Our Combination of Words

Ten Things

2012-01-10T14:42:00.001-07:00

1. We had a good time in Texas. The kids were good on the flight. Olsen had a great time with his extended family, who all give him a lot of attention. Jovie has reached the stage where she cries whenever someone other than me or Adrian hold her, which is unfortunate for many reasons...

all of the cousins on the Welsh side. Jovie is about to cry...

2. Olsen had a good Christmas. It was his first Christmas where he understood more and anticipated it. He still didn't want to sit on Santa's lap but he did ask him for Legos, which he got a lot of.

3. It has been a very mild, dry winter here in Logan. Olsen has gone to the park and has ridden his bike around many times this month! This has been kind of nice and since it hasn't been too cold, we have not had any red air days yet. But this isn't looking good for the water supply that relies on the spring runoff of snow pack.

4. Apparently, the lack of snow has also been hurting the ski industry. Vail has been unable to open the entire mountain for the first time in 30 years. There are some dry patches in Beaver Mountain, our local ski mountain. Olsen has gone once this year and seemed to enjoy it, though he has no control at this point.

5. Olsen likes to give people presents. Today he had a card to give to one of his teachers who is leaving soon to have a baby. Olsen told her, "I have something for you. Open it. There's paper inside." so cute.

6. Jovie turned six months old last Friday! She has almost rolled from her back to front when she's trying to get something but hasn't quite gotten it. She has been making a lot of different sounds lately, like "buh, fuh, vuh, and muh." I feel like she is making much more sounds than Olsen did at this point. I wonder if it's partly due to the differences between girls and boys.

Six months old!

7. Speaking of the differences between boys and girls, I read an interesting article in the Huffington Post the other day. It discusses how boys and girls react to challenges differently. When given difficult material, boys enjoyed the challenge and worked harder. On the other hand, girls felt hopeless and discouraged. This is because girls believe that their abilities are innate while boys believe that they can develop their abilities through effort and practice. A lot of this is based on the messages we give boys and girls. Since boys tend to not listen as well as girls, we are often telling boys things like, "If you would pay attention, you can get this." Girls are better able to follow instructions and we end up telling them things like, "You are so good. You are so smart." I can already see with Olsen that sometimes he doesn't listen very well and we do tell him that he needs to try a little harder at times. We will need to be careful that we emphasize effort with Jovie as well as she gets older so that she also gets the message that "experience, effort, and persistence matter a lot."

8. I haven't really made any official New Year's resolutions, but I do want to get much more organized. Our house is a complete disaster. I really want to declutter and get rid of a lot of things we don't need or use. And then there's always the whole exercise and eat healthy ones that are always on the list...

9. We found out last week that we will get to use Adrian's dad's old company's cabin in Estes Park, CO for a week this summer. We are excited. We went back in 2009 when Olsen was just over a year old. He took his first steps there.

Olsen walking around exploring the cabin.

10. Whenever Olsen talks about something that happened in the past, he always says, "Yesterday, a long time ago..." I was thinking that now at about 3.5 years old, he will probably remember a lot that happens now in the future. I remember a few things from being three. I feel like most of my memories start at four, possibly because I started pre-K at four and have that as a benchmark. It will be interesting to see how much Olsen remembers from his time as a sweet preschooler.

Jovie happenings

2011-12-20T14:12:00.001-07:00

Jovie turned five months early this month.

We didn't get a great picture for her five month portraits because she is starting to want to sit up more.
(four months, three, two, and one months)

Olsen still likes Jovie and he can make her laugh much harder than we can. This is a little video of Olsen making Jovie laugh. She seems to be most amused by his shaggy hair.

Last weekend, Jovie got to hang out with one of her friends, Vivi. Vivi is only four weeks younger than Jovie. Vivi's older sister, Cailin, is 6 months older than Olsen.

Next weekend we are off to Texas. I hope the flight goes well!

Kevin, the bearded dragon

2011-11-30T12:08:00.001-07:00

We had a nice Thanksgiving this year. We usually go to a big potluck Thanksgiving meal with fellow graduate students, but many of the grad students we used to celebrate with have since moved away and the others we know were away for Thanksgiving. This year, we went to our neighbors who live a few houses down from us. They have a three-year old son who also goes to the same daycare as Olsen. Olsen and Ben are best buds, and it was great to celebrate the holiday with good friends.

Here they are waiting for their feast.

Every year, we like to see what kind of deals there are for Black Friday. We were looking at the PetSmart ad to see what we could score for Lucy. I saw that leopard geckos were 50% off. I jokingly said we should get one. We have a friend (who has since moved away) who has one, named Quiggy, and every time we would go to her house, Olsen would ask to hold her. Adrian, Olsen, and Lucy headed off to the store. They were gone for a long time. They came back with a bearded dragon!

here is Kevin, the bearded dragon

Adrian explained that he got a 40 gallon vivarium so that Kevin could turn around when he gets bigger. Apparently, bearded dragons can get up to two feet or so. Here is a video of a two-year old bearded dragon catching crickets to give you an idea of size. I oscillate between "how cute and funny" and "uh, that is a big reptile that I'm not sure I want on my shoulder."

I did some reading about beardies that night and learned that they really do sound like the ideal reptile pet for kids. They are very docile and tolerate being held (some even argue that beardies enjoy being held). I also learned from reading forums on beardeddragon.org that reptile folk are very funny about their beardies. People really cuddle with them. One person wears two shirts and puts their beardie in between the shirts to keep him warm in the winter, ha ha ha.

Anyway, I did more reading and learned that all reptiles can shed salmonella and the CDC recommends waiting until children are at least five to have a reptile pet. We were being careful and kept hand sanitizer by the cage, but I felt too worried about it since Jovie is so little and puts her hands in her mouth all the time. I know it's rare to contract salmonella from a reptile pet if one uses common sense, but I decided I didn't want to stress about it, so we took poor Kevin back on the 2nd day. Olsen was okay with taking Kevin back but he does still talk about "my lizard." Yesterday, he was playing with his wands and instead of turning Jovie into a frog, he turned her into a lizard "like my lizard," he said.

We will probably end up getting one of these when Olsen is eight or so.

Olsen holding Kevin

San Diego

2011-11-30T11:22:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a trip to San Diego. Adrian had a trade show there for a couple of days so we all tagged along and stayed for a week. It is about a 13 hour drive from Logan to San Diego. Olsen generally does pretty well in the car especially since he has the v.reader my mom gave him last Christmas. We were more worried about Jovie, because she tends to get mad in the car. She did better than I feared. We stopped every 2-3 hours.

The weather was nice and mild in San Diego. We even wore shorts! While Adrian was busy with the show, I took the kids to the Children's Museum and Balboa Park to play. This trip was fun, because even though Adrian and I had our honeymoon in San Diego, we did things this trip that we did not do last time, mainly going to the Maritime Museum at the Embarcadero. We went on a 30 minute boat ride in the San Diego Bay and toured around 5 boats, including two submarines (Olsen's favorite). We actually did not even do the big San Diego things like the zoo or Sea World. We went to the Omaha Zoo when we did our College World Series trip so we figured that we did not need to do it again so soon. We almost did Sea World but it is so expensive, we decided to wait on that for another trip.

We stayed in Little Italy (we had not been before) the first three nights there. Every night we would walk around and ate pizza and pasta every night. After Adrian's show was over, we switched hotels to the Hilton on Mission Bay and Mission Bay Park (a 4000 acre park). Adrian found a pretty good deal on hotwire and we were able to get a free upgrade. It was a nice hotel. We had a back door to the garden area and were able to walk to the Bay, where Olsen could play in the sand. There was also a huge playground not too far of a walk away. Every evening, we would see so many people and dogs jogging and walking on the trails and a lot of different exercise groups doing bootcamp type exercises.

We went to three different beaches while we were there: Mission Beach (and had fish tacos at our favorite place Roberto's), La Jolla Shores, and Coronado Island. I love the beach in San Diego. The water is always cold, but the sand is so nice and it is not so windy that you feel like you are going to blow away like in Corpus.

On the way back, we stopped in Las Vegas. Adrian found a nice hotel right by the strip on hotwire so that we could be walking distance to the sites. Olsen has a thing for the Eiffel Tower right now, so we headed to the Eiffel Tower and rode the elevator up to the top (I just hope he doesn't think that the Eiffel Tower is in Vegas). We watched the Bellagio Fountains and the Mirage's volcano. Olsen really enjoyed all the sites and saw a lot of people dressed up as characters. His favorite part was riding all of the moving walkways, escalators, and elevators, though.

It was a fun trip! When we got back to Logan, there was snow all over the ground.

Olsen on the carousel at Seaport Village

Jovie Belle smiling as we wait for fish tacos (we ate fish tacos a lot on this trip).

At the Birch Aquarium

fun on the beach!

Olsen mops the poop deck!

I almost forgot - we had to ride this, because Olsen was so excited when he saw the train pass by when we walked around the Gas Lamp District. We purposely walked pretty far just so we could ride San Diego public transportation.

playing with sand toys in front of the Hotel Del Coronado

Olsen at the top of the Eiffel Tower (Vegas version)!

Four months

2011-11-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

Jovie is four months old! She weighs 12 lbs. And is 23 inches long. Her hair has gotten much thinner, but the cradle cap is gone. She can bat at her toys under her arch and will briefly hold toys and bring them to her mouth. Olsen still loves her and always tries to grab her hand. Here are her four month pictures.

click here for her 3, 2, and 1 month pics.

This is Halloween. This is Halloween.

2011-11-01T11:27:00.000-06:00

October has been so much fun! It seems like there have been so many fun Halloween activities for Olsen to participate in. So much so, that I didn't think it would be too big of a deal if Olsen was too sick to go trick or treating tonight! (he felt well enough to participate in Halloween festivities, though he did miss his friend's Halloween party on Saturday.)

First, there was Boo at the Zoo at our little zoo in Logan. Olsen wore his costume and played a lot of little games and went trick or treating at the various booths.

the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and a triceratops

Then he went trick or treating at the last Gardener's Market and got his face painted with a giant pumpkin. He really wanted to get his face painted and when he sat in the face painting chair he said, "I want a pumpkin." The face painter asked if he wanted a big pumpkin or a little pumpkin, and of course he said a big pumpkin. The bottom half was wiped away 10 minutes later.

After his nap, we went to the American West Heritage Center for their fall activities, which include a corn maze, giant slide, pony rides, and a little honeycomb maze. We went with some friends who have a three year old little girl (and a baby girl only four weeks younger than Jovie). Cailin and Olsen had such a blast together. They ran around holding hands, looking cute.

We went to a pumpkin patch to pick our pumpkins and had some friends over to carve pumpkins.

what else should you do with a baby and a pumpkin?

our obligatory pumpkin picture. We'll have to do a montage of our pumpkin picture over the years.

The next weekend, we went to the Dinosaur Park for their Haunted Dinosaur Park. It was pretty cute, with a lot of lights, fog, and decorations throughout the park. One display was motion sensored and when you walked up to it, a car with a skeleton in it lit up and honked. I screamed, then Olsen started crying, then Jovie started crying. Other than that, Olsen had a good time, especially since he got more candy.

Then we walked through Pumpkin Walk to see this year's exhibits made from pumpkins. This year's theme was "Favorite Things."

Finally, Halloween! First, Olsen went to a little Halloween party at school. He said they decorated cookies, had a dance party, and made witch's brew (root beer). Next, Olsen and Jovie went to Adrian's office to trick or treat. Then for the big event: the real trick or treating! Olsen went with Ben, his friend who lives down the street from us. The two boys had such a good time trick or treating together, even though our neighborhood is a little lame.

a triceratops and Batman

getting some loot

on a mission for moar candy

Jovie and I stayed home to pass out candy. We didn't really get too many trick or treaters, so now we have a ton of candy left over - not to mention all of the candy Olsen has. I have found the candy helps to bribe him every once in awhile but I'm kind of looking forward to not having so much candy in the house. We bought the good stuff so we wouldn't be stuck with a ton of leftover cheap candy and I don't have much willpower around Reese's peanut butter cups.

a triceratops with a peapod

three months

2011-10-10T21:51:00.000-06:00

Jovie turned three months old last week! She has rolled from front to back, smiles, laughs a little, and coos.

Jovie's three month old photo shoot.

Jovie at two months.

Jovie at one month.

racecar bed!

2011-10-06T19:41:00.000-06:00

We finally took Olsen out of his crib and into a twin bed. Miraculously, he had never tried to climb out of his crib and he slept so well in it that we felt no rush to get him out of it. But I thought the ability to get out of bed might help him learn to go to the bathroom at night instead of wearing a diaper for nap and bed. To make the transition fun, we got him his very own racecar bed. He was so excited about it and helped Adrian put it together. But that first night he wasn't quite sure about it and needed a lot of cuddles and reassurance. He has been in the bed for three nights now, and every night it is the same, where we get some resistance but then he sleeps so well, I have to wake him up in the morning to get to school. He looks so small in the bed compared to his little crib mattress.

driving!

earwig juice

2011-10-06T19:36:00.000-06:00

We have a pretty big grapevine growing on our fence. Grapes are one of Olsen's favorite fruits, but these homegrown grapes have 3 or 4 seeds each in them. The last two years our friend has juiced the grapes for us, but sadly, she has moved away. This year it looked like we had an even larger abundance of grapes than usual. Luckily our neighbors have a fancy juicer that we could borrow. Adrian spent hours cutting the grapes off the vine, battling numerous bugs, but we didn't think much of it...until we started to wash them to get them ready for the juicer.

Tons of earwigs kept crawling out of the grapes. The grape bunches were so tightly compacted that earwigs would crawl out when we tried to pick the grapes off individually. We thought about letting the grapes soak to drown out the earwigs, but we had people coming to see the house and we didn't think a sink full of drowned earwigs would be a good selling point. Our friends' juicer is pretty magical and can somehow differentiate between the parts that make juice and the parts that don't, but we were too afraid to inadvertently drink earwig juice, so we sadly threw the grapes away. Instead, we bought a pineapple and papaya and made pineapple, papaya, grape (from the store), and apple juice. We're not sure how to avoid earwig infested grapes in the future. We don't want to poison the grapes, but our earwig scare does help explain why grapes are on the dirty dozen list. Anyone have any tips on how to keep our grapes both chemical and earwig free?

Our grapes growing on the vine.

Our bounty of grapes!

Earwigs! How many can you count?

she likes it!

2011-09-29T20:13:00.001-06:00

First, Jovie HATES the car. She pretty much always cries when she's in there. We haven't quite figured out the problem. She's usually fine when I put her in the carseat, but then starts crying some point during the car ride.

Second, Olsen loves catchy pop music. He has a fondness for Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Sometimes we don't even realize he knows a song until he starts singing it in a restaurant (Maroon Five's "Take All That I Have", for example). He loves that song "Tonight Tonight" by Hot Chelle Rae.

I was taking him to school in the morning, Jovie was crying as usual, and Olsen's song came on. I turned it up so Olsen could hear it and Jovie started to settle down.

Olsen: You like this song, Jovie?
Jovie: Wah
Olsen: Jovie says yeah

ha ha, I think they're going to be great friends one day.

ah, the tortuous threes!

2011-09-08T21:35:00.003-06:00

okay, first off, Olsen is a very sweet, kind boy. He has been nothing but loving to Jovie and when he's playing with his toys he'll say, "When Jovie gets older, I will share this and this with her." HOWEVER, he can have a complete meltdown in an instant over a very small thing and cry very, very loudly. He might be the loudest person in the world in those moments. Tonight, he wouldn't put his toys away and kept saying, "I'm tired." I tried to help him by breaking the task down into smaller, more manageable tasks, but he just wouldn't do it. I finally told him that if he couldn't clean up his toys that he wouldn't be able to play with them anymore. He said okay. I don't know why but it made my blood boil to see how uncaring he was about the whole thing (in retrospect, maybe it's good that he is willing to accept his punishment?). So I gathered all his toys and threw them in the outside trash. And he still didn't care! He even brought me another toy to put in the trash. I sent him to bed without any stories, and now I have to dig his toys out and find a place to hide them. :|

Jovie's here and other stuff

2011-08-18T10:06:00.001-06:00

Jovie turned 6 weeks old yesterday! She came 16 days early on July 6th. My mom had planned to come on the 17th (5 days before Jovie's due date) so we had to call a friend at 4 in the morning to come watch Olsen while we were at the hospital. Jovie came an hour after we got there at 5:35 am! She's pretty cute with a lot of hair and brown eyes. We now have our blue-eyed boy and our brown-eyed girl.

