Smiley

A gift from the baby gods

Recently we discovered that Natalie will *almost* always settle down and stop fussing when we set her in her carseat and swing her. Fun fact that I did not realize before having a child: Babies in carseats are heavy. Like really, really heavy. Although swinging her in the carseat is a good solution to a fussy baby, it is not a good long-term solution to being able to get stuff done. Also not ideal if you have the arm strength of a beetle (yuck).

Many thanks to the baby gods for creating baby swings and one of my generous aunts who lent me hers. We've only had it for a few days but already have enjoyed the benefit of a happy swinging baby while doing other stuff.

She is so happy.

Girly time

I love playing dress up with Natalie with pretty dresses and adorable headbands and bow things...

A trip turned vacation

A couple of weeks ago, from the 6th to the 13th, was the first time Matthew and I had been apart since being married. It was really, really hard! I am NOT a fan!

And at least both of us went out of town, just not to the same places. Matthew was in New York City! He went on a research trip with some members of his research group to do some experiments on the synchotron at the National Laboratory at Brookhaven on Long Island.

At least, that's what they were supposed to do. They got there and were supposed to start experiments on Wednesday, but the machine was broken. It was supposed to be fixed by Thursday, then by Friday, and finally halfway through Saturday they were able to start running some data. It's too bad, because they had to come back on Monday to take finals and stuff, so instead of many days of data gathering, they got... a few hours. I felt really bad for his professor whose project this is. It's a good thing the group is going to a few other synchotrons this summer though. And at least Matthew got to be in a cool place for his Physics Department sponsored vacation.

 What a handsome guy eh?

Part of the beamline Matthew was supposed to use at the synchotron

The joys of apartment living

We live in the basement of a house. Overall we really like it, but we've decided that the upstairs tenants are crazy. Here are four reasons that we just shake our heads at the people living above us.

Reason #1
They control and AC and heat. Usually it's not too bad, but they have this thing about when they keep the house cool. Lately, (during the summer time this is) they have been running the AC at night. So when it's hot during the day the AC is often off... and it comes on at night to freeze us out. Sometimes we turn on the oven to help warm up the house a bit.

Reason #2
Our landlords (they live in AF) provide us with Dish Satellite complete with DVR. We kinda like it. Anyway, the upstairs people monopolize the DVR. They record all sorts of stuff, fill up the memory with all their random stuff, don't delete stuff after they watch it, and then there's hardly any room for us. We have probably seven things recorded right now... they have around 190. We try to be considerate of the finite amount of space and delete after we're done with something, but they just go ahead and record episode upon episode of The Hills, Phineas and Ferb  (seriously?), Design on a Dime, Gossip Girl, Modern Family, Project Runway, and a lot of other things I can't remember now, and leave it on there forever. Drives us nuts.

Reason #3
The upstairs people are in charge of watering and mowing the lawn. They have been given the responsibility and they have the key to the shed. So this spring they decided to wait to mow the lawn until it was two feet tall. We were like "ummm... they yard is looking like a field..." and so we were pretty excited to come back from somewhere one day and see them mowing. Hurray! When we went outside after they were done, we saw that they had only sort of mowed the lawn. They had left big patches of tall grass unmowed all over the place.

Reason #4
They play the synthesizer in the middle of the night.


Other than that though, they're great!

Public Service Notice

I don't know if this is company wide, or just at the one in Orem, but I thought the general population might be interested to know that at KrispyKreme (in Orem, at least) if you bring in an ugly tie this week, up until Father's Day, they will give you a dozen original glazed donuts... for FREE! Absolutely free. We got some today!

Second Breakfast

I think Natalie (or probably any baby for that matter) and the hobbits would get along well.

Sleeping habits

This cracks me up so much. Notice how Natalie's arms are turned upwards around her face. Natalie sleeps like this all. the. time. Always. The only time she may not is if she's sleeping semi-upright, like in her carseat or bouncer (but even then its 50-50). It's so cute and so funny and so predictable, all wrapped up in one adorable little baby.