Happy Anniversary!

Our 2nd anniversary was on June 25, and all in all it was a pretty good day. When I woke up, I found some pretty hydrangeas in the kitchen.

Later that morning, we went on a fishing trip to one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. It was a pretty windy day, so it didn't last long (mostly because my $15 Walmart fishing pole didn't hold up too well to the wind).

When Spencer got home from work, we went out to dinner and then came home and had some yummy carrot cake. So we were happy.

My Kind Of Man

On Saturday, Spencer suprised me with a pre-anniversary gift: a dress that I've been eyeing from JCrew. He was originally going to buy it for me as part of a deal that we made- I could get the dress if I worked on my thesis for at least 2 hours a day for 2 weeks. Anyway, I had told him that it recently went on sale, and when he gave it to me on Saturday he told me he got an extra 25% off. Apparently Spencer asked the guy at the register "Is there some kind of special discount if a guy buys a dress?" and the worker was like, "Let me check with my manager." Well she said, "Go ahead and give him 25% off," and it was a done deal. Can you believe that? I'm glad I wasn't around when this all took place (as I would have been totally embarrassed), but I'm also proud that his semi-joking comment saved us some cash!

Look What I Made

This is the nerd in me coming out... but what appears to be two totally boring graphs of not quite quadrilaterals are actually pictures of vowel space area. It it the primary measure that I am researching for my thesis, and it reflects the extent of tongue movement during speech. Vowel space area has been linked to speech intelligibility, and in people with Parkinson's disease, research has shown that this measure gets smaller (suggesting lower intelligibility). There are two graphs because we recorded the participant's saying "The boot on top is packed to keep" (each vowel is one of the points on the quadrilateral) once with a deep brain stimulator on (above), and then again with it off (below).

I assure you that cutting these vowels out of speech samples gets pretty boring after a while, so getting to this point was a big step for me. And I look forward to the day when the sentence "The boot on top is packed to keep" is but a distant memory :)

Visitors!

Lucky for us, my friend Katrina Anderson and her family are in Minnesota on vacation to visit family, and we were able to join them for dinner last night as they passed through our neck of the woods. I'm encouraged by the fact that these out-of-towners were able to find a good excuse to come visit us in the random location of Minneapolis, hoping that others will be just as obliged to come see us when we live in northeastern Ohio.

The Pacas

As many of you know, my parents have been raising alpacas for several years now. Going to see the "pacas" (as the kids call them) is always one of the highlights of visiting Grandpa & Grandma's farm. Here is what they look like:

Aren't they cute? They are skinny right now because they have recently been shorn for the spring. Several of them are pregnant and should be having babies within the next few months. They are very skittish around people, but some of the braver ones will eat hay right out of your hands...

sometimes.

If they are freaked out because you get too close, they'll spit at you. This has never happened to me, but both my dad and Shauna have been targets to the snot/saliva mixture. Another defense mechanism they have is kicking their hind legs. I think I heard that a while back one kicked Riley in the chest because she was standing too close behind it. I was afraid this would happen to Allison while we were there because she kept inching up behind one, touching its tail, and then running away. She was very proud of the fact that she was able to touch it, and luckily no hooves ever came her way. Actually, the only crying we heard when playing outside was Dallin. He was so upset because he found a "deadly worm" in the little stream at the back of the property, and was afraid of it (or maybe thought it got on him???). We were relieved at this report, as his bloodcurdling screams lead us to suspect something more along the lines of a severed limb. Good times.

Ohio

We are back from our quick trip to Ohio, and we had a fun time visiting with family. The house hunting was an eye opening experience as to how digital photos of homes on the internet can look deceivingly nice, and then when you see it in person it is downright ugly. The ratio of scary homes to nice homes was probably 3:1, but we did find some stuff that we liked. Anyway, here are some pictures (although not as many as I should have taken) of us at my parent's house.

Riley ever so gently (HA!) styles my hair. She eventually worked half of it back into a tasteful side ponytail. Allison simultaneously dressed me up as a "gypsy princess" by wrapping me up in that bright purple fabric.

Shauna holding her baby James, who just had his first birthday a few weeks ago.

Spencer and Dallin, who was apparently more interested in looking at the alpacas than looking at me to have his picture taken.

P.S. A good sign that you probably shouldn't buy a home:

Dirt coming through the walls.

In their defense, the roof was being redone during our showing, but still. This was only one of many problems with the house, so needless to say, we crossed it off our list.

"The Heart of It All"

Random Fact: "The Heart of It All" is the slogan that used to be on Ohio license plates, which I thought was clever since Ohio is kind of the shape of a heart and it looks like the heart of the USA on a map. However, in recent years it was replaced with "Birthplace of Aviation" because the Wright Brothers and other famous aviators like John Glenn were born there, but I think that slogan is totally boring. Isn't the old one way cooler?

Another Random Fact: I once took a family history class at BYU, and one day the professor was showing records from Lake County, Ohio. He asked if anyone in the room was from Ohio, and when I raised my hand he looked at me and said, "The test of a true Ohioan is if you know the number of counties there are in the state. Do you know how many there are?" Thanks to my 8th grade Civics class with Mr. Kopko, I did. There are 88.

Anyway, the purpose of this post isn't really to give you an Ohio history lesson. It's to tell you that we are heading to Ohio for a whirlwind trip this weekend to look at housing in Cleveland Heights. Yipee!! Although I plan to take serious amounts of digital photos of houses, I also anticipate taking lots of darling pictures of my nieces and nephews. So be sure to check back for a full report next week!