General Update

Okay, I really don't have much to say, but I know that the unwritten blog rules state that going over four months without posting on your blog officially makes you a bad blogger. I am sure the two people that read this are simply dying to know what's going on in our lives. First off, thanks for voting in our baby name poll! We are keeping all the names on the table until we meet her. We'll give her one of the four once we've gotten a chance to make sure we have a name that fits her best. We are trying to avoid the whole, "Really? Your name is ______....you don't look like a ____!" We have two favorite names, but for now, we refer to her as "baby Bella" until we can officially settle on the right name for her.

Anyway, we are getting super excited. I am in the whole nesting phase. This phase is pretty surreal, especially for those like me who would normally care less whether or not their home is perfectly organized. It's very out-of-character for me, but all I can think about these days is labeling her closet cubbies, organizing our filing system, or re-organizing the closet... again. It's consuming me. I am overtaken by an overwhelming need to make our apartment a nice place for her to be.

Andrew is nesting in a different way. He's drawing-up plans to deck-out her crib. He's planning on installing a sound system so we can play lullabies, primary songs, and Metallica to help her sleep. He also wants to install a camera so our out-of-state family and friends can simply log-on to a website and see her napping anytime they want. He is also working on a high-tech mobile of the solar system including Pluto as a planet (he's not ready to let it go).

So far, pregnancy has been less than wonderful. I feel like I've had every annoying pregnancy symptom under the sun. I am even more dramatic than normal, which is saying a lot. I have stretch marks that look like twenty cats thought my belly was covered in cat-nip, my hair is falling-out, my back hurts, my feet are so swollen that I can't wear any of my shoes, I cry for no reason, I can't eat chicken, I am exhausted all the time, I have acne, and I waddle like a cowboy...and those are just the symptoms I feel comfortable posting on the world-wide web.

The only fun part is that when she kicks, she is very dramatic about it. I was resting a bowl of cereal on my belly and she kicked so hard that the milk spilled out. At least she seems to have a driven and determined personality. When church gets boring, Andrew and I can just sit and watch her kick-box my stomach from the inside. It's very cool. We are just anxious for her to be born already! Andrew is excited to explain string theory and cloud computing to her and I am excited to start teaching her about Streisand and C.S. Lewis. Touchstone seems to be excited about sniffing her and possibly licking her face while we are not looking. All of us are anxious and not a bit patient.

Andrew is finishing up his degree in a week. His university is developing an undergraduate class for him to teach next semester while he works on his masters. He is also looking for a day job. My students are surprisingly very respectful toward me since I've been pregnant. I have real-live thugs opening doors for me and even insisting that I have a seat while they run errands for me. I even had one kid scold me for bending down to pick-up a pencil that I dropped. He made it clear that I should ask him to pick-up anything I dropped in the future. (It's surreal, considering the fact that he cursed me out and threatened my life last semester.) The only bad thing about working while pregnant is that it's more tiring than I could have ever imagined. My last day at work should be Jan 9th, so I only have a few more weeks of employment left. I'll update the blog if anything newsworthy happens! :)

It's a baby girl!!!

Hello again. See, I told you I would be a bad blogger! I just feel like I rarely have news to share! Except for today! The few people that read this blog have most likely already been told, but just in case.....I am totally knocked-up! We are having a sweet baby girl. My due date is February 3rd, so I'm five months along. We are so super excited. We have been waiting for so long for the right time in our lives, and the time has come! Yay!

As expected, I have been reading wwwwaaaaayyy too much and have been instructed by my doctor not to read anything else (needless to say, I get a bit dramatic at the slightest inkling of a problem...and the hormones don't help either). So far everything is looking good. The geneticists say all is well in that department, so scary tests won't be necessary. During my last sonogram, our sweet little girl was visibly itching her nose. So far, she has two hands and two feet, good kidneys, a little beating heart, and all the other important stuff. She even has a little profile with what currently looks like a large nose and an overbite. Right now she weighs a little less than a pound. All or her tiny cuteness makes up for how super duper sick she makes me!

I convinced myself that if it was a girl, I would not buy pink or super-girly clothes, but sure enough, the minute I found out she was a girl, I totally added pink stuff to my registry. I am such a pushover. I am still big on neutral colors, but I am slowly warming-up to the whole idea of having a girly world. I am even considering those large bows and flowers that people put around their baby girls' heads for church. What is happening to me???

