A Little Late Birthday Ballet

The Nutcracker in San Francisco was fantastic this year! The costumes sparkled all they way from the balcony. Britton didn't want me to get cold so he made sure we sat way up in the highest seats:) Maybe we'll slowly move our way down as the years pass.

To start our evening we enjoyed a dinner at Sauce, a fine restaurant located within walking distance of the ballet. (if using high heels, multiply walking distance by 100.) I had the Hawaiian butterfish wrapped in bacon on a sweet potato risotto cake. mmmmm...bacon. Here's the dashing young husband with adorable dimples. Notice the baby is absent from these pictures. Nana offered to feed him all night again!

We spent the night in The Whitcomb Hotel. Also within walking distance of the ballet. It had this creepy, haunted mansion feeling.

The lobby was a little more cheery.
We stayed in this room.
Sha, I wish! I bet the whole room is made of chocolate!

Down by the Bay

Have you ever seen a plane land in the rain, down by the Bay.
Have you ever seen a duck down on his luck, down by the Bay.
Have you ever seen a pigeon surround you with his legions, down by the Bay.
Have you ever seen a sea gull shootin' the bull, down by the Bay.
Have you ever sung a song that lasted all day long, down by the Bay...

Yes, actually. We were down by the Bay yesterday. Other people know this crazy song right? We found this place by the Bay with a trail for us to stroll Will, a small airport for Britton to watch planes land, and a duck pond for me. Hopefully they make lots of babies. There's nothing cuter than baby duckies!This area is probably a lot more fun when there's not so much cold wind. At the duck pond there's a whole lot of pigeons. (or rats with wings according to some people)
And there's a whole lot of sea gulls.
And finally a few cute ducks...

New Baby!!

Our good friends and neighbors just had a bouncing baby boy! He was born exactly on his due date Dec. 4th and came in a big hurry (30 minutes after mother arrived at the hospital)! Meet Gabriel! Congratulations to the mom and dad!I was quite jealous that they had such good pictures taken on day one. Nikki's step dad Galen Lowe took these. I don't know how he does it, but tired, ordinary people look like this amazing, beautiful art. when I was visiting them post-hospital, he offered to take pictures of Will too! I was included in some of the pictures and it was late evening and I was wearing a sweatshirt, but somehow I didn't look bad in the pictures. How does he do it? Will, on the other hand, doesn't need any help looking absolutely adorable 24/7.

Happy B-day to Me

How old am I? yellow candles = 10 years, blue = 5 and pink = 1. It was Britton's idea because we were low on candles.
I know the candles are hard to see but since I'm definitely not 16, (although some people still think so...) I must be 26 this year!! This year the Olsons came to party with us, and we went to the creche exhibit. I didn't know what creche meant until I moved here, but as with everything in this area they go BIG or they go home. The exhibit was just as amazing as last year. Then the Olsons made me dinner and we had cake while I opened presents. Britton is taking me to a French restaurant and the Nutcracker next week! (after finals)

I'm always surprised by how much chocolate I get every year! On my mission EVERY person who sent me something sent chocolate...I loved it, but I also learned a very important lesson. If you eat nothing but chocolate in a 24 hour period, you won't have your usual energy to ride your bike around town and climb flights of stairs. I guess it's better in moderation.

Is chocolate my kryptonite? NOOOOOO!

He's Back!

No more fever!! Will woke up all smiley and happy this morning. It's so nice to have the old Will back, and it's also good for our budget that I don't have to take him back to that expensive clinic. I might have spoken too soon. He just threw up the entire contents of his stomach on me. But he's smiling again. I hate having to guess at his sicknesses.

Here's Will's new tricks. He can hold toys and put them in his mouth!

He can roll onto his stomach, but his arm gets in the way and he gets really frustrated.

I just thought this was a cute, funny picture of his baby cleavage:)

Good Idea Bad Idea

Good Idea: Celebrating Thanksgiving in Utah with all the extended family.

Bad Idea: Take a three month old baby on a 12 hour car trip to celebrate Thanksgiving with all the flu infected family.

Good Idea: Stay at home with your new baby.

Bad Idea: Let time lapse between insurance coverage because the next day after insurance runs out your baby gets really sick.

It's so sad to see baby Will so sick, but our trip to Utah was really great. The car ride wasn't that bad either. Will was an amazingly well behaved baby on the way there, and then he was sick and a bit fussy on the way home. I only have a few photos because I forgot to upload the ones I took on Papa Olson's fancy camera.It was a full suburban!


We stopped in St. George to pick up Grandma, and there was a mishap with the sink. Doesn't Margo look lovely?
After we arrived in Nephi, Will loved hanging out with Uncle Derek...and then puking on him. Somehow I was able to time it so every time I handed the Will to him he would spew.

