First visit to Georgia

Jacob and I visited Georgia about a month ago. We went to meet his colleagues and adviser, see the campus at Emory, and try to find a house to rent. The following comes from an email that I sent to my sister after our trip:

Atlanta is crazy. All of the streets are curvy. I mean seriously. All of them. Ok, a couple of the freeways are straight(ish), but here is my theory. The area was once heavily wooded, and so people just took the cart-path of least resistance through the trees and eventually those got paved and ta-da! Curvy streets everywhere. For instance, a street, let's say Clairemont Ave. will intersect another street, say Lavista. Then they'll both wind around for a bit, and intersect again, a couple miles later. Yeah. That's not confusing. 

Also confusing is driving down Clairemont Ave and seeing the cross streets: Clairemont Rd., Clairemont Place, Clairemont Ct., Clairemont Way, etc. All of these one right after the other, little residential dead-ends. 

Third confusing thing (though maybe not as unique to the area): Two roads converge and one is just swallowed by the other, so you were on Briarcliff, and now you're on, say, Clairemont. But you don't always know (because you don't live here yet) which name the street will take. 

Oh, and don't forget how Clairemont Ave is sometimes posted, within the same few miles, as Clairmont Ave (no e), and how Lavista is La Vista when the signs feel like it. 

Emory seems nice. It is strikingly small. I guess I didn't realize how big BYU and University of Illinois are, but they both have reputations for large campuses, whereas Emory is a small private school instead of the big private school that BYU is. The buildings are gorgeous white stone, some with accents in red marble, which is native to the area. It's all very hilly, especially compared to Champaign. 

Very hilly and very wooded. I felt like I couldn't see anything. When I moved from AZ & UT out to IL, I was like "hey, I don't get a view of every city as I come down into it. This is tough" and Georgia, man, whew! Many, many more hills and trees and you don't even get a view of the street you're on while you're on it, let alone the city as a whole. If you drive in a neighborhood, there's probably a sign warning you of a "blind drive" just ahead. Watch out for cars backing out!

The weather in Atlanta was gorgeous while we were there. Oh, so lovely! I'm looking forward to Atlanta weather. Even though it is reported to be despicably hot in the summer, I'm looking forward to it. 

We did NOT find a place to rent while we were out there. Boo. :-( The rental market is moving too fast and everyone's like "oh, you want to move in in 3 months? well if you pay us $250 we'll hold this place for you for 3 weeks..." it's much more geared to people who are moving inright away. Probably in part because it's a bigger city than I've ever lived in before. Thankfully we found a realtor we like, we were just guided right to him, like it happens when you're praying your guts out. Probably he'll help us find a place long distance and we'll move in without first seeing it in person. Cuz, you know, he's like "you'd want to come back in late April, at the earliest." and I'm like, "yeah, I'm having a baby then..."    

Jacob is getting serious about writing his dissertation, and plans to defend it before his committee in the first week of June. 

We still haven't found a place to rent yet, but it is still early (for the Atlanta market, anyway. Here in IL I've seen signs advertising rentals that open in August). Wish us luck!

Home again, home again, jiggetty jig!

We're back in the great state of Illinois! Just in time to get some groceries before the winter weather advisory. :)

We had a successful and happy vacation by all accounts (meaning only the baby barfed that time we all got sick). But I would like particularly to highlight that in more than three weeks of vacation Levi had ZERO allergic reactions!  Thank you, thank you to all of our awesome relatives who made sure he didn't get any milk, eggs, peanuts or tree nuts! Your sacrifices were not unnoticed! I love you all!

While in Arizona this is the winter quote I thought of most often:

"During the winter my attention was attracted to the changes in the stars and planets in the sky." --Paul Nurse

Those AZ skies were clear and beautiful! Orion is my favorite constellation, and one night in particular he was huge on the horizon just when I walked outside. Gorgeous.

source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)

Winter Inspiration: Quotes!

