Funny Sleeping Conversation

This is just a quick blog to let all my blog-followers have a little insight into my unconscious...scary, I know! :) haha But Mikey wrote down this conversation that we apparently had last night, even though I don't remember any of it! So here it is, just for laughs:

Me: The uniform is on your shoulders!
Mikey: (amused and confused) what uniform?
Me: The uniform of the world!
Mikey: WHAT?!
Me: Because Oliver will start playing and he'll lick me
Mikey: What?!
Me: Why are you asking me so many questions? (getting frustrated in my sleep)

Mikey proceeded to laugh uncontrollably, and I fell back into peaceful slumber.

Ain't Love Grand!?!

This Valentine's Day has been absolutely amazing!! Last Valentine's, Mikey proposed, and our first married Valentine's was even better than I expected :) I had to work all day, but Mikey surprised me with flowers, chocolate covered strawberries he made himself, and a really sweet note (including a "Perfect Wife" pin)! It was so sweet...he had candles lit and romantic music playing when I walked in the door. Then we got to hang out until our dinner reservation at the Boathouse at 9. The food was delicious, and the restaurant was beautiful! :) What an amazing Valentine's Day! And to top it all off, I know THREE couples that got engaged (we must have started an awesome trend last year haha). My sister's best friend Cameron, and our good friends Robbie and Chelsie and Mike and Bailie!!! It is absolutely amazing to see new couples joining the club :) haha and they are all so perfect for each other, and I seriously squealed like a little girl when I heard the news!! So awesome! Anyways...here are some pics and videos to commemorate a very eventful and very wonderful day!! :)

Lizard Legs

Some of you know and others are now finding out that this semester I am "working" in a lab where we race lizards.  My beloved father has been bugging me about putting up proof of my reptilian exploits, so here it is :)  

I work with Dr. Eric McElroy.  It is his first year as a professor at the college, so much of this semester has been spent setting up the racetrack for the lizards and also setting up all of the computers we use for the analysis of our data.  Kristen, another honors student doing her independent study in the lab, is in charge of the kinematics.  So she analyzes the high speed video we collect of the trials.  In a couple of the pictures, you can see the white dots we use to collect data on specific limb and spine movements.  The videos are of vertical and horizontal views, and a calibration cube made of legos is used to input the video data into a program so we can analyze it in 3D.   My main focus is the study of the forces the lizard outputs when it runs down the track.  A force plate is embedded in the track and each time the lizard runs, 5 seconds of data is collected.  Then, I use another program to filter out the "noise," like the forces exerted from the building shaking and air particles vibrating (which all do at about 60 Hz I believe).  Then, another program breaks up the forces into vertical, medio-lateral, and fore-aft.  Those are the forces down on the plate, the forces to the right or left, and the forces forward and backward.  I analyze the output graphs based on footfalls on the force-plate, and that information is used to find how the lizard pushes on its limbs to propel itself along the track.  Right now we are focusing on acceleration, so right when the lizard starts running.  But later in the semester we might move onto terminal, or peak, velocity.  The species we have right now are Agamas, Fire Skinks, and tachydermis (the really little ones with super long tails that remind me of the tiny dinosaurs that attack that one guy in Jurassic park).  I am really enjoying the work in the lab so far and look forward to the rest of the semester!

Quieting Down

Life is never dull.  The past few weeks have been packed with assignments, the Super Bowl, trips, and everything else imaginable!  And this week has been full of tests for me.  Organic Chemistry on Monday; Genetics today; Physics tomorrow.  I feel like my life has been all studying lately.  And poor Mikey has been getting headaches and feeling icky all week.  So our home has been pretty quiet lately, filled with hours of reading, studying, and trying to get better.  But it has not been all bad at all.  I've been cooking more, and thanks to my mom's help on numerous emergency calls, we've been eating pretty well!  And the studying has been paying off because I feel really good about my test today.  And the quietness has given us a chance to calm down, if not relax totally.  It is amazing how easy it is to get caught up in all of the craziness of life, with school and marriage and work and family and friends all piling up on one another.  But with a few major demands on our time, we've gotten to focus a little bit more on what is really important:  God and one another.  I feel so blessed to have such an amazing, loving, and understanding husband and to have such a compassionate, peace-giving God!  Even if all of this studying doesn't pay off as much as I want it to, I can rest easy knowing that God's plan for my life is going to prevail.  I can trust in Him.  And trust that Mikey will be there through everything with me.  Life is good!

Hot Tubbing and Freeze Hiking

Mikey and I just got back from the Genesis Mountain Trip of the year. It was so wonderful! Besides being in an absolutely beautiful cabin, it was our first Core Team trip as a married couple. The core team had gone to this cabin two years ago, but I wasn't on Core Team then. Mikey talked so much about that trip, and I had been sad to miss it, but too busy with my senior year of high school to go. Last year's cabin trip was pretty eventful too. We went somewhere in NC, rather than to the Gatlinburg area of TN, and we went skiing. It was an awesome trip except I was all stressed out about wanting to get engaged. Mikey and I had a great time, but the whole time I was just DYING to get married! And now, just a year later, we ARE! It felt so great to think about how far we've come since the past year. We got engaged just a week after last year's cabin trip. Four months of being engaged and seven months of marriage followed, culminating in this fantastic experience!! :)

We went hiking, and it SNOWED! It was absolutely gorgeous, and we all had so much fun doing team-building activities (despite how "built" our team already is :D) and walking 2.7 miles to get to an amazing waterfall. The girls also had a great time bonding with girl talk in the hot tub :) Another plus for the trip was that Mikey took over recording videos, so instead of the measly ten minutes I might have gotten, we have almost TWO HOURS of footage...it was so fun having him get involved in recording all of our memories! We had an awesome time, and now, we get to rest all afternoon to prepare for the SUPER BOWL tonight! GO STEELERS!!!!

Here is a video of the team building activity we did while we were on our way up the mountain :)

A Child Prodigy

This is AMAZING! Mikey's little brother Luke can play Rock Band. He is only four, but he got 87% playing on beginner when we went to Mikey's parents' house last night. I'm pretty sure he's better than me! Hopefully, you can see him keeping the beat and getting the notes right and everything....he is SO CUTE!!!