Still Awesome

Nicole made it to our second water-polo game so we had a full team this go-round. Also, I came up with a battle plan-I mean game strategy. I'll post it here, but I'll wait until after this season so you're not too tempted to accept bribes to share it with anyone who might play against us. Yeah, It's that awesome. Needless to say, it worked perfectly and we handily beat our opponent.* Here's a picture of the team. Several of us are attempted to fashion some sort of "A" (for Awesomeness) but as you can see, it didn't translate too well.

*We really did beat our opponent this week, but not as bad as they got beat the time before. Apparently their last match-up beat them 40-2 which is a little wider of a margin then our 19-12. But still... A win is a win. Plus I checked the schedule and we don't have to play the team that scored 40 points!

Home repairs

<--- With buying our own place, especially one of the older, non-cookie-cutter variety, there comes some special challanges. For instance, when your friends are over helping you clean and paint before moving in, one of the more helpful lads might volunteer, "Do you want me to take off your kitchen cupboard doors? They'll be a lot easier to paint that way." You might think this is a bad idea, but your wife might really be enamoured at the idea of newly painted cupboard doors. You would, of course, give in to this desire, and probably wouldn't say "I told you so" when you do not have cupboard doors for the next 9 months. You'd probably even hire your brother to take a drill to them on a January holiday at which point you would discover that each of the doors is custom build. While you may enjoy solving puzzles, and your wife might have recently gotten addicted to Sudoku, you might also have planned to use your day off to take care of the approximate 7 trillion projects you have going. You might also get most of the way through before discovering that you don't have enough screws, but still, you'd be glad to at least have half your cupboard doors up. Oh, and another friend might give you a new fridge free too! (leading to your blog post picture of the cupboard dooring event to showcase some of the extra food as it was transitioned from one fridge to another).

ZOO 3

We're not ready to be called "Noah" yet, but we do have another permenant resident in our house. (And for those who missed it, Nicole posted a picture of our cat and fish kissing in the orginal Zoo post). The new guy is the yellow lab mentioned in the second zoo post. Here's an updated picture. You can see the puppy friendliness just oozing from this shot, can't you. And yes, that's one of my slippers in his mouth.

His new name is "Gaberiel."

In other pet news, Ms. Mittens is now happily reunited with her family where she is the only pet in the house. (Technically the only pet in the apartment where there's no pets allowed, but we're pretty sure our friend's landlord doesn't read this blog, so shhhh! keep it on the DL). Much like our dog, Ms. Mittens found her new owners on the street and sometimes you just have to let them follow you home.

InnerTube Awesomeness

Being a philosophical/theoretical emphasis in my PhD program, words do not often fail me. However, I am completely at a loss for words when it comes to describing the awesomeness that is innertube waterpolo.

A friend invited me to his team last year and it was great then too. Today was the first game of the first season and we slided to an easy victory.* It was as good as I remember and better. I'm playing on a ward team so the first order of business was to change our name from "BYU 103rd Ward" to "Team Awesomeness." And we are.

I'd post pictures, but 1) my camera is not waterproof and 2) I haven't met my dieting goals well enough to post online pictures of me in a swimsuit. However, this shot of me right after the game should show off the awesomeness just by the size of my smile:

*Our schedule opponent did not have enough players show up, so we'd have won by default (we were down a player, but still have enough to play). However, since the other game that was scheduled simultaneously also had one of their teams no show, the refs put the two teams that had enough players together for an offical game. That one we lost. Like 27 to 11. But we got a lot better the second half!

Teaching with the Spirit?

I just got done with my second class of the semester (i.e. the second week of teaching Personality). I was struck by how great the students were. I taught at a state school last semester and it was an overall positive experience, but these students just bring a little extra something to class. Additionally it was good to have prayer in class again. Hearing students pray for you as a teacher really helps me put my duty to be a good teacher before God in perspective and I have to confess, that makes class go so much better.

Today we talked about categories of personality theory in general. I gave them all some modeling clay and some seeds and they discussed each as a metaphor for personality in their groups then shared some really profound stuff in our class discussion. They also made really cute figures with the clay! I guess even college students like to play with clay from time to time.

Guitar!

