Convocations and Corollas

Wow. It's been a little while since our last post. I guess things got pretty busy. We both finished up our last semester at BYU, graduated, packed up all of our belongings (sans some furniture), and moved to the East Coast. Woah! We'll back up a bit and recap some of our exciting transitions and highlight what we'll be up to in the next few months.

First: Graduation

We had so much fun during graduation! Both of our families (well, most of our family members) were able to travel out for graduation, so we spent several days with parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. It was a blast! We had just finished the mad rush at the end of the semester where it really seems like things will never end, so we definitely welcomed the break. Graduation was great! We had the processional the first day for all the graduates. Elder Oaks was the speaker and it was great to hear his words of wisdom for us.

The next day we went to the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences convocation. We decided we only wanted to go to one and we picked mine because I was selected as the Valedictorian for the Political Science department! I was so surprised and honored! We had a lot of fun sitting on the stand during the ceremony and looking out at all the family members who came to see us graduate. So I now officially have a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. And Matt, the cum laude graduate, has a Bachelor of Science in Bioinformatics. Wahoo! Go Class of 2012! And we took lots and lots of pictures, of course.

Second: Move to East Coast

After graduation, our families left and we packed up everything in our tiny apartment. We gave away most of our furniture, which really helped us save a bunch of space in the truck. We only occupied 9x8x5 feet of space with everything we own! Half of our boxes were filled with books. It is really hard to get rid of them! We just keep buying more and more and we can never get up the courage to try to slim down our collection. Maybe we never will and I can have my dream library like the one in Disney's Beauty and the Beast! Of course we'll be able to afford that :)

Before we left, we tried to visit as many friends and family as we could. We spent a few days playing a grand total of 8 or 9 games of Settlers of Catan with Matt's cousins before we left. Matt won 4 times and I won twice. We're trying to become a serious double threat with that game. I'm just worried that someday no one will want to play with us anymore! So we decided to save a bit of money and catch a red eye flight to North Carolina. Wow. All I can say is that I felt pretty weird for a few days afterwards. We left Utah at midnight and got to Raleigh at 8:30 am. Yikes. At least we were able to spend a few days sleeping and catching up!

All of our things in the back of the moving van

Third: New Car

Neither Matt nor I have ever owned a car. We've been married a year and a half, are now college graduates, and we just purchased our first automobile! Our car is a beautiful blue 2006 Toyota Corolla we have christened "The Blueberry", a not-so-subtle homage to one of our favorite TV shows, Psych. And we LOVE it! So far, The Blueberry has lived up to all the high expectations we had for the famously tireless Corollas. My Mom also graciously gave us a Virginia is for Lovers bumper sticker that both is a good reminder of Matt's proposal in Lovingston, VA and a foreshadowing of our new home in Charlottesville. Perfect.

The Rest of the Summer

So what in the world are we up to this summer? Not too much. And we're ok with that. It has been wonderful to wake up and know that there aren't any looming deadlines, no tests coming up, and no strict schedule. It will be hard to give that up when we re-enter real life in August. Well, we're just going to live it up until then! We've got a trip with Matt's family coming up, a trip to Peru to see Matt's Aunt and Uncle who live there, and a bunch of smaller things. Plus, we still have some big decisions coming up. We still need to find housing in Charlottesville and we've got to figure out everything we'll be involved in up there. Well, until next time, remember to live the bigg life!

Comedy of Errors

As we near the end of our time here at BYU, we've examined the way we've spent our free time during our undergraduate careers, and found something lacking. For instance, the Harris Fine Arts Center (or HFAC, for those familiar with BYU shorthand) offers several plays per semester at discount prices. We've lost count of the number of movie-date-nights we've held, but can count on one hand the number of theatrical productions we've enjoyed. We decided to do something about it...

One evening, with time on our hands and ambition to culture-ify ourselves, we decided to walk up to the art museum and look at the new Islamic Art exhibit. En route, we passed through the HFAC and decided it was high time we bought a ticket to a play or something (that's how one culture-ifies oneself ... by attending plays). I walked up to the ticket counter, asked for two tickets for a March 24th showing of "Love's Labors Lost" (a Shakespeare). The guy behind the counter asked "Do you want to see the play right now? I have free tickets ...". Jessica and I looked at each other, and in that split second glance our entire evening's plans changed. I said "We'll take them". He handed us the tickets and we walked into the play, having missed the first couple of minutes and not paid a cent.

The play was set in the 1940's, and besides the novelty of hearing Shakespeare's lines in a Chicago accent, there was a live band playing classics like "Pennsylvania 6 5000".

Our other recent Shakespeare experience left the realm of glamorous tuxedos and the greatest generation and entered the psychedelic. Love's Labors Lost was done in a main-floor auditorium of the HFAC. Our newest experience led us down into the bowels of the HFAC, several floors down to where the stairs don't go any deeper. This, my friends, is where the truly artsy people go, and your average bioinformatician hasn't the nerve to stray. But Jessica and I courageously walked (hand in cold-sweaty hand) into an arena theater to attend "The Comedy of Errors" set in the 1960s, and done in the style of Bob Fosse. It was hilarious, mostly due to the physical comedy, expertly carried out by a long, gangly fellow with a champagne glass and mustache.


After extracting ourselves from the bowels of the HFAC, we walked home with "The Time of the Season" by the Zombies stuck in our heads, and a new-found appreciation for disco balls.