Being a native Arizonan in the thick of the Illinois winter can give one a serious case of the-grass-is-greeners. This year my winter preparations (in addition to stocking, hunkering, and battening) included a mental component: gathering inspirational winter quotes.  I have plenty of original quotes in my brain about the pitfalls of winter -- I wanted some brainfodder that was pro-winter, to even the scales a bit.

It is not yet officially winter. The first day of the season is December 22. In Illinois, unlike in Arizona, this actually makes sense. Sure, we've seen a hint of snow over here, but with a couple years under my belt I know that the season has much more of snow, ice, and cold wind for me.

But today the wind is particularly cold, and on the 20th I'll be flying to Arizona, so here is some early winter inspiration.

Blow, blow thou winter wind, 

thou art not so unkind 

as man's ingratitude.

 -- William Shakespeare

No, I did not validate that quote. Ten points to the first person who tells me which of his plays it is from. And, because that one is only backhandedly nice about winter wind, here is another.

One
kind
word
can
warm
three

winter
months

--Japanese Proverb

See? Winter's not so bad! One kind word is all it takes. And I would submit that includes blog comments! ;D

Potluck Picnic

Tonight is a potluck picnic with friends attending the Arthur Cheese Festival. Remember last year? When I was very pregnant for this? Well. We've got to go defend our title.  

Anticipation

So right now I'm getting ready to go give a (little, short) presentation about book blogging. To a group of high school students who are attending a class at the Center for Children's Books here on UIUC campus.

Excited!

Nervous!

Validated!

It is so nice to think that something I do for fun, something I just do just because I love it (blog about books that is) is interesting to other people and they want me to come talk about it.

This is awesome!

I'll tell you how it goes.

Watch out!

Two new drivers on the Illinois roads...

We had a blast at Champaign Touch-a-Truck day.

New World Symphony

Jacob and I seized the opportunity to attend an orchestra concert this evening. We haven't been to a concert, especially a concert without kids, in roughly 3 years. Anyway, we left the boys with our trusted friends and monthly childcare swappers the Freestones. (Thank you, Freestones!)

We attended the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra's concert, and got to see our neighbor, Sungmin on the violin and our acquaintance Alice on cello.  The orchestra played 4 pieces, including a gorgeous oboe concerto. Let me tell you, this girl was good.  Jacob whispered to me, "It is really hard to make an oboe sound that good." and I agree.  We're both erstwhile clarinet players. They also favored us with some of the Lord of the Rings score by Howard Shore, and a personal favorite, Dvorák's New World Symphony.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to see orchestra perform live. It's not just the music, it's the movement.  The orchestra, like a great beast on the stage, moving, quivering, dancing in perfect time with the music -- because its movement creates the music.

The concert hall was lavish as well -- intricate mouldings* and gorgeous wood paneling.  I couldn't decide if the huge, yet somehow delicate pipe organ that was set into the stage was the teeth of the beast or its crown. Probably the crown. I mean, the violin bows, chomping away during the last movement of the New World Symphony were definitely the teeth. Like Jaws.

After the concert we presented Sungmin with an origami rose (courtesy of Jacob's mad paper folding skillz) and Hyuna told us that we were very good neighbors. We are so glad that we went. We had a blast.

*British spelling! As I looked at the moulding, I thought to myself: That's not molding. That's moulding. 

rainbows for breakfast

"You not can eat rainbows, because they're dery dery big." Benjamin, when Jacob asked if he'd like to eat rainbows for breakfast.

"Hi, window! Hi, dishwasher! Hi, Mom and Dad! Hi, window! Hi, dishwasher! Hi, Mom and Dad!" repeated many times as he spun in the kitchen.

"You messed up my plan." Benjamin says after messing up his own train track. "I'll give you one week."
"One week for what?" Mom asks.
"Painting. . . . Five paintings."

"Mommy! Mommy! . . . I'm not calling you!" Oh, of course not. Silly me.