The following are our name options. Feel free to share your preference as long as you don't get too attached to any one name so you don't get disappointed if we don't choose yours. As you may know, my family has a tradition of having "lyn" in every girls' name. We thought about defying tradition, but my grandma would die (faster) so we decided not to risk it. Here goes. Lynlea, Roselyn, Lynelle, and Evylyn. Andrew gets to choose the middle name and he has decided upon Isabella. She is going to have a very long and extravagant name, but we are assuming, considering her long line of dramatic predecessors, that she will be able to pull it off.

In other news, Andrew just started his masters in Computer Science. He is also running the computer engineering lab at City College part time. He is currently working on grants to fund his super ambitious thesis research. I am so excited for him. He is very busy, but is really enjoying himself. I am teaching this semester (for the last time in a while). I am really enjoying my new theater and music classes. The kids so obviously needed these creative outlets! They are already doing very well and really seem to be enjoying themselves! The choir is singing their first song in a foreign language and they are totally freaked out! It's so funny! We are taking it up a notch this year! Teaching is one hundred times more tiring when you are pregnant, but it's manageable (for now). Touchstone is getting very protective of me since I've been expecting. It's like he is totally aware of what's going on with me. He barks when Andrew hugs or kisses me (I'm guessing it's a warning to be gentle). My friend was trying to jokingly steal my jar of green olives, and Touchstone charged her until she simply had to surrender. We think we have enough evidence to assume he will be a good big brother.

That's all for now! Wish us luck!

Ben and Jerry Bliss

Well, we had a graduation/housewarming celebration this weekend. It was a Ben and Jerry's theme. A few months into grad school, I thought up the idea for this party, and the idea of it really carried me through the hard times and late nights. We managed to obtain 25 different pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. We were unable to find a few flavors, but for the most part, we got a good representation of their line. We got a ton of plastic spoons (sorry environment) and sat around tasting each flavor, then ranking them on a sheet I provided. We engaged in many deeply intellectual conversations regarding flavor nuances. It was nice to taste those flavors you would not usually be gutsy enough to commit to. People left feeling slightly sick, which was kind of the idea. Someone mentioned ice cream in sacrament meeting the next day, and you could hear audible groans from those who attended the party. It was a transcendent moment. It was a very satisfying party. Some even said it was the most important party they attended all year. I suggest having a similar party wherever you are.

General Update

The Blue Angels Choir had their last big concert and it was a hit. They even sang harmonies on a few songs! We only had two physical fights (that I know of) among our choir members this semester. Only one was arrested, only four were suspended, and all but three passed enough classes to move onto the next grade. That's a record at my school! This goes to prove that the arts are ever so important in disadvantaged schools! The choir came a long way in a short time and I am so proud of them! I will be teaching choir again next year along with math. I am also heading-up the school's Theater program next year. This should be interesting. My freakin' three-hundred-page thesis is now done, evaluated, and is currently sitting on our shelf gathering dust. It's a mighty good feeling. I finished my degree a few weeks ago, and instead of feeling free, I just feel really tired. I'm hoping that lets up soon.

Andrew is, of course, doing well. He works as a lab specialist in his professor's engineering lab when he's not in classes. His professor actually has him teaching some graduate classes, and he told all his graduate students that if they had any questions, they should just ask Andrew. In his spare time, Andrew is now working on a system that makes us able to turn our apartment lights on and off from anywhere in the world via the Internet (I'm not sure why that's useful, but he's very exited). All our apartment lighting is also voice-activated and programed on timers and one-touch controls. If you haven't noticed, I am very proud of Andrew's gift for anything electronic, mechanical, or computer-related.

Our new apartment is wonderful and our new church Branch is very cool. Driving in the city is getting better and we are in the process of finding all the best restaurants in the area. I'm still planning on posting more pictures soon. I am not so good at this blog thing. I forget that I have it for weeks at a time. It will take me a while to get used to it.

NOT Lost In Yonkers

Speaking of "Lost in Yonkers," what a great play, Richard Dreyfus was also great in the movie. Anyway, we moved from our super trendy (aka ghetto) apartment in Manhattan to an even cooler (aka beautiful) apartment in the riverside district of Yonkers (they call it "So Yo"). The picture to the right is of our building, the esplanade in front of our building, the water taxi station, and the Hudson river. If you look closely, you can see the George Washington bridge in the distance. I'll take better pictures when we find our camera in one of our boxes.

