Visit with Mom

My mom got to come out from California and visit us this weekend! I was really excited for her to come, since I figured that I saw her for a grand total of six days during 2008. I know this is still a decent amount of time and may be more than I get in the future, but before last year I'd always at least been able to go home for several weeks or even months. I've been counting down to her visit ever since I found out she was coming and it was so good to get to see her!

Of course, I never remember to take pictures when people are actually here, so this is a picture from Mother's Day three years ago:




She didn't get to stay for very long, but Gerrit, my little brother John and I all really enjoyed getting to talk to her, play games, visit with our grandma in Salt Lake, and taking care of some things for my little brother's visa that he needs to get before he can leave on his mission in June. I think my mom also enjoyed her first chance to play grandma! I knew she was planning to bring one or two things and buy us a crib, but I didn't know she was planning to bring so many cute little clothes! Thanks so much mom!!!!

Here are some of the cute little outfits:



My mom loves to crochet, and she made us the cute fluffy blue ones. A woman that my mom visit teaches made us the little sneakers.



My mom also made this little blessing outfit in just one day!



My mom is so talented...It never ceases to amaze me. I'm so glad she got to come visit us!

My Name in Print

When I got the mail on Friday, there was a big manila envelope addressed to me from Harvard Educational Press. Since I haven't ordered anything from there...well, ever...I was pretty confused until I realized what had to be inside.





I helped write a chapter in this book as part of my job last summer. It's about whether or not attending a racially integrated high school makes you more likely to live in an integrated neighborhood five years later, based on studies of the Jefferson County school district in Louisville, Kentucky. Short answer: yes. I wrote the section on historical background of the district, a fair amount of the literature review, formatted all of the endnotes, and did a LOT of work getting the census information for all of the student's high school and later neighborhoods.I'm really lucky to work for a professor that lets her graduate students be so involved in the publishing process, since not everyone gets to do something like this. It was a fun project, and it was really neat to see all the work pay off and end up in a book!

BYU Gladiator

This past Wednesday, Gerrit decided to compete in the BYU Gladiator competition. We had seen a poster about it earlier that advertised an American Gladiator-like experience competing against BYU football players and Cosmo the Cougar. Gerrit doesn't get much of a chance to do adventurous things anymore...since my idea of an adventurous date is walking right about now, so he decided that he would go compete and I could be his cheerleader/photographer.

Gerrit competed in several events, which included:

Head-to-head mental combat (which he dominated)


Climbing up a giant inflatable slide and sliding back down it. Gerrit was the first one to do it, and after his turn, they changed the rule that you could take off your socks.


Inflatable jousting against a BYU Football player. Despite his well-planned strategy, Gerrit did not dominate. Strategy does not trump being a tall, buff, Tongan football player.


Other events included ping pong, arm wrestling, rock paper scissors, a ball-throwing task, and Nerf projectile dodging. When they totaled the scores, Gerrit was the second-place qualifier! Granted, this is out of ten to twenty people...but it meant that he got to run in the Eliminator (aka Soremaker).

For the Eliminator, you basically did all the tasks in a row as quickly as possible. Here he is in the inflatable hamster wheel of death portion:


After one narrow loss due to some difficulties making baskets, Gerrit got to race for third place. This time, he successfully made the basket on the first try. They were neck-and-neck when they hit the jousting ring (see earlier picture). Slightly behind, Gerrit decided to let his inner ninja free and flew (mostly) over the inflatable wall to gain some time. The crowd went wild! Gerrit's glasses also went wild, tumbling off his face and almost being crushed by giant football players. Needless to say, regaining his glasses lost valuable time and Gerrit finished the night in fourth place.

By the end, Gerrit was really sore. 27 may be too old for a gladiator. I was really proud of him! Here he is with the other winners, Cosmo, and the football players.


After all that effort, you would think he would get an awesome prize. Here is his prize. Ignore the part where it says second place...I think they decided the prize was too lame for second place. Anyone want a gladiator? Warning: Not as buff as actual football player.

Home Sweet Home

A few days ago, our apartment was newly cleaned and I found myself thinking "Hey, I really like our apartment." This led to two other thoughts: A) I realized that this is now the longest I have lived in any one house or apartment since September 2003 and B) Wow, my attitude towards our apartment has really changed over these past 14 months.

