Hannah Banana's Baby Quilt

It's done, and is going in the mail today! :-) I was excited when I found out Michael and Caroline were having a girl, because I had leftover fabric from making Carrina's quilt. I had already cut out the squares and everything. I had fun making this quilt, but I've decided that when I do another quilt I'm sending it in somewhere to be topstitched for me. I love piecing the top and doing the binding, but topstitching is kind of a pain with a regular sewing machine. So, it's a few weeks late, but I hope Hannah likes it!

She's so beautiful.

The End of Junior Year

Well, another semester seems to have come to a crashing halt. I don't even know where the last month has gone. It's funny how every semester seems to go faster and faster. We're seniors now, and that's weird. It's a little scary and very exciting, but I'm also kind of sad that our time at BYU is almost over. The last two semesters  have definitely been my hardest and most stressful two, but somehow they seemed to fly by.

First block of this semester was pretty awful at times, but the second half was really good. I learned so much stuff that I never thought I'd learn. About plants and fungus, mostly. :-) I have to say that I never would have signed up for plant biodiversity or plant classification if I didn't have to for my major, but I'm glad I took them. I don't think I'd ever be a botanist, but it's always good to learn new things. It's helped me open my eyes a little more this spring and see the beauty in the plants around us, especially here on campus where they put so much work into making it beautiful. Ecology, on the other hand, was pretty boring.

This semester I've learned a little more about myself, too. I've been starting to realize that I can be better at reaching out to be a friend, even when I'm busy. For a while I was feeling pretty lonely (besides having Spencer, of course), and some really great couples in the ward invited us over to their houses for dinner or FHE or games. I realized that I'm probably not the only one who could use a few friends. I've been trying to be better at it. I'm not very good at breaking the ice with people, but I like talking and socializing, so one of my goals this spring is to befriend new couples that move into our ward. We get a lot of turnover now because so many people graduate and move out, and new couples get married and/or move in.

Anyway, my finals went alright. I only had 3 because some of my classes were block classes, and they were all scheduled. I like the testing center, so that was a little sad. On the other hand, there's no way I would have chosen to take them all on Friday and Saturday (the first two days of finals), but they were scheduled so I'm done!! Spencer has 3 finals left, so I'm going to try not to rub it in his face that I'm done studying, and also try not to be distracting. I have some goals for how to use to my new-found free time, so that should help. I seriously need to start running. Also, I want to get back into playing my guitar, and it has been so long that I've forgotten almost everything. And it makes my fingers hurt. That will be fun. Other than that, this week I am going to finish up little Hannah's baby quilt and hopefully get it in the mail. I also ordered an independent study course to get another prerequisite for PT school done. Hopefully I can get that done before my summer classes start up in June.

Okay, that's it for now. Good job if you made it all the way through that post. Maybe we'll do something fun soon and I'll have a fun post.

A Busy Saturday

Saturday morning we got up early to pick up our Bountiful Basket! Bountiful Baskets is a food co-op where you pay 15 dollars ($20 the first time) and you go pick up a basket full of fresh produce! You don't get to choose what will be in it, and if you miss your 20 minute pick-up window they donate it. Spencer signed us up for it this week for the first time. He was really excited about it all week. 

Does he look pretty happy? 

This is what we got. That's a lot of anaheim peppers.

One of the fun things about it is that you don't know what you're gonna get and it makes you figure out how to use produce that you might not usually buy. That means new recipes! Tonight we made spinach and mushroom lasagna with a white sauce to use the mushrooms, spinach, and an onion. It was some good lasagna. 

We put those strawberries to good use as soon as we got home. 

After eating those delicious pancakes, Spencer dropped me off on campus for my ecology field trip. I had a good list of things I could have been doing with my Saturday before finals week, but I was looking forward to this field trip and I was required to go. We made a couple stops to talk about the geological history of the valley and stream ecology. 

These make my hips look so good!

This is my professor telling us about this brown trout and how it's body is adapted to it's environment and role in the ecosystem. He is a stream ecologist by profession, so he knew a ton about it. We caught some stream bugs and he knew each of their scientific names and just about everything about their life cycle.

Goin' electrofishin'! 