Olsen has been a good big brother to Jovie. He's been very sweet to her and gives her hugs and asks to hold her. Julie, his daycare provider, said that he's always been so sweet to all the babies there. He really is a nice boy and has been good about sharing and taking turns with his friends. This is not to say that he's been perfect, though. He seems to have a meltdown and/or moments of defiant disagreeableness almost everyday. I'm not sure if any of that is related to adjusting to Jovie's arrival or if it's just because he's three. I'm thinking it might just be the case of the threes...sigh, I have to remind myself to keep my patience and not lose my temper (I don't always succeed).

Since Jovie's arrived, I spend a lot of time sitting around holding her, trying to feed her and watching HGTV. Now that she's six weeks old, I should probably start working on my dissertation. I'm telling myself that it's like I took a six-week maternity leave, ha ha. But I really do need to work on things while I hold Jovie instead of watching TV or surfing the internet, reading about the A&M to SEC rumors.

We're going to Omaha!!! (part 3 of 3)

2011-06-23T19:00:00.000-06:00

Continuation from the last post
see http://aggiewelshes.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-going-to-omaha-part-2-of-3.html for previous
and http://aggiewelshes.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-going-to-omaha-part-1-of-3.html for part 1

Day 4 - Monday, June 20 - Continued

After the zoo we took it easy at the hotel, but Olsen didn't nap, of course. We decided to go eat in town while the second game of the day was going on. We ate at Rick's Boatyard which was right on the Missouri River and looked like a nice place. I do not recommend it. It wasn't that great, very expensive, not the best wait staff, and the service was sub-par. Anyways, we decided to leave the car in the parking lot and walk around.

Rick's Boatyard

The Missouri River was flooding

Big walking bridge to Iowa from Nebraska

We decided to go for a walk and take a big walking bridge into downtown. Before we left, we heard the air raids go off (the tornado sirens) and started panicking to get back into the car. We were in the parking lot when we heard this but we saw a family get out of their car all casually and go into the restaurant. They told us that the sirens happen all the time and made it sound like it wasn't a big deal. So we decided to proceed and the sirens stopped soon after. But as we got a little ways on the bridge, we saw a group of people running to get on the other side. Then the sky started turning black and the wind picked up a lot. Lisa started getting a little nervous so we turned back. The sirens came on again and we started running to get to the car. Lisa was not happy with this since she was 8 months pregnant...

Once we got to the car, we tried to get back to our hotel. It was a mess with cars everywhere. The baseball game that was going on got postponed. We got about a quarter of a mile and police officers were making everyone stop their cars in the street and get into the Qwest Center, which is a large arena in downtown. It was full of people just waiting for the storm to pass. It was pretty scary and we weren't happy because we just wanted to get back to the hotel and go to bed.

But luckily, after about almost an hour, they let us go. We got in our car and went to the hotel. No real damage anywhere and nothing really happened. Olsen had fun in the hotel wearing his Dadda's baseball jersey.

Oh, and for the record, the t-sips lost to UNC, so they were eliminated! Vandy and Florida will have to resume their game later

DAY 5 - Tuesday, June 21

Baseball schedule today

Game 6 (continued in 6th inning) - Florida vs Vanderbilt

Game 7 - Texas A&M vs California

Game 8 - South Carolina vs Virginia

Before we headed out to the game (since we had the early one), we decided to get to downtown early and walk around a bit. We went into the ballpark area where they had a lot of things going on. Olsen got to do some tee-ball and some other things (but most stuff was for older kids)

Today's game had a slight threat of rain but it helped cool it down a little bit (you can see Olsen wearing his jacket). Amy wasn't going to be at this game because she had to go back to Texas to teach a class. Bret was there though. This game was very low attended and wasn't a problem at all to get in (no line and no wait).

We had higher confidence for this game to beat Cal vs beating South Carolina (or USC East as they hate being called). The outfield wasn't near as fun this time (I guess South Carolina fans are a lot of fun!) and the lower attendance made it a little less fun. There were still beach balls and some waves. The weather wasn't looking too good; dark clouds and sprinkles of rain here and there.

We hit a homer in the 4th inning and things were starting to look up. The sun came out and Olsen put on his sunscreen

Then, of course, our team starts to screw up and completely throws the game away. They ended up scoring 6 runs in the next 2 innings and our team never recovered.

All relief pitchers running to bullpen

It starting raining again and everyone ran out of the stands to find cover. But there is no cover in that stadium (at least where we were in the outfield). We lost 7-3 and our season was over.

Olsen said his goodbye to Bret (and gig'em)

College World Series photos
As soon as the game was over, we got in the car and started driving back to Utah. We drove as far as we could before everyone got too tired. We ended up stopping in Sidney, Nebraska.

View Larger Map
On the interstate (near where the original Cabelas store is) they have tons of big chain hotels. It was a Tuesday night and every single one was sold out. There was nothing around for miles and no town for at least 100 miles. Our trust GPS smartphones couldn't get any service in rural Nebraska but somehow we found our way into the actual town of Sidney and found a piece of junk American Best Value Inn. It was gross and had no pool (poor Olsen) but it had vacancy.

Report for the day:
Florida beat Vanderbilt
A&M got eliminated by Cal
South Carolina hammered Virginia

DAY 6 - Wednesday, June 22

We got up and hopped in the car again and drove into Wyoming. This time we drove through Cheyenne and stopped in Laramie.

View Larger Map
We drove around town a little bit and found a nice park to set up for a picnic. Olsen played on the playground.

Laramie pictures
After Laramie, we drove until we got to Evanston, Wyoming (I think we made a quick stop in Rock Springs, WY as well).

View Larger Map
We stopped at a little park that we had stopped at before, when we were on our way to Estes Park, Colorado 2 years ago. Olsen had a great time kicking the soccer ball around and eating french fries. But the most exciting thing was there were some guys playing basketball nearby and they had this dog that liked checking Olsen out. He would come near us, and Olsen would chase him back to the court. This went on for a very long time.

Olsen chasing the dog. It's not the best video but he likes to watch it.

Evanston pictures

After the Evanston stop we drove straight home!

View Larger Map

It's good to be home and it was a super fun trip! I hope to make the trip in the future.

We're going to Omaha!!! (part 2 of 3)

2011-06-23T14:13:00.000-06:00

Continuation from the last post
see http://aggiewelshes.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-going-to-omaha-part-1-of-3.html for previous

DAY 3 - Sunday, June 19 continued

Finally in Omaha! Before I talk about this, I want to list the schedule for the College World Series.

Saturday, June 18
Game 1
Vanderbilt vs
North Carolina (Vandy won 7-3)

Game 2
Texas vs
Florida (Florida won 8-4, which is awesome)

Sunday, June 19
Game 3
California vs
Virginia (Virginia won 4-1)

Game 4
Texas A&M vs
South Carolina (will discuss later)

We showed up in the middle of Omaha right before the first game of the second day was starting (Cal vs UVa). It was fun seeing all the chaos and people milling around. We had to grab our tickets at will call which wasn't easy. I got out of the car and Lisa scooted over to drive it around. We purchased a 10 pack of General Admission tickets. We would use 6 (3 per day) and give the other 4 to Bret and Amy who we were hoping to see for the games.

This year, the CWS moved from Rosenblatt stadium (where it was for 50+ years) to the brand new TD Ameritrade Park in the middle of downtown.

Once we got out tickets we went to our hotel (which was actually in Iowa near the Omaha airport). Olsen didn't nap but we rested and watched some of the UVa and Cal game. We then started reading some info tickets and learned that you had to get in line 2 hours early for GA since they're all first come first serve. This made us really nervous so we tried to upgrade our seats (for $20 each) to seated seats. We had to make a trip back into downtown and Lisa dropped me off at the ticket window. They didn't have seats together for us so we decided not to upgrade. Well, 2 hours before the game we took out hotel shuttle to the ballpark area and got in the very back of the tremendously long line. We were really nervous on getting into the game since the line was so long and it was hot and Olsen was hot and Lisa was hot (and 8 months pregnant...).

Somehow we found Bret and Amy in the line and gave them our tickets. We didn't want to cut so we got in the back (you can see Bret in the above picture). Well, it turns out that the late game on Sunday (the game we were going to) wasn't the highest attended game so we got in just fine and got pretty good seats in the outfield, though it was really hot and humid.

I forgot to mention that Sunday was Father's Day! It was a fantastic Father's Day present to be able to be in Omaha and see our Aggies play baseball in the College World Series. Somehow the local news station found us (channel 6 NBC) and interviewed us. I thought it was pretty cool but then started thinking, every time we've been on TV for a sporting event, we've lost (Super Regionals in Baton Rouge in June '04, Cotton Bowl in Jan '05, and there are probably others I'm forgetting). But either way, it was cool

Link to the article

Our first game was against the South Carolina Gamecocks. They were the defending national champions and looking to repeat this year. Sitting in the outfield, in General Admission, we were surrounded tons of Aggies, Gamecocks, and locals. It was actually pretty fun with all the commotion. Olsen LOVED seeing the beach balls being hit around and he thought the wave was super cool. I can't remember the last time I participated in a wave since at Olsen Field, it's "not cool" to do things that are trendy or popular, plus the stadium doesn't wrap around (no outfield seats). It was also really funny hearing the right field seats yelling at the left field seats:

Video of "Right Field Sucks"

Video of The Wave

Video of The Wave part 2

The game started off GREAT! We were batting first and scored a wopping 4 runs! We were super excited to see us dismantle their stud pitcher (with a super low ERA). And, of course, "Texas A&M" happened and they equaled our scoring route with 4 runs on their own against our "number 2" pitcher (since "number 1" was injured for the rest of the year). Then, nothing happened. It was a fast game since no runs were scored for the next 7 innings.

The CWS camera guy put us on the jumbotron

Olsen doing the Wave

Olsen really got into saying Gig'em

Olsen saying Gig'em (he liked to use his finger and say "that's Olsen Gig'em").

Well, we got to the 9th inning and couldn't produce a run, so, for some strange reason, RC decided to pull our pitcher and put in a reliever. We all knew this wasn't going to end well. Immediately he got the bases loaded with no outs and the next guy up hit a screaming double and that was that.

Don't look at the image -- just showing the score

Father's Day picture

And for whatever reason, Bret and Amy were dancing.

Pictures from the College World Series

Day 4 - Monday, June 20

Games today:
Game 5
Texas vs North Carolina (elimination game)

Game 6
Florida vs Vanderbilt (winner's bracket)

We decided to take a day off of bsaeball (not going to watch the Longhorns and UNC play) and go to the famous Henry Doorly Zoo. We had heard lots of good things about this zoo and were eager to check it out. It's supposed to be a hot day but we had heard that they had a lot of indoor, air conditioned exhibits. The zoo is right across the street from Rosenblatt stadium (where the College World Series was played before):

The most exciting thing at the zoo was the lion's area. The male lion was really active and wanting to eat the kids.

Olsen got to feed some birds. He had a lot of fun doing that.

Olsen liked seeing the gorillas

This gorilla was staring at all the people

We saw a lemur sitting on a turtle

The little guy was exhausted after the zoo. He was still holding his magnet in the car

Omaha Zoo pictures

This blog post will have to be continued again...
http://aggiewelshes.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-going-to-omaha-part-3-of-3.html

We're going to Omaha!!! (part 1 of 3)

2011-06-23T12:38:00.000-06:00

In college baseball, the ultimate goal is to get to Omaha, Nebraska (and, of course, to win it all). Omaha is the site of the College World Series every year and only the last 8 teams left in the tournament make it. This year, after a 12 year drought, the Aggies finally earned their berth and we wouldn't miss it for the world! We got tickets and booked hotel rooms as soon as we had beaten Florida State University on Monday, the 13th. I took off of work early on that Friday and we headed on our way. We were a little weary of how long this trip would be (Google said 14+ hours) since we have an 8-month pregnant Momma and a 2 year-old little boy, but we were determined to make it and to have fun!

It may be easiest to tell this story in pictures but I'll do my best with both (words and pictures).

DAY 1 - Friday, June 17

Since we left sort of late in the day, we had hoped to make it to Laramie, Wyoming which is about a 6 and 1/2 hour drive from our house. We made our traditional stop in Little America, WY.

View Larger Map

I don't know what it is but we always stop here. They have billboard signs all up and down I-80 for this place and I think the "50 cent ice cream cone" is the one that gets us the most. Olsen got to sit on the Sinclair Dinosaur

And got to see a stuffed animal penguin that was larger than himself

Little America Pictures

We didn't make it to Laramie. We got all the way to Rawlins which is about 100 miles short of Laramie and stayed at the Best Western there.

View Larger Map

DAY 2 - Saturday, June 18

The next day, we ate at the diner inside the Best Western. It was weird and not very good but it was free. Then the boy and I went swimming in the pool. He had a really good time swimming. Until he really had to pee. So I ran him out of the pool and into the public bathroom which was super nasty. We then ran to our room and he was able to go... We drove on through Laramie. I wanted to stop but decided not to since we needed to make up missed time from yesterday. Though we did stop right past Laramie at the Lincoln Monument that overlooks the highway. I've always been curious to stop here but I'm usually in a big rush for time so I never have.

Apparently this spot on the highway is the highest point of any coast to coast highway and Lincoln had some aspiration for manifest destiny (I think is what it was...). Olsen had fun running around here but we needed to get going.

Lincoln Monument Pictures

We drove to Cheyenne to have lunch and see the capitol building.

View Larger Map

We found a nice little area to set up a picnic blanket.

Olsen had fun chasing the squirrels there. We then walked around the area of the capitol building.

We saw a bronze calf and people were riding it. It was pretty funny and Olsen wanted to put his hand in its mouth

We then had to be on our way into Nebraska, finally.
Cheyenne Pictures

We stopped in Sidney, Nebraska; home of the original Cabelas store. It really wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be (I think the Cabelas in the Salt Lake area is more fun and nicer). We saw an elephant that Mr Cabela killed and Olsen sat on a four-wheeler

After we left, we went through the scariest hail storm I have even been in. It wasn't safe driving on the highway. It lasted for what felt like an hour but it had to have been shorter than that.

We stopped in Kearney, Nebraska (home of the famous Great Platte River Road Archway) to eat and then decided to stay the night in Lincoln since it wasn't worth driving an extra hour to get to Omaha. It was nearly impossible to find a hotel in Lincoln because of the College World Series going on in Omaha. It was ridiculous. Somehow we got the last room in the "airport" Holiday Inn and had to settle there. It was a pretty nice hotel.

View Larger Map

DAY 3 - Sunday, June 19

We ate the continental breakfast in the morning and the boy and I decided to go for a swim again. Well, it was an indoor pool and apparently wasn't heated because it was super cold. We didn't even get in past our legs... Before heading into Omaha we made the obligatory stop at the state capitol building to walk around and check it out.

We probably stayed a little longer than we needed and it was getting hot so we decided to get on to Omaha. I kind of wanted stop and walk around the University of Nebraska campus but Lisa wanted to get to our hotel in hopes that Olsen would take a little nap before the game.

Lincoln Pictures

This blog post will be continued...

http://aggiewelshes.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-going-to-omaha-part-2-of-3.html

http://aggiewelshes.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-going-to-omaha-part-3-of-3.html

Adrian's Summer Running 2011: Week 4 (Smart Phones)

2011-05-29T15:11:00.000-06:00

Week 4 is through and Lisa and I finally did it: We got smart phones. I had been thinking about getting a smart phone for awhile simply because they seem so useful, and of course, they're so cool! (which in turn would make us cool, right?) On new years eve and new years day, Best Buy had some really good deals on phones from HTC which made the phones free. It was really intriguing and was going to do it, but after talking with Lisa, she talked some sense into me how much this would cost us per month and she was right. Currently we were spending $59.99 a month for our AT&T family plan which gave us 550 minutes and no texting/no data. This was plenty for us and we never went over (had rollover too).

The phone I was looking at was the HTC Incredible which was on a Verizon plan:

It was supposedly listed at $599 but was free for the new year's special. It's the Android equivalent of the iPhone. But the plan we would have to get (we would each get one) would cost about $120 a month which was quite unacceptable.