***

So we've all been getting over a nasty sinus thing here.

Levi got his second tooth this week, so now he's got two on the bottom.

We got our taxes figured out, always a bit of a hairy mess, being part of a couple of family trusts. I can't say I'm not annoyed (because I am annoyed) that Jacob's income doesn't qualify as "earned" or that Illinois doesn't have a child tax credit, but hey, at least I'm learning about taxes.  Chalk one up for education.

Had a lovely picnic this week with some neighbors:

My awesome Korean neighbor Hyuna brought kimbap, which she packs for her husband's lunch each day. [sidenote: when she learned that I pack Jacob's lunch sometimes she was very impressed, and told Jacob "You have a very good wife!" Jacob said, "I know." :-)]

My other awesome Korean neighbor, Doyeon, made this delicious noodle salad with shrimp and peppers and blueberries and lettuce. Guys. It was so good! She is a fantastic chef.  Back in Korea she was a pharmacist. So, you know. Chemistry in the pharmacy, chemistry in the kitchen, right?  

Oh, also Doyeon told me that she took her congested little one-year-old in to the doctor for some medicine and they didn't have anything for the under 2 crowd (as we all know).  Well apparently in Korea they do!  Am I wrong in thinking that an infant decongestant would sell like hotcakes here?  I think that I am not.  She's like "what do you do?" and I'm like "um, let them sleep with an elevated head, turn on a humidifier..." all the while thinking, "where can I get me some of this drug?" Part of me thinks, "Well, it must not be safe!" and the other, bigger part thinks, "Pharmaceutical politics in the US are so, so, whack." Because as we all know Asians are geniuses. And also no entire country (or pharmacist) would give their babies a drug that was not safe.

So I can have some of that, then? Because remember we are all getting over the sinus infection here.

My kind of sport

Yesterday (39 weeks and 1 day, for those of you counting) we went to the Amish Cheese Festival in Arthur, IL.  All kinds of fun, let me tell you.  For one thing, it was adorable listening to Benjamin say "cheese festival!" which sounds more like "cheese a bess a bull!" For another, there was cheese tasting.  My favorite flavor was named "friendly garlic." Also, there was delicious funnel cake.

eating delicious funnel cake

But the undisputed highlight of the festival was the 11th Annual International Cheese Curling Team Championships.  Allow me to emphasize that, being the only (to my knowledge) cheese curling event, this is the most prestigious of all cheese curling events in the world!

What happens is this: a team of four steps up.  Usually said team of four has a cheesy (pun intended) name.  The Cheese-its.  The Cheesettes. Winsleydale, The Cheese Slicers, Pretty Gouda, and so forth.  Our team name was Blue Cheese, since we were all coincidentally wearing blue.  Our whole team was coincidental, really.  It consisted of myself and Jacob, as well as our friends Joe Bair and Bill Evans.

looking like he's been sweeping cheese
his whole life

One team member is chosen as the sweeper.  On our team this was Jacob.  The other team members roll a four pound stone of Baby Swiss down the tarp field toward the target.  The sweeper does anything he can to get the cheese on the bullseye at the end.  Each curler gets one practice roll and one roll for points.  The bullseye is worth four, and there are rings worth three, two, and one points.  This makes the highest possible score 12 points, and the low score could be 0, if the target was never reached.

For participation, each team gets to keep their stone -- roughly a pound of baby swiss per person!  We almost didn't participate, but as we watched the other competitors, who varied widely in skill and in the punniness of their team names, we figured, "hey, free cheese!" (and also "what a great story, if this put me into labor!") and signed up.  Since we signed up mid-competition, we were the last team on the roster.


Two teams were tied at 11 points before team Blue Cheese took the field.

I rolled first, for practice.  My roll was too hard and the broom was too soft. It rolled right through the target and beyond.  Joe rolled second, and Jacob was able to sweep it over into the three point section (but it was just practice).  Bill was our anchor, and his roll went wide, hit the boundary, and never even made it to Jacob. Things were not looking good for Blue Cheese.

