Easter

Sorry, I am going to skip past the remainder of my time in Denver and jump straight to Easter. It is much more fun, (i.e. comes with pictures).

Last Saturday Hubii and I went to Iowa to visit his sister and her family. On Saturday we went to the Great Plains Dough Company (a yummy pizza place, but Hubii does not seem to be fan).

Here's a picture of James I took from the loft of the restaurant.

I was also able to get a great picture of our niece who recently learned how to walk. She is a very impressive walker, as you will see later in this blog.

We played Settlers of Catan with the Great River Expansion. I mention it, because it is the first time in my life that I have ever won at Settlers. So it was a big deal for me. I think that the river changed the game mechanics and people were not playing in the usual way. Anyway... I am sure you are very interested.

We went to church the next day and enjoyed a great Easter Service and baptism. I don't have a picture of the whole family, but I do have a picture of the cutest member.

I was really impressed that she could walk and handle that ball at the same time. When I was playing basketball I had a lot of issues with that skill.

And here she is giving the ball to Hubii. Thanks for the fun time in Iowa!

Denver

Happy Easter everyone! Christ is risen!
So sorry that I was not able to keep up with my pledge to update weekly but I am sure that my hilarious recount of all the fun I had last weekend will help you forgive me. So last weekend my labgroup went to Denver. It was for a conference with the research group we are part of. We work with a couple of universities (like Denver University) and with a medical device company and share the data that we collect with them. So we were going to present our current research to them and they were going to show us what they had been working on and what we had to learn from them. I had a decent bit of data on my specimen but still did not have my slides put together. I thought that this would be the biggest obstacle to a low stress weekend.
The plan was to leave on Thursday at noon and arrive in Denver between 10 and 11pm. Then present our group research on Friday morning. I had leftovers in the freezer plus I bought a few frozen dinners for Hubii to make while I was away. Further, Hubii had plans for Thursday and Friday evening (a piano recital and a play: Julius Caesar). So all was set at home. I just had to work on my slides on the way there or early Friday morning.
Well, as the guys in the lab were in charge of getting the rental cars we didn't end up leaving until 1pm. No problem, just an hour, not too bad a set back. The trip across Kansas was mostly uneventful. Long, boring, tedious, about 6 hours of flat highway. Well, it is Kansas after all. It starts to rain and possibly hail (it sounded like hail but I couldn't see anything on the road). After we stop for dinner I take over driving one of the cars. After about 20 minutes it starts to snow and then it starts to be ridiculously hard to see and then the wind starts pushing my car around. I comment that if I were making this trip with Hubii this would be the point at which I make him do the driving. But we keep going, 45 mph or slower on a 75 mph interstate. eventually we make it into Colorado and I think, great only 3 more hours and I will be in nice, clean, safe, hotel room. Then I see that the gates on the interstate are closed and we need get off at the coming exit.
We drive into a town that is completely dark, even the McDonald's is dark. We realize that the power is out in this town and the McDonald's workers are leaving for the night. Thankfully about 15 minutes later the power comes back to the town and we drive to the nearby gas station and hang out in their food mart. We were hoping that as the storm was heading east and we were heading west that the gates would be up soon. It was about 9pm and we stood around the food mart (which was quite large) and drank gas station coffee. I called Hubii to update him on our situation. We call the DOT hotline to get updates on road closures. At about 10 we start to pull chairs from the attached restaurant and sit around. Then the power goes off again. The gas station is actually quite full of people. Lots of people who were heading towards Denver or Kansas City were stuck there. There was even an Army unit hanging out in the restaurant area. We start to play price is right with the items in the gas station. Then we start to fall asleep. At about 11pm my advisor decides that we won't be travelling anymore that night and would have to find a place to stay in this town. We try to call the nearby hotels but the only hotel that is picking up is completely occupied. At midnight the power finally comes back. We are able to call a hotel and find enough rooms for the group. Great! Well, we learn to be thankful for small blessings. Like the fact that the room does not have any dead insects in it. Supposedly the rooms we got had been closed all winter and they hadn't cleaned it (they weren't expecting to be inundated with stuck travelers). No insects, but a fair number of mouse droppings :S . Well it was just one night, and I could have slept anywhere after staying up till midnight in a gas station.
The next day we found out that the gates finally opened at 4am that morning. We left at about 7am and drove straight to Denver. Thankfully I finished my presentation in the car on the way there. I gave a short (very short) powerpoint presentation and as I was the last presenter people were more interested in moving on than in asking too many questions. Which was good, I hadn't really practiced my presentation a lot.
Phew, what a crazy trip! There are more, not so exciting details, about the rest of our time in Denver but I need to get to bed. Also, look forward to a posting on our Easter trip to Iowa.