So we ended up going with a real cheapo plan (suggested by a co-worker of mine) and a real cheapo phone but it had GPS and Android which is what I wanted. It's a Samsung Intercept:

The phone is on the Virgin Mobile plan which uses Sprints cell phone towers. Therefore we don't really get phone coverage in our house and the overall coverage is bad. But the plan is a non-contractual plan (unlike Verizon's 2 year contract) and it gives us unlimited data and texting as well as 300 minutes for $25 a month. The other problem with a non-contractual plan is that you have to buy the phones in full and they were $170 each. So now we're paying $50 a month for both of our plans.

The phones are really poor quality for an Android smart phone but we have found use in them and use them for various things. One thing I really wanted to use it for was tracking my running. Since it had GPS in it, I could use it while I was running and it would track my distance/pace/time, etc. I didn't know what the "best" running app would be but I searched the Android market and came up with:

Adidas MiCoach. I hadn't heard of it but I liked it right away. I learned that there were tons of training/running apps and it was hard to determine which one would work the best. Here is an image of my very first run with MiCoach and the phone:

(click on the image to see the workout). The up and down nature of the run shows the varying heart rate. This was a 34 minute run (straight from the workout sheet) that I did around my work on Wednesday. I stopped the run on the phone as soon as I stopped running but had to jog back to work so it ended up being about 3.125 miles.

Results from Week 4 of the Juniper cardio/fitness challenge.
Week 3 of RaceRx study
Week 2 of Marathon Training

Adrian's Summer Running 2011: Week 3.1 (Marathon Training)

2011-05-22T18:00:00.000-06:00

Week 3 is over and I had another interesting running revelation. Last week we had a potluck dinner at Meg's house (she was leaving for good; it was very sad). I talked with Ashley D'Antonio and told her about this weird study I was partaking in and also told her that I was signed up for the Top of Utah Half Marathon at the end of August. She had told me that she was planning on running the Top of Utah Marathon (full marathon) on September 17th. I don't know why but the idea was really intriguing to me.

I went home and looked up training plans on HalHigdon.com and thought it wouldn't be too bad. I feel that I could easily do a 12 week half marathon program and the full marathon was only an 18 week program. I mean, there were some obvious greater distances with full training versus half but I still thought it was doable. So I half-heartedly committed to doing the training. ...oh and it just so happened that the marathon is 18 weeks away from yesterday (which means that week 2 of my training starts today).

On Hal Higdon's website, he has a lot of free training plans to use. For the marathon, he has 6 specific plans: Novice 1 and 2, Intermediate 1 and 2, and Advanced 1 and 2. I decided to attempt the Novice 1 plan since it was the "easiest" and seemed to be the most doable. The most you would have to run would be 20 miles one time which was 3 weeks before the marathon. But you would build up to the point and then taper down. Nearly everywhere else in the country has their races on Sunday but in Utah, they're all on Saturday.

So I created a little spreadsheet that adjusted the training to a Saturday race day and put the date of each Saturday in the spreadsheet.

Now comes the next dilemma, RaceRx study. This study specifically says that I have to run the times that are listed by my study sheets and nothing else. So, I asked Matt Rhea (director of RaceRx) about it, but I just asked about training for a half marathon since that was the one that I was fully committed for (paid for). Matt said that this study that I was participating in is very well suited to get me ready for the half marathon and 99% of the runners preparing for these events run many more miles than they need to. Although a month prior to the race he would suggest adding 1 or 2 extra runs of 6 to 8 miles per week.

So I replied to him about wanting to run a full marathon and he reiterated that people run more than they need to. He said that I shouldn't be having "long runs" 18 weeks before the race and that I can't add much running because it would mess up the study. But again he said that a month (or 2) before the race I can add an additional long run or 2.

So I was a little torn on this and considered quitting the study so I could do the Hal Higdon training. I wasn't sure what was the "right" training method to believe. Therefore I decided to consult TexAgs.com. On this thread: http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1842182&forum_id=48 some people said they had heard of people doing the heart rate training and it working for them but no one had any real or direct comparisons, so I was still torn...

Next, I decided to ask the guy at work who announced this study since I assumed he ran marathons, etc. He didn't run long distance but his wife and brother-in-law did and used Matt's program so he got me in touch with them. The bro-in-law said he absolutely swore by Matt's training and suggested anyone do it. He said it helped him qualify for the Boston Marathon, so that encouraged me some more to stick with the RaceRx study. Though, I still had thoughts in my head of doing the long runs earlier than 2 months before the marathon because I wanted the mileage and wanted to do a long easy run as opposed to the strenuous varying heart rate runs.

Adrian's Summer Running 2011: Week 3

2011-05-22T14:55:00.000-06:00

Week 3 is over and the heart rate training got a little more intense. Here is an example of one of my workouts:

Though it was a shorter time, it was much more difficult to keep within my target heart rate zones. There was another thing I forgot to mention in my last post. Along with the heart rate monitoring, I also had to go on a diet with this research study. We had to maintain healthy amounts of calories, proteins, fats, and carbs and log that information onto this website:

I kind of got obsessed with spark people and learned a lot about the nutritional facts of the regular foods that I ate. This site helped me to eat quite a bit healthier as well as helped me to realize that I need to drink more water than normally drank. It also helped me to lose some weight too. It was nice.

Results from Week 3 of the Juniper cardio/fitness challenge.
Week 2 of RaceRx study
Week 1 of marathon training

Adrian's Summer Running 2011: Week 2 (RaceRx Study)

2011-05-15T16:41:00.000-06:00

Well, for week 2 of this running/cardio challenge, I got involved in a different program. A guy at my work emailed everyone and talked about an organization in town, called Race RX. They were doing an experimental study using heart rate monitoring for training in running.

I was somewhat intrigued by this and thought that it might help motivate me to run more, so I volunteered for this study. It was very strange and not the best defined. Apparently there were 3 different study groups and each one was doing a different study but all using heart rate monitors. My group apparently was the hard one where we had to run 5 days a week and the times were between 20 and 60 minutes. At each minute, we had to be in a certain heart rate range (or zone) according to a sheet they gave us after an initial assessment. Another group was just told to exercise for 20 to 60 minutes and maintain a wide heart rate range.

The initial assessment was at their facility at 286 North 850 West in Logan. I was surprised at the size of this place and how nice it was. They had a lot of treadmills and other similar machines and had a huge back of their facility where they had the rest of their equipment. They had me run on a treadmill and increasing speeds and put this horrible mask on my face to measure oxygen. I also wore a Polar Heart Rate Monitor that worked pretty well. They said they wanted me to get to an exertion level of 8 (on a scale of 10) and let them know. They recorded all of the results and sent me my detailed workout schedule before the study was supposed to happen.

For this study, all participants had to buy a heart rate monitor. Race RX had their own (with their name on it) that they had on a 25% discount. So I got this one:

...and it didn't really work. So I had to take it back to exchange it with another one that "worked" but not really well. It's just a low end, piece-of-junk heart rate monitor. (After looking up HRMs, they can cost up to about ~$400... This was one $65, and then discounted 25%).

The night before first week of training, we got our workouts emailed to us. They came in 7 pdfs; the first 6 had 3 exercises and the last had 2, to make 20 workouts: 5 per week for 4 weeks. My target heart rates were broken into 4 zones: 0, 1, 2, and 3. Here is what it looked like:

And here is the example of workout number 1.

The first workout was relatively easy and they generally got harder as the weeks went on.

Here are my results from Week 2 of the cardio/fitness challenge. I did the heart rate monitor training on Mon-Thur and on Sat (as you can see).
(This is week 1 of the RaceRx study)

Adrian's Summer Running 2011: Week 1

2011-05-07T15:04:00.000-06:00

Well, week 1 is complete and I didn't do as well as I would have liked. The Top of Utah Half Marathon, that I had already signed up for, is on Saturday, August 27, 2011. So that put it at 17 weeks away. My training method is a 12 week training so, right now I'm looking at 5 weeks of non-structured training.

I played soccer on Sunday and wondered how I should log those miles. I emailed our fitness guy and he suggested using a pedometer. While that doesn't sound very accurate, I decided to make up a metric of every half hour of heavy exertion in a sport, I'll count that as 1 mile. This way, I know I went over 1 mile but I'm safely underestimating it.

Here are my results from Week 1 of the cardio/fitness challenge

Adrian's Summer Running 2011: Juniper Systems Challenge

2011-05-07T14:00:00.000-06:00

Before the month of May, my company's fitness guy (Steve Suhaka) decided to announce another fitness challenge to Juniper Systems employees and their families. The previous 4 months, Steve made a fitness challenge for Juniper employees that looked at how many pushups and situps you could do, as well as VO2 max and body mass index. This current fitness challenge is a cardio challenge where each person participating will track how many miles they cover in 5 different categories:

Walking
Hiking
Running
Cycling
Swimming

Because Cycling miles aren't the same as running/walking miles, each mile cycling will count as 1/3 of a mile. And because of the strenuousness of swimming, each mile of swimming will count as 3. Running, Hiking, and Walking will all count normally; 1:1.

The overall goal of this cardio fitness challenge was to have the participants cover 20,000 miles over the course of 16 weeks. With some rough calculations, that means the 80+ people signed up would need to cover about 15 or so miles per week; which is doable. At the end of the fitness challenge, Juniper Systems will have a 5k fun run to cap it off. A mileage sheet was emailed to the participants to record each person's miles for each of the 16 weeks (in each category of cardo).

I was pretty excited about this because I had already signed up for a half marathon and this would help motivate me to run. And I had a feeling that they would reward people who ran the furthest, etc and I am hoping to be one of those people. I was a little sad that Lisa couldn't do this because, at the start of this, she was about 6 months pregnant.

Adrian's Summer Running 2011

2011-05-07T12:51:00.000-06:00

I have been running all summer (original post date of this blog entry is August 31, 2011, but I am backdating it to May 7, 2011) but haven't blogged about it. I will blog about my adventures in running for the summer and back date each blog post to the correct corresponding week. This is just for me personally to reflect on and if anyone wants to read about what I've experienced for the last 4 months.

Since about late 2006, Lisa and I had always had the goal of running a half marathon. I don't know how we came to this goal but it sounded like a good idea and would be something I could check off my list of things I've done in my life. Starting in December of 2006, Lisa and I started training for a half marathon that would take place on the weekend of March 4th, 2007. We used Hal Higdon's training program (to a degree) and were extremely dedicated to running. Since we didn't have a full 12 weeks, as suggested by the training, we fudged it to make it work. I was really proud of how far we came and how well we did, especially when we started running 9 miles in one day.

A couple of weeks before the half marathon Lisa got a message from Utah State University to come to a welcome weekend sort of thing to check out the campus. Well, I'm sure you can guess the rest, this weekend happened to be the same weekend of our half marathon. Needless to say, we never ran the half marathon and hadn't run one since. I was a little disappointed because we had trained so hard and did so well. I even thought about just running the 13.1 miles to see how well I could do... but I never did it. I wanted to have a "race day" like experience; unhindered by vehicles and other such distractions on a 13.1 mile run but figured I couldn't recreate that... I did learn that the weather for the half marathon was awfully cold (start temp was possibly in the high 30s) so that did make me feel a little better about not running the race. (Oh and we got to go skiing for free up at USU so it was worth it!)

A couple of other times we attempted at training again for a half but other things kept on getting in the way: school, kids, school, and kids, etc. Last summer (the summer of 2010) Lisa started training again for a half marathon for late summer. She had a Salt Lake City half marathon in her mind and was doing well with her training. She had wanted to do the local, Top of Utah Half Marathon but that one is so popular that it fills up really quickly (a couple of months before the race). Motivated by Lisa's running, I started running too. She would run when it was light out, and I would run at night. But as the distance and time commitments started building up, Lisa couldn't keep up with her training; mostly because of the neediness of Olsen (and her willingness to get things done - school work). So she had told me that she wanted me to try the SLC half marathon that was later in the summer. It would be a short training span but I thought I could do it. Well, the logistics of getting down to SLC and participating in the half marathon didn't work out, plus, if I remember correctly, I had something else I had to do on that weekend. So we still haven't completed our goal of running a half marathon.

This year, back in April, I decided to take a different approach. I signed up for the Top of Utah half marathon way early. So therefore I was committed to run this race!

The Power of M&Ms

2011-03-21T19:53:00.000-06:00

This weekend we decided to get serious about potty-training Olsen. We put him in fun underwear and set the timer to put him on his little potty. He needed an M&M to sit on the potty and would get three more for peeing. He has actually done really well! On Saturday, he had two accidents and told us right away about it. On Sunday and today, he has had no accidents! Sometimes, he doesn't want to sit on the potty, but M&Ms are too hard to resist. He still hasn't pooped in the potty, because he always seems to do that right after he wakes up from sleeping and is still wearing his diaper, so I'm not sure how to go about that. I have been trying to space out the interval of getting him on the potty, and I'm hoping that soon, he'll be able to tell me when he has to go instead of us putting him on the potty. But we've had a lot of progress these last two days!

Olsen finds out he's going to have a little sister

2011-03-18T19:03:00.029-06:00

Olsen finds out he's going to have a little sister
Originally uploaded by Aggiewelshes
We got the idea from watching America's Funniest Videos; there was a video of parents telling their 2 kids about having another baby. The boy (probably about 6 or 7?) at first didn't believe it and we thought, this isn't very funny for this show. Then he starts breaking down in tears about this new baby. After a little bit his slightly older sister starts bawling as well. It was hilarious. I thought it would be funny to tell Olsen, on video, about his future little sister. The video was pretty funny; check it out!

Click on the video, or video link, to see the description in Flickr (or I guess I can post it here):
Olsen at first has a little chat about having a little sister. He compares Calliou having a sister named Rosie. (Calliou is a tv show he loves to watch about a 4 year old boy and his adventures. He has a 2 year old sister named Rosie). Then Olsen realizes that he would much rather have a brother and gets a little sad.

Here is Calliou and Rosie:

(posted by Adrian)

Potty Training Attempt #486

2011-03-17T21:37:00.005-06:00

Two days after his initial successful potty adventure, he had another successful one! Then it was daily fighting to try and get him to sit on his potty seat. It was pretty frustrating and seemingly hopeless, but finally, tonight, he peed again in his potty seat! So maybe there's a slight bit of progress here. This weekend we might try potty training boot camp and see what happens.

Dinosaur Park

2011-02-27T14:48:00.001-07:00

On President's Day, we took Olsen to the Dinosaur Park in nearby Ogden.

The Dinosaur Park is made up of a museum with replica dinosaur bones and a few automated robotic dinosaurs that move and roar. But the biggest part of the Park is their long outdoor trail marked by dinosaur sculptures.

Olsen liked this part the best, because he enjoys walking outside. Plus, there was a playground there as well.

Olsen called this dinosaur a "scary dragon."

walking under a giant dinosaur

posing with dad on one of the dinosaurs in the playground

looking out from the playground tower

Olsen had a good time, and we will be going back again. I had ended up buying a year long family membership through Groupon, so we can go as much as we want this next year.

Olsen-isms

2011-02-20T20:26:00.005-07:00

Olsen has been talking a lot lately, and I love it, because he's so open and honest with the things that he says and thinks. Some of my favorites:

Out of the blue, he'll say, "I like Mama. I like Dada, too. I like doggie. And I like Olsen."

When he's eating a snack, he'll try and share with us and say, "Mama, want some?" or "Doggie, want some?" (which of course she does!)

He also tries to get us to participate in his games. The other day he was playing with a fly swatter and pretending to swat flies and put their carcasses in a container. After awhile, he said, "Mama want to try it? Mama want to swat flies?" After I put my flies in the container, he said, "Good job, Mama!" "Thank you, Olsen." "You're welcome, Mama."

There are times when Olsen is disagreeable, and I start to get irritated. I think he can tell, because after while, he'll say, "Sorry, Mama" in his most contrite voice. It sounds more like "Thor-ry, Ma-ma," and it's hard to stay upset with him.

Sometimes, he gets upset since it can be hard being two. He'll say, "I'm sad," or "I'm mad," and cry at the injustices brought upon him. I'll hold him for awhile and he'll say, "I feel better now." May we all get over our anger as easily and happily as a toddler!

Potty Training Attempt #346

2011-02-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, well not exactly 346 but there's been many many times in which we've tried to get Olsen to go potty on his potty seat or on the "big potty." But today, he finally pottied for the first time in his little potty seat! It was such a big deal and I hope it's the start of many more times of going potty on the potty seat (instead of his diaper). I just had to write this short blurb on here so we can remember when he first peed in the potty! :)

Tuesdays with Olsen

2011-02-15T23:53:00.000-07:00

We recently switched Olsen to go to daycare Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays (from Tues, Wed, Thurs). I am hoping to collect all my data for my dissertation this semester and will have to travel a lot. With this new schedule, I can have Saturday to travel back home if needed (since Adrian's schedule is not as flexible now with his new job).

