school starts!

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!

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.