Sorry in advance, but this is going to be a nerdy post.

So a few nights ago, It just started to snow as I went to pick up Leah from her night class. The snowflakes were so huge, I could see hexagons on my car from 5 feet away. Some of them were 7 to 8 mm. across. Once we were back, I wanted to see if I could take some pictures. After awhile I got the hang of it and there were just a few that turned out really well (click on the pictures to make them bigger).


Nothing spectacular, but I thought they were pretty cool.


About my interview on Tuesday- I found out that I will be interviewed for two jobs at the same time, the one I mentioned and one with Wisconsin DNR. It would be a similar job at a 4,000 acre recreation area and wildlife preserve about 45 min. south of town. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

We haven't done anything else blogworthy lately because Milwaukee is pretty boring in the winter (if you don't have extra spending money) as evidenced by my snowflake pictures. We are already looking forward to spring so we can do stuff outside. So just as a heads up, if you want us to keep posting, our blog might become a little boring. Hang in there until spring!

Hi All,

As many of you know, I've been looking for jobs for quite awhile now. I applied through Americorps for a stewardship assistant with the Milwaukee county park system. It would involve many things that I have done before, like invasive species removal, seed collecting, plant propagating, and general maintenance. The job also comes with some form of health insurance. It would start March 1 and go through August, full time. Today I got an email inviting me to come in for an interview. I'm not letting myself get excited, but it would be great if I got this job. It's on February 2 and I'm asking for prayers that all will go well.

We just came back from another relaxing weekend in Holland. The main reason we went home was because one of Leah's older cousins got married. The reception was at Boatwerks and had a 10 piece jazz band all night, very cool. We also got to hang out with Joel, Julie and Kyper. They were in town because Joel is in between rotations. We had a "business meeting" at JP's and talked about a project that we might get going soon. More about that later.

No pictures today, but we'll keep posting.
Aren

So. I guess it's been awhile. We kind of gave up on the whole blogging thing for a bit, mostly because our camera was broken and wouldn't turn on. I guess it just needed a little bit of time to itself, because we tried it again yesterday, and it works again! Yay!

Now to bring you all up to date on our lives (even though we've likely recently seen everyone the two people who read this). I made it through my first semester of grad school quite successfully and was all too ready for a break. Fortunately, Marquette has a month-long winter vacation, so I was able to totally forget about school for awhile. We spent a fabulous two weeks in Holland; some of the highlights included:

-Going sledding and playing in the snow with cousins
-Having Christmas morning with the whole Phillips family for the first time, and seeing our nephew Kyper's first Christmas
-Going snowshoeing on fresh snow at the nature center
-Spending New Year's Eve at the local retirement center. Without the old people. More fun than it sounds, I promise. There's a hot tub, pool (swimming) and pool (billiards), games, food and family.
-Going on a walk through the Allegan woods with my family
-Going to the beach and stealing signs (Aren and his brothers; I did not participate)
-Having a knitting and tea party (me and my friends; Aren did not participate)

After two weeks at home, Aren and I came back to Milwaukee so that I could work for my assistantship. It's been pretty nice for me to be here and not have homework to do all the time. After I got home from work, we had time to relax, get things done around the apartment, watch movies, etc. I finished our wedding album finally and Aren got his butterflies all labeled and put in a case, they look pretty cool:


Today, we went to the Mitchell Park Domes, a botanical garden near our apartment. We are always looking for cheap (and by that I mean free) entertainment, and today residents got in free, so we took advantage of that. It was a sunny day and the gardens are in glass domes, so it was very bright and summer-y feeling. Here are a few pictures:


(Stealth photography...Aren had no idea I was taking this one)


And that brings us up to right now. This may be the last you hear from me for the next few months, since I start back up tomorrow with classes. I guess it's all up to Aren for awhile, so complain to him if there aren't any new updates. Peace out.