It's kind of nice, because there are more activities for Olsen and me to participate in on Tuesdays. Today we went to story time at the North Logan Library. They have two story times, one for 0-2 years and another 30 minutes later for 3-5 year olds. We went to the first story time first. He loved the singing parts of the session. He really does love to sing. He danced to the chicken dance and sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes". But then he walked off during the actual stories, so we left the story room and he played in the children's section for awhile. We ran into a friend and her son and talked with them before Olsen decided that he wanted to go back to the story room and hear the story.

So we waited until the next story time, and he actually listened to the stories the second time around. He even got to participate in the felt board story and place his piece of 8 lions on the board when the librarian read about the lions. Although he was much more involved for the second story time, we didn't stay the whole time. His attention faded when they got to the third story about Inuit people. He still had a lot of fun, and I think we'll try and go back next week.

2010?

2011-02-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

I realized that I did not blog at all in 2010! That's a whole year of Olsen's life. Here's a quick photo summary.

He turned two!

celebrating with sparklers

watching his birthday parade!

He had the chance to go on several trips.

He went to Zion National Park:

He visited his grandparents in Corpus and Pearland:

beach boy

splash pad fun

He went to Montana and danced at Sara's wedding:

He went to Yellowstone and the Tetons:

posing with his dad by the Yellowstone River

throwing rocks in the Yellowstone River

He went to Reno and Lake Tahoe:

exploring the beach

jumping off rocks at our cabin

Some other fun events of 2010:

petting pigs at Baby Animal Days

lots of hiking:

running with Lucy down the trail

more rock throwing at Hyrum Reservoir

cheering on the Aggies at USU football games

our little dinosaur

exploring the hay maze

picking out a pumpkin at Paradise Valley Orchard

eating apples while apple picking

shoveling snow for mom and dad!

decorating the tree

hanging out with Raley during our TX Christmas visit

pictures with the grandparents:

I think Olsen had a good year and is looking forward to the continuation of 2011! I can't believe he'll be THREE this summer.

Inventory of 2009

2009-12-31T23:36:00.002-07:00

I read this on the always enjoyable Blakery and found this fill-in-the-blank template from Mary Schmich at The Chicago Tribune and thought I would give it a try. Because Blake's right: what else can parents of toddlers do on new year's eve?

In 2009, I think I gained a few more pounds when Olsen was able to tolerate dairy, because that meant the return of ice cream and cheese to my diet!

I lost some confidence in my ability to balance my roles as student and mom. I hope to really work on this in 2010.

I stopped showering daily. It's not really possible with a toddler. But I want to try and get up early to exercise so if that can happen, then I will be back to showering daily. :)

I started Olsen in daycare twice a week and still have mixed feelings about it.

I was hugely satisfied by some things I actually got done regarding schoolwork this past year.

And frustrated by the things I didn't get done.

I am so embarassed that I freaked out about my lack of progress in my Ph.D world in front of Meg and Joanna. (They were wonderful and helpful though.)

Once again, I said I would eat more vegetables and cook much more instead of getting pizza all of the time.

Once again, I did not do that nearly as much I should have.

The biggest physical difference between me last December and me this January is the extra pounds, I guess I would have to say again.

The biggest psychological difference is that I am much less worried about Olsen's physical health. His digestive system has not given him any trouble for several months now.

I loved spending time with my little toddler. He's so funny.

Why did I spend even two minutes stressed out about what I should be doing instead of just doing it?!

I should have spent more time making more progress on my degree.

I watched way too much TV!

I didn't exercise nearly enough.

Graduate school drove me crazy.

The most relaxing place I went to was Estes Park this past summer.

Why did I go to Athens, GA and leave my toddler-baby for 5 days?

The best thing I did for someone else was try to be helpful and easily accessible.

The best thing I did for myself was use a little bit of the time Olsen was in daycare to have some lunch dates with Adrian.

The one thing I'd like to do again, but do it better, is parent Olsen. (I borrowed that from Blake).

Happy New Year and New Decade!

2010 - the year of Lucy surgeries

2009-12-29T12:54:00.008-07:00

It looks like 2010 will be the year of Lucy surgeries. Our little girl seems to be falling apart. Last month she was diagnosed with hip dysplasia and surgery is recommended since she cannot really walk very well right now. Last week she was running in excitement and hurt herself. We thought it was her hips but it turns out that she tore her cruciate ligament in her left knee, so she needs surgery on that first. And then after 6 months (!) she can get one hip done and then 3 months later, the other hip. Then after all that, she needs to get a tooth pulled. In the meantime, Lucy will have to take it easy and can only have minimal exercise. She's a little overweight so I'm not sure how we will be able to get her to lose any weight or at the very least not gain any more until she is recovered.

Lucy in the leaves, a few years ago, a few pounds lighter.

last semester recap!

2009-12-28T14:37:00.003-07:00

I think last semester went well for the most part. Olsen started going to an in-home daycare two days a week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. He is generally more sad and grumpy on Tuesdays and is nicer on Wednesdays. I hope that soon he will actually look forward to going. He always enjoys lunch there at least.

I also went to a conference in Athens, GA and left little Olsen for five whole days. Poor Adrian. But he handled it really well and they both survived. I didn't use that trip as an opportunity to wean, though. He still likes to nurse and I thought it might be a good thing to do through flu season at least. It is interesting to me how some people think that Olsen is too old to nurse but at the same time are fine with 2 and 3-year olds with pacifiers and bottles. oh well, some American ideas can be puzzling.

I don't know if I made as much progress on my degree as I would have liked. I'd really like to step it up this next semester. I think Adrian feels the same and can hopefully finish his masters soon. I'd really like to take and pass my comprehensive exams by the beginning part of next fall. We'll see if that happens. Maybe that will be a new year's resolution.

a little frustrated

2009-08-15T11:20:00.002-06:00

I've been trying to work my graduate school life around Olsen, so anytime I get any free time from Olsen, I HAVE to spend it doing work, because being a Ph.D student is supposed to be a full-time job. Plus I am getting paid pretty generously (in terms of graduate stipends) to be a graduate student, and I need to make sure that I earn it. But this leaves me with no time to myself to do something that I would consider fun. This is horrible, but sometimes I feel a little resentful that Adrian has his soccer that he plays twice a week and is in an all-day tournament today. I'm glad he has the opportunity to play soccer and get his exercise and he really is a HUGE help with Olsen, but sometimes I wish I had something similar for myself. But really, it doesn't matter, because like I said, whenever I do get the time away from Olsen, I can't really justify doing anything other than work (plus, I'm also a little behind where I should be in my graduate program). I don't know - I'm just frustrated and a little discouraged right now. I need some balance in my life and right now, I'm just not sure that it's possible. Maybe it will be when Olsen gets a little older...

Estes Park and the Rocky Mountains

2009-08-09T21:52:00.008-06:00

We had a fun vacation at Estes Park, CO. We were fortunate to get to use the cabin that Adrian's dad is offered every other year from his former company. It was so beautiful and right in the boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Olsen was actually pretty good on the ride over. We started in the evening and stopped after about 1.5 hours in Evanston, WY so Olsen could crawl around in the park. Then we stopped again in this complex called Little America (a respite from the desolate WY landscape with a hotel, restaurant, travel center, playground and 50-cent icecream cones!) to eat dinner. By that time, it was about Olsen's bedtime so he pretty much slept the rest of the way to Fort Collins.

The next day we went to our cabin and settled in.

Olsen loved the piano in the cabin.

The views were incredible from the big picture windows. We played some shuffleboard and explored Estes Park and the downtown area.

On Sunday, we decided to hike a trail right behind our cabin, the Deer Mountain Trail. Our cabin sits at 8300 feet, so the elevation is a bit higher than Logan (4500 feet) and we felt it! It was a nice hike but later we found out we didn't quite reach the top. Oh well, we got to hike and I was a little anxious to get back before Olsen got too much sun.

Monday: We decided to take it easy and went to explore the Bear Lake area in RMNP. The trails around the lakes there are accessible to wheelchairs so we brought Olsen's stroller. The Bear Lake area is very popular and the parking lot fills up very quickly in the morning, so we had to ride the shuttle bus over. Olsen enjoyed people watching on the bus and two older Aggies asked if Olsen was named after Olsen Field after noting his name on his helmet. Bear Lake and Nymph Lake were nice and we saw a friend of ours who is doing her graduate work in the area and took her survey on visitor perceptions. I was pretty surprised at how many people were in the Park. I expected crowds in places like Smoky Mountains and Yosemite but for some reason, I didn't expect the degree of crowding that we encountered in Rocky Mountain. In some ways, I feel like the large crowd can detract from the experience but then at the same time, I think it's great that a lot of people want to come out to national parks and experience the wilderness. Perhaps, national parks are not really the place to go if one is in seek of solitude.

The lilies were in bloom at Nymph Lake

Tuesday: We drove along Trail Ridge Road in the Park. We stopped at the Alpine Visitor Center (the highest visitor center in the park system) and hiked a short trail to a look-out where we saw a lot of elk. On the trail, we met several Aggies (we are truly everywhere!). One was a Navasota teacher that I worked with when I was a master's student at A&M.

It was windy up there. We think Olsen looks like a superhero in this picture with his intense eyes, clenched fist, and hair flying out of his helmet.

Wednesday: Adrian hiked Long's Peark, the highest point in the Park and one of the Colarado 14'ers, while Olsen had his day of rest. He crawled around and played a lot AND practiced his walking!

Thursday: We strolled around Lily Lake and showed Olsen the ducks and baby ducks. Then we went to the Baldpate Inn, which has the world's largest collection of keys.

They even have a key of the White House, sent by George Bush, Sr. Many people leave keys there as well. We ate the famous bread, salad, and soup buffet at the Inn. It was really good. One lady told us that her oldest child wore a helmet when she was younger. It's nice when people do that, because we did get a lot of stares this week - I guess because we were exposed to a lot more people the whole week. Oh well, I think Olsen looks really cute in his helmet. It seems to emphasize his cute face. We spent the rest of the day walking along downtown Estes Park.

Friday: We went down to the Wild Basin area of the Park and did a very short hike to Copeland Falls. If we ever come back to the Park, I'd like to continue on the trail to the Calypso Cascades and Ouzel Falls, but we needed to get back to the cabin so we could clean it before we left.

We left Estes at about 5:30 pm and drove through to get back to Logan. Olsen was really nice and pretty much slept after we stopped for dinner. He had one moment where he was upset but we were in WY and there was nowhere to stop for 30 miles. By the time we reached a place to stop, he had fallen back asleep, poor thing. We arrived back in Logan at 3 in the morning.

It was a great vacation. Olsen really improved his pointing skills and took his first steps in the cabin. He loved watching the hummingbirds and chipmunks that hung out around the cabin. Now, we are back to reality and have to get back to work! :)

Olsen's one!

2009-07-27T21:45:00.002-06:00

Olsen is in his second year of life now. In some ways, it feels like this 1st year has gone by so fast, and other times, it's hard to remember a time when we didn't have our little guy. He had such a fun birthday. It coincides with Pioneer Day, a huge holiday in Utah marking the day when Brigham Young led the Mormons into the Salt Lake Valley, so he gets a parade and fireworks for his birthday! We had some friends over for dinner and cake, and it was nice to have people who wanted to celebrate Olsen's birthday with us.

Olsen is growing to be more and more human-like everyday. He can now clap like a normal person and loves to wave at people. Whenever Adrian or I go out the door, even if it is just to check the mail, he waves at us. He loves music and enjoys beating his drum and tamborine. He can play the kazoo properly and blow into his recorder. His two favorite books are "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (he always claps when we get to the last page where he turns into a beautiful butterfly) and "Where's Spot?" (he loves to lift up the flap at the end to finally find Spot).

And, he takes real afternoon naps now! It's pretty awesome. AND, I have been eating dairy and he has been eating yogurt and he has had no ill-effects! I think I'll see how he does with cheese soon. I had a few slices of pizzza with cheese tonight, and I think I might prefer my pizza without cheese now - very curious, indeed.

We love our little guy and enjoy watching him grow and develop his personality more and more everyday. It's amazing how much they grow in one short year. We went to an outdoor band concert on campus and saw this tiny newborn baby. It was weird to think that Olsen was that small just a year ago.

Our little Jaggernaut

2009-07-09T21:44:00.002-06:00

We now have a little Jaggernaut on our hands. We finally decided to try the helmet with Olsen. I kept looking at his head and noticed that his left side bulges out more, so we went to get it measured again, and it turns out that his head is 7 mm assymmetrical. Insurance covers the helmet at 6 mm off, so he is at the borderline between not helmeting and helmeting. We decided to go ahead and go for it so that we can say we did all we could for him and not have any regrets later. I know that many people that I've talked to say they don't really notice it or that it isn't that bad (but then again, who really wants to tell someone that their baby's head is odd-shaped?), but people also told us that at 5 months and now when I look at videos from then, I think 'gosh, his head looks flat' and I cringe a little that at the time I didn't think enough of it to get his helmet back then. I really don't want to look at videos from now in the future and think the same, so we have gone ahead with this helmet treatment. I dreaded this helmet so much at first, but now I am quite used to seeing my little helmet head.

This is silly but I think that one reason why I dreaded the helmet is because I didn't want to seem like an awful mother who left her baby on his back all day, resulting in a flat head. Before we had Olsen, I was totally aware of the possibilities of babies getting flat heads if left lying on their backs a lot, so I was careful to hold him most of the day and give him plenty of tummy time. He never even sat in a swing (mostly because he hated it) and wasn't really in his carseat that much, so I thought I was doing good. But we did not know about his torticollis until two months in and when he slept on his back, he only turned his head to the right, resulting in that side getting flat. Plus, he did take his naps in his bouncy chair, which probably didn't help things.

I also worried about the helmet because I didn't want to give the impression that I am unhappy with the way my little boy looks or expect him to be perfect. Right now, he is a little older than the ideal age to start the helmet, so he may not get perfect results, and I am okay with that. I just don't want him to have any future ill-effects from assymmetry. I read a couple of articles (from peer-reviewed journals!) that untreated plagiocephaly (flat head syndrome) can cause some issues, like jaw or sinus problems and even learning disabilities, although the articles did not discuss the severity of the plagiocephaly of the research subjects so I'm unclear if these things would apply to Olsen since he is more on the mild side. I also don't want him to feel self-conscious about it in the future. We definitely plan on teaching Olsen that looks mean nothings if not accompanied with a spirit of generosity, empathy, and appreciation.

But, it can still be easy to feel a little self-conscious. I use myself as an example: I was in a pretty serious car accident several years ago and I fractured my spine. I had surgery and rods put it but somehow the part that was fractured slipped forward a little so my neck is not inline properly and comes forward. This makes my posture look awful! And I do feel self-conscious about it, especially when I have to give a talk, since bad posture does not really give the desirable message. But to fix my neck, I would have to have another invasive spinal surgery with a long recovery and all the other risks that come with having a surgery around your spinal cord. My neck issue obviously hasn't bothered me enough to get a second surgery, but if i could fix it just by wearing a huge, cumbersome back brace for a few months, I would totally do it. So, I think if Olsen can get a little bit of correction wearing this helmet for a few months, then it will be worth it. He doesn't mind it at all and the only real negative effect is that people stare at him. But Olsen doesn't understand the stares, so that is really something that I have to deal with. I think, though, that people would probably stare at him anyways, because people generally stare at cute babies.

At first, I was pretty sad about the whole flat head issue and the helmet wearing. Olsen has had a series of small issues in his first year: hip dysplasia, not nursing for two whole months, torticollis, plagiocephaly due to the torticollis, reflux, and milk and soy protein intolerance. These things have all been pretty minor, though at the time of their peaks, they have felt like huge issues to me. But today, Olsen had a follow-up appointment with his ped ortho to check his hips again (they look good!) and we saw several little ones in spica casts to treat their hip dysplasia, while Olsen only had to wear a harness. So, I am thankful that Olsen has been really fortunate that all of his issues have resolved pretty quickly. He has been in good health and has actually not been technically sick yet. I think we will make it through this whole helmet/plagiocephaly issue as well.

restricted access

2009-06-14T19:07:00.003-06:00

We got a steal of a deal on a baby gate on craigslist. We put it up in between the living room and dining room. It's great because this way, Olsen can't wander into the dining room without intense supervision. The dining room is part of the entrance way, so a lot of debris ends up on the carpet that he liked to pick up and put in his mouth. In addition, Lucy likes to carry her food from the kitchen into the dining room carpet and not eat it all, much to Olsen's delight. I feel a little mean restricting the little guy, but I think it's for the best, since I don't vaccum everyday, like I probably should.