Best Weather Ever!

So the weather outside is great! I wore open toed shoes to church AND capri pants AND we both left our coats at home. It makes me very happy when the weather is warm. Plus there are so many trees whose flowers are in bloom or beginning to bud. Overall very optimistic weather, which is nice after weeks of freezing rain and 'wintry mixes'.

As usual, school is keeping us both very busy. This week was better for Hubii than the last but I spent a lot of time at school trying to do testing for my research. If you want to see some of the things my lab is researching you can watch this video, but be warned there are a lot of closeups of cadaver knees. Anyways, the lab mostly works with the knee joint and how it interacts with the attached ligaments. I am doing a small research project on how the arteries around the knee behave as the knee moves. There is no testing protocol for this, so I am trying to figure that out right now. All that figuring out means that things take longer than expected. What I thought would be done by Friday night was only at the beginning stages when I left on Friday. I had to quit on Friday because I needed someone to run the x-ray machine for me and the only person authorized to take X-rays in our lab had been running his own tests all day and was too tired to be of any help to me. So I will have to continue testing on this coming week.

But last week was not a total let down because after I left work we went to Hubii's coworker's (Mike's) place for game night. They were playing Arkham Horror, a co-operative game that can be played by upto 8 people! Well, I only missed one round so I joined when I got there. Plus I got fed with delicious grilled burgers on home made buns! But wait that wasn't all! Mike's wife, Kirsten, has had some maternity clothes sitting in her closet since she had her son. She had tried to take them to a large charity consignment sale. Fortunately for me, they were no longer accepting maternity clothes (which seems strange to me, because all the maternity clothes I own are second hand). Here I am modeling one of my outfits and showing off my 24 week belly.

Like I said earlier, I have to continue my research this week but need help from lots of other grad students. To help lubricate the wheels of graduate student generosity I baked up some goodies. Hopefully they are persuasive.

Cinnamon raisin bread

Banana nut bread

I will be going to Denver with my research group this week. We will leave on Thursday and return on Sunday. Hopefully Hubii will survive the weekend without me. Also, please pray that I can get all my testing done by Wednesday as well as all the HW I have due this week. Oh, and that babii doesn't get too affected by the stress I feel this week.

Papaya

This will be a short post, it's almost bedtime. We just got back from a dinner we got invited to last minute (well almost, invitation this morning at church). It was delicious and fun. The hosts have chickens and bunnies!!! Flemish giant rabbits, but we only saw the kittens (I just found out that's what baby bunnies are called).
Supposedly babii is now the size of a papaya. That is scary because there were papaya's on sale at the Price Chopper and those guys were HUUUGE.
Last week was rough for Hubii because in addition to his regular duties he had to advise students and interview another candidate for the CS faculty position. The college made an offer this week, hopefully things work out for the best.
In other news, my inner ankles have almost disappeared and my feet look extra chubby.

Spring Break Blahs...

Well, today is my last day of Spring break. Can I tell you that I got very little accomplished. Oh, I graded everything that I had to grade by Saturday but all my personal goals (catch up on research, start early on HW) went to the toilet. I was too busy reading thebump.com community boards. And I was not too discriminatory about it. I was on the natural birthing board, the July 2011 board (for people who are expecting to deliver in July), 2nd trimester board, the Kansas City mom's board etc. Basically, filling my head with junk.