I stepped up to the line again, and sent the cheese flying with a nice follow-through.

just look at that form!

It headed straight for the bullseye and Jacob smacked it down for four points!  Joe sent another one nice and easy down the middle, and Jacob brought our total to 8 points!  In the meantime, Bill's two kids who had been standing next to us decided to head back to their mom -- causing a break in concentration on the team.  Where are the kids? Where is Bill?  Okay, here we go again.  The official stopped Bill saying, "Did you roll, before?"  He wanted to make sure we weren't pulling in a different team member.  Once Bill was cleared, he curled straight and true.  Jacob nudged the cheese over as it passed into the bullseye, and we had a perfect 12!

Team Blue Cheese (plus a few)

We are the International Cheese Curling Team Champions for 2010!  For winning, we each got a stone of swiss to take home, as well as a Cheese Festival T-shirt.  A local media man took our picture for the paper, and has promised to mail us a copy of it.

Since I figured our little family didn't need eight pounds of Guggisberg baby swiss (four will do, thanks!) we gave our second wheel to some friends who got lost on the way and arrived just after we'd won.  We finished the day with a picnic in the park, and unfortunately, winning my title hasn't put me into labor.  

Now I'd like to make a little speech, if that's okay.

Thank you, friends, for celebrating my success with me.  Winning this championship was one of those things I never knew I always wanted.  If you have any good recipes that involve swiss cheese, please, for the love of cheese, send them my way.

Haven't done THAT in a while

Today we washed our car. Haven't done that in a while. In fact when my neighbor Erika came over and said she was impressed, I had to disillusion her. I told her this was the first time that I had washed a car as a married woman. Come to think of it, it's probably the first time I've washed a car since high school. What brought on this sudden vigor was that our friends the Richards's just discovered that their car had rusted to death right under their noses. This scared me pretty good as our car is relatively new to us, and I'd like it to last a long, long time. So I did some research on how to prevent that whole rusting thing. Apparently it is brought on by moisture and salt (hmm, no wonder we never worried about it in AZ) and exacerbated by having a dirty car, so you should wash and wax your car regularly! Revolutionary! Okay, to me, anyway.

So, today Jacob got the oil changed and helped me wash the car out in the parking lot. Then he watched Benjamin while I went and vacuumed it (so much easier at a car wash place!) and while I waxed it. Neither of us had ever waxed a car before, and I'm the one who watched two internet videos, so that makes me the expert in the family. :) It was tiring! But hopefully it will be worth it in the long run to make a habit of it.

While Jacob was waiting for the oil change he picked us out a pumpkin and we couldn't resist getting some pictures of Benjamin with it. I've been trying to get him to say "Trick or Treat" but he hasn't got there yet. Not surprising, since his newest word is "meow."

Yeah, this picture was SO cute...before he stood up right as I was taking it. You can see his new molars though!

Curtis Orchard

We went and visited Curtis Orchard tonight with our former next-door neighbor Stacy. Since we didn't get there until 5 minutes before they closed, we mostly just looked around and enjoyed watching Benjamin explore. There was a litter of kittens and he had a fantastic time chasing them around.

This one actually let him pet it. He was very gentle.

In the wagon corral

So tall!

Driving Home with Stacy

We'll have to go back another time when we can pick apples, choose a pumpkin, see the goats, play on the jungle gym, etc. etc. :D We had fun though. I wish I'd brought the good video camera -- these videos are so cute.

Benjamin kept squeaking at the cats:

Here he finally corners the orange one -- for a second:

And now he's willing to say "hi" from behind bars:

Dairy Tour

Last Saturday, Bruce led a tour of the University's dairy.It was pretty awesome. There were lots of friends from church, which is how we know a Dairy Sciences major, and lots of cows.

We learned about cow nutrition: cows eat lots of things, including cotton seed.