* there are still hazards in the living room, as you can see. We have a lot more baby proofing to do!

hiking

2009-06-10T11:27:00.009-06:00

The weather in Logan has been quite strange lately. It has been raining for a week and the temperatures have been in the upper 50s - 60s. From what I understand (from others and from being here last summer), it is generally quite hot and dry at this point in the summer. Every once in awhile the sun will break through for a spell and it is beautiful. We took advantage last Saturday to try our new baby carrier backpack.

Olsen actually seemed to like it and had a great view of the scenery. Every once in awhile he would take advantage of his position to pull Adrian's ears.

Lucy had a good time as always. We didn't hike for very long. We came across this in the trail and I wasn't sure if I wanted to try crossing with Olsen in the pack.

Overall, I think the pack is great and it will be handy when we go to Colorado. I'm just not entirely sure where his head goes when he falls asleep.

Home again

2009-06-05T21:22:00.004-06:00

We're back from a whirlwind TX trip. We went to Pearland, where Adrian's parents live and to Corpus, where my parents live. Olsen's grandparents were very excited to see little Olsen. He is pretty cute now and fun to watch. He still cries when people he doesn't know hold him, though. He likes to watch new people and even climb on them, but if they hold him, he generally cries. We will need to try and work on that, especially if we ever need someone else to watch Olsen. However, one day when in Corpus, my aunts and uncle came to see Olsen, and he let everybody hold him! I'm not sure what was different about that day. He had a bad night of sleep that night but took a nice long morning nap. I guess the nap refreshed him and put him in an extra good mood.

We had a nice time. Olsen went swinging and swimming almost everyday. And he took his first trip to the beach! He also got to play with his friends, Raley and Krysta. Olsen did great on the plane both ways, but it did take a lot of effort on my and Adrian's part to keep him fully entertained, since he could not crawl around. It was nice to see family, and in some ways I was sad to leave, especially my parents' house since it seems like I don't get to go there too often. But, it was also probably time to come home, since Olsen was starting to get crankier the last few days and Adrian and I were getting tired. I think Lucy missed us, too.

clapping by Olsen

2009-05-22T22:36:00.002-06:00

We went to a friend's house the other day for a farewell BBQ for Sara who is off to Montana after finishing her masters. Bec has a little girl, Lola, who is exactly 2 weeks older than Olsen. She is super smart and if you say, "Lola, clap," she immediately claps her hands together. Olsen is not quite at that point, and I don't think his fine motor skills are as advanced as Lola's, but he's working on it. Here's Olsen's version of clapping.

the chase

2009-05-20T23:43:00.002-06:00

Here is a video of one of Olsen's favorite games. This video is almost a month old, and he can crawl so much faster now. He's still not close to walking, though. I think he wants to be like Lucy and stay on all fours.

beets!

2009-05-13T21:56:00.002-06:00

This is a picture of Olsen after eating some beets. It looks like he has some red lipstick on. He actually seems to like the beets and opens his mouth wide when they are offered. To be honest, I do not care for beets. But I know that they are supposed to be amazingly good for you. I am trying to get us to eat much more healthily, because I get the feeling that soon Olsen will not be satisfied with a bowl of beets while I'm eating half a pizza...

Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T20:24:00.003-06:00

I had a great Mother's Day! It started with breakfast in bed: cereal, a poptart, and jello with fruit. Cooking isn't Adrian's strong point, but it was great. Olsen had gotten me a collection of Burt's Bees lotions and soaps with a really nice note. And then, Adrian and Lucy planted me a gala apple tree! There was also a package of oreos in the mix as well (they are dangerously dairy-free).

The day was excellent and work-free. It is amazing how I just love my little guy to pieces, and he isn't even 10 months old yet. Being a mom is really an incredible role, and I am so happy that I have been blessed to experience it!

Olsen and me by the apple tree.

jogging finally!

2009-05-06T23:04:00.002-06:00

I have gone jogging twice this week! After I put Olsen to bed, I have gone jogging, while Adrian goes jogging (he probably actually goes running) while I am going through Olsen's bedtime routine. It has been nice, but I am pretty slow these days. Adrian and I used to run together around the A&M campus. He was always ahead of me, but I could still see his back. There is something about seeing someone's back that encourages you to run faster and longer. Now I am on my own, so I will have to push myself. These past two nights, I have jogged up to campus and through it a little bit and then back down. It is nice being up on the campus and looking down at the valley with the surrounding mountains.

I do have an awesome jogging stroller that my dad got me for Christmas. I love it, and I take Olsen and Lucy for walks everyday with it. It was especially nice in the winter, because it can navigate through the snow and ice with such ease, compared to our other, huge travel system stroller (which I might not have gotten in retrospect). However, I am still a little afraid to jog with it, because I don't like the idea of Olsen's head being too rattled. I think this is a little bit of an irrational fear, because the stroller is designed to absorb the bumps, plus Olsen's head is pretty well attached at this point. But still...I worry. Maybe sometime soon I will jog with Olsen. Perhaps, next week, when Adrian is out of town for his short course, and I will be unable to jog at night alone.

decisions, decisions, decisions

2009-05-04T20:21:00.005-06:00

I think the hardest part about being a mom is making choices for my little person, who is not able to make his own decisions. I need to try and make the best choices possible for my little guy, because I want the best for him. I can do all the research in the world, but a lot of the times, it still just comes down to what Adrian and I think is best. Lately, I have gone back and forth about our decision to not get Olsen a helmet for his head shape. His head is still a little flat on the right side.

Olsen must have been crammed in my uterus and was born with hip dysplasia and torticollis. His ped caught the hip dysplasia right away, but we didn't realize he had torticollis until his 2 month appointment. I had noticed that he had a tilt at times and liked looking right, but I mostly just thought that was due to having a heavy head and weak neck. But apparently, his neck muscle was extremely tight and he couldn't turn left (maybe Zoolander had torticolllis). We only had him on his back when he was sleeping, but his head got a little flat on the right since that was the only way he would turn his head when on his back. We went to physical therapy and did a lot of stretching. His tort resolved pretty quickly, but we had to be really vigilant about repositioning him. I almost wanted to go ahead and get him a helmet to reshape his head, but insurance requires two-month of repositioning. And most people I talked to said it wasn't that bad. He had no facial asymmetry. Even my mom thought he looked fine, and she can be somewhat critical at times. And I honestly wanted to avoid having him wear a helmet since he already had to wear a hip harness.

His head has improved and he is actually only 3 mm flatter on his right than his left, but he still has this flatness to his head. I think in general his head naturally doesn't come out as much and this is emphasized on the right side. I can tell his head is more flattish when I look at other babies. I just hope it doesn't bother him when he's older. I have never really noticed people's head shapes before, so I hope others don't really look at that also. I just wonder sometimes if we made the right choice in not going for the helmet. But his face is as cute as ever, so I'm trying not to worry about it too much...

cognitive enhancers?

2009-04-30T14:32:00.002-06:00

My semester is over, so I am done with course work until the fall. Now, I can concentrate on my research. I need to finish my proposal and work on a couple of papers. I hope these things get done this summer. Sometimes, I enjoy my role as a graduate student, and I am so glad that I can stay home with Olsen. But other times, I wish I was solely a stay-at-home-mom. I can think of a lot of things I can do with the time I use for school work, like sleeping, cleaning, exercising, thoroughly filling out Olsen's baby book, reading, organizing all of Olsen's inherited clothes...I get overwhelmed sometimes when I think of the things that I need to try and find time to do.

If I wasn't breastfeeding, I would be tempted to take Adderall or modafinil. I'm just kidding - the side effects of all drugs tend to freak me out. But I read an article a couple of days ago about the rise of people taking drugs like Adderall as a "cognitive enhancer." I found it interesting and disturbing. The article raised the question of how this use of these types of drugs can lead to "cosmetic neurology." In the future, will people who refuse to take these drugs be at a disadvantage? Does the use of these drugs, limit creative thinking, and are we teaching our young people to learn in only certain kinds of ways? The author of the article feared we would be raising a generation of very "focused accountants", hee hee, that makes me laugh (not that there is anything wrong with being an accountant). Of course, the other side of the debate was discussed too. Could the use of these drugs as a cognitive enhancer level the playing field for those not as fortunate to have a good education? Can we really look down on people who use these drugs when they still have to be motivated to finish the task at hand in the first place? For me, I get a little concered when I think about how this fast-paced life doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. While the use of these cognitive enhancers might help people get more work done than they may have been able to do without it, I think that there will just always be more to do and more demands on our time. For now, I'll just do the best that I can.

teeth!

2009-04-10T12:46:00.009-06:00

Thurday, I saw two little white slits in Olsen's lower gums. Teeth are coming! It is a little bittersweet, because while it's always exciting to see evidence of Olsen growing up, I will miss that toothless smile. However, according to Mariann, it can take up to two weeks until his teeth are totally out, so we still have more time with gummy grins.

Olsen has officially graduated from physical therapy! His torticollis is resolved and he has full range of motion in his neck. I think his physical therapist was a little sad to see him go. He has certainly come a long way, from crying a lot during PT to happy and playing instead. She said that she will always remember little Olsen.

At 8.5 months, Olsen:

crawls everywhere in a super quick manner.

pulls up to standing.

gets really mad when I try to change his diaper.

eats a small variety of solids.

babbles with consonent sounds.

sleep training?

2009-01-07T22:41:00.002-07:00

Our little Olsen is not the best sleeper. He's pretty bad about taking naps, except for in my arms. The instant I try to put the little guy down, he awakens, usually in a sad, indignant manner. Recently, I thought it would be cool if Olsen would sleep in his crib at night in his room, mostly because his crib looks really comfy to me and I selfishly enjoy the idea of having our room to ourselves again.

Olsen can't really fall asleep on his own yet. He usually likes to nurse to sleep or be rocked to sleep. The past few days, I have nursed him to sleep and then I carefully put him in his crib. He sleeps for about 20 minutes and awakens with some tears. So, I nurse him again and put him back in his crib where he will sleep for an hour. Then he awakens. Then I move him back into our room. Last night, he actually slept for about 6 hours after being moved back into our room, so I was glad about that. Sometimes he wakes up a lot and so we end up co-sleeping with him so that he can basically be attached to the boob all night.

So that has been my method of sleep training. not very effective really, but I don't want to do the whole cry it out method, because I feel that sometimes as Americans we really stress the importance of independence a little too early in life. Olsen is not even 6 months old yet, and I don't think he's meant to be able to do things independently. He needs me to help him sleep and that is one of my jobs as his mom. After all, the way I see it is that as his mom I actually have very few years where I will be the most important person to him, because nobody likes a momma's boy after a certain age. So I will relish these moments when it is only me that Olsen wants and needs. :)

Family Tag

2008-11-29T22:58:00.003-07:00

so I totally failed on trying to post everyday this month. I think I might try it in January, and I might be a little more successful. I have lots to catch up on about Olsen (and his various medical maladies :( ) but for now, I think I will fulfill one of the tags Blake from the always entertaining Blakery has tagged me with. I'll do the easier one now:

1. How many people are in your family?
Three, actual humans, but four if you count furry people as well.

2. When did you get married?
July 22, 2006

3. Are your children boys or girls?
One little baby boy

4. What do you do for fun as a family?
well, so far we seem to be a boring family of three. We do like to take Lucy (and Chico when we are dog-sitting) for walks. We try to spend time playing on our tummies, and we read Dr. Seuss books, especially Hop on Pop (the simplest Seuss for the youngest use). Olsen loves this book!

5. Is your family complete, or are you planning on having more children?
hummmmm, well, for some reason I have always thought it would be fun to have three children. But right now, I seriously don't understand how people have a baby and other children at the same time! Our little guy seems to take up most of our energies, but he is awfully cute.

shots and other health related news...

2008-11-12T13:24:00.004-07:00

Today Olsen received the last two shots from his two-month series. We're doing a slightly modified schedule so that he doesn't get 6 shots at once (but he is getting all the vaccinations). I realize that this modified schedule probably doesn't really do anything, but I figure for my peace of mind that it is worth it. He was such a good boy. He tends to have a delayed reaction and cries after the shots are done. I hold him for a little bit and he calms down really fast. Now he is sleeping. I'm hoping that all his vaccinations go like the past two sessions, although I fear he will become more sad as he gets older.

This past Sunday, we went to Emily and Seth's casa for a fabulous dinner. Emily and Seth have a Wii and a Wii Fit. It is too cool. BUT I did the little health assessment thing, and apparently I have the fitness level of a 38 year old and the Wii suspects that I must trip when I walk! yikes, indeed. I think I will partly blame that on having a baby not tooooo long ago (well maybe it was awhile ago) and being tired from minimal sleep. However, I seriously do need to exercise. I just am not sure when to exercise. I have a PeeWee Pilates book that shows exercises that I can do with Olsen, but everytime I try, he gets mad. Hopefully I can figure out how to schedule in some exercise soon. On a good note, I have a healthy BMI and the Wii said I weigh less than what I thought. According to the Wii, I am almost back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Even so, my pre-pregnancy jeans still seem tight to me. So I am wondering where this weight loss has come from. I'm starting to suspect I might have lost some brain mass. sigh.

quick post

2008-11-02T21:48:00.003-07:00

Olsen is so cute when he's not mad. He laughs and squeals now, and it is so cute and funny.

I only have a little more than a month left of this semester since I don't have any finals. It'll be such a relief when I get all these papers done. Christmas vacation = opportunity to sleep.

NaBloPoMo

2008-11-01T23:09:00.002-06:00

I might try NaBloPoMo again, which means that I will try and post everyday this month. We'll see if that happens, because November always seems kind of stressful since the semester is ending which means I really need to get to writing my papers!

I haven't posted in so long! Olsen is doing well. His hips are normal now and he's nursing! It's fun watching him develop. I'll write more in my future posts, but now I need to get to work since Olsen is sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeping...

grandparent visit!

2008-08-17T23:31:00.002-06:00

My parents are coming into town Tuesday night to see their grandchildren (Lucy and Olsen). The house is a small mess, but hopefully they will not mind too much. I hope that we will be able to show them the area a little bit, but I honestly have not really gone out much since Olsen's been born.

I'm not going to lie - this newborn stage has been pretty challenging for me. It's difficult to know exactly what is bothering Olsen when he cries - I'm always convinced that he's sick. I miss sleeping and it's difficult to not be able to just get up and go, especially when I feel permanently hooked to my pump*. It's also weird to not be able to get things done. I'm a little worried about school starting but hopefully I can do it. Every time I look at him, I know that it is all worth it, and this newborn stage will go by so fast that I will be sad when it's over.

*sooooo, we still are not nursing. But he has been solely getting breastmilk because I am now an "exclusive pumper." But it's so time-consuming that sometimes I want to quit. But I really want him to have breastmilk because it's supposed to be the best, and I want him to have the best, especially with his hip dysplasia. (although pumped BM is really second best to getting it from the source.) There are other reasons too, like I don't like the way formula smells or tastes; I've heard that formula poop is worse than BM poop; and BM is free.

Maybe one day he will nurse. I've heard some people say that after 6 weeks (one said after 4 months!) that their baby just "got it" and started nursing. I would love to be able to nurse because it is so convenient - you don't have to get anything ready or wash anything and it's the perfect temperature. Plus, this pumping takes up almost 3 hours of my day if I include the washing of everything. I suppose I can do other things while pumping (like write this post), but I hate feeling so worried that I'm going to dry up if I don't pump at least every three hours. I have heard that after about 3 months, my milk supply will stabilize and I can start pumping less until I'm only pumping four times a day, so that will be nice.

The other worrisome thing about pumping is that the pump is not as effective at pulling out the milk as a baby is, so some people can end up decreasing their supply when they just pump. I have started taking fenugreek, this herb that people say can increase your milk supply. It's side effect is to leave me with a maple syrup aroma, which is not my favorite perfume. My ultimate goal is for him to have BM for a year with my minimum goal of 6 months. I hope I can do it.