Hubii and I did decide on a carseat together. It was nice to drag Hubii into my personal madness. Anyways, now we can use the money that Hubii's mom and dad sent us to use on the baby (Thanks mom and dad!). I also went on a tour of the hospital that I will be delivering in. It's nice and all, nice big 'suites', as they like to call it. Still a hospital room with heart monitors and IV poles and hospital beds. Not a hotel, oh well.

Well, not much else to report. Been pretty chill here this week. Here's a picture of me that we took this week (week 22).

Oh! I was able to buy 2 maternity jeans and one pair of maternity capris for $28 at a consignment store here called Ditto. Which is a relief because the rubber band through the button hole trick was not working anymore. I was getting upset that I had to spend $30 on a single item that I would wear for less than a year (and they were from Old Navy so it's not like I was paying for quality). So... glad I could end on an exciting note (for all you bargain hunters out there). Not as cheap as Salvation Army/ Goodwill but better than buying new.

So this week has been full of happenings and events. While Hubii was working hard over spring break, I was busy finishing up midterm assignments and studying for midterm exams. We had to get a lot of stuff done before we left for a weekend wedding trip to Atlanta (but more about that later).

Hubii was pretty sick for the first few days of his spring break, but after recovering some of his strength he managed to grade two exams, one homework, took his computer in to the apple store for problems with the keyboard, CD ROM drive and battery, AND he finished the taxes. Yey for first time home owners credit, Boo for owing more in income tax than we planned because they didn't withhold enough from my paycheck. Actually, it's not so bad because we put most of my paycheck in savings; so we don't really include it in our budget AND we make some interest off of it before we have to hand it over to the government. Hubii is so very diligent, he will be my inspiration for this week because I have spring break and am already tempted to sleep it away.

Another thing that Hubii did this week was to join me at my ultrasound. I can't believe the baby is so big inside me (although, he/she is probably only big enough to barely fill two cupped hands). Anyways Babii (as a good friend suggested I call the little guy/gal) was very cute but stubborn during the ultrasound, refusing to rotate into the right alignment despite prodding and poking. I had two different kinds of ultrasound (the regular abdominal kind and the 'Australian' kind, also called transvaginal ultrasound). Then after I went through my normal check up we tried the abdominal ultrasound again, to get all the right measurements from the correct perspective. Finally, the baby turned and the ultrasound tech was able to get all the measurements on the baby.

Here are some of the pictures that were taken during the ultrasound.

It's just too cute.

And look at the size of the brains! In one angle (sorry I don't have a picture), you could see its ears! Which means that Babii will have Dadii's big ears, yey! (Wait did I just add another nickname? oh well, Hubii and Dadii will be used interchangeably from here on)!

A little on the down side the baby is 42nd percentile for how far along I am. The doctor said that this was fine and I am normal, but I really want a chubby baby. Friends have been telling me that this might be a good thing, seeing as I don't want to deliver a 100th percentile baby. Still, I will be marginally increasing my calorie intake and praying that it goes to Babii and not to Momii :)

So after turning in take-home exams and doing a midterm on Friday I rushed home to pack and get ready for our whirlwind trip to Atlanta. Our flight to Atlanta arrived at 8pm and two of our amazing friends, D & LL from Atlanta, braved the traffic to pick us up at the airport! We then went out to dinner and had our first experience of Yeah! Burger. I was super happy with my burger (but then I am not a burger connoisseur, I would be super happy with a Five guys Burger). We then spent the rest of the night playing Yahtzee with some more great Atlanta friends at Ormsby's. Another great place that makes me miss Atlanta so much and wish I were back there :(

Oh, I suppose I should mention that we also played Othello and I was completely trounced by LL, my opponent. Ah well.

