babies in Utah

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!

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...

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!

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

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

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!

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...

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!

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

we will always remember.

ski swap!

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

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

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

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

long day...

HDESM

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...