I suppose it will not be the worst thing in the world if I end up having to supplement with formula. After all, I was a formula baby and I feel like I am relatively healthy. But it has taken me awhile to feel okay with that possibility. I cried a lot those first two weeks when all I did was try and get Olsen to nurse. I suppose if we were in the wild, he would have eventually gotten it because there would have been no other option. But since we're not in the wild, I wasn't willing to have him go hungry and so I pumped and gave him a bottle (probably not the choice that La Leche League people would have chosen). We did try other supplementary methods like the syringe, but it was so time-consuming that we couldn't really keep that up. Oh well, I think it should work out one way or the other...

Olsen is two weeks old!

2008-08-08T15:05:00.006-06:00

Olsen turned two weeks on Thursday! He now his harness that he will be wearing for several months. We're not entirely sure of the time line, but we have to go into Salt Lake every 2 weeks to see his orthopedist to check his progress. He seems to tolerate the harness pretty well and he can still kick his legs so it isn't too restrictive. Diaper changing is a little more difficult, but other than that, we can't complain too much. We're just praying that it works!

Olsen had his 2 week appointment on Friday. He now weighs 7 lbs. 12 oz. and is 21 inches long. He grew a whole inch! In weight, he's in the 22 percentile and in height, he's in the 61 percentile. Adrian asked the doctor if that meant he'll be a tall, skinny guy, but the doctor said that the percentiles don't really mean anything. I like our pediatrician because he's pretty patient and allows us to ask him a ton of questions - most of them are pretty silly. It is a little disturbing because Olsen's next appointment is for his 2-month checkup. Does our pediatrician really think we can handle the next 1.5 months by ourselves, without getting checked up on?

We still are not really in a routine. I feel like we mostly spend our days trying to feed the guy. Maybe we'll get that down at some point. It's weird because even though I don't really do too much these days, the days go by fairly quickly. Our little boy is too cute. He does get fussy at times, especially when we take him upstairs for bed. We have to bounce him for a really long time before he will settle down. I don't think he cries too much but he can have his moments of yelling. Although, it seems like all of our friends that have recently had babies have babies that never cry. hmmmm. Sometimes I wonder when I will feel like a real person again. It's only been 17 days or so, though, so it will probably be awhile longer.

Lucy meets Olsen

2008-08-05T10:17:00.004-06:00

So many people have asked how Lucy likes Olsen. We were wondering the same thing. But here is a video that shows the first time that Lucy met Olsen on Olsen's first day home from the hospital. He wasn't even out of the car yet before Lucy wanted to say hi.

If you can't view this, then contact me on YouTube.
My user name is MidnightYell2003.

Lucy loves Olsen and wants to take care of him. She likes to clean his face or his hands with her tongue and gets sad when he cries. She can't wait until he grows up a little bit to where he can start playing with her.

one week!

2008-08-02T17:13:00.006-06:00

Olsen is more than a week old now! He has had a pretty eventful first week. First off, he was born. It must be a really weird feeling to be a newborn and getting used to life outside the womb. It's funny to watch him get used to his body. His arms and legs are like springs and his grasp is really tight. I read that these reflexes don't last long and soon his arms and legs will be more relaxed, so we have to appreciate his springiness while it lasts.

He had a case of jaundice when he was born and for his second night in the hospital, he had to stay under the blue bili lights in our room. He had to stay under them for 3 hours at a time, so we couldn't pick him up when he fussed under them. And he did fuss. He did not seem to really like them that much. We were able to take him home the next day and we had to bring him in the next two days to get his bilirubin levels checked to make sure that his jaundice was gone.

The difficult thing about the jaundice is that the best way for him to get over it was for him to eat a lot so that he could poop a lot to release the extra bilirubin. But the jaundice made him so sleepy that he was really ineffective at breastfeeding. So at the hospital we had to supplement with formula and then at home, I have been pumping like crazy. He is over the jaundice but he is still not really eating at the breast. It's been kind of frustrating because he has a really lazy suck. We've been putting him on and trying to get him to latch. He finally latches but then he sucks very weakly. Then eventually, he gets really hungry and cries and then I cry because I can't feed him. So then we give him a bottle of pumped milk and then I pump. It is a time-consuming, frustrating process, and I hope he can get it soon or else I will have to become attached to my pump, I suppose.

One other challenge that Olsen has right now is a case of hip dysplasia in his left hip. Olsen's pediatrician found it the morning after he was born when he moved his legs around. His left hip socket is shallower than normal, so his left hip can easily become dislocated. We're not sure why he has this since it is most common in girls and breech babies, which he is neither, though it is more common in first born babies. The good news is that since he is so young, the treatment method is for him to wear a harness for a couple of months. The harness will keep his legs abducted so that as he develops, it will press his hip ball and socket together to form a deeper socket. From what I have read, this works 90% of the time and no further treatment is needed. So, we are praying that this will work so that he won't need surgery. And the good thing is that since he is so little, I don't think the harness will bother him too much. We go into Salt Lake on Monday to see an orthopedic pediatrician to get his harness.

That is pretty much his first week in a nutshell! (Plus his umbilical cord fell off today...)

Here is another video of Olsen (including the bili lights and putting on his first clothes!)
If you can't view this, then contact Adrian at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MidnightYell2003
and either "add as friend" or "send a message" or "subscribe to videos" or something. Either of those options will contact Adrian and will allow you to see this video.

The famous Daydreamin' Boy Video

2008-07-30T17:44:00.004-06:00

Olsen wanted me to share this video with everyone. It's a short (1:30) clip that's getting pretty popular on YouTube. He's quickly becoming a baby phenomenon!

Olsen's birth story

2008-07-29T12:32:00.007-06:00

Adrian has been wanting me to write in our blog, so here is the story of Olsen's birth. This is pretty long and most likely not that interesting to anyone but me. Olsen was officially due on July 23, but he did not seem to be coming, so we went to the Utah Festival Opera to see 1776 with some friends. We invited them over for some cherry cobbler (made from cherries from our tree!) and then went to bed at around midnight or so.

I had some slight pains in the night but I thought it was just indigestion from the cobbler. Then at around 5 am, I felt really weird and went to the bathroom a lot. At about 5:30 am, my water started to leak so I took a shower and finished packing up my hospital bag. Adrian woke up at around 8 and we had some breakfast. I was having some contractions but they weren't too bad, so we went to our favorite garden store to buy a few more plants since they were having a sale. I started having more frequent contractions at the store, but we ended up getting the plants that we wanted and we headed home.

At that point, I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to the hospital or not. When I would have a contraction, I would want to go but then when it went away, I wanted to stay home. My lower back was hurting a lot and my water leaked some more, so I decided to go, since the hospital has a jacuzzi that I thought would be nice to sit in for my back. We got there at around 11:30 am and they hooked me up to a heart monitor and contraction monitor thing and checked me to be 6 cm dilated. I asked if I could sit in the jacuzzi but they wanted to wait longer to see how fast I was progressing, because I guess they don't really want water births there. An hour later, I was at 8 cm, so I was not allowed to go to the jacuzzi or even take a hot shower. And they don't allow you to drink water, which I found very sad.

My lower back pain was due to the fact that Olsen was sunny side up, facing the ceiling instead of ideally facing down, so the pressure of his skull and back was pressing into my back. The nurse had me lay on my side to see if it would help him roll over. I didn't really use the lamaze techniques we learned. I think everyone has a different way to deal with pain, and I like to deal with it more internally so it didn't really work for me to have Adrian try to coach me through a breathing pattern. Instead, I made him massage my lower back while I did my own thing. I fell asleep sometimes in between contractions.

Around 2 or so, I was fully dilated except for an anterior lip because of the whole sunny-side up position. The nurse let me start pushing while she tried to move that part out of the way (I hope this isn't too graphic). After more than an hour or so of that, my doctor came (actually not my original doctor because he was out of town but another one in the same practice, a woman who I had a chance to meet beforehand and really liked) and tried to turn him with her fingers. I don't think she was quite successful but I kept pushing through the contractions, which was nice because I think that pushing helped with the pain because at least you are doing something about it. He eventually turned but it seemed like he did not want to come out, ever. I think sometimes your body knows how much you can handle, because after awhile I thought to myself that I wasn't sure how much longer I would be able to do it, and then he finally came at 5:06 pm, after 2.5 hours or so pushing. We weren't sure how to count the length of the labor, but we decided that maybe it started at around 5 am when my water started leaking. Olsen was only one day late and a Pioneer Day baby.

It will be interesting to see how my future deliveries would go, since I seemed to have dilated really quickly, but the whole sunny-side up position really prolonged the whole pushing business. I'm glad the doctor didn't need to use forceps or vacuums or anything like that, but Olsen still had a bit of a conehead from all the stress. I was lucky that my labor wasn't really too painful and that I didn't need an epidural with the anterior lip problem, and physically, I have been great and have been able to go on walks. But I think to make up for that, I have been having problems breastfeeding. sigh, I would rather have had a longer, more intensely painful labor...

Olsen is here!

2008-07-27T13:25:00.003-06:00

Olsen Daisaku Welsh was born on July 24th, 2008. July 24th in Utah is Pioneer Day which is a pretty big deal here (bigger than July 4th). Lisa will probably write more but I wanted to give the details on his birth stats.

Due date: July 23rd
Birth day and time: July 24th, 5:06 pm
Where: Logan Regional Hospital, Logan, Utah
Weight: 7 pounds, 1 ounce (3200 grams)
Length: 20 inches
Lisa in labor: almost 12 hours

Here is a video montage of Olsen's first day:

If you can't view this, then contact me on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/MidnightYell2003
Also check out some of our pics of Olsen at Fotonomy.com: http://www.fotonomy.com/Olsen/

Olsen's Room Video

2008-07-22T11:59:00.005-06:00

Here is a video clip of Olsen's room. The quality isn't the best (because of YouTube) but you can still kind of see what his room looks like.

Problems: If this doesn't work, maybe try adding me as a contact on YouTube. My user name is MidnightYell2003. Because this video is a "private" video on YouTube, there may be some problems. If you're my contact on YouTube, then I can allow you to view my "private" videos. But I thought this would work fine if I embed it into blogspot. Oh well...

a new combined blog

2008-07-13T14:51:00.001-06:00

I decided to roll my blog into one that includes Adrian as well, so that he can also post. My posts have been somewhat sparse lately so I thought it would be fun to have a co-blogger pick up the slack for me, especially when it comes to photos.

babies in Utah

2008-06-23T12:55:00.003-06:00

Utah has the highest birth rate in the nation, at about 21 babies born per 1000 people. We will soon do our part to keep Utah's birth rate high. It is funny to me how noticeable it is as well. We went to an arts festival in Logan recently (we got Olsen's name drawn in leather brush art to hang in his room), and I had never seen so many pregnant ladies and small children in one space before.

I think there are some advantages of living in a town where lots of babies are born. The Women and Newborn Center in the hospital is very nice, and the labor and delivery rooms don't even really look like hospital rooms, with their wood floors and flat panel tvs and even a futon that folds out for the dad. However, I don't really have anything to compare it to, so perhaps all labor and delivery rooms are nice these days. Although in the documentary, The Business of Being Born, they showed some hospital L,D,R rooms that looked quite dreary. I thought the documentary was very interesting and emphasized the importance of knowing what you want in labor and also being able to know what is best for the baby under different circumstances.

We have about a month left! We almost have everything I think we will absolutely need, plus things we probably don't need as much. (We have a plethora of clothes that were given to us by various people who had baby boys not too long ago.) We still have to finish decorating his room and making some improvements to the house (like ceiling fans!). We are also trying to do a little landscaping in our front yard with some native, drought-tolerant vegetation. Plus, I need to get a lot more research done before the baby comes, yikes...

peacocks!

2008-06-15T21:40:00.002-06:00

I haven't blogged in awhile, which is kind of a shame, because I had wanted to chronicle my summer for my own remembrance. We've had a pretty good summer so far. We took a short trip to Texas to see our families and I got to see Mariann and her new daughter, Raley. Then we went to Missoula, Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, and Grand Tetons NP - a trip that I really enjoyed. Lately, we mostly have been enjoying summer in Logan and working on our yard, house, and the baby's room. It's my goal to try and finish the baby's room by the end of next weekend. But today, I decided to blog because after we got back from our walk, we saw two peacocks on our porch. As we approached the house, the peacocks took short flights until they were on our roof. We watched them for awhile until they flew to our neighbors' roof. We're not sure where they came from, but they made me laugh.

update of some sorts...

2008-04-26T12:49:00.002-06:00

I still have two term papers and a presentation to give before my semester is officially over, but I am feeling so antsy and unmotivated! Hopefully, I will make it through the end, but the weather is so nice and I just want to play. I am excited about school being over. We are going to: take a fast trip to Texas, take a short trip to Missoula and Glacier National Park, garden and landscape our yard, get the house ready for a baby, and have a baby! There will also be some research and writing involved as well. :)

cheap plants!

2008-01-27T16:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to admit that this weekend has been somewhat uneventful for me (Adrian is currently skiing...). I am taking 4 classes this semester so that next semester when the baby is here, I can only take 1 (maybe 2) classes. So it turns out that this semester I tend to have a ton of work to do to cover my 4 classes and to begin really formulating my dissertation plans. But it hasn't really been stressful - just busy, which is probably a good thing overall.

We have been on a houseplant craze lately. After Christmas, we got a ton of plants 75% off because they were considered Christmas plants (I'm not sure why). Then, we got a coupon at Lowe's for $10 off a houseplant. Search Lowe's and Learn to Grow and you can find it on the internet. It is supposed to be only one coupon per household, but we went to different lines to get two plants, and a friend of ours said it works at Home Depot too...so we will probably head to Home Depot to try our luck at getting two more plants. I hope this isn't too dishonest, but $10 off plants that cost $10.97 - you can't beat that!

new year catch-up

2008-01-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in quite awhile but I did find a draft that I had started back at Christmas time, so I thought I would add to it and supplement with photos for less writing on my part. :)

We just experienced our second white Christmas here in Utah. Our first white Christmas happened in south Texas, believe it or not! We went to a couple's house that we met at church who are also from Texas. They had already gone to Texas for Thanksgiving and were going to be alone for Christmas so they invited us over for a Christmas meal. It was great, because BJ made brisket, which is not very common in these parts. (I actually am not sure where a BBQ restaurant is in Logan.) We stayed over at their house for awhile and talked with them for longer than I thought we would. They are very nice, a little older with children around our age, who also miss aspects of Texas but also enjoy living out West like we do.

Our house -somewhat decorated.

Here we are in front of our tree. We ended up buying one from the Forestry Club on campus since we were unable to cut our own down. Lucy is sporting one of the jackets she received from her grandparents for Christmas.

Here's Lucy, in front of Matilda, our snow-woman.

Before Christmas, we had decided to send care packages to soldiers in Iraq, and we planned to send one to an Aggie geology graduate who was in two of the labs that I TAed at A&M. I had emailed him to get his address and he emailed me back telling me everything was going well and offering to bring me back some rocks from Iraq. I was in the kitchen making the cookies to go in the care packages when Adrian read that Jeremy had been killed in Iraq, 5 days before Christmas. Jeremy was such a good guy and I know that he will be severely missed. He is the first person that I actually knew who was killed in Iraq, which made it so much more real to me.

Other than that, we had a nice Christmas break, although I do have to admit that I spent a lot if it being somewhat lazy. We did do some work around the house and went sledding and skiing to take advantage of Utah powder. I strictly stay on the super easy (and pretty cheap) lift and was able to return my ski pass with a doctor's note, so I may not ski that much more, but I am extremely cautious when I go and have perfected the snowplow.

Sledding down Old Main hill on campus.

The Beaver

On New Year's Eve, we went to the Hardware Ranch outside of town to take a horse carriage ride through an elk herd. The Hardware Ranch feeds the elk that migrate down in the winter time so that the elk do not become a nuisance and migrate into the town and surrounding farms. This is something that they have been doing since the 60s, and every year at around mid-December, the elk come to the ranch, hang out and eat some free food, while visitors stare at them from a wagon pulled by two big horses.

The elk are used to the horse carriages and don't mind the people, but we're told that the elk would scatter if someone approached them on foot. In the background, you can see a little elk nursing (I'm not sure what baby elk are called - perhaps calves?)

Before school started, we decided to take a short trip to get away from Logan a bit. We went down to southern Utah and camped out in Escalante State Park in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It was cold - we were the only campers. We also drove through Bryce Canyon, which was so incredibly beautiful with the red hoodoos covered in snow - probably one of the most scenic places in the country, especially during the winter time.

