Accepted!

My paper for the Journal of Agriculture and Food Science has officially been accepted! We still have one more review to do but the only thing we can change is grammar mistakes. We are almost done!

Update :)

I see it has been a long time since I have posted anything, at least not since we moved. Nothing too exciting has happened. We love our new place and are constantly over at our neighbor’s apartment or there are at ours. We eat dinner together a lot and play games like hand and foot, name five (Christmas gift from my parentsJ), and in a pickle. We spent the holidays with Bryan's family which was a wonderful break from life. I might post some pictures later.

School is going really well. Besides my nutrition courses I am taking piano lessons and really like it. My instructor is focusing on what I want, which is sight reading, instead of just learning pieces. I am also taking the second half of the first year of Spanish. I needed to fill in some more credits for my scholarship to apply and it seemed like a good idea. There is a lot of homework but the class is fun. Bryan likes his courses except for English-Business Communications. He doesn’t like to write to much and so finds it difficult. His advanced database class is proving to be somewhat of a challenge so he’s learning lots of new things. He is also taking C++ but finds it slow because he had already taught himself the basics last summer but that class is where he will learn to write code so it will pick up.

Bryan still works at Best Buy and loves it. The newness of it has worn off so he doesn’t come home talking about great deals they have so much anymore; only when there is something really cool. I still have my job doing research on campus which slowed down over the winter months because I was between projects but has started to pick up again. We are putting the finishing touches on the paper I wrote so it should be published in the next few months. I am also doing a small project for another paper which I will be listed as an author of. So I should have two papers under my belt shortly after I graduate. I am doing a couple presentations on one of these this semester. One at Weber State, kind of a practice run for me; a second at a local competition so I can do some networking in my field; and a third in Cincinnati, Ohio at a national chemists’ society annual meeting. It is four days during finals week so I have to take all my finals early. There are two graduate students going with me and we will each give a 20 min presentation sometime during the conference. It is a very exciting opportunity and I am glad for the practice runs I will get beforehand.

We made freezer jam for the first time last week. Strawberry, mixed berry, and mango. Our stake put on a food storage bazaar. So each ward was responsible for a type of food and was supposed to provide information on how to store it, recipes, and samples. The food was really good, there was enough that we didn’t have to eat lunch. The winner of the recipe contest was a chocolate cake made from black beans. It may sound bad but it tasted really good, kind of like brownies. All the recipes are posted on a blog: bearallthings.blogspot.com. If you need some good info on emergency preparedness this is a good place to go.

That’s what’s going on right now.

New Apartment!

We moved into a new apartment on November 1st but I haven’t had a chance to post about it. It is a bigger apartment with two bedrooms, no stairs, more space, and washer and dryer hook ups.

We got our washer and dryer for free from a friend of a friend. They are old but they work, although we did have one mishap: on daylight savings I woke up at 5:00 in the morning and asked Bryan why the washer was still going. One of the hoses had cracked and flooded half our bathroom, the hallway and a little into the two rooms adjacent to the washer. Luckily it was clean water and we just spent the next few days letting it dry out. So we bought new hoses for the washer and now it works great, but I don’t leave the water turned on unless I’m doing laundry.

Here is a picture of the hallway, the bathroom door is open on the left. In front of that is a closet, behind it is a second bedroom and across from the bedroom is our room.  I am really glad to have the shelves and cupboards at the end of the hall, it’s a good place to put decorations.

 

Above is our kitchen with a dishwasher and lots of cupboard space! Below is our living room with our Christmas tree. The toys in the bottom left corner are for Aiden who is 14 months and comes over a lot.

Last week we went to a friends’ apartment and helped them decorate their tree so this week they came and helped us decorate ours. Here are some pictures of us decorating our new apartment.

Bryan and Nephi set up the tree and put on the lights. It took them a minute to figure out which was the bottom portion.

Thumbs up! The lights are on and we’re ready to decorate.

Hannah put up a nativity scene while Nephi helped me hang some garland.

Bryan decided he wanted to be decorated too. You can see at the bottom corner where he is plugged into the wall. Hannah and I love our charming husbands.

November

November has gone by pretty fast and all of a sudden we’re looking at two weeks left of school. We spent Thanksgiving in Centerville, UT and had a great time for the time we could be there. Bryan ended up working late Wednesday and early Friday so we couldn’t be there very long but Thanksgiving Day was a relaxing day. We went to Layton for some family pictures and then back to Dad and Karen’s for dinner.  There were about 30 people there, which means lots of food and lots of left overs.