Perhaps our nerdiest venture into the HFAC (if you can believe it gets nerdier) was to attend the BYU hosted TEDx event. If you're familiar with TED talks (an organization that publicizes short talks by creative and successful speakers on a wide range of topics), then TEDx is just an independently organized TED event. This one, hosted by BYU, featured invited speakers and accomplished students on the topics of social entrepreneurship, solutions journalism, and how to be successful. Jessica got free tickets by volunteering at the registration desk, and it was a special treat because one of the speakers was a good friend of ours from Cinnamon tree, named Wilfried Eyi, from Gabon, Central Africa.

A Busy Valentine's Day (plus an easy cake recipe!)

We had a real adventure this year on Valentine's Day. Since the beginning of the school week is especially busy for me, I got up early to try to get a heads up on all of my homework. As a result, I was really tired all day. After I took a midterm, I ran home for a one-hour break in my day to bake a cake. I decided I really wanted to use our new bundt pan, so I made a classic recipe from my Mom. (I'll put the super easy recipe at the bottom of the post.) Fortunately, our oven cooks really really fast (is it normal to have to shave off 2-10 minutes off of every baking time?) so I was able to get back to campus in time to meet with Matt for lunch and the campus devotional. 

Our Valentine's bundt cake

Man. Then we had five hours straight of class/work/homework until we could finally get home and relax a bit. I have to admit that I was a bit cranky by the time I got home, but Matt was so sweet. He had bought me some fudge (he certainly knows me well!), a copy of Thomas S. Monson's biography (so excited!!!), and the children's song book from our church. Since we are teaching the Sunday lessons for the six year olds in our congregation, this will really come in handy. It was so thoughtful! I bought Matt some chocolate covered cinnamon bears (a BYU classic) and made him some "love checks" that Matt can redeem for kisses and breakfast in bed and such. So cheesy, but certainly Valentine's Day appropriate :)

Once we had a chance to dress up for dinner, we had to catch the bus since we still don't have a car. Ten minutes and $4.50 later, we arrived at Red Lobster. We were trying to use a gift card my grandmother gave us for Christmas, but the waiting time at the restaurant was almost 2 hours! Wow. It was really cold outside and I was freezing in my skirt, but Matt, in his wonderful, eternal optimism was able to find a great place with a reasonable waiting time. We finally decided on California Pizza Kitchen, which was DELICIOUS. Their artichoke pizza is to die for! It was so so perfect. We had a wonderful waiter and 4 glasses of mango and peach lemonade each! Then we were able to go home and devour the cake. It was wonderful. Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays and I am so glad that Matt made it special this year. You know you've found the right person when they help you have fun despite the chilly air and long restaurant wait times. I'm one lucky duck.

At the bus stop :)

Recipe for Lemon Blackberry Bundt Cake


What you need:
One box of lemon cake mix
3 eggs
1 can of blackberry pie filling


Directions:
Mix ingredients in a bowl and pour into a well greased bundt pan. Bake according to directions on the box. To add a bit more deliciousness, I topped ours with a lemon glaze (lemon juice and powdered sugar). And that's it! It's yummy and very moist.

Up a Trail Without a Flashlight

Our Sunday evening turned out to be unusually busy. I (this is Matt tapping the blogging keyboard today) went with the Scouts to sign off our physical wellness forms before leaving for scout camp, we called our families, ate dinner (Potstickers from the freezer ... mmmmmm), then the both of us enjoyed a slice of carrot cake with a young fellow named Marcos who turned 1 this past week. To cap off the evening, I was able to convince Jessica to go adventuring with me, and the two of us, with bikes, helmets, water and a camera, powered up the side of Y mountain to catch the sunset.

The adventure started with a fortuitous meeting, still in Provo, with an old friend from Cinnamon Tree. After a hearty greeting and farewell, we pedaled eastward until the road started to climb. Anyone who's ever biked up a mountain, or even a minor gravel heap, probably understands the sensation of every downward pedal stroke getting harder and harder. We followed the neighborhoods up the hill until we could see over most of the houses below us. To our chagrin, the road we were on did not lead to the Y.

Undaunted, and knowing that people in this neighborhood were surely as lazy as we were, and would not want to regularly go back down the hill in order to get up to the Y, we scanned the roadside brush for any signs of a trail. Our well-trained eyes soon spotted a small trail leading away, into the bushes and supposedly up the mountain to our destination. We followed it. Jessica was very excited at this point to

have me as a guide. The trail appeared abandoned. We followed it for five or ten minutes, dodging branches and stepping over grass clumps. Portions of the trail were paved, nearly overrun with plant life, and portions were merely a thin carving in the dirt. We wound our way through this unknown path. It got steeper, and steeper, and the sun was setting fast.

Then, we met The Hill. It was like no hill we had yet encountered. It towered above us, its rocky crags challenging our will to climb, mocking our desire to view the sun's parting rays (as an informative side note, bikes seem to become heavier - maybe 30-40 lbs - when climbing such a hill).

We made it to the top sweaty, but very much alive. From then on, we breathed heavily, enjoyed the final descent of the sun into the horizon and the twinkling lights of Provo coming to life beneath us. The desert flowers were blooming along and way the sun colored the mountainside a bright pink-ish orange before sinking out of sight. Most definitely worth it.

As is usually the case, the photos do not do it justice.

Once dark, we realized that we were nowhere near a road, nor did we have any sort of light source. Jessica was not very impressed that all we had was my sense of adventure, saying that if she had her way, she would prefer a flashlight.

We continued uphill, and after another hill or two like the monster mentioned before, we arrived at the road that leads to the parking lot for Y hikers. We made our way slowly down the mountain, and biked home, making it just in time to brush our teeth and collapse into bed.