Here we are, in front of some hoodoos. :)

We also drove through Great Basin National Park and will have to go back when the spring orchards are in bloom for some free, fresh fruit. We did a nice hike in Escalante State Park that wove around numerous deposits of petrified wood. Lucy attempted to chase a jack rabbit on the trail but she did not get too far, because first of all, she got too tired and second of all, she got into trouble. In the visitor's center, they have pieces of wood that were returned by visitors who had stolen them from the park but returned them, after experiencing bad luck.

Lucy in front of a piece of petrified wood, for scale.

And, in early January, we went to our first real doctor's appointment and had the chance to actually see the baby and hear the baby's heartbeat! Which was nice, because even though I knew I was pregnant, I didn't much feel like it, so it was nice to know that there is actually something in there! I haven't really had that much of a bad time. At the end of last semester, I was pretty tired and there were some things that made me feel nauseous, but now I feel 100% (except for some reason, I can't stand still for long periods of time without my water, so I have to make sure I bring it to bball games), so it will be nice when we go to our second appt on the 31st to get the confirmation again that the baby is still in there...

here is the baby at about 11 weeks

That's pretty much all that has happened since my last post. School has started and we are on our 3rd week. It's been pretty hectic so far, but for the most part, I am enjoying my classes and learning a lot and getting the opportunity to read some interesting articles. I have also begun water aerobics class on campus with a friend of mine on Mondays and Wednesdays. Last Wed, we did deep-water aerobics, which I had never done before. It was really fun. You wear a water belt and go out to the deep end where you can't touch the bottom. I felt that it really worked my legs and arms without any kind of impact on my joints.

We've also begun to get kind of plugged into our church. We have been going to a small group Bible study, which has been really good. It is actually led by an Aggie couple (class of '87 and '91), so it is fun to have that in common and to be able to reminisce about College Station. There are actually several people in the church that have A&M ties. But the study is made up of a nice varied group of all ages for a lot of different perspectives and experiences. First, we eat dinner together (and there are tons of kids) and then we have the study in the basement, while the kids hang out with a babysitter upstairs. It's been kind of nice to meet some people in a different context from school.

And, there - I should be all caught up!

Christmas tree non-adventure

2007-11-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we had planned on cutting our own Christmas tree from the Wasatch National Forest. You can get a tree-cutting permit for only $10 and they tell you where you can go to cut down a tree. It's a bit of a drive from our house to the permit place, about 3 hours or so.

So I decided to make us some turkey sandwiches with leftovers for the journey. I was cutting open some bisquits and I cut my thumb with one of our wonderfully sharp Cutco knives. It was so gross, because I saw that I cut a big chunk of my thumb. Adrian helped me run it through some water and then I had to lie down. He kept putting pressure on it while I lay there, very grossed out. Eventually it seemed to stop bleeding so he wrapped it, and we ended up not going on our Christmas tree adventure. :(

Later that evening, it bled some more, so we went to a clinic near our house and they cleaned it out and I got 11 stitches! ugh, lately, the thought of blood really makes me quesy, and I felt quesy at times in the clinic, especially when the doctor was digging in there and saying that the chunk was only attched by a sliver of skin, ew. But it is better now, and I feel less quesy about it. It hurt a little bit, but it was really the thought of it that bothered me more than anything. (I hope that I can handle kid injuries when we have kids and not faint when they bleed everywhere. I used to not be such a wuss, so I'm not sure when that changed.) They wrapped my hand pretty well, and now it looks like I have a hurt wrist.

So now, we are probably just going to put up our fake tree and get a real one next year, since I can't really help lift the tree on the car or anything like that - a little sad, but I guess we will save $10 (although, I'm not sure what the clinic bill is going to be yet, eek...)

happy thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

Our Thanksgiving meal turned out decently, I thought. The turkey was a bit of an ordeal. The thing was so heavy everytime we tried to flip it and move it (it kind of dropped on the floor at one point - bad oven bag loading strategy, but we agreed that it had been way less than 5 seconds and we figured the hot oven would re-sterilize it...). And just seeing the whole body and dealing with it raw slightly grossed me out to the point that I can't fully savor it. Plus, I wanted to cook it breast-side down for 2/3 of the cooking time, but apparently I was mistaken which side was the breast...in the end, it turned out okay - it was perhaps a little dry, but I am so terrified of undercooking poultry that I was okay with that. I don't know that I ever want to cook a whole turkey again. There's just something about that headless body that is bothersome, and neither of us really like the dark meat that much anyways.

But the side dishes turned out great. We made mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes from scratch, stuffing, green bean casserole, and dinner rolls. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie and chocolate pumpkin cake. We have tons of leftovers...we'll see if I can eat more of that turkey. I found some recipes for leftover turkey.

Then, we went to see the movie Enchanted. We've been wanting to see it ever since we saw the preview in the summer. I really enjoyed it. It was so cute, and we sang, "That's how you know".

"You're not going to sing, are you?" ~ Robert in Enchanted.

turkeys...

2007-11-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

I can kind of see why some people are vegetarians. I prepared the turkey tonight so that it can sit in a brine overnight, and it was a little disturbing to see that we are pretty much cooking the entire body of this animal. Even the neck is included in a bag in the turkey (which I find gross, but I was relieved that it was all in a bag that I just had to pull out. For some reason, I feel that our sophomore year when I made a turkey with Monica and Christy that we had to pull out a raw neck and I remember some screaming, but maybe I am remembering wrong). So really, the only thing missing was the head of the turkey (not that we are going to eat the neck - I threw that away).

on a more fun note, I baked our Thanksgiving desserts tonight. For our chocolate pumpkin cake, I pureed a real pumpkin! so that was exciting. Then for the pumpkin pie, I just used the much easier Libby's can. yay, there's something exciting about making our entire Thanksgiving dinner. I just hope it turns out all right.

thanksgiving break!

2007-11-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving break begins now! At Utah State, we get Wed-Fri off instead of only Thurs and Fri off at A&M. Although, now that I think about it, A&M, usually as a "last minute" treat, gets out Wed starting at noon. Which I think is kind of weird, because if a professor has morning and afternoon classes, then their morning class gets ahead of their afternoon class - it seems like a mess, and I don't understand why they just don't call the entire Wednesday a holiday. But that is just a big digression...

Actually, ever since Nate left last Thursday (!) for Thanksgiving, I've been feeling ready for the break. I did not get much work done this past weekend - it was mostly cleaning and organizing on Saturday and then on Sunday we went hiking with some friends (we conquered the 5 hills) and made and ate a ton of pizza afterwards (yum!). I finally got a lot of work done yesterday, though...

We took our last pre-Thanksgiving trip to the grocery store tonight, and I think I am ready to make a Thanksgiving meal. We were planning on inviting some friends over, but the small number of people who we know well are all leaving town for Thanksgiving (two are going to Seattle! it's crazy to think that Seattle is only 12 hours away), so it will just be me, Adrian, and Lucy. :) oh, well, I think it'll be more fun and relaxing this way...in case the turkey doesn't quite turn out as planned...

Bonfire 1999

2007-11-18T18:13:00.001-07:00

we will always remember.

ski swap!

2007-11-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

We went to the ski swap this morning and bought skis, boots, and poles! The ski swap was so cool with so much equipment of varying conditions for sale. I bought my skis with the bindings for $59. Now, I am ready to go - it just needs to snow! :)

While we are waiting for snow, we can mountain bike! We finally went for the first time today on the Lake Bonneville Shoreline Trail in Dry Canyon. It was really fun but also really hard - I really need to get in shape and there were some really steep uphill sections (that is a lot of reallys/reallies).

nablopomo

2007-11-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

I feel that November is not the best month for nablopomo for me as a student. November always seems to be a hectic month! Perhaps, I will try a myblopomo (my blog posting month rather than the national blog posting month) some other month that works a little better for me. :)

morning kisses

2007-11-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

When Lucy finally gets out of bed and comes downstairs (she likes to sleep in a little), Chico (an early riser) gets so excited and gives Lucy numerous kisses on the face. He licks her nose, eyes, and ears. It's so funny and cute...and a little gross.

yikes

2007-11-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

I am blowing goats with this nablopomo thing. I forgot to post again yesterday. This weekend has mostly been uneventful - mostly lots of reading and paper writing. But we did take a small break to watch the first half of the Boise State/Utah State game (we 2-percented out after halftime when we were losing 31-0)....I'm not sure if Utah State will end up winning a game this year - I think we have one more chance against Idaho State, who has won only one game.

Then today we used our free Bee Movie tickets. I thought it was cute - and it reminds you of the importance of bees in our world. I read a quote by Albert Einstein that said without bees, humans would only live for 4 years. Also, in the movie The Eleventh Hour (one cool thing about Logan is even though it is pretty small, it has an arts cinema that shows documentaries and independent films), it was said that if humans had to do what bees do, it would cost 15 trillion dollars. So, I'll try to think about that the next time a bee flies in my face...

ugh

2007-11-09T19:11:00.001-07:00

long day...

HDESM

2007-11-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

The name of my degree is really long and weird: Human Dimensions in Ecosystem Science and Management. The goal of the degree (this is what I think so far...) is to really study and consider the interactions of humans and the environment. I am interested in water issues, both water quantity and water quality (but I haven't really defined my dissertation project yet...).

This degree is pretty different from my geology degrees, which consisted of straight-up biophysical science. Sometimes I feel a little out of place in the more social science aspect of my new degree, but I have noticed (at the GSA conference, for example) that I am most attracted to research projects that have a human element to it - projects that work to solve human problems with the environment.

I was reminded today of a conversation I had at GSA with a very interesting, dynamic woman geologist. We were talking about climate change and somehow we got on the topic of New Orleans. In her opinion, we should not be spending so much money to "rebuild" New Orleans, because the city is below sea-level (our doing since we do not allow the Mississippi River to be connected to its floodplain and resupply the land with sediment) and it's in a hurricane prone area (climate change or no climate change). Instead, she believes that we should be spending our money to help the people of New Orleans adapt and move away from this poorly planned city.

To a group of geologists, this makes total sense. But then I started thinking about New Orleans and its uniqueness. To the people who are from there, their identity is embedded in New Orleans - this weird, crazy place that probably only natives can really understand. Take away New Orleans and we take away who these people are. It's a difficult problem. I can see and understand both the physical science and social science views. I really don't have much of an idea on how to resolve it, but I like that my long-named, un-understandable degree focuses on these kinds of issues...

sad dog

2007-11-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Nate left to go to a conference in Arkansas until Sunday, so we are babysitting Chico while he's away. Poor Chico - he's such a sad pup without his dad. Adrian said that Lucy was mopey and sad when I was away in Denver. It's so sad and nice at the same time to see how much dogs miss you when you're gone.

"Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made." ~Roger Caras

Christmas Mountains update, skiing!, and Bee movie

2007-11-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

The Texas School Land Board voted to delay the sale of the Christmas Mountains for three months, which gives the National Park Service time to buy the land. It's still not clear, though, if Commissioner Patterson will still require hunting and firearms to be allowed on the land. If that is the case, the NPS probably won't buy it, so we shall see what happens...

on a different note, we got our ski passes today before the special student rate expired! I'm so excited to ski the Beav...

also, (this shows how eventful my day has been) we went to Albertson's and bought 10 boxes of cereal for $2/each to get 2 free tickets to the Bee movie...plus, we've been eating a lot of cereal and regularly go through boxes. However, only a few cereals were part of the deal, so we will be eating Golden Grahams, Cocoa Puffs, and French Toast Crunch for awhile...probably not the healthiest...

october wrap-up

2007-11-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to post today before I forget. I thought I could do a brief October wrap-up now that November is officially here, time change and all.

Some time in the middle of October we had a pumpkin carving party and invited people over to carve pumpkins, eat some food, and play some games. It was pretty fun, and people's pumpkins turned out so good. Also, when people left, clean-up was so much faster and easier than in our College Station house since we have a dishwasher! incredible!

Adrian and I also went to this event called Pumpkin Walk. It's in a park in North Logan, and it's kind of like a Christmas tree walk, where different groups had exhibits of painted and carved pumpkins. They had Sesame Street, Garfield, and many more in the form of pumpkins and squash. It was kind of cute, and apparently a very popular event, as there were tons of people there!

I forgot to add, we also went to a corn maze with our friends, Seth and Emily. I had never been to one before, and it was really fun. Each season here seems to have some fun, festive activity to participate in. :)

Then at the end of October, I went to Denver for the GSA conference. I presented a poster on my masters thesis and went to a lot of other talks and presentations. It was a nice break from school and I got to see A&M people. I didn't really have a Halloween though, since I flew in at 11 pm on Halloween night, but maybe next year I'll have time to think of a clever costume. Adrian said that we did not get very many trick or treaters - only about 6 groups....

That was pretty much the 2nd half of my October... :)

oops

2007-11-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've already failed at NaBloPoMo. Yesterday, I went to some hot springs in Idaho with some girls and then we went to dinner. We dropped off one of the girls first and noticed that Adrian was over at her place (Adrian and her husband, Seth had been working on building a shed at our house all day and then insulating their windows) so we stayed and talked to them for awhile. It was late when we came back home, but we started to watch the A&M -OU game that we had taped and I fell asleep at some point in the game...hence, no post yesterday...

Christmas Mountains

2007-11-02T17:16:00.000-06:00

Next Tuesday, Nov. 6th, the Texas School Land Board will vote whether or not to sell the Christmas Mountains to private interests. The Christmas Mountains property contains most of the Christmas Mountains and is adjacent to Big Bend National Park. When the property was sold to the Texas General Land Office, the owner made an agreement with the then GLO land commissioner that the land be kept public and if the land was transferred, it could only be to the National Park Service or the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept, or else the owner would have to be consulted.

The National Park Service has recently expressed interest in obtaining the property to add to Big Bend National Park, but the current land commissioner does not want the property to go to the NPS, due to the Park Service's prohibitions on hunting and firearms. In addition, the current commissioner is not interested in checking with the previous owners to make sure that they approve of the sale - disregarding the owners agreement with the previous land commissioner.

I suppose the land commissioner is hoping that the land will go to private hands that will responsibly manage the lands and allow hunting, but I think that can be a gamble, plus I feel it's a shame that the land commissioner is not interested in adding more public land to Texas. According to some stats that I have looked up, less than 5% of land in Texas is public (I've found as little as 2%). In contrast, approximately 60% of land in Utah is public land! And honestly, this is one big reason why I really enjoy it in Utah. You can easily drive 20 minutes in every direction from our house and hike and camp! :) Also, I am biased, but Big Bend is really an incredible, special place and one of my most favorite national parks so far.

If you oppose the sale of the Christmas Mountains to private interests, here's a link to the petition: https://www.environmenttexas.org/action/preserving-texas/perry
For more info, here are some articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/us/03mountains.html?ref=environment
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/10/13/1013bigbend.html
http://www.bigbendgazette.com/blog/_archives/2005/12/2/1441607.html

nablopomo

2007-11-01T15:31:00.000-06:00

November is NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, where the goal is to post in your blog everyday for the month of November. We'll see if I can do it, although I imagine the posts could become boring. I've just gotten back from Denver so I could post about that. But I have quite a bit to catch up on right now (including a scary 3-hour fluvial geomorph test that I need to get to in a bit), so I will write more later.

mid-October update

2007-10-14T15:40:00.000-06:00

I haven't updated in awhile. We have been somewhat busy with school. Here's what's happened so far:

1. Dinosaur National Monument with my fluvial geomorphology class. A fun trip - beautiful scenary. We hiked along and across the Yampa River, and it rained one night for the whole night, leaving me with a wet tent and wet sleeping bag.

This was one of our crossings, where the water came up to our chests!

2. Adrian's parents came to visit for a long weekend. We took them around to see the beautiful fall colors and it even snowed one day!

One of my favorite pictures of Lucy in a bed of colorful leaves.

Adrian's parents in the Logan Canyon.

Fall colors, while snowing!

A real pumpkin patch, where we picked two pumpkins, that still need faces.

Adrian's dad in front of the capitol in Salt Lake.

On the drive back from Salt Lake, snow on the mountain tops with fall colors on the slopes.

That is actually pretty much it. Last night, we went to a pig roast that the College of Natural Sciences holds every year in October. It was pretty fun with a huge bonfire that kept us warm through the drizzling night. Other than that, we have spent a lot of time reading (both of us), playing soccer (Adrian), and going on numerous fluvial trips and labs (me).

seasons!

