Personal Progress

No,unfortunately this is not a plug for the Young Women's program. I'm just on an alliteration streak. We've completed a few goals around here and I thought it'd be fun to share.

ROWAN

If you recall, a long time ago we were working with Rowan on learning to write all of his upper case letters. Well, we may have taken forever (too many fun distractions over the summer), but Rowan finally finished.



Towards the end, Rowan was interested in drawing his own pictures for the words.






My personal favorite is "vomit", but I have a gross sense of humor sometimes. Rowan is starting to read a little and write a lot. I bought him a blank notepad and he filled it in a day. He loves to write me letters and then I have to pronounce interesting letter combinations. How do you say NWEBMTVC?

Our whiteboard often has a word of the day with no encouragement from me.


He knows words like ZOO, STOP, ON, OFF, YES, NO, I LOVE YOU, and so on. Our next goal is lower case letters and I have a feeling he'll be reading a lot after that.

NADIA

Nadia is obsessed with the potty. It's gotten to the point where if I don't throw away her dirty diapers fast enough, they'll end up in the toilet. She got rather upset when one of her slightly older friends came over and used the "facilities". She really wants to do it, but I'm not sure she's ready. We've pulled out the little potty and it's one of her favorite things around the house. It's funny how much more interested she is in doing things than Rowan was at her age. She loves unloading the dishwasher and helping with any household chore. I don't know if the interest stems from being a girl or the second child, but it's kind of neat.

She's also doing a lot more word combinations and possessives. Mommy's juice, Daddy's bus, Rowan's car etc.

Her interests also extend to building things. She likes legos almost as much as her brother. When we were cleaning out our laundry closet, she took it as an opportunity to build with soup cans.



ME

My mom has come over the summer for several years. Each time we talk about how she should give me painting lessons, but we get distracted or worn out from watching kids all day. This year, just a few days before she left, Steve offered to take the kids so we could finally do it. I took a couple of beginning art classes at BYU, but I was never that impressed with the instruction I received. I'm so excited for her to come next year and maybe we can do some more. In between packing and moving to some unknown location hopefully.

The paint we used was from Walmart and was extremely dry and chalky for oil paint. The canvas was meant for acrylic and again from Walmart. So learn from me and don't buy paint supplies from Walmart. Regardless of these obstacles, I'm really excited about how this turned out.


The original



I find I like working with smaller canvases. At BYU, we had huge ones and the effort it took to fill it made for a lower quality product, especially given the time constraints due to deadlines. Thanks Mom for all your help!!

STEVE

Steve is crazy busy this semester. He is teaching (200+ students!), doing his research, conducting experiments for his dissertation, taking his last class, helping support different facets within the lab, running support for Iclickers on campus, and applying for jobs. So far he's got about 30 jobs that he will be applying for and a lot of them require different things for the application. Some want research statements, some want teaching statements, and all of them seem to have a different emphasis on what they are looking for. Printing off a resume and sending it to 30 different locations would be a cakewalk compared to the prep that is involved for what he's encountering. The jobs he has found seem to either be Ivy League positions or branch campuses. There are a couple that are in between, but not many. Even with some of these prestigious universities on the list, we don't really have a top pick, which is a little surprising to me. Every position has a downfall- too far from family, too high cost of living, living in a state we don't like, too intensive/competitive of a work environment etc. Even with these obstacles, we are both really excited to get the applications in and see where we end up. I know that the Lord will take us to a place where our family will thrive- I've felt that confirmed to me time and time again. It may not be what we expect, but coming here wasn't exactly a smooth transition either. Anyways, I'm proud of Steve for all the hard work he is doing to get us to the next step in our lives.

Bybee Blitz

Apparently I have a thing for alliteration. Our friends the Bybees came Friday evening and left Sunday morning which made for a VERY busy Saturday. It was so fun to have them come and we were sad to see them go.

Our day began with Jess and I garage saling in the morning. We found some interesting things and saw some even more interesting things. Like people fighting over a $60 Wii.

Afterwards, Jess and Mike went to take Steve's experiment because who doesn't want their eye movements tracked? It's the "cool kid" thing to do.





Jess went to visit some friends after that and then we headed over to Curtis Orchard. The weather was perfect for donuts and apple cider. The kids enjoyed the festivities, with the exception of Nadia. After falling out of the wagon face first onto the asphalt, getting left behind at the bounce house because when you have four adults you assume someone has the baby, and then falling a second time off a picnic table, she had had enough.

The pony ride made up for some of that.



If you look closely, you can see some of the road rash on her face.




Prior to the slew of mishaps, the kids had fun feeding goats.



And then there were bounce houses. Rowan has gotten over all of his fears about bounce houses due to a surprisingly high exposure to them over the summer. He had no reservations and immediately went up the highest slide and zoomed down. Good job buddy!







After that, we went to our favorite restaurant, Courier Cafe. I relived my love of Jamba Juice by having them concoct a banana-chocolate-peanut butter shake aka the "Peanut Butter Mood". We had trouble detaching Nadia from my straw. Rowan did much the same to Steve's chocolate shake.