My little brother Ryan takes guitar lessons and taught Nicole a few things when we went down last weekend (and she broke one of his strings -- Sorry!) Today on her way home from work, she stopped by a local music store just to check things out. She came home with this:

I guess it was a really good deal and she had enough leftover birthday money. She says that she always wanted to play guitar, but this is the first I've heard of it ;) j/k

New Semester

Part of our new blog commitment was to post at least weekly. We gave ourselves a little lattitude because we wanted the annual newsletter to be near the top, but it's been long enough that I hear duty calling.

This new semester has started off well. After last term's focus on my thesis, I'm back in classes. I have three really interesting ones, or rather two really interesting ones and one that is excruciatingly brain numbing. That latter one is requiring me to memorize all the parts of the brain. It's more nuerological than when I memorized them for Anatomy and that was so long ago that it's not much help to me. However, because I participated in one of my buddy's research projects a little while ago, I'll get to use pictures of my own brain to study from!!! (I'll post them when I get them).

The other two classes are Qualitative Research where I'm doing a project on what helps people make moral decisions and Moral Psychology where we basically read and discuss what everyone else has said about morality.

I'm also teaching a section of personality which is fun, even though I regularly don't feel prepared enough to teach. Still, it's been going well.

2008 Family Newsletter Post

For all those who only hear from us once a year, (and to have a record so that our children and family and our future selves will believe just how busy we were) we have put together this little year-end letter/blog post/chronology.

The year started with Nicole finally being out of school with her RN (and a raise!). She enjoyed that for a few months before enrolling in BYU's Bachelor's of General Studies program which she's now just a few credits from completing. I was in the middle of my first year of grad school taking 16 credits, doing double TA duty and working nights. At the end of that semester I reduced my TA load and also quit my night job. My health immeadiately improved. I also got approved to teach and have been teaching classes at both BYU and UVU.



In February I was able to attend my first Academic conference in Miami, sponsored by APA's division for theoretical and philosophical psychology. I presented a paper there that would probably have gone a little better if traffic and a tight plane schedule hadn't made me a late to my own presentation. Still, it was fun overall. I learned what "hob-nobbing" is. A skill which came in handy when I attended the national APA convention in Boston in August.

With our schedules (briefly) relaxed, we took the opportunity to make use of the free trip to Disneyland that I won the previous year. It was Princess Nicole's first time at any of the Disney parks and she was suitibly impressed... So much so that we ended up visiting Disney World in August with more family.

Nicole also had the opportunity to visit her sister and assist (for the third time) with one of her new arrivals, this time, a Man Child! But the girls will always be her favorites.

(And who can blame her?)

We also were able to attend the sealing ceremony of Nicole's brother as he finalized the adoption of his fourth child. Almost all her family came to Georgia and we were able to witness a baptism and two baby blessings to boot! As you can see from the picture on the right, every one had a good, if somewhat discomboberated, time. I was even able to sneak in a quick trip to check out the University of West Georgia and their Psych department, nice place.

In other news, we saw a house we liked and ended up buying it. We were pretty surprised that we did so, but it's been great and we feel like we've been here for years. I was about to say we couldn't be happier, but apparently there's always something that needs fixing or replacing in a home. But we've repainted the major rooms and have definately added our own mark on the place. (Note the sun on the garage was not our mark, but we're keeping it for the time being.) Nicole's father and brother have taken us residence in our basement apartment.

In other big news for us, we've completed the intital processes of adoption. Now we're in the finding stages, but there are plenty more people willing to adopt then children who need adopting, so if you hear of any leads, let us know!

We celebrated our 3rd anniversary and Nicole's unmentionable birthday (let's call it "26," Now she's finally younger than me! ;) I lost all of the weight I gained on our summer trips and then some (but got some of it back over the holidays, stay tuned for more updates!)

We also took a quick trip to Connecticut last month which let Nicole see the sights she missed when I went to Boston. While there we caught the musical "Legally Blonde" at the Bushenell which definately exceeded expectations. We met our finacial goal to pay off the remainders of the outstanding student loans and other debts we've been working off for the last few years! It feels good to be "debt-free" again, although we weren't quite left with enough to celebrate much. We did, however, enjoy our holidays in Cedar with some breif visits to St George (and even to a Ghost Town)

ZOO 2

Nicole foster-adopted a yellow lab who was in need of rescue.

We're pretty sure he was someone's pet, so if you want him back, just let us know. (He's currently enjoying an all-expense paid vacation to our Garage). Nicole's flirtations with keeping him were damped a bit by how much he pooped when we took him for a walk, but I said that it was still better then Teddy pooping in our living room on our anniversary.

We're calling him "Buster Keaton" for now...