2007-09-17T21:38:00.000-06:00

We have seasons here! The leaves in the canyon have started changing color and it has been getting a little cooler in the mornings and evenings.

We have started getting into somewhat of a schedule and settling into school life. For the most part, I like it - I really like my fluvial geomorphology class where we go out every week to different rivers. We have to go into them and since I don't have waders, I wore the wetsuit that I bought at a thrift shop in San Diego today. I looked a little odd, walking to class in a wetsuit, as if I was going to school in California instead of the mountain west. But it kept me warm. :)

Other times, when I spend hours just reading, I start wondering why I am still in school, but I can't really complain.

Last week, Adrian and I volunteered with the Water Quality program, teaching 4th graders about macroinvertebrates in the Logan River at a campground in the canyon. While there, we noticed how the leaves have already started changing! We hope the colors will still be around when Adrian's parents visit us in the first week of October.

We also went to a USU soccer game on Sunday. It was pretty fun. It made me a little homesick for Aggieland with the rowdy, huge crowd, but the game at Utah State had a different kind of charm. Soccer games are free for everyone, and you can bring in coolers with food and drinks. We also saw several dogs there, and little kids would spend the time rolling down the hill, where people could sit in lawn chairs and blankets rather than the bleachers.

This weekend is actually homecoming week at Utah State, but I will have to miss the festivities since I have a weekend field trip with my geomorphology class...and I am not sure how to end my post, so it will just be an abrupt ending.

school has begun!

2007-09-06T18:58:00.000-06:00

We are just about to finish week 2, and I feel like I have really started hitting the ground running. Overall, I am enjoying school (though I have a lot of reading to do), and I like working with my advisor. This will sound silly, but I feel more idealistic here (hopefully, this is not a temporary thing...) - I've been more exposed to stories of change and community-wide activism. There's a lot about A&M that I miss, but I'm glad that I chose to go elsewhere for my attempt at more schooling. Experiencing a different landscape, a different kind of people, and a different way of doing things has widened my perspective.

Lucy and Chico have been doing well. We discovered that there is more than just the beautiful Logan Canyon to hike in, but canyons all over the area that are a 15 minute drive away. We took the two dogs for a short hike in one of them the other day, and they had a good time. also, we found this little trail that runs parallel to the irrigation canal (which I am slowly learning more about) that is just a short walk from our house. It's a nice jogging trail, because it's away from the cars (and it's fairly flat as well. Maybe someday, I will get in shape and not huff as I walk up the hill to go to campus...).

I will end with some pictures of the pups:

school starts!

2007-08-26T23:01:00.001-06:00

School starts tomorrow! I'm a little nervous about it...

I haven't really blogged much lately. Let's see, mostly we have been organizing, but some fun things happened: Christy came and visited us for 3 days. It was so much fun having Christy here. We went hiking and played a lot of the Settlers of Catan, a board game that Christy introduced us to. It was so nice having a great friend here - a kindred spirit in the same town, finally!

Lucy got into a little bit of trouble for barking too much - more on that later...

Nate, another Ph.D student in my department, and his dog, Chico, moved in with us for a short spell while Nate looks for a house to call his own. Chico is a Portuguese water dog, and he is so cute. He and Lucy play and wrestle together.

Today, we went into Ogden to watch the rookie team of the Dodgers, the Ogden Raptors play. Parker Dalton, of A&M, plays there now, and we got to meet him. He was so nice and so excited to see Aggies. Before we found him, a teammate of his talked to us and said that all Parker talks about is how great A&M is. :)

living in Logan!

2007-08-19T00:31:00.000-06:00

A lot has happened since my last post, mainly moving to Logan, UT for an approximate 4-year adventure. There is nothing like stuffing a moving truck to the absolute fullest to make you realize that you have way too much stuff, but we had such wonderful friends in the two Marks and Bret to help with the stuffing. It's really the people and the great friends that we left behind in Texas that I miss the most.

So far, in Logan we have mostly been working on our house, trying to get everything fixed up before school starts (just one more week!). The latest task that we completed was painting a couple of rooms. Our bedroom is a two-toned green, the living room is russian blue with a reddish shelf as an accent, and then the room that I messed up on: the dining room - red and yellow...it is pretty bright and I am not sure that I really like it too much. But we have spent so much time painting that I refuse to paint anymore, but perhaps in a year, I will repaint if it hasn't grown on me by then.

For my birthday, we went away for a couple of days and escaped the paint fumes. We took Lucy to Wyoming. Adrian showed me around the town of Lander, WY where he did his 6-month internship and we camped at Sinks Canyon State Park. It was a great camp site, right next to the Popo Agie River. We went on a hike to a natural water slide, where water flows over a rock into a pond. We took turns riding the "slide" into the super cold water. (I might post our videos at some point.)

The next day we went to Thermopolis, where there are hot springs, and sat in them for 20 minutes in the free bathhouse (you wear swimsuits in the bathhouse...). On our way back home, we stopped at Fossil Butte National Monument, completed the senior ranger program, and hiked a nice hike around an island of aspen trees. It was a fun trip. It's exciting to realize all the incredible places that are very close to where we live. Lucy was really good throughout the trip. We tired her out on the hikes, so she went right to sleep in the tent. I will have to post pictures and a video or two of our hiking and bouldering dog. She has an adventurous heart.

hufflepuff

2007-07-18T13:30:00.000-06:00

I've decided to retract what I said previously about Hufflepuff. I wouldn't mind being in Hufflepuff. Tonks was a Hufflepuff and we suspect that Lucy might be in Hufflepuff if she were to get sorted.

"You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil;" ~ the Sorting Hat

mission accomplished!

2007-07-17T09:37:00.000-06:00

We have actually done everything on my list of things I wanted to do before we left Texas:

hike up Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas - completed 7/01/07
take some pictures in the Texas bluebonnets - this was done in the spring on 2 different occasions
see Nickel Creek in concert again before they disassemble - seen at the Meridian on 4/20/07
go to an Astros game at Minute Maid Park - went to 3 games! (2 were free. I think we may have lost all 3 of those games...)
explore the George Bush Museum - I'm going to say that we did this. We went to the Museum on July 4, but I forgot that the entire main exhibit is closed until November, but we did see the miniature White House and both of us had already seen the main exhibit at some point previously.
visit the Houston Zoo to see our old friends one more time - completed 7/14/07
fully appreciate Whataburger, H.E.B., and Blue Bell - we are kind of still doing this, but I consider it done. :)

"Time is making fools of us again." ~ Albus Dumbledore

we say goodbye...

2007-07-16T11:36:00.000-06:00

It seems like we have had a lot of goodbyes lately. First to my parents two weekends ago; then to our Bible study group when we met last week for a game night (we learned how to play a card game called Nertz); then to my boss (He's heading off to law school. The College of Geosciences paid for our lunch at Abuelo's and I truly ate an amazing amount of food.); and finally to Adrian's parents.

We spent this past weekend with them in Houston and went to the zoo Saturday. It really was the perfect day for the zoo. It was overcast the entire morning we were there with a few spots of slight drizzling. It was a nice temperature, and it made some of the animals a little more active. We rented the movie, The Holiday, which I thought was kind of cute - maybe a tad long - definitely a chick flick. Occasionally, when Cameron Diaz would talk, I would think, 'She sounds like Fiona...' Then we spent the rest of the time trying hard to find a DVD/VCR player that would work with his parents' connections. 2 hours and 4 stores later, we found one!

We got home in the evening Sunday night and prepared to make another goodbye - to Adrian's old blue Malibu. We made the sale, and the Malibu drove away. We are officially a one-car family now.

"You're supposed to be the leading lady in your own life, for God's sake!" ~ Kate Winslet, as Iris, in the Holiday.

Harry Potter

2007-07-11T09:42:00.001-06:00

We went to see Harry Potter at 12:05 this morning with Michelle and Neal. It was packed - with some people in Gryffindor outfits. If I were not a muggle, I would most want to be in either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. And then I think that I might prefer Slytherin to Hufflepuff - it just seems like Hufflepuff kind of gets all the leftover people who are not distinctive - although, it is true that Cedric was a Hufflepuff...

Anyways, I think the movie did tell the overall story, but I had just finished rereading book 5, so I noticed so many differences. They cut out a lot (I suppose they had to), but some of the deletions made me sad. They also changed some things, mostly for the sake of simplifying and shortening, but there were some changes that really bothered me. I won't say anything specific so I don't inadvertently ruin the film for someone, but I will say: Harry and Cho's kiss in the movie was way more involved than in the book...

"Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily -- weak people, in other words -- they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!" ~ Severus Snape (I really like Alan Rickman as Snape - he's cool.)

Our Corpus trip!

2007-07-10T19:04:00.001-06:00

We went to Corpus this past weekend to see my parents for the last time before we move to Utah. It was weird and kind of sad to think that it may be awhile before I go to Corpus to their house again.

We all went to the beach together on Saturday - and Lucy swam for the first time! There was a deeper area in the water separated by a sandbar where we deposited Lucy in. Then, she swam to shore. She looked so cute swimming. I think it gave her a little of a high because after she swam to shore, she was so excited and ran around everywhere. She swam 3 times.

re-run of our Logan trip

2007-07-10T13:41:00.000-06:00

I found this post as a draft and thought that I would post it, before I post the pictures and video (of Lucy swimming!) from our Corpus weekend.

We flew into Salt Lake on Tuesday a little after 4. By the time we picked up our rental car and drove through rush hour and construction, it was about 7 or so when we got into Logan. We ate dinner at Taco Time and settled in at Priya's house. She allowed us to stay at her house for the whole week even though she wasn't there!

Wednesday: We spent the morning walking around Logan.

Here is the Logan Temple.

Logan is on a grid system, and most of the streets have sidewalks, so it is really easy to walk everywhere. They also have these above ground irrigation canals that are interesting - some have ducks. We met with Andrea, our real estate agent, and looked at houses. We found two that we liked - we called them the little house and the big house. The little house was a bit farther away from campus and had an offer on it already by that afternoon. We decided to write an offer for the big house.

Thursday: We received a counter-offer that morning and submitted a counter-offer of our own. Then, we drove all the way through Logan Canyon to Bear Lake in Garden City. It is really a beautiful drive, with lots of hiking, climbing, and fishing opportunities along the way. We ate raspberry shakes in Garden City and hiked a short, easy hike in the Canyon - the Limber Pine trail. We went back to Priya's and learned that our counter-offer had been accepted, and we were under contract!

Friday: We went back into Logan Canyon and hiked to the Wind Cave, which was a fun, steep hike.

Wind Cave

Then we went back to our (hopefully) future house for the inspection. It is weird to think that the house is 108 years old!

For the most part, it seems in pretty good shape although there are some things about the house that aren't ideal. The good thing is that we are looking at the house as a place to live for 4-5 years, not a life-time, and that helps me not freak about things. Plus, the price we are paying is more than fair, and from what we have seen of the real-estate market in Logan, we don't think that we will have trouble selling it - unless the house falls apart... We also love the location, and we figured that our mortgage payments plus taxes and insurance would equal what it would cost to rent.

Our house! It's a little plain in the front. (incidentally, I have no idea why this is underlined...)

Half of our kitchen - look there's a dishwasher!

The living room

The backyard

Saturday: We met with Andrea again to add in more things to the addendum for the seller to fix before closing. We stopped by the Farmer's Market, which was really cute and fun. Then we headed back to the Canyon for the Mt. Naomi hike. This hike took us to Tony Grove Lake, which is beautiful. We even encountered several snow drifts on the hike!

Tony Grove Lake

Snow!

Sunday: A full day of traveling to get back to College Station at around 10 pm.

Guadalupe Peak

2007-07-03T15:06:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, we took a short road-trip out to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The goal - hike up Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas before we move to Utah.

It was a fun, Texas-filled trip. On our trip out there on Saturday, we stopped briefly in Fredericksburg and walked down Main Street and browsed in the 10 cent store and in a fancy dog shop. We also stopped in Junction to eat Cooper's famous BBQ.

We got to the campsite at Guadalupe with plenty of time to set up our tent, eat a quick dinner of sandwiches, and make the campfire talk that night. The campfire talk was filled with children who kept interrupting the poor ranger while he tried to give his geology talk, but I suppose it is good that they are inquisitive and interested about the area - even if their questions had nothing to do with the subject on hand.

at our campsite before we put the tent up

The next day, we woke up after a strange night's sleep. It was somewhat loud in the campsite - with a group loudly discussing the merits of wedgies at 10, a group of guys barking loudly at 3 in the morning, and a car alarm incident at some point in the night (though, I actually slept through this, but it sounded amusing from Adrian's memory).

We went to the visitor's center to stamp our passports, buy a magnet, and ask a few questions about the hike. The girl working the desk was Class of '05. :)

Then we set out on the hike. It was a good hike. It is somewhat strenuous at the beginning, then gets easier, and then inclines steeply again until you get to the top. The hike climbs 2,950 feet to reach the 8,749 foot peak. It is cool, because as you climb, you can see how the vegetation changes - from desert plants, like agave and sotol, to ponderosa pines and junipers.

agave

the Texas madrone - one of my favorites

cholla!

At the top, there is this metal triangle symbol that denotes the peak (complete with the American Airlines symbol). There is also a log book where you can record your ascent to the top. :) We ate lunch at the summit and enjoyed the views for a spell. We met an SCA crew throughout the hike as well.

Here we are at the top. In the second picture, you can see El Capitan in the background.

We made it back down for a total excursion of almost 7 hours. We headed back to the visitor's center to complete our tasks for the senior ranger program. :) We earned our patches and headed back to the campsite, where we looked at the clouds, talked, and read for a spell until it was time for bed.

The next day, we left somewhat early to start on the 10 hour trip back to College Station. We stopped at a peach stand outside of Fredericksburg to buy some fresh, locally grown peaches. Then we stopped at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Site outside of Johnson City. It was very pretty there with lots of wildflowers and cute walking trails along the Pedernales River. We didn't really stay too long, but we did get another stamp in our passports, and were able to see-saw in the adjoining playground area.

It was a fun road-trip, and I am glad that we were finally able to hike up to the highest point in Texas. It was something that I have been wanting to do for a really long time, and I am glad that I was able to do it with Adrian. :)

"I'm king of the world!" ~ Jack in Titanic (although, in this case, it's really king of Texas, perhaps...?)

B-G-O!

2007-06-29T13:33:00.000-06:00

yay, for Biggio. He's my favorite and so nice. :)

Because we are dog/house-sitting, we had access to extended cable and were able to watch: Acie Law IV get drafted AND Biggio's 2998, 2999, 3000, 3001, and 3002 hits. Hurrah, it is always gratifying to see good things happen to nice people.

“I never did say that you can't be a nice guy and win. I said that if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with the winning run, I'd trip her up.” ~ Leo Durocher

dinner with the Gastons

2007-06-28T09:56:00.001-06:00

Last night, we got to have Mariann and Shawn over for the first time since their wedding. :) I made a chicken pesto pasta, which actually turned out pretty good (hurrah for the food processor), and then we finally finished off the fried icecream balls. It is always fun to have Mariann and Shawn over. We will miss those two! Adrian says they are good listeners, ha. So I hope that doesn't mean we spend the entire time talking, while they are forced to listen.

Sadly, it may be one of the last if not the last time to have someone over for dinner in College Station. Our house seems to be getting messier, and my will to clean it seems to have weakened over time...

back in Texas for a month or so

2007-06-26T11:42:00.000-06:00

We are back in Texas after a week of blue, dry skies. The continual threats of rain seem to be making the air even more humid, which results in extra frizz for me, which seems more defined as my hair adjusts from being in dry air. :(

We are dog-sitting and kind of house-sitting this week for a family that lives off of Thomas Park. Last night, we cooked a premade casserole that was left for us, played Guitar Hero, washed clothes, and watched Mighty Ducks Three at the Fogles' house. It was kind of fun, but Duke really misses his parents.

a house!

2007-06-21T19:49:00.000-06:00

We found a house and are under contract! whew, it is a fast process here in Logan. Houses go fast. I would see houses for sell and then poof, a day later they are under contract. We were lucky with this one - it was not even listed yet, but our agent knew the man who was selling. It is super old - 1899! But has been remodeled (there is even a dishwasher!). It is only 4 blocks from campus. The yard is not nearly as big as the yard we have in College Station, but hopefully, Lucy will still like it. We are across the street from a park. The house is a bit bigger than we really know what to do with, so we hope to have people visiting us. It is beautiful here...pictures to come. :)