Hey all,

So we are officially bad picture takers and bloggers, but you might have known that already. We have been trying to get out to do things on the weekend, but it is getting increasingly harder in proportion to Leah's homework. We have done some interesting things in the past few weeks which might be noteworthy.

After coming back with quite a few apples from cranes, we thought it was in the best interest of some of the apples that they should be coated in caramel. It was a fun thing to do on a cloudy friday night.


For the past three Sundays we have been going to Brookfield CRC. We really like it and feel at home there. Last week we went to their church picnic (a huge pot luck in the parking lot) and Leah ran into someone that she went to Calvin with, who also took speech path/went to Marquette. And this week we met a lot of people our age, including a friend from Holland Christian and her husband, and someone that was in Leah's physics class (and whose sister was my sister-in-law's co-worker) and her husband that was in my chem 103 class. I think we won dutch bingo that week. Hopefully now we'll have a social life.

A few weeks ago after church, we went to a county park west of Milwaukee called Naga-Waukee Park. It is a pretty huge park with a lot of nature trails, open space and trees. It's also on Nagawicka Lake, which was pretty cool. Here is a picture that I stole from their website.



We had a nice relaxing time eating our picnic lunch in the shade and walking the trails. Too bad it was 85 degrees and we didn't have our suits!

Now that I am officially trained and know what I'm actually doing, I can tell you that I have a job doing science demonstrations for elementary schools in the greater Milwaukee area. The company is called Mad Science (madscience.org); it's an international company based in Canada, but is quite extensive in the United States. Basically, we give free assemblies to schools and then the kids can sign up for an after school program, which the parents pay for (after much begging and pleading from said children). They also do birthday parties and anything that has a big group of kids.

On Saturday, I went up to Oshkosh with 3 other mad scientists to the Midwest regional boyscout jamboree. Imagine 7,000 boy scouts and dads camping in tents on the most massive lawn imaginable, and then throw in some random attractions like paintball, guitar hero, and Mad Science, to name a few. It turned out to be pretty fun. I got to play with dry ice for 7 hours and got paid for it!

This week I start teaching the after school programs. So far I have observed and assisted other people doing it, but haven't done it myself without anyone else there. But I think if I can handle Honduran kids, I'll be fine.

On a side note, have you ever had Haagen-Dazs Mayan Chocolate ice cream? It's our favorite, nothing else comes close. I like it because it tastes like a frozen version of my mom's hot cocoa when I was a kid. So I found a piece-of-cake recipe on the internet to make Mayan chocolate fudge. It turned out pretty good!

Mayan Fudge

1 12 oz. bag of semi sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup nuts of any kind (very optional)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (calls for 1/2 tsp, but it was pretty spicy)

Line 8X8 pan with wax paper
Mix chips and milk together, nuke for 1 min, stir, nuke for another min.
Mix spices and very optional nuts in thoroughly (if it starts cooling, nuke 30 sec.)
Pour into pan, chill in fridge for 30 min.

and this is what you'll get (I opted for no nuts)


We are thinking that we will come to Holland sometime in October, but we don't know when yet. Hopefully we'll see some of you soon! Next time we'll try to post some pictures of us instead of food.

It's been one week...

This picture was taken on my very first day of grad school by my proud husband. Don't I look excited? I'm a week into classes now, and so far, it's been going pretty well. I am at least somewhat interested in all of my classes, and the work hasn't been too overwhelming so far. I haven't started seeing clients for clinic though, and I'm thinking I'll probably be a lot busier once that all starts. I'm kind of excited for it to start though: I'll be working with kids for the first time, and one of them is a Spanish speaker, so that will challenging but fun.

In other news, we had a very wonderful labor day weekend. We realized that yesterday was my only school day off until Thanksgiving, so we decided to go home to Michigan while we had the chance. I didn't have a lot of work, and the weather was very summer-y, so I was able to forget I was in school for a little bit; it was a nice break! We went to Crane's and picked apples, had a camp-out with my cousins and did lots of other happy things. Yay for 3 day weekends!

And on a completely unrelated note, does anyone else see a swastika in my frozen yogurt?

I think we might need to find a new grocery store...I'm not so sure about the one we bought this at!

A few things we've done so far

So now that Leah is officially in grad school, it looks like I will be doing a bit more of the blogging. This one might be boring because there aren't any pictures and I might talk too much about plants and rocks, but I wanted to tell you more about what we have been up to.

The first few days here were pretty boring because we had a ton of not-so-fun stuff to get done, like finish moving in, getting parking passes etc. Once that was done, we wanted to get out and explore, so can you guess what the first thing we did was? We went to see Lake Michigan! There is a fairly nice beach about a 5 min drive from our apartment, but nothing like at home. We decided to drive up the coast so I could show Leah some cool houses that her parents and I saw when we visited some time ago (she was on campus at the time). We made it to Doctor's park, but by this time the sun had set behind the trees, yes the trees, not Lake Michigan, so we turned back. We'll check it out again later.

The next day, I believe it was Wednesday, we packed a picnic and headed up to Kholer-Andre state park about 45 min north of Milwaukee. We went straight to the beach, but it was so cold that we put our jeans and sweatshirts on and took a nap (at least I did). There were some cool plants like blue dune wild rye and sea rocket that can't grow along the east side of Lake Michigan because it is too windy and wavy. We drove around the campground, which was pretty nice, and found a nature center on the beach (only in Wisconsin) that had a trail through their "dunes" which were only about 30 feet high. It was cool though.

Since there was a good chunk of the day left, we hit another state park on our way back. We liked it so much that we bought an annual sticker; we figure that when we have spare time, we will want to get away from the city.

Thursday and Friday Leah had orientation part of the day so on Saturday we got away again and went to the Boerner Botanical Gardens southwest of Milwaukee. We were expecting something like Meijer gardens, but it was mostly outside. We enjoyed it anyway. There was a huge rose garden and a cool herbal medicine garden. Our fingers reeked on the way home because we touched and smelled everything like pineapple sage, lime geranium, peppermint, basil, lavender, bay laurel, and eucalyptus!

Sunday we were all excied to go to church because we found a CRC church in a nearby suburb, but I wasn't feeling great, so we'll have to wait until next week.

So now we are in our routine of Leah going to class and me looking for jobs and cooking and cleaning. Here is a little something I whipped up tonight:

Aren's creamy olive bacon delight

2 servings rigatoni (however much that is)
1 clove garlic minced
2 Tbsp pine nuts
10 black olives
10 green olives with pimentos
4 cooked strips of bacon chopped
1/2 Tbsp butter
1Tbsp flour
1/2 cup half and half
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup grated romano cheese

While pasta is cooking, in a small pan heat up a bit of olive oil and saute garlic for about a minute on medium heat. Add pine nuts and cook another minute or until a little brown. Add butter and when melted, add flour and stir. Add cream, milk, olives and bacon, reduce until creamy. Turn off heat, add cheese and stir. Drain pasta, put in bowls and spoon sauce over. Enjoy!