What's Your Nature? Free Book!

My mom is giving away a new book by Carol Tuttle on her blog, here. Hurry! The drawing will be tomorrow, May 1st at Noon MST.
I've just finished reading this book and my husband and I attended an event when we were in Utah. This Amazon review sums it up much better than I could (I tried.) I'll just say I'm gaining a much better understanding of how and why my friends and family act the way they do (It all makes so much sense now!). Good luck!

"Carol Tuttle has discovered a personality profiling system. But it's not just another system. Carol uses physical features of our own bodies and compares them to physical features in nature and explains the correlation. But the information is based more on the energy behind the physical characteristics and not the actual physical traits. She then helps each "energy type" learn how they uniquely tick. Why is this important? Because we often function in certain ways that are mystifying to us and we wonder why in the world we do these things. Conversely, we often judge others because of things they do and say with assumptions as to why they do and say them. Carol's energy profiling helps us understand why we are the way we are at the core. She thoroughly explains all four energy types and helps us celebrate the unique creation that each of us is. Only then can we come to a place of understanding of who we are and who others are. It is so much easier to understand why someone is blunt (in our mind rude) if you understand that they are a 4. It is also easier to understand a bouncy, fun person who can't seem to finish anything because they are a 1. And to understand the drive and energy of a 3. Understanding your type can also help you find ways to work with your unique combination of energy types and grow and prosper, rather than beating yourself up for what may be a perceived weakness. I have read many other books that profile and have always been left feeling that something was missing. They helped me gain an understanding but I never felt I was "pegged" quite right. With Carol's It's Just My Nature, I finally feel as though I have the key and it is now easy to understand much of what I have chosen in my life. I know you will enjoy this fascinating book as much as I did. "

While Mom's away....

So the boys and I have been on our own for just about six hours, and already we've spent some time cruising downtown, made a stop at a liquor store, picked up some chicks, at least one of us passed out in the back of the car, and when we got home we watched a show with killers in it.

Mom would not approve--or would she?

We ended up cruising downtown because we wanted to see the Santa Maria on the waterfront and it took forever to find a parking spot. When we finally did find one, I didn't have any change, so we gave up and decided to go to the Japanese grocery store instead.

That's how we ended up at the liquor store--borrowing a phone book because without the QB around I don't know how to find anything in Columbus. I got the address and we went to the store to pick up ingredients for Okonamiyaki.

Afterward we stopped at McDonald's and picked up some CHICKen McNuggets and a few waters.

The Monkey, who didn't get a nap today, was passed out in his car seat before we cleared the city limits.

We got home about 8:30 pm, just in time to get a call from the QB who was then waiting in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for her connecting flight to Lubbock. We said our i-love-yous and then the boys and I watched a show about KILLER whales. We read a few books and they were asleep by 9:45 pm. Not bad, considering.

The QB will be in Lubbock with her mom until Saturday and hopefully they will find somewhere for us to live this fall. This is the first time she's been on a trip without me or the kids since...hmmm...since I can't remember. It should be a vacation for her, if for nothing else than the uninterrupted reading time on the plane.

Meanwhile I am taking a little time off of work to be home with the boys, and in between Lincoln log towers and games of catch outside (and mostly after bedtime) I'll be finishing up my thesis and turning it in to a friend/copy editor to give it a final close read before I submit it to my committee for final review at the beginning of May.

We'll miss you while you're gone QB. Have fun!

Happy Easter

We've had a busy pre-Easter Saturday complete with handi-crafts at Lowe's, an Easter Egg hunt at a friend's house, baseball with the neighbor kids, some apartment and church cleaning, and a trip to the library book sale. The QB just finished wrapping Easter gifts (framed pictures of the Savior) for the boys and we're about to go to bed, but I wanted to post two brief videos.

The first is a portion of a talk by the Apostle Jeffery R. Holland about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, given last week at the LDS general conference , and the second is a collage of pictures set to the primary song "Beautiful Savior," which the QB is teaching the primary children this month at Church.


If you've ever wondered what an Apostle of Jesus Christ would have sounded like, what he would have spent his energy telling people, then this will hopefully give you an idea.




I could never say it any better than Elder Holland, and so I will merely add an Amen to his words, and a thank you to God for living prophets who speak plainly and honestly, as well as for our individual opportunity to feel the Holy Spirit and know the truth of what we hear.

And this is the song...probably one of my favorites (though I like the men's chorus version better, the QB is fond of this version)

April Fools!

