Glorious Grilling!

Thanks to a tip from my visiting teacher we are now the proud owners of a gas grill! A family in our on-campus "village" was moving out, and we claimed their well kept grill and dishwasher. We bought it a few days ago, and have already used it for a family BBQ, and a casual dinner for the two of us. I love grilled food! I don't really have the grilling experience, but my love of the end product should motivate me to learn. Britton's family grills all the time for family get-togethers and parties, and my favorite so far is their grilled salmon with veggie kabobs....mmmmm. So do you have any grilling tips for us, or favorite recipes? Enjoy the rest of summer while it lasts.

A Blending of Generations

So we have about a month until baby Olson is born, and I can't help but wonder what he will look like... Dark and hairy?...Pink and pudgy?...the possibilities are endless, really. To give myself a better idea of what my baby will look like I have compiled a group of photos spanning three generations. Take a look beginning with grandparents. Notice the facial structures, nose shapes, and uh...eyebrows.

and our parents...we can see the different possibilities for eye and hair colors here.Finally here is the expecting couple. Here we see more technology than genes at play--the computer edited perfect complexions, sparkling, white teeth, and slightly unnatural hair color. (for me at least) Photoshop can do wonders.
Using the Baby Face Imager 3000, I will put all these faces together and come up with…

Well, I guess that’s not too surprising. He definitely has that baby look, but I’m not seeing any huge resemblance to anyone in my family. Well even if he does look like any other baby at first, eventually he’ll look more like these three generations of family, and maybe even inherit our super power abilities! Like my ability to eat cold things without a trace of ice cream headache, or the freakish ability to wiggle my ears. He could also inherit Britton’s curly toes, or impeccable aim. Wow, this is going to be one unique kid. Only one more month until we meet him.

Update

I almost made it two months without a new post! I didn't mean to, but I just haven't taken many pictures and I usually need pictures to spur my post writing. So...a lot of stuff has happened. We moved to our new, bigger place mid June. Weather in the area had been extremely pleasant until the day we moved. It was nearly 100 degrees, and the pizza and drinks we provided before-hand was weak motivation for our volunteers. Luckily we have some great friends, family, and missionaries who are willing to sweat profusely hauling around our stuff. A special thanks goes out to Britton's dad Jeff for stellar effort at EVERY move we've had so far as well as others in the family. However, the actual moving of our stuff from one apartment to the other only ended up taking about an hour and a half.
Britton went on a bunch of trips the past couple weeks. First to a Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Conference in Washington D.C. Yeah, wow. I just told people he was at a conference about his research. When asked what his research was about I just said you know fluid dynamics with the computational simulations on high powered supercomputer nodes involving some Navier-Stokes equations. My strategy is to just confuse people so they stop asking questions. Britton said the conference broadened his research horizons, and he had plenty of time to visit the famous landmarks. Hopefully I can join him next year except I'll skip the nerdy conference part and just see the sights with my babe. Britton also took a short trip to Utah to visit old roomates and remind himself why he's so grateful he's married now. Isn't that right?! Click here to see the pictures Britton already posted from his trips.
We finally took a trip together to visit my family in Seattle. We had amazing breakfasts each morning with any variety of eggs, pancakes, waffles, hash brown, and sausages. It was like our own version of Denny's except with the Sommercorn's signature orange juice/tang mix. We saw Get Smart, sampled chocolate, took a trip to view sea creatures at the beach, went to a spectacular fireworks show, and took various bike rides. I was also able to squeeze in a few visits with old high school friends and a meal at Thai Ginger, my all time favorite restaurant! It was a much needed Sommercorn family reunion because it's been a year since I've seen most of my family, and two years for the others!
Here's the beach we went to. The morning of the 4th of July was low-tide and perfect for finding all kinds of sea creatures.


The beach was covered with this fantastic seaweed. We each found our own crab friend,

and then we introduced them to each other and had them fight! Turns out they were all a bunch of wimps, and just buried themselves in the sand.


The kids loved playing in the sand,and squishing the sea anemones with their toes to see the water squirt out. What if the anemones squirting out their last store of water before the tide comes back is like us exhaling out last breath of air under water. I felt like we were torturing the poor brainless creatures, but the numerous nature guides on the beach didn't seem to mind. Still, it was hard for me to watch.

