Where did summer go??

I can hardly believe summer has come and gone already.  This was arguably one of the busiest summers I've ever had.  Unfortunately, that left very little time to blog about everything going on.  I want to remedy that and get back into blogging regularly.  I apologize already for all the pictures coming in this post, but I decided to do one long post recapping summer rather than several short ones.

Summer kicked off with my sister's beautiful wedding in early May.  The wedding was held outdoors at Cedar Bend Events around 20 miles south of Austin, TX. Their ceremony started with both her and her husband dancing down the aisle to Happy by Pharell Williams.  If you know my sister, it was very fitting!

All of the bridesmaids and flower girls were asked to wear floral dresses and cowboy boots which turned out to be a lot of fun! The only problem was trying to find cowboy boots in the middle of March in Boston. It was worth the search though! 

One of my favorite pictures was this one [left to right] of me, my mom and my sister Vanessa.

We had so many friends and family there to celebrate with Vanessa & Cory on their wedding day.  The day turned out absolutely perfect and I couldn't be happier for both of them.  

Two weeks later I was off to the inaugural Women in Statistics Conference held in Cary, NC. That was one of the two events I did blog about this summer, so rather than elaborating on it again, I encourage you to read the blogs linked above.  I will say this: the entire conference has had a lasting effect on me.  I love the old friends and new friends I was able to meet.  New opportunities have come out of it, and I am very grateful that I was able to be a part of the conference. I look forward to the next one!

On a more heavy-hearted note, we lost my grandmother to cancer at the beginning of June. She had been battling cancer for several years now, but it was still very hard on our family.  This is an older picture of my sister and I with her from Easter many years ago.

We were fortunate enough to have all of the family come together for the funeral in Concord, CA. The picture below was taken at The Warehouse Cafe in Port Costa. 

We took this picture of my dad with his two brothers and dad (my grandfather) by the railroad tracks and the water next to the restaurant.

Somewhere in the middle of the summer, Chris and I found time to explore Boston a little bit too.  We canoed down the Charles River (twice!): 

We attended our first Red Sox game:

We made our first lobster rolls:

and took a duck boat tour around Boston with an out of town guest who came to visit us!

At the end of June, we had our annual BCB Department Retreat which was very informative and fun including catching the end of one of the world cup matches at lunch time!

At the end of July, there were two major conferences happening back to back: Bioconductor Conference (BioC 2014) and the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2014), both held in Boston this year. I had never attended a Bioconductor conference, but I really enjoyed meeting the major contributors and developers behind it. Here is a picture from BioC developer day:

Here are two pictures fom JSM advertising the This is Statistics campaign:

In addition to the conferences, I also found time to fit in progress on my research.  I submitted an R package to Bioconductor called quantro and it was successfully accepted a few weeks later!  Also, one of my projects required some of my calculus to be dusted off the shelf, so I drew this to explain my feelings on the subject at the time. :)

Finally, the biggest news of the summer was I got married Labor Day weekend!  I figured I had already maxed out my photo quota for one blog post, so stay tuned for that in the next post.  For now I leave you with this picture of our penguin cake topper which was designed, 3D printed [design available on thingiverse] and painted by my husband Chris! :)

I promise to get back to my usual posts very soon!  I hope everyone had a restful and productive summer.