Giving Thanks at 20 Weeks!

We just got back from a wonderful, relaxing week with both of our families for Thanksgiving. We are in the lucky situation where our parents and siblings are friends, so we didn't have to pick and choose where to spend the holiday. Fortunately, I was feeling pretty good, so the week was a nice change from some of the pregnancy weirdness that's been going on lately. We spent the time eating lots of good food, watching movies, going shopping (for maternity clothes!), laughing, and talking about the baby. My belly isn't too big, so I haven't had any strangers poke it yet, but that did not stop my sister from showing our baby some love. This little baby is definitely coming into this world with lots of love and support. I hope our baby understood that all the rubs and pats were coming from people who are really, really excited about his or her arrival!

Also, this week marks a great milestone in our pregnancy: we're halfway there! 20 weeks is officially the halfway mark--so the countdown begins now! We're excited to find out our little one's gender in a few weeks. It's hard to wait, but seeing our baby's mature features on the ultrasound will be totally worth it! Here are a few pictures of our growing baby bump.

Well, Here We Are!

This post is long overdue, especially since we've been in Charlottesville almost a month! Wow, the time really flew by! Moving is always stressful, but you finally get to the point when you've almost figured out where to hang all your pictures and you can take a few moments to pause.

We had an awesome summer hanging out with family and traveling, but there is something great about settling down in your own place and starting to put together your life again. We aren't living out of suitcases anymore!

Matt just started classes last week, so our schedule has changed quite a bit since then. Matt is gone for most of the day and I have a lot of flexibility with how to use my time. Although it is strange to not be studying or writing papers, I have to say that my new-found freedom is definitely a welcome change. I can do anything! So far, I've joined the local chamber orchestra and signed on with a group that helps adults improve their writing and reading skills. I just recently found out that this same group teaches civics classes to prepare immigrants to apply for US citizenship. As a politics buff, teaching civics is definitely one of my passions, so I am supremely excited to be involved.

We are really loving Charlottesville so far. We've been able to explore many of the local restaurants and met some really awesome people. Here's to the next 5+ years!

Matt putting together a bookshelf in our living/dining room. Fortunately our house doesn't look like this anymore!

Matt and his family in front of Bodo's Bagels, a classic Charlottesville establishment.

Matt and me at Carter's Mountain Orchard near town.

Eating Wayside Chicken with my family--another Charlottesville classic.

Grad School: The Decision

Wow. This has been an intense and somewhat stressful adventure. But like all important and life-changing decisions, this one didn't go off exactly as we planned. Such is life. It turns out that we couldn't pick a school by finding out where we both got in--because none of our acceptance schools overlapped! I got into one of our top schools and Matt got into the other one, but neither of us got into both. How unexpected. But we've done a lot of soul searching and pondering and here is our official decision: We're going to the University of Virginia! Matt just accepted the offer on Wednesday.

UVa has extended Matt a generous stipend and he loved his interview experience there. The faculty were engaging and the research environment was stimulating. He found a lab he is really excited about working in and all his bioengineering dreams will come true in just a few short months.

My future will be decided with much more improvisation, trial and error, and pixie dust. Seriously though, the next five years will be one big journey of self-discovery. Since I won't be getting a postgraduate degree at this point, the options have only become more overwhelming. Do I get a postgraduate teaching certificate? Do I become Suzuki-certified to teach violin? Do I find a position at a local non-profit? Do I apply for editing jobs at local magazines and newspapers? The sky is literally the limit.

Amid all the celebration and confusion one thing has become clear: Charlottesville is the right place for us. We'll be back on the east coast--closer to our families, the ocean, and the Appalachian Trail. What more can you ask for? Here's to our new home!

Our Little Creperie

One of our dreams for the future is to retire and open a little creperie (a restaurant that sells crepes!). We started planning after we visited the cutest creperie in Charlottesville, VA during our honeymoon. It is called The Flat and you can see a picture here. The menu is really simple and features both savory and sweet crepes. Matt and I stopped there for dinner one night and fell in love. My crepe had ham, fresh brie, and apple slices. Matt's crepe had sausage, brie, and spinach. They were both delicious! Of course, the dessert crepes were to die for as well. Who can beat Nutella and fresh fruit? (As you can tell from previous posts, I am definitely obsessed with Nutella).

Matt and I have made crepes a few times now. Usually, we eat them in the morning and just mix fruit, jam, honey, Nutella, peanut butter and such for a wonderful breakfast. Today we made some crepes for dinner. We decided on ham, swiss, and apple as the dinner combination. They were fabulous! The great thing about crepes is that they can be very inexpensive. The cost depends entirely on what you decide to put in them.

The talented chef.

Here is the recipe we used to make the crepes. We got it from a book called Teens Cook that I got for Christmas many years ago. It actually has some great recipes in it. I use it all the time.

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
2 Tb. oil
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Place eggs in a blender. Add the milk, oil, flour, and salt and blend until smooth. Since we don't have a blender (see the smoothie post), we just beat the mixture really well. A blender would probably make sure there are no lumps though.

Heat an 8-inch nonstick saute pan over medium heat. Place a small amount of oil or butter on a paper towel and rub it over the surface of the pan. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter and quickly swirl the pan,  making sure the batter covers the entire bottom of the pan (the crepe should be very thin). Cook for 2 minutes (or until the edges start curling up a bit). Loosen the edges with a spatula and turn the crepe over. Repeat the process with all the batter. You can just stack the cooked crepes on top of each other--just be careful pulling them apart when you are ready to eat.

When all the crepes are finished, put whatever you want inside. It will all be delicious, we promise.

I love that we are both wearing our BYU football shirts. I think that really highlights our sophistication and grace :)

Grad School and the GRE: Where are we gonna go?

  

This Friday, Matt and I are both taking the GRE (insert insanity here). Our mental health aside, we are both really excited to be done studying. Remember high school geometry? As a political science major, I definitely don't. Well, it's covered on the GRE. The plus for me is that there is a verbal section. Hallelujah. Sentence completion, editing, and reading comprehension? Sign me up!

Anyway, we have been preparing for a while now and the time has finally come to take the GRE and find out where we can apply. Both of us are currently planning on PhDs in our respective fields. Matt: Bioengineering. Jessica: Political Science. We are both assuming we can get into a few top 25 programs. Hopefully! Surprisingly, bioengineering and political science doctoral programs have good overlap. Let's look at the possibilities:

School	Rank for Bioengineering	Rank for Political Science
MIT	1	10
Stanford	2	3
UC--Berkeley	3	6
U of Illinois--Urbana	5	22
U of Texas at Austin	8	23
U of Michigan	9	4
Cornell	10	20
Texas A&M	13	24
UC—Los Angeles	14	11
UC—San Diego	15	8
Columbia	16	7
UW—Madison	17	16
Harvard	18	1
Northwestern	19	21

Look at all those options! Awesome! We have 14 schools in the top 25 of our fields that overlap. We are SO lucky. Matt doesn't like the idea of living in the midwest. He says the thing he hates the most about Utah is the eternal winter. Since I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin (notice it has one of the top schools!), I have fond memories of snow forts and snow days, so we'll have to see. Besides, four of the schools up there are in the midwest. Oh well. On the upside, four schools are in California! It would be totally cool to live in California. I would be sunbathing every single day. We'd also be close to extended family there, which would be really nice. Matt says we apply to every single overlap school and see what happens. Bring it on!