I guess it's about time to post again. Not much exciting happens to us, so we have to post every 3 weeks to keep it interesting. We are doing a better job at taking pictures though.

Two weekends ago we were graced with the presence of my lovely in-laws (note: no sarcastic tone) and we had a great time! They came in the early afternoon on Saturday with a candle for Leah, candy for me and cheese curds and summer sausage. We also got curtains that my mom made for our bedroom. We decided to go to the bottling plant of Sprecher's root beer (ironically I'm drinking our last bottle as I write this). Sprecher's actually started as a brewery and still makes beer, but there is a reason they are known for their root variety. After a quick 10 minute tour of two rooms, we got to taste their beer first. They had a good russian imperial stout, but that was about it. I was very impressed with their soda (no "pop" here), probably because of my highly sophisticated pallate and my overly powerful sweet tooth. They had a vanilla cinnamon cola and a cranberry cherry something too. Side note: Stewart's Ginger Beer was discontinued in July of this summer, so if you see any, buy it all and sell it online for $10 a bottle after you give me some, seriously.

For supper, we walked downtown from our apartment to a place called "the safe house." It is a pretty cool spy themed resturaunt. You have to know where it is because it is a pretty plain brick building with a sign saying "international exports inc." Under that there is a description of what they do and within this, there are red letters that spell out "safe house." You enter a small room with a girl sitting at an old fasioned operator's switchboard. She asks if she can help you, and if you know the password. If you don't, you need to do some kind of funny dance, then a fireplace swings open and you're in! We went up to the host and saw tvs all over the place showing the small room with an old guy trying to do the hula hoop. We know the password now, so if you come with us, you won't have to embarrass yourself. After quite awhile, we got our table and ordered. We walked around doing a scavenger hunt on the menu and after another quite awhile, we got our food. I'll just say, next time we go, it will be for the atmosphere and drinks.

Sunday morning we went to church, and Leah's parents could see why we liked it. We went out to eat at a butterburger place which is known for just that and understandably so. The burgers are awesomely good, but awesomely bad for your health. We came back to the apartment and then walked to the end of our street, where the Pabst mansion is. The place was spectacular! you wouldn't believe the wood carvings, stained glass windows and furniture. And to think that there were houses like that up and down Wisconsin Ave. One mansion took up the front of an entire block! Now there are only three left, and the Pabst mansion is one of them.


Week nights are pretty boring, so this is how I practice for Mad Science and how Leah takes a study break:

This week I'll be practicing making slime and playing with Jenga. On Friday I got trained on the cotton candy machine and came home with a nice big bag for my lovely wife (there are obvious perks to this job). I'm not exactly bringing home the bacon, but pretty close. The day before Halloween, I will be doing a "spooktacular," which is basically what we usually do, but with a spooky twist. Like instead of melting packing peanuts with acetone, we melt maniquin heads, stuff like that.

Another week day study break was making our traditional (one other time when we were dating) fall cookies. It took three nights: one to make the dough, one to cut and bake the cookies and one to decorate them.

Last weekend we went out for drinks with a couple from church (and Calvin and high school). Mark it on your calender, Leah and Aren have a social life. We had a great time. It is nice to do something with another married couple.

That same weekend we really needed to get out and take a break, so we went for a little road trip. We went to a place kind of like crane's, but twice as crazy. Honey crisp apples were $1 each. The line for the hayride (after you stood in line to buy tickets) was longer than some lines I've been in for a roller coaster. We blew that popsicle stand in a hurry and headed down to Lake Geneva for their Octoberfest. The lake was beautiful:


Their polka band wasn't too shabby either:


On our way home, we stopped at a mom and pop roadside stand and bought our pumpkin (for $5 cheaper than at the crazy crane's place) and some gourds and apples. Our apartment looks nice and homey now.

If you haven't heard, we are planning on coming to Holland the Friday before Halloween! Let us know what you guys are up to (those of you who are in Holland) so we can see you!

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!