Here are some pictures at Gordon and Karen’s having pie.

 

 

 

 

Carson, Emily, Kimberlee, and Bryan.

Karen and Dad; Kelley and Daphne.

This is some of Karen’s family: her sister and brother in-law on the left and niece and nephew and friend on the right.

They had a lot of fun playing with the nerf guns although they weren’t very good at playing baseball with them.

Parties in October

This month we attended a couple of great parties, mostly with family.  We were invited to a 1920’s murder mystery dinner-the Grand Opening of the Four Deuces, a new speakeasy, all dressed in 1920’s appropriate attire (at least what we could find).  Just before we were to start dinner a prominent guest was murdered.  Inspector, Matt Kerr, (who was there investigating a murder from the night before) took charge of the situation and enlisted us all in helping to find the murderer and thus clear ourselves.  While socializing we were trying to gather information about the murder and to further our own agenda for the evening. (We had all been given characters to play with pieces of gossip, knowledge, instructions, and money.)  During our investigating another guest was murdered, who many people had thought committed the first murder, so that threw us off the scent and only one person guessed the murders correct at the end of the game.  They gave out certificates for those with the most money: Dustin, the host; the best acting: the first victim; and the best costume: me!   It was a great night and I got to try a new meatball recipe that turned out really good. It uses apple jelly and grape juice, which I’ve never thought to use for a meatball sauce but it works.

Halloween was very busy.  Bryan dressed up as a Samurai and I dressed up as Princess Peach for a LAN (computer) party and played video games to 3:00 in the morning.  Kimberlee was voted most attractive female, Matt was voted best overall and most original and I was voted best fit (character/personality).  I had not played the games we played before and had fun with most of them.  The next day (Saturday) we stayed at Dad and Karen’s for their Halloween party and got to see lots of costumes, eat food, and play rock band.  Then on Sunday we went to the Birthday Bash at Grandma and Grandpa Gordon’s to have more treats and fun.  It was an exciting weekend we got to see lots of family and friends.

Lockout!

Bryan and I decided to go on a date to get a root beer float from A&W. We got dinner from Wendy's and since we had gone through the drive through, we sat in the A&W parking lot to eat. While sitting there Bryan rolled down his window for a time, then rolled it back up and left the keys in the ignition; so when we got out of the car we locked the keys inside. Unfortunately his wallet was also in the car and our lights were on. We would have walked home and got my keys but weren't sure the car battery would last that long so we called our friend, Nephi, and asked him to bring my keys to us. He was really nice to stop studying for his test the next day and bring us the keys. We had our root beer float while we waited for him since the coupon had been in Bryan's pocket and didn't require us to buy anything. Once we had the keys we retrieved Bryan's wallet and bought Nephi a float as well. It turned out to be a very funny date.

Oatmeal Cookies

My mom gave us a book of family home evening activities for newlyweds. This week Bryan picked out an activity to make cookies but you have to look up scriptures to figure out the ingredients. So we took turns looking up scriptures and adding things to the dough and were having a wonderful time. When we had added all the ingredients and were ready to bake them the dough was really dry, powdery. We looked at the key at the bottom (which is there to be sure you don't mistake what the ingredients are) and found it included milk. There was no measurement or scripture to tell us to put in milk, shortening and eggs were the only wet ingredients listed in the recipe.

So we knew it needed milk but not how much. We tried looking up the book online to see if there was a correction and all we found was a review of someone who had the same problem we had and still didn't know how much milk was needed. We looked up other oatmeal cookie recipes but couldn't find any consistency. So we added a little bit at a time and probably put about 3/4 cup in. The cookies turned out really great though. So if you want to use this as a family home evening activity here's the recipe. (I added the scripture and measurement for milk.)

Beat together:

1/3 cup Psalms 55:21

1 1/2 cups Jeremiah 6:20

2 Isaiah 10:14

3/4 cup Judges 5:25

Add:

2 cups 1 Kings 4:22

1 tsp song of Solomon 4:14

1 tsp D&C 101:39

1/2 tsp 1 Corinthian 4:6

3 cups D&C 89:17

1 cup 1 Samuel 30:12

Drop by spoonful onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F for 15 min, but not before reading Joseph Smith History 1:37 and D&C 133:11

Key: Beat together butter or shortening, sugar (1 cup brown, 1/2 cup white), eggs, and milk. Add flour, cinnamon, salt, soda (to make them "puffed up"), oats, and raisins.