I'm so good at this. I caught 4 fish! 

So, this is my first time ever catching a fish. Besides some minnows that we caught in pop cans as kids and brought home to put in our fish bowl. It's kind of cheating when the fish is unconscious and floating belly-up, but that's alright. :) We released them all after we talked about them. It was a pretty fun field trip, but I'm no field biologist. 

Thing I meant to blog about, but didn't.

We got a letter from Ryan!! :) Notice the fantastic stamp on the envelope. It was fun to get that in the mail. Thanks, Ryan!

That, friends, is a smashed Reese's Pieces. Ryan's a pretty thoughtful guy.

A couple weeks ago Spencer took his first full-length practice MCAT. He got a 28 on it, so we're feeling pretty good. He's still got about a month left to study for it, and his goal is to get in the 30s. Final are this week and next week, and after that he's taking off work so he can really focus on studying for it. I'm most likely going to take off for a week on a plant-collecting trip with one of my professors from this semester to get out of his hair. I'm not sure on the details about that trip, but it would be a fun thing to go do and I really think I'll be more of a hinderance than a help with the MCAT prep. This test kind of determines our future.

We also got to baby sit Carrina one evening so Josh and Katy could go to the temple. It was so fun. She is at a really fun age. She can roll over on her own with a bit of effort, but she can't scoot quite yet. We sure love her, and we need to do a better job of going to hang out with Josh and Katy more often.

She is such a cute, happy baby. 

Spencer trying to get some Chemistry reading done. She's helpful. 

Carrina totally loved this mirror. 

We'll take her anytime, Josh and Katy!

Catching Up

I've fallen behind on my blogging again, so here's a catch up post.

A couple Fridays ago Bishop Anderson and his wife invited us and 3 other couples to their home for dinner. It was so nice of them! Their home is absolutely beautiful. Seeing real homes always makes me excited for the day that we'll have one of our own. Dinner was delicious and it was a lot of fun to get to know the other couples and Bishop and Sister Anderson better. We all shared our stories about how we met.

I have this ecology project that I have to take a bunch of pictures of ecological processes for, so on Saturday we drove out to Bridal Veil Falls. The weather was absolutely beautiful and we had a good time walking around. I was a dummy and didn't think to charge the camera before we left, but I did grab the extra battery on the way out the door. About 5 minutes after we got there the camera battery died and I found out that the extra wasn't charged. It all worked out though because we had our iPad with us (we were trying unsuccessfully to use a GPS app), so I used that instead. Finding wildlife was pretty unsuccessful, but I think I got some usable pictures of plants.

That Sunday was Easter. It was pretty low-key around here this year. We didn't do easter baskets or eggs or anything. We kind of decided to save the money instead, and we had a busy week leading up to it, so we didn't really plan for it anyway. We invited Josh, Benjamin, and our friend Dan over for dinner. James and Miranda were up at her parents' house, so they were taken care of. Katy was out of town with her family, but Josh stayed because of school and work. We had homemade scalloped potatoes, rolls, game-hens, and some french silk pie. The game hens were good, but they took forever to cook so we ate later than we had planned. We actually had the pie first because everyone was getting hungry. It was nice to spend the evening with friends and family.

This last weekend was General Conference!! Can I just say that I absolutely love conference weekend? It's such a nice break from the craziness of school and life. We stayed home, slept in, and had yummy breakfasts while we listened to the morning sessions. It was an awesome spiritual recharge and I loved the talks this conference. (I think I say that every conference) The speakers went back to the basics and bore very strong testimonies of Christ. I felt peace about some questions I have been pondering, and I felt a reassurance of God's love and concern for me. I am so grateful for the direction we receive every 6 months from living prophets and apostles to guide us through this world full of distractions and ever-changing morals. I love this church.

This week is the last full week of class. Next Wednesday and Thursday are reading days, and I'll be done with finals next Saturday! It's very exciting, but it also means we have a lot of studying ahead of us in the next week and a half.

Oh! And I cut my hair! I think everyone's seen this already, but here it is anyway. It's very different, but I like it so far. :) I was kind of terrified when she was cutting my bangs.

So there you go. I know you were all dying to hear what's been going on in our lives. Time for me to get some sleep!