Move #8

Last Tuesday we started our drive to Cleveland, Ohio. Since we can't move into the house we're renting until July 31, we decided to take our time getting there so we could stop to visit some family along the way. We spent a few days in Indiana with Clarke, Char, Andrew, and Lucy. Spencer and I had a fun time having Star Wars light saber fights with Andrew, who was "Yuke Skywalker" and Spencer was Darth Vader. Andrew started humming the Darth Vader theme while we were fighting, and then he told Spencer, "You're not my father."

The look of a true Jedi warrior.

That afternoon, we went to a waterpark.

There was a free zoo nearby, so we stopped in to check it out.

I learned how to milk a fake cow.

Spencer and Andrew pet the miniature horses.

We even got to see Cosmo Cougar!

After saying goodbye to our darling hostess and the kids, we were back on the road.

We got to Ohio, and then headed to Wendy's house for a family gathering.

We enjoyed catching up with everyone, jumping on the trampoline, playing SPUD, eating a yummy dinner, and watching Dad demostrate proper ballet technique for Allison and Riley.

Riley and Allison are such girly girls. They love makeup, and they asked me to put some on them. Riley had a makeup stash that was at least twice the size of mine. Allison let me do her makeup, but Riley insisted on doing her own.

Since Friday night, we have been staying with my cousin Heather and her husband Jason in Cleveland. We went to Medina on Saturday for the wedding of my good friend Jesica. I couldn't find my camera for the reception, and unfortunately I missed some awesome Kodak moments (particularly of Jesica's 90ish-year-old grandpa cutting a rug on the dance floor). We spent the night with my Uncle Harry and Aunt Donna, and I found my camera in time to get a picture of their new puppy Dolly just before we left.

Harry Potter Mania

Last Friday, we jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon and joined our friends Tras and Sarah at the Mall of America for the midnight party before the release of book #7. One of the Barnes & Noble workers told Spencer that there would be a boa constrictor and sharks that people could pet (there's an aquarium under the mall, and they were bringing up the animals). Anyway, we saw the snake but no one was allowed to touch it. Then we went to "pet" the "sharks", but they weren't quite what we expected:

"Petting" the shark meant using one finger to rub slowly down its back. Lame. And slimy.

We had much more fun scouting out people that dressed up for the costume contest. We saw many a Harry Potter character, including Mad Eye Moody:

Professor Trelawny, Dolores Umbridge, Dobby, and some random wizards.

We wanted a picture with this cute baby dressed as baby Harry (his mom had drawn a scar on his head and put a pair of round black-rimmed glasses on him), but when we asked to get a picture with him, this lady jumped in and said "Of course", and the mom and baby left. I forget her name.


Hermione (her dress was amazingly similar to the one in the movie), and Ron, who had one of the worst wigs I have ever seen.

And finally, Mr. Harry Potter himself.

We counted down to midnight, and then the balloons started falling.

We had our book by 12:15pm. I read 88 pages that night, and I look forward to finishing it on our drive to Ohio. When we get there, I will pass it along to my mom.

Last week, Spencer decided to start reading them too. He is now on page 3 of book #1.

Happy 4th of July!

For Independence day, we headed to St. Paul to enjoy the festivities at the state's annual "Taste of Minnesota" celebration. We had a good time walking along the Mississippi River before the fireworks started.

We were actually trying to get to the other side of the river where there was food and music, but the bridge to get over there was so crowded that we were content to get food elsewhere and then await the firework spectacular on a nearby grassy knoll. (It was actually a grassy median between 2 streets, but hey, it worked just fine.)

On our way to said grassy median, we were walking on an asphalt drive and I totally tripped over a camouflaged asphalt sidewalk that jumped up out of nowhere. It didn't really hurt, but when I looked at my foot a bit later I noticed that my clumsiness left me with an injury.


And just so you don't think we took the awesome fireworks photo above (since I know you weren't quite sure), I copied it from a Google search. I fully intended to post sweet fireworks pictures that we took, but this picture pretty much sums up all of our attempts at capturing them with our digital camera.


We hope you all had a great 4th!

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.