Memorable moments from out trip were

-The food of course. There was a lot of it because there were 30-something people. 3 turkeys alone! All the traditional stuff--mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry stuff, yam stuff, many varieties of Jell-O salad, and lovely Vodka crust pies! Britton made his banana cream pie again, and it was the first pie to be completely devoured!

-The games. We played the traditional bunko after the feast, and I was introduced to a new, hilarious game called "Curses" I think. It took me a while to stop talking like Scooby Doo after that. There was another one we played that Rachael and Celeste made up. Everyone picked a piece of paper with instruction of something you had to do that day. For example Celeste was supposed to offer to clean people's glasses, and Derek had to challenge everyone to a dance off. Then at the end of the day people guess what your task was. Sometimes people don't catch on to your weird behavior. Celeste's parents thought she was so thoughtful to clean Grandma's glasses twice in one day.

-Murder mystery dinner. EVERYONE got into the spirit and dressed to fit their parts. Will even became Toothless Willy, owner of famed treasure. I really wish I had the picture of him in a pirate hat.

-"Zapping". I think Will and I were the only ones not zapped by Uncle Jens new machine so I can't really give a good explanation of it. All I know is that it had something to do with healing energy, and revealing what type of element people were. Britton is fire. Lots of energy I guess:)

-Derek brought a girl! She wasn't the only one there though. There was quite a few boyfriends/girlfriends and just "friends".

-Heading back to Provo to visit friends. I have such fun memories from college years, but I still don't really miss the place.

Glad to be home again! Love that humidity!

Annoying Talents

Britton just woke up the baby with his ridiculously loud belch! He was all the way upstairs too!

Bloggers Block

For lack of anything else to write about I'm responding to a tag. I am also anxious to post something new so I don't have to look at the spider picture anymore.

5 things I was doing 10 years ago

1. Getting my first job at Target as the Operator/Fitting Room Attendant
2. Enjoying life without braces again
3. Going on my first date to my school's Homecoming also on Halloween!
4. Suddenly getting a lot more attention from my parents because all my older siblings were off at college
5. Pulling all-nighters to write all my big papers for school (I was a horrible procrastinator)

5 things on my to do list

1. Figure out Christmas presents
2. Buy a sympathy card
3. finally bake and freeze the pumpkins
4. Play with the boy
5. Exercise

5 snacks I enjoy

1. I force myself to snack on things like carrots and cooked greens
2. I ENJOY cookies
3. yogurt
4. bananas
5. plain ol' bread

5 things I would do if I was a millionaire

1. Buy an airplane and take pilot lessons with Britton!
2. Donate to the World Food Program (I heard they are in danger of running out of funds/food)
3. Go back to school
4. Travel to Japan to see the places I've never been and revisit the places I have been
5. Travel to lots of other places!

5 Places I've Lived (more like all the places I've lived not including here)

1. Renton, WA
2. Provo, UT
3. Nagasaki, Japan
4. Okinawa, Japan
5. Brentwood, CA

5 Jobs I've Had (this could be its own blog)

1. Blockbuster
2. Ross
3. Library desk person
4. BYU catering
5. Research Assistant for a Sociology professor
(Too many jobs to list or I'm too embarrassed to list them...many of which are strong contenders for WORST job EVER)

4 Things I'm Passionate About (In no particular order)

1. quality chocolate
2. Family
3. a clean house
4. Music
5. Raleigh-Taylor Instability (for you Britton!)

4 Things I Say Often (I talk to my baby a lot)

1. Agu!
2. Hi cutie
3. Yam! That was goud. (German accent)
4. You look like you've got something to say...do YOU!?

4 Things I Want to do Before I Die

1. Get old
2. Have a job I really like
3. Serve a mission with Britton
4. Learn calculus (luckily I'm married to Britton)

4 Things I Want/Need

1. sewing machine
2. Piano
3. tapioca pudding
4. a cute coat

4 Places I Want to See/Visit

1. Japan
2. Egypt
3. Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe
4. England, France, Germany, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, pretty much all of Europe

4 TV Shows I Can't Live Without

1. The Office
2. Pushing Daisies
3. 30 Rock
4. John Stewart/Colbert Report

4 Things You Don't Know About Me

1. If I told you I would have no material for the 2 truths and a lie game
2. but...I have no middle name
3. I can wiggle my ears
4. I'm slowly being converted to the Blue side of politics

I tag

1. Santa Claus
2. Martha Stewart
3. Bill Ayers
4. M. Russell Ballard
5. Bella Swan

Quals: Day Three

Quals have passed, but did Britton? To find out click here.

Spider Killers...