Cute kids! They grow so fast!
This is Loren and Sara on top of the Snoqualmie Tunnel. They rode for 2 and a half miles through it to find it pouring rain on the other side. Too bad I volunteered to take the kids to a park at the lake and stayed completely dry all day!

Britton's final wish before we left was to mow the lawn... a little strange I know, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the riding lawnmower part.

Quality Time

This is me staying home from book club so I can spend more time with Britton. It was a nice thought!
Britton repays the favor by working on...hmmm, not sure what he's working on. It looks like he's doing something with computer code. (Look how small our kitchen is. I can't wait to move to a bigger place next month!)
And thus we see the consequences of not planning. Renee left on her own gets sucked into looking at a lot of blogs while leaving very few comments behind. Britton left on his own is very productive, and quickly becomes an aeronautical zombie in the "zone". Very few things can get his attention while he's in the nerd zone. One of them is dessert which I'm supposed to be making. But I don't see how I could possibly do this since there is absolutely NO chocolate in the house. We'll have to settle for some fake Crystal Light. Next time I stay home I'll have to make a plan to avoid getting sucked into the computer.

Touring Campus with the Warrens

We had friends come visit us this weekend! It's the first time for us to show off our tiny apartment to pre-Stanford friends. Not much to show. It gets crowded with visitors so we spent most of the day outside or playing ping pong downstairs. We had a picnic at the oval in front of campus, and then walked to different gardens. Ok, not the best picture of me, but Dani said I looked cute that day. Lately I'm grateful for any comment about my appearance that doesn't involve the word huge.
Meet Emma the new addition to the Warren family. I think she looks a lot like her older sister, but with darker hair. Sorry to state the obvious. This is the New Guinea Garden, or as we like to call it...the totem pole garden. You'll have to see it for yourself when you come to visit. Yep, most of our pictures were imitating statues. Dani and Paige posing with one of the weird plants in the cactus garden. Our last stop was the Stanford Mausoleum. This is where the Stanford family is buried. I thought it was pretty creepy the last time we went there, but it's not so bad when you're sitting with the sphinx.

Ultrasound Day!!

Well, the ultrasound technician has spoken. 53% of you were wrong, and we are actually having a boy! You can see his handsome silhouette above. Please notice the larger dark spot in the chest is his heart, and the smaller one is a kidney. Just kidding, I don't really know, but the technician was showing us all four chambers of the heart, the different sections of the brain, and the lenses in his eyes! It's amazing she could find all that even though he was moving constantly and I didn't drink enough water. She really had to jam that thing in my belly, but it was all worth it to see his cute little face. We're almost halfway there to see him in real life.

I'm Organic

Well, I've never really bought into the organic hype before. Organic to me = more expensive at Safeway. But thanks to our friends the Conti-Browns, we made organic omelets this morning filled with fennel, spinach, mushrooms, and swiss cheese. There's some local farms that actually deliver fresh vegetables and fruit on campus. We missed out on the strawberries last week, but we did get some fun carrots, radishes, fennel, leeks, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, parsnips, mustard greens, that grassy looking stuff, and some other kind of big green leaf. So we get all kinds of fresh, healthy food delivered for only $10 a week! It's amazing! I just have to figure out what to do with it now... Nikki let me borrow her vegetarian cookbook, and so far we've made zucchini soup, and fennel omelets. Let me know if you have any good parsnip recipes, etc. Thanks Kate for the potato leek soup recipe on your blog!

As Promised...

I did promise there would be more tutus, babies, and ravioli in my blog...here they are!


Do people really do this with their babies?


The ultrasound is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and I can't wait!!! I finally felt the baby kicking for sure last week at work. It was just like one of my friends described, "like a flopping fish." So my little flopping fish is about 8 inches long now, and should weigh about 9 ounces I think. I can feel it flopping in all corners of my belly, but Britton can't feel it yet. Good to know it's there and getting comfortable kicking my bladder and pancreas out of the way. 4-ish more months left...

Here's another tutu picture just for fun.