February

Taylor's birthday is on Valentine's day. That means I get presents for his birthday. It's pretty fantastic. Don't worry, I got him presents too. And I made him dinner. But it makes me feel like I'm cheating because I wrap both holidays into one. So maybe I overcompensate and we celebrate all week long.

Today we went to Tucanos thanks to the birthday club. As usual, we ate a little bit too much. One of the servers made a comment about how I much I was eating and it made me proud.

Tomorrow we're making bacon-wrapped teriyaki chicken. We made it this summer and it's delicious. I mean it's wrapped in bacon, how can it not be?

Speaking of bacon, Taylor got bacon flavored jelly beans for his birthday. I'm pretty sure they would be the worst flavor in Bernie Bott's Every Flavored Beans. Bacon does not belong in jelly bean form. 

Tonight we played a game that I got Taylor for his birthday. I won the first game and then he beat me 3 times in a row. I'm kind of addicted even though I lose so much. But we had to stop so that I wouldn't get mad.

 Now Taylor's doing our taxes and I'm doing homework. Happy Saturday!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I love December. I love the Christmas lights, the trees, the nativities, Christmas songs. It's a beautiful month. Besides the finals of course. Our December got off to a bit of a rough start, but it's perfectly lovely now.

We returned from Thanksgiving to realize that our heater was not always working. And then it decided to quit altogether. So we began to carry our space heaters around the house with us and eventually just hibernated in a single room to try to get warm. It worked by the way. But I have never been so grateful for a working heater. Especially with the weather getting colder and colder.

Bundled up with our trusty heater.

So I really love our apartment. And now I love it even more because it has a beautiful real Christmas tree.

Isn't it just great?

A milestone

Our car, fondly known as Reggie, has been approaching 200,000 miles ever since we drove him to the ground (well almost) this summer. We've been planning this event and looking forward to it for the past couple of months. We were within 20 miles tonight so we decided to go for a drive together because otherwise we might not both be there. So we went to 5 guys, got some fries, and took them to Taylor's mom's. We intended on sharing them, we really did. But she wasn't home, so we ate them there by ourselves. Then we drove around town a little while longer until we saw this lovely sight.

Good job Reggie! Thanks for being so great!

October

It's fall and I love it. I love wearing sweaters. I love the mountains and how colorful they are right now. And I love thinking of how many things I can make with pumpkin. (Like pumpkin alfredo for dinner tonight.)

Our lives have been completely consumed with school lately. Well Taylor's more than mine. But at least our chalkboard is getting good use. And I get to have a lot of entertaining conversations with Taylor when he's waking up in the morning, still mostly asleep, and he talks about random math in response to any question I ask him. It's always a good start to the day.

Life is good.

Faster than the speed of light

I don't know how many people have heard about this. I know it might not be true, and they're still looking for confirmation, but it's caused me to think a lot about science and the things I learn. Because what if this is true? What if there is something that travels faster than the speed of light?

Nearly everything I study is an idea or theory of man. Most of it is our best guess based on experimentation. But many great theories have proven to be wrong, or at least not quite right. As we get better technology and experimentation, our theories get that much better. But still, they are all theories. They're fascinating and I love learning about them. But the more I learn, the more I realize that everything we do is just a simplification of reality. It's all a little bit false, but close enough to the truth that we value it.

For me, incredible findings like the one about these neutrinos are just another reminder of how little we truly know, how feeble our attempts at knowledge are in the bigger scheme. And as I have been thinking about all of this, I am just grateful I believe in an unchanging, all-knowing God. (And I can't wait to take chemistry classes from Him.) I have faith and trust in Him and no matter what I know or don't know, and no matter what theories of men are proven to be false, I know that God lives and that He comprehends everything. That's all I need.

Statistics

Right now I'm trying to teach myself Bayesian statistics and Gibbs sampling. I was supposed to learn about these things last summer. Somehow I managed to complete the assignments but I didn't learn a whole lot because I was a little distracted falling in love with my best friend. And now I'm paying for it. But I think it was a pretty good deal. The best husband in the world for a little bit of statistics knowledge.

Moved in and loving our lives

We have officially moved in! It was a little crazy moving in during the first week of school, but we've been so excited to have our own place that we didn't mind staying up late organizing and putting things together.

We love our little place and how unique and historic it is. It's even a Utah Historic Site!



We have a cute blue fireplace and a little window on our door that we can open up and talk through.



And we have a stained glass window!



We just love this little house and having our own place.