Thanks to everyone for their input about spider killing. It seems that I can pretty much always count on someone else to kill the spider for me. I will continue to be a spider wimp unless I'm alone, and even then I can probably wait for Britton to come home. Above is a picture I took of a huge, nasty spider in Nagasaki, Japan. They were in all kinds of hallways outside people's apartments and I could hardly stand to walk near them! My Japanese companions didn't pay any attention to them.Here's a better picture from Nagasaki. I took this shot of Nagasaki Harbor from a moving bus. I'd love to go back someday spider and all.

Quals: Day Two

Britton finished up his interviews on his minor subjects yesterday. He called me while he was waiting for the last one to start. He said all this prolonged anxiety and misery was like waiting to break up with someone. You know it's going to be miserable but you can't ignore it or think about something else. I'm glad he didn't say it was like being broken up with. That would sound like Quals is going to win. Britton might be miserable, but he's confident. He's going to dump this Quals and hang out with me. Just like he did to that other chick back in the day.
Here's Britton's report on his tests/interviews yesterday. The first one went ok. The second professor forgot who Britton was and that he's taking the structures class right now. The professor was confused and he confused Britton so he didn't feel very good about that one. The last one went great and Britton came home feeling much better except for all that prolonged anxiety about four professors questioning him about his major the next day. The last test is the most important. They were told that it's ok to mess up on some of your minors, but messing up on your major would be a real problem. He is studying now as I type. Quals is about to go down at the hands of Britton J. Olson.

Quals: Day One

The end is in sight! I will have my husband back in three short days. Quals, for the layman, is short for Ph.D. Qualifying exam. Or in other words, Britton's test of DOOM! Britton chose two subjects, structures and controls, for his minors and one for his major, fluids. He is given two problems for each minor, and four problems for his major. Over three days he has sessions with different professors scheduled in which the present him with a problem, and then ask more questions until they determine they have reached the limits of his understanding. This takes about 15 minutes according to Britton :) It's a little bit tougher than the presidential debates because he can't weasel his way out of questions by saying things like, "When I was a boy...and that's why I love America and believe that someday the Cubs will win the World Series." No sir, they follow up on each answer Britton gives,and don't take no, "My wife just had a baby" for an answer.

My interview with Britton about his controls session on Friday:

Me: What kind of question did Dr. Enge ask you?

Britton: If I told you, I'm afraid I'd have to kill you. These are highly secretive questions and some other grad students would pay big money to know what I know. But basically, they asked me how I would figure out this problem, I derived some equations, plotted some rough graphs, and then we talked about it.

Me: I see. How did you feel? Were you more nervous or confident?

Britton: Confident. I wore my power tie and lucky fuzzy flip flops. I think it went quite well. (Ok, so I'm kind of spicing up Britton's answers to make them more interesting. He actually doesn't really want to have an interview right now because he's studying again.)

Me: The fuzzy flip flops I gave you?! Well, here's the last question. What do you look forward to most after Quals are over?

Britton: Spending more time with my lovely wife and adorable son! I was also thinking of doing some cleaning around the house. That toilet is just asking for a nice scrubbing. And then maybe getting some new tires for the car like your dad suggested.

Me: Well, it sounds to me like you have your priorities straight. It was wonderful talking to you. Let's do this again sometime. How about next Tuesday?

I still love you Britton! Good luck with the rest of your exam!

Veggie Challenge

50 brownie points* to anyone who can name this pointy green vegetable. This came in our weekly veggie delivery, and it looked so pretty that I couldn't cut it in half. So we'll have to ask the Conti-Browns what they did with it.

*50 brownie points for the correct name
25 brownie points for a creative name
Points are redeemable at ?

My Chunky Boy

I took the boy to his 2 month doctor's appointment yesterday. He's actually about 2 1/2 months old now, but there was a scheduling difficulty with our pediatrician. We haven't been able to officially weigh him since he was two WEEKS old! So I noticed his diapers seemed too small so I used our neighbor's bathroom scale to weigh myself holding Will, and then weigh myself. Subtracting the first weight from the second and dividing by the square root of pi I figured that William weighed about 15 lbs! He was a little less than a month old then! I went to the appointment yesterday expecting him to be something like 18 pounds...he's getting heavy, I don't care what you moms of older kids say! But...the scale doesn't lie. He weighed exactly 15 lbs. yesterday. So I must have made some error in my calculations earlier.

I don't remember the exact head size, but it's normal
length is 23 and something inches...normal
weight is in the 96th percentile!

I think I may have been confusing tired with hungry. Well, at least he's super healthy and I don't really ever worry about him.

Other milestones he's reached are smiling, being able to see us from across the room, making new sounds like "agu and a gurgling sound, lifting his head up, and eating his hands (usually the left one).This is Will in his favorite place--the changing table. For whatever reason he can be screaming, but on his changing table I can always get him to smile.