For April Fool's day this month the QB made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Except there was no cheese, no bread, and no grill. These "sandwiches," believe it or not, are made of thin-sliced pound cake and orange-colored frosting--lightly browned in the toaster oven. Even up close they looked legit. The boys were so fooled! She also made jell-o in juice cups for breakfast the boys tried to drink. This definitely beats out last year's rice crispy treat sushi and mashed potato and meatloaf cupcakes.

She claims not to be in competition with herself, but we'll have to wait until next year to find out. And she wants everyone to know that she owes much of her foolery success to Familyfun magazine.

pictures from spring break

On Wednesday it rained nearly all day, so we had a "stay-cation" with the boys. We woke up late and told the boys we could do whatever they wanted to (within reason). So we had smoothies for breakfast, watched Bolt at 10:30 am, went to the Baker Center in the afternoon to play Foosball , and played Lincoln Logs and blocks and Legos until dinner time.



Tuesday the weather was great so we took a short hike in Strouds run State Park. We hiked 2.4 miles round trip and had a granola bar break at the half way point.
Strouds run state park literally spills out into Athens city, with several trails originating at dead end streets in the Sells Park neighborhood. I've mountain biked on this trail, and we've hiked it before as a family, but never this far. The boys did great and we kept saying to ourselves: "We're going to miss the trees and the hills so much." Oh well, I hear West Texas has some great canyons.


Here's Mr. Baseball with his walking stick (And here is the same stick the day he picked it up--It's in Jon's hand). He picked it up nearly a year and a half ago in Virginia when we were visiting Alex and Jon and has taken it on every hike we've been on since. The silly boy actually asked me the other day--"Dad, Why do they call sticks that you use for hiking 'hiking sticks?"



The giant rock formation at mile .95 was kind enough to stop and take a picture of all of us. The Monkey spent about half his time in the back pack and the other half picking up sticks and dirt and darting off the trail after fallen logs and bugs and wild flowers.

Lubbock it is!

So we officially said yes to Texas Tech this week, which means that this summer we are moving from this:


To this:


A side by side comparison, for those who don't know much about either town:

	Lubbock, Texas	Athens, Ohio
Population:	212,169 (+35,000 students)	21,342 (+20,400 students)
Land size	114.9 sq. miles	8.3 sq. Miles
Average temperature summer/winter	93 degrees / 25 degrees	85 degrees / 18.3 degrees
Annual Average rainfall	16.5	38.6
% Republican/ % Democrat	74% / 25%	36% / 63%
Football Team BCS ranking in 2008	7th	na
Approximate number of Mormons	Aprox. 1900 (.77%)	Aprox 183(.44%)
Distance from University to LDS temple	8.9 miles	82.6 miles
Distance to Grandma and Grandpa’s house	902 miles	2082 miles
Distance to Nana and Papa’s house	888 miles	1813 miles
Median home value	$110,000	$153,000
Citizens of Note	Buddy Holly	Johnny Appleseed

So, all-in-all Lubbock doesn't look like such a bad place. I'm sure it has its problems (they don't do curbside recycle, for one, which makes my Oregonian hurt), but like Melissa said recently, after a year in Japan we can live anywhere in the states. In fact, we are getting excited about the prospect of living in a house with a yard and room for a garden and the possibility of staying in one place for four or five years. We've been married for six and a half years and, if you include our initial drive to Utah after our wedding, we've moved six times, including once over seas and once across the country.

Now the biggest question we're facing is when to actually pack up the moving truck and leave Athens. I graduate in the middle of June, but we'd like to stick around a little longer and earn some money here before we go, and since I don't have to be in Lubbock until the middle of August, we'll try to get a summer teaching gig here that will keep us busy until the end of July.

Side note: teaching "gig"--that's a silly expression that I have heard often and used often. The OED doesn't know where the expression came from, but it does know that it refers specifically to jazz or dance music and implies a one-time, or limited engagement for a band, as in this 1934 usage in All about Jazz:

"Jack runs numerous bands which play ‘gig’ worki.e. private engagements or public work. In his office, he has a file in which some hundreds of ‘gig’ musicians are listed."

Now, I initially started this side note with the intention of pointing out my own cliched use of a bad idiom, but now that I know what it really means, it feels like a good fit for the adjunct professor world. Adjuncts are a lot like aspiring musicians looking for a steady gig, and making ends meet by playing where ever they can. And just like gig musicians or starving actors in New York, or minor league baseball players, adjuncts live like second-class citizens in their professional world, doing all of the same work as the Pros for a fraction of the pay, and many of them burn out and move on to something else.

The QB has only made me promise that we won't move over her birthday and our anniversary, which means we have to move no later than the end of July.