Flashback to last January....
We couldn't move into our apartment until a few days after the semester had already started and I had class until 3 on our move-in day, so Gerrit pretty much moved all of the boxes in by himself. When I showed up, I was really surprised, and not in a particularly good way. I'm ashamed to admit that I cried. A lot. I cried about the tiny ancient oven and the cinderblock walls. I cried about the rusty soap dish in our shower and the ugly countertops. I cried about the mysterious disappearance of our bedroom closet doors. I wondered how I would manage without any air conditioning or a dishwasher. I alternated between laughing and crying at the handy plaque above our oven that reads "Caution: Stove and oven surfaces are hot."

And now....
The apartment really feels like home. Those things haven't changed and I'm certainly looking forward to having a nicer place somewhere down the line, but somewhere along the way, I learned to love it. Every time we come back from a trip, I'm just so happy to be back. I guess the first thing that happened was that I realized it looked a lot better with furniture.



See? Much more colorful and less prison-like. Plus, that couch is ridiculously comfortable.

I also found a few things about the apartment that I was really grateful for.

First, I love our pantry:


It's not that big, but it fits our food perfectly and leaves me with the perfect amount of kitchen cupboard space for our dishes and appliances.

Also, I really love this giant wall of built-in bookshelves in the study:

As you can see, we have a lot of books. This kept us from needing to buy lots of bookshelves. The desk on the bottom also makes a great work space for various projects.

But really, the far and away best thing about the apartment is this guy:


I think that sharing this apartment with him is what has made it into home. We've shared a lot of great moments together in this place, and I wouldn't trade those times for all the dishwashers in the world. This may not be the perfect apartment, but it's a wonderful first place to call home together.

I Spy

Yesterday afternoon, I asked Gerrit what his plans were for the day. I was expecting him to say he didn't really have any plans, so I was shocked and delighted to hear him say "Well, we're going on a surprise date."

I excitedly got dressed, asking Gerrit questions about whether or not what I was wearing would be okay (read: trying to extract information about the date). When the only information I got was that my coat needed to be warmer, I figured it would involve being outside...but still no idea.

We started walking out to the car when Gerrit pulled me towards our other car. I figured that he wanted to just keep using his car to keep it working when he pulled me in yet another direction and explained that he thought I would enjoy a walk. I had been talking about wanting to go on a walk for a while, so I was excited. Granted, I had wanted to go on a walk on one of the days in the high 50s-low 60s, but I wasn't about to complain.

We walked for a while, just talking and enjoying the walk, when I realized that our walk had wound us up at the campus art museum. Double surprise! I had been talking about wanting to see the new Walter Wick exhibit, and Gerrit remembered and decided we should go see it. The exhibit was awesome! Walter Wick is a photographer who takes all of the pictures for the I Spy books, as well as a bunch of other optical illusion and nature photography.

Here are some examples:





They also had some of his props that he uses to make the pictures and some "in-process" information. A lot of these pictures take months and months to complete. Wow! If you're in the Provo area, this exhibit is lots of fun! I think it will be here for about six months or so and it makes for a great date, whether it's a mystery date or not.

A Veritable Laugh Riot

This past Friday, we had a fun and delightful time making homemade pizza and playing games with our friends Sam and Sara.  As usual, we ended up laughing ridiculously hard while playing the games.  We played Mad Gab and Apples to Apples, and in between how silly you can sound when playing Mad Gab and the funny things that can happen when you misread Apples to Apples cards, we definitely had a lot to laugh about.

In honor of our Mad Gab experience, here are some Mad Gab puzzles for you to enjoy:

***If you've never played Mad Gab, you're supposed to read the phrases until you can figure out what common phrase these words sound like.  For example:  Tubby Horn Not Tubby=to be or not to be****

Jaw Nan Bah Beak Hen Eighty

Eye Hefty Rye Dancers

Abe Hole Hutch Hip Sand Hip

Elects Hand Earthly Crate

and a seasonal one, for good measure:

Hint Earn Hall Rougher New Sir Face

Another funny thing that we had the opportunity to do this past weekend was attend a silent film night on campus.  They showed The Mark of Zorro from 1920 and one of the organ professors provided the mood music.  The great thing about really old movies is that many of the things that are funny now probably were never meant to be funny at all.  For example, does this man look like Zorro to you?

The alter-ego character was supposed to be kind of a wimp, but the way he went about it was just really silly nearly 90 years later. However, the stunts were pretty awesome. Apparently, acting like a ninja never goes out of style.