Anyway, anyone who had been to our former apartment will be very happy for us. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing our fourth floor walk-up, might as well be the Dominican Republic, building literally falling-down, graffiti all over, "I hope I don't get mugged tonight" apartment, you will just have to imagine. We sorta liked living in the Dominican Republic, and we didn't even mind the four flights of graffiti-ridden stairs...it's the suddenly serious mouse infestation we didn't like. Those who know me know I'm pretty tough, but mice in my couch...peace out...that's the limit. So we got out quick and literally "moved on up to the East side (well...sorta...it's North and a tiny bit East of where we were before...really I meant that we significantly improved our quality of life which is what the song lyrics allude to anyway)."

Our new apartment has a ton of things that we are not used to and are SUPER exited about. I'm now going to list some of them, but for those of you that already have these things and have always had them, you have to remember we've been living in a third-world country for the past three years, so use your imagination. We have a dishwasher (please clap enthusiastically), a doorman (not necessary, but super cool), a gym in the building, laundry in the building (no more checking the weather before doing laundry) and a personal parking space (with actual visitor parking with is really rare in these parts). Our apartment itself is huge and actually has LEVEL FLOORS!! Best of all....no rodents or pests (except of course for Touchstone).

Bigger than the news of the new amazing apartment, is the fact that after seven years of living on the East Coast with no car...dum...dum...dum...we got a car. Okay it's not a car, it's an SUV, but still! We can now go anywhere we want, when we want, and no super-smelly guy making your coat stink or really sick lady coughing on you or getting yelled at because you are a white lady on a "non-white" train line. Public transportation is now an option and not a necessity for us!! Those of you who have had a car all your lives will really have to imagine the feeling. No more deciding what groceries to buy based on how easy they are to carry three city blocks and up four flights of stairs! Anyway, learning to drive in New York has been like bungee jumping or sky diving: it's kinda exhilarating wondering whether or not you'll be alive by the time you get where you are trying to go. It's about as far away from Utah driving as...well...about as far as Utah is from here. I miss wide lanes and straight roads, street signs, and people who follow the basic rules of driving. But if I die driving, at least I was smiling and rocking out to my music and not getting smelly, being verbally assaulted, or contracting some dangerous airborne illness from public transportation.

The bottom line is, we feel super blessed to be living in such a cool place. Best of all, we are now in a branch (for my friends who are not Mormons, this is a very small church congregation) that is just getting started, so we are excited to do some real intense church work and make stuff happen for this area. More updates to come.

CCHS Choir

Introducing the Christopher Columbus High School Blue Angels Choir (I didn't come up with the name). For years, this school has gone without a choir. The administration finally gave me a choir class to teach. I got to hand-pick the students I wanted to be involved. Most of them are great kids. We just sang a sixties medley for our school's Black History Month Celebration. Most of them have absolutely no experience or musical ability, but they work hard and they really want to sing! (The boy in the back is in the Harlem Boy's Choir. He's really great. Our choir has sky-rocketed him to stardom and now he has "super-sexy" status throughout the school.) There are more choir members, but the others weren't allowed to perform due to poor attendance. Right now, we are working on the "Star Spangled Banner," "Man In The Mirror," "Seasons of Love," and "Somebody to Love." So far, they can only sing in unison, but it's a start!

The Update

Hello all! We thought it was time to give in to the temptation to start a blog. I know, you probably never thought we'd stoop so low, but we justified it with the notion that a blog is a relatively good way to update the tiny number of people who are actually interested in how are lives are going.

Well, I graduate with my Masters in Urban Education this May. I am looking forward to having a life again, although I don't really remember what that's like---maybe they've changed it? Anyway, I am still teaching full-time at one of the most violent and "at-risk" schools in New York City. It's a walk in the park.

Andrew graduates with his Computer Engineering undergraduate degree in December. He's not here, so I can brag. He's doing exceptionally well and is receiving quite a bit of acclaim from some pretty stuffy professors there. They are asking him to write grants and do geeky research for important geek magazines and stuff. One professor even asked him to help write a book about--um--computer code or something. He's even gotten a few A's with an actual plus behind them. He's somehow gotten the reputation of being a whiz with that computer-y stuff. I think his abilities surprise him. It's cool to see him realize his potential. It's like watching Sister Act II for the first time.

Our dog just turned two-years-old and is officially past the puppy stage (though you wouldn't know it.) He enjoys taking at least six naps a day, chewing the armpits out of our shirts, spooning, stealing food, barking at sirens, drinking from the toilet, and tearing-apart toys with his freakish jaw strength. He also enjoys dive-bombing us while we are sleeping and licking our faces raw. He's a joy. We can't imagine life without him.

That's about it. I never said this blog would be interesting. Updates to come.