, nerves dissipated and the world grew quiet.  In fact, the experience seemed like a treasure- something that someone would and perhaps should have to drive for hours to deserve.

I guess the best things in life are hard to come by.

Squishy Birthday Baby

Our perfectly squishy, curious, oh-so-happy, baby turned 1 this past week.  She makes strangers swoon, she chases down vacuums, when you aren't looking she nibbles on noses and sucks on shoes, and she is the perfect caboose to our train. 

Liam has declared, "On a cuteness scale of 1 to 100, she's a 200!"