The next day for breakfast Hubii and I had breakfast with my college roomie and Maid-of-honor, LG. I forgot to take my camera so here's a picture of us from the wedding.

We at one of my favorite Atlanta breakfast places, the Flying Biscuit. I don't usually go overboard there, but since I hadn't had it in 2 years, I completely overindulged. I had their biggest breakfast, which comes with eggs, sausage, diced hashbrowns, a biscuit and my favorite, an oatmeal pancake topped with peaches. Yumm!! I was completely stuffed after and felt like a whale. I did share some of it with Hubii, he was not as happy with his cinnamon pancakes, which tasted more like sourdough pancakes. It was a nice leisurely breakfast and we caught up on a lot of what LG was up to.

In the afternoon, Hubii and I had the pleasure of going to our first robotics tournament with D and L. D works with a local high school to mentor their robotics team. It was lots of fun seeing the robots in action, and even more fun was the fact that D's team completely dominated the tournament. Well actually the alliance completely completely dominated. The robots from each high school worked in an alliance with two different robots against other alliances. It's fun to root for a winning team :)

Finally, we went home and got ready for the main event: the wedding of JG to HH! The whole event was beautiful. The weather was pleasant, there were flowers in bloom over the gazebo where they said their vows, the bride looked radiant, the groom was handsome (with his dashing batman belt buckle). It was just so beautiful. Then the bride and groom recessed down the aisle to Journey's Don't Stop Believing and I could have just burst there. I love that song. Just thinking of it now is making me tear up.

Here we are before the reception with D and LL at the far end and another friend BC who is getting married soon!!!! Thank you, D and L, for putting us up for the weekend. I love spending our time in Atlanta with y'all :)

Here's another picture from the wedding, cake was delish, but the groom's cake was a tiramisu style cake and I probably had too much of that.

Well, we made it home safely today. The leaving was really poignant for me. I missed all the friends I saw while I was there and Atlanta just looked so beautiful this weekend. Staying in D and L's midtown home made me miss living in a city. I know Hubii misses his friends but I feel like he doesn't miss their constant company and is happy with keeping in touch long distance. It makes me sad to think about the things I miss in Atlanta so I have to think about the positives here in Kansas City. Hubii is doing work he likes, we are close to his sister and her family, spring is coming (or is here) and farmers markets will be popping up all around us and close to our home and we have a wonderful home that we can feather and nest for our little Babii. And I know that no matter where we are, if we are together we can be happy :)

Spring break has begun, for some people

So another, Sunday another post. This week has been crazy!
Hubii left on Wednesday to attend the SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Conference in Dallas. He got back last night but he now has a cold :( Thankfully Hubii is off for Spring break this week so he has time to recuperate. We were supposed to go for a walk with the Hike of the Month small group at church, but Hubii skipped out. Good thing he did it was cold and not too pretty.
It was kinda good to have the house to myself/ be alone because I was able to do a lot of school work. I stayed on campus later and came home to Pasta Roni dinners (Don't worry I threw in lots of spinach to offset the unhealthiness).
We did some dissections in our lab on pigs' legs to help ease our undergrads into cadaver testing. Also we use it to introduce the different muscles (pigs have similar muscle structure to humans). I was supposed to help lead that, but really I know less about anatomy than they probably do (being 10 years removed from my last biology class). Thankfully, we have a masters student with a biology undergrad working in our lab.
Yesterday, I helped my advisor with a Technology and Tea event on Campus. We had 6-8th grade girls come and participate in different engineering workshops. We tried to do a Lego Mindstorms project. We had them build the basic robot and then gave them the obstacle and asked them to modify their robots to get past the obstacle. To keep it simple, we just had different boxes that the girls had to try to escape from. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time and no one was able to get out of the boxes. But it was fun, and a little relaxing to not think about school work or research.
This week is the first proper ultrasound appointment at the OB. Maybe I will get some pics to put online and make this blog more exciting. I know just talking can be boring, and I don't know how to write to be interesting :P