We saw the milking machines and the calves, the sandy cow beds (sand keeps away disease) and we thought we had seen everything when...
Bruce stuck his hand into a cow's stomach. If you want to get specific, it is the cow's rumen -- the first of a cow's multiple stomachs. In the rumen (root of the word ruminate) a cow's food sits and ferments. Solid, liquid and gas are all present. The ruminal mat is the solid part that floats on the liquid. It's pretty thick. I should know.


I look like a maniac in this picture. Jacob didn't take a photo when I had a very exploratory, scientific look on my face because I wasn't looking at the camera. Don't worry, no cows were harmed in the making of this dairy tour. This particular cow leads a normal life except that it gets to be part of studies every once in a while. It actually probably will live longer than other cows, becuase it is a valuable tool for science now that it has a hole in its side.

Here is another friend of ours, looking less like a maniac than me. Obviously it's pretty cool though; you can see how much we enjoyed looking into a cow.

Click to enlarge any of the photos, and don't forget to vote in the romantic soup poll on the left!

The rains came down

and the floods came up. So, remember how we had been in our new place for a month and loved it, et cetera? Well, now we're in a different place. The heavy rains we got on Sunday soaked our carpet through, so we've moved into a different building in our complex and up on the third floor. Now all we have to worry about are tornadoes! haha, no, seriously. Apparently there are at least a few warnings every year.

Anyway, I have a couple of videos. The first is me showing you the rain and my cute baby reading a book -- blithely unaware that our house would be wet and smelly in a mere few hours. The second is the aftermath.



Many, many (many many) thanks to the Elders' Quorum in our ward for coming to the rescue by packing and moving all of our stuff from one apartment to the other in 2 hours 15 min flat. You guys are amazing.

The new apartment is basically the same as the old one, but with better carpet. So, we won't be getting new carpet anymore, but we don't really need it either. Also, it has linoleum instead of tile, but at least the place doesn't reek like really old, nasty, rotting rental carpet.

One Month Home

So, we've been in our new place for a month today! Pretty cool, huh? People keep asking me if we like it. We do. We like the apartment. We like that we're on the ground floor (this baby is only getting heavier). We like the new kitchen and the proximity to church and school and bus stops and stores, and the library isn't far either.

The library here is fantastic by the way. It's a much bigger collection than my last library, which was a much bigger collection than the library before. Ah, yeah, movin' on up! jk. It even has a cool mom and baby playtime thing on Mondays! But we missed it last week, so we'll have to try again next Monday.

That's what motherhood is about, you know? Keepin' on. You miss the mom & baby thing because it takes you longer to get ready than you thought -- you just try again next week. And I was thinking today, as I did dishes. Dishes and diapers are the "busy work" of motherhood. You just do it cuz it's gotta get done. The cool stuff is worth it though. Benjamin is getting bigger and cuter and he uses his eyebrows more in making funny faces. He loves rattling his keys around and I'm telling you he was singing me a little tuneless song earlier today.

So, yeah, we like our new place. Oh! and guess what! I always say "we like it all except the carpet." The carpet is grody. And coming up and dangerous. That's why I put in a request to have it replaced. TA DA! They're coming on Tuesday to put in new carpet. Rock on.

We're home! (for now)

We made it to Illinois! To our new apartment -- which is awesome! Let me tell you why it is awesome. It has

• a dishwasher!
• a bedroom! (2 actually)
• a new stove and fridge, well the whole kitchen is new.
  
• a baby...well, we brought him with...
  
• tile (not linoleum)
• nice weather
• good lighting (inside and out)
  
• and it is in a good location. The bus stop is, like, right next to our house, and the bus to campus is free for Jacob. The shopping is close, and so is the church.

Anyway, we're liking it. Benjamin was great on the long drive -- he's a good baby, but, if possible, he was even better in the car than he is normally. He's sleeping well, giving us at least six or seven hours a night, but almost always eight or more. I'll do a photo-post here for ya.