The kids were pretty much overloaded by the end and fell asleep pretty quickly when we got home. The adults got in a couple of games before we crashed ourselves. The highlight of the evening can be seen here:



Apparently Mike is secretly a fan of Spice Girls- who knew? ;)

As we've been preparing for our last year here in Illinois, Rowan keeps reminding me that he saw a house for sale right next to the Bybee's new home. Hopefully we'll go somewhere were we can still see each other! Friends like these don't come easily- thanks Bybees for a great time!

Summer Summary

I can't believe it's September. Summer came and went in what feels like a matter of minutes. All my good intentions of accomplishing so much while my mom was here didn't really get very far, but we definitely had fun while Grandma was in town.

We danced.



We played



We ate





We read



We swam




We watched movies. Despicable Me was Rowan's favorite of the summer.



And we shopped. A lot. Perfect summer? I think so. We're so grateful Grandma could come!

Family Pictures

A while ago, a friend of mine let me know that her best friend from Texas, who just happened to be a photographer, was coming into town and was interested in doing sessions with other locals. I signed up thinking it would be great to finally get some pictures where we didn't look like a poster for birth control. My one regret from my wedding was not hiring a professional photographer and I don't want to have similar regrets as my family grows older. So we signed up and I had high hopes that my children would be cooperative and everything would go smoothly. Because family life is just that way....right?

The day of the pictures there was a extreme heat advisory. Rowan refused to smile and had a big fit. We were all drenched in sweat. I went home depressed, sure that nothing had turned out and that I'd just wasted my family's time and money. Still, I held out hope that at least one picture would turn out. I haven't seen all of the pictures yet, but the photographer just posted a sampling of that day on her blog. Considering the obstacles she had to work with, I am estactic. Thank you Kristen- you are a miracleworker!!

Check it out at http://kristendukephotography.com/

Subjected to being a Subject

This summer has been extremely flexible since Steve isn't teaching. With this being his last year, he is scrambling to get everything together to start applying for jobs this month. There's been a lot of pressure to get the dissertation going because the University of Illinois is facing some serious budgetary concerns. After Spring 2011, Steve probably will not have any funding- even his superior will be laid off following the fall semester. Things feel like we are heading towards a black hole and all we can do is run in the other direction as fast as we can. Steve even told me that universities with better funding are poaching the good professors from here because they know the U of I can't match their offers. Scary.

Anyways, the first step to getting the dissertation done is to run his experiments and collect the data, but that is dependent on outside factors, namely the availability of human subjects. Steve had hopes of getting people for his experiment over the summer, but we weren't sure if that would be easy since most of the students are gone. After a while we decided to enlist the help of some ward members to help bring those numbers up. I babysat for the parents and Steve ran the experiment. I may not know the ins and outs of psycholinguistics, but it was nice to feel involved at some level in helping his dissertation along. It was also nice to feel the support of friends around us. I'm going to miss this ward and little community of grad student families when we leave.

I should have gotten a picture of his fancy eye-tracking machine that he uses when I went- maybe another time. Here are the kids in another lab watching Scooby Doo while mom and I took turns taking the experiment in another room.




Steve still needs more people (native Korean speakers too!), so if you know of anyone or would like to do it yourself, please let us know! Free babysitting and money- how can you go wrong?

Whee?

My mom recently gave us her Wii. Steve and I have swore up and down that we would never buy a gaming system and I guess we've kept to that promise. We didn't buy it. Mostly I'm concerned I will have a family of gamaholics on my hands, but we're keeping that down by mostly renting games. Admittedly, it's been nice to make use of Netflix's streaming capabilities with the Wii and I've also learned that I am exceptionally well balanced and not too bad at yoga. Although my inflated ego quickly went down after the Wii told me I was 42 years old given my fitness level and body composition. Thanks Wii.

Speaking of getting old, I'm not very technologically advanced and it's starting to show. I've never sent a text message and my phone is just a phone. I recently got called into Young Womens and now I'm starting to see just how out of it I am. One of the first spiritual messages I heard in YW started "I was looking for apps for my iPhone and..." I'm out of touch- I get it.

I thought I was pretty well insulated from these kinds of thoughts, but now with this Wii in my house and being in YW, the assault is kind of brutal at times. I tell myself it's payback for laughing at my mom when she told us to turn off the computer because we were wasting the battery. The hardest part is when my 4 year old son, who has had just as much exposure to this gaming system as I have, tells me how to use it.

Thanks hun for keeping me on my toes.



Nadia doing her yoga poses?

Shopping Spree!

I love to shop. I love to shop at garage sales even more. Why?

16 Short Sleeve mostly Eddie Bauer Wrinkle-Free, Stain-Resistant Shirts, some Nordstrom and JoS. A. Bank.
9 Long Sleeve Eddie Bauer Wrinkle-Free, Stain-Resistant Shirts
2 Long Sleeve Claiborne Sweaters
1 Pair of Merrell Hiking Boots
10 Ties- some new with tags!

Retail cost?

$1600 is a conservative estimate. A few things have new tags and I looked the rest up online.

My cost?

$32. Seriously. Everything is in like new condition and I'm ecstatic. With Steve hopefully getting a job next year, this is a great time to get some fantastic business casual wear. Not to mention the fact that we just got rid of a ton of his old stuff because it didn't fit anymore. And I don't have to iron! Love it!!!