Friday, June 11, 2010

Cake, Paint, and Box

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This week Susanna and her little best friend had an Un-Birthday party.  Which, when I host it, is basically a play-date with a birthday cake.  The girls had a great time decorating the cake and blowing bubbles (that was their birthday gift) and, as always, simply playing together.

The next day, we went to a Student Housing finger-painting activity.  Susanna and the same best friend were above crawling around in paint, but Andrew did a little painting.  His toenails are still purple.

We also got a new tent this week. We’ve outgrown our little three-man backpacking tent so we spent our REI dividend on a much bigger one.  And the lucky kids got to color on the box and crawl through it over and over again.

Next up: graduation.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Dr. Scott

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Scott handed in his dissertation a few weeks ago, and last Thursday he defended it.  he did a fantastic job.  This picture of us was taken after the talk in front of the Health Sciences building.

The title of his talk was, “Tolerance induction in peripheral CD4+ T cells through RAG-dependent TCR revision” and I didn’t understand a word of it.  Well, I understood Pam’s introduction.  She said that Scott is a happy hard working guy with an extremely messy work area.  She also called attention to a cheap hostess-style chocolate cream pie he brought for provisions on a hike; “bad Scott” she labeled picture of Scott tucking into the pie.  “But, that’s about as bad as Scott gets,” she concluded.  Great introduction.

I am so proud of Scott for this tremendous accomplishment.  Way to go, hon!  I am excited to go with you wherever the road next takes us.

My parents, Scott’s parents, and three of Scott’s siblings came for Scott’s big day, and we had a great time celebrating with them.  Thank you everyone for your support on this special day and throughout our lives.

While my parents were in town we hopped up to Vancouver.  My mom lived there when she was a little girl, while her father presided over the Alaska Canada Mission (for more about LDS missions, click here).  We went to the new temple, saw the amazing aquarium, and visited the beautiful home in which my mother and her family lived way back when.

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Above: the beautiful new Vancouver, BC temple; below Andrew at the aquarium (followed by two more of Andrew also at the aquarium)

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This last one is the old mission home; the historical plaque on the right traces the history of this home starting with Milt Weilenmann’s purchase in the sixties (Milt is my grandpa).