Congratulations President Obama

It was a historic day for...me actually. This is the first presidential election I've voted in! I was only one month short of voting age in 2000, and then I was a missionary in Japan in 2004. I kind of doubt I would have voted either time even if circumstances had been different. I was pretty clueless and apathetic about politics up until about two years ago-ish. Not that I know everything now, but I know a lot more about current events and politics due to not being in school anymore! How ironic is that?
I feel so privileged to have so many rights and be able to vote for our leaders and on our laws. I'll have to teach my boy to do the same.
Oh, the coveted sticker.

Halloween Adult Style (aka boring)

I am growing up. I guess. Halloween just isn't the same as it used to be.Clue 1: Pumpkins went uncarved.
At least they'll be of use for the next holiday after I bake and freeze them. (for instructions click here) They should make some good pumpkin cheesecake or good pumpkin bars. I'm still not a big fan of pumpkin pie. (lots of pumpkin recipes here)

Clue 2: I didn't dress up on Halloween
I dressed up for the church Halloween party a week earlier, but it was a pretty lame attempt. My boy however, was a chubby crocodile success! Look at those round, squishy cheeks!
Clue 3: No motivation to walk around for candy handouts
Above is a Boehms chocolate box that my mom brought to me from Issaquah, WA. I ate pretty much the whole thing. With chocolate like this and Godiva, etc. that I can buy for myself ANYTIME, who needs the Butterfingers of the world? (That's what I bought for the kids b.t.w.)
Even with all this chocolate consumption, I have somehow managed to fit into all my old clothes again.
One of the best highlights from this year's Halloween was decorating my back porch for the kids. (the backs of the houses all face each other where we live) My parents helped me put up lights and a spider like the one above. I won a best decorated prize, but some of the little kids were too scared to walk past the spider. We have to filter out the weak ones:) There was one little Tinkerbell that wouldn't stop coming to our door. She was too cute. Probably too short to see the spider.
So I guess I have different things to look forward to in the upcoming Halloweens. This year I just couldn't get over how ADORABLE kids look dressed up in costumes! I'll leave you with a better picture of my favorite kid.

spider killer or spider wussy-pants?

The other day there was a knock on my door in the middle of the day, and my neighbor Nicole was standing there looking terrified. She said there is a strange noise in her house, and she thinks it's an animal. I went right on over to investigate, but in the back of my mind I was wondering why she asked me, and why she hadn't even tried to find out what it was. Sure enough, as soon as I walked in I heard a LOUD weird animal noise. Based on what I've seen in Psych, Monk, Murder She Wrote, etc. I deduced by the open screen door and the telephone lying on the ground that the nasty rat or whatever must be under that small table. I crouched down to look at the dirty beast. Nicole stood in tense anticipation behind me. "A squirrel?!" I said a little disappointed. It was the cute fluffy gray kind, and not even the freaky, beady-eyed black ones. It was all hunched in the corner looking more scared than Nicole. Once again, it seemed that she wanted me to take care of it. I ran the possibilities through my mind of coercing it out with a trail of nuts, or scaring it and then trafficking it out the door without getting bitten. It seemed like a potential for a lot of fun and dumb pictures, but I still had a baby sleeping upstairs at my house. So I just called emergency maintenance and let them take care of it. Later I was telling Britton how our neighbor expedcted me to take care of the squirrel problem when I noticed spiderwebs on the gate latch. "Ewww, Britton open it for me." I'm such a hypocrite.
I realized that sometimes I'm the spider killer (like with roomates) and sometimes I'm the wussy-pants demanding my sister to vacuum the spider up. (It's more humane) My theory is that whoever is startled by the spider first feels like they have the right to demand the next person to take care of it. Let's see what you think.

Message from Will

Hey guys, Halloween is coming up soon and I'm getting scared. There's no stopping this woman and her ridiculous dressing up shenanigans!

Weekly Veggie Challenge

Most of you can probably relate to the "What do we do with all these zucchinis?" problem. We experience something like this each week. We signed up for a weekly veggie delivery from local farms, but have no say in the type of veggies we get. Two weeks ago we got some sorrel, and it's just been sitting in our fridge.
Sorrel has a surprisingly lemony, tart flavor and I found out it's commonly used in salads, fish dishes, and soups. Britton grilled some fresh halibut steaks, and I made a sorrel chiffonade to go with it. That's right, a chiffonade. I'm not sure what it means either. Here's our sorrel success with sides of potato salad and sourdough bread.
I just found out that sorrel is also a laxative. That would have been good to know before I finished off the chiffonade.

Next week's challenge: leeks
If you have any good ideas let me know!

Will's Photo Shoot

I wish I had a nice camera. Well at least we have friends who do. In fact, one particular friend brought over a whole suitcase full of photography gear. Thanks you Chris for the following pictures!

Little Stomper

Everyone loves feety pajamas!