november updates

Wow.  It's 2012, and we haven't updated in over a month.  Sorry!  You'd think that life would have calmed down for us (at least that's what we thought) since we haven't really made any friends or gotten involved in anything yet.  Turns out we were wrong!

We're going to give our November updates in this post and then tackle all things December later.  Hopefully we'll get to talking about 2012 by the time it's 2013.

November was a busy month for us.  We got unpacked and as settled as we're going to be until we get a house.  We went house hunting and church hunting while meanwhile getting used to the area and adjusting to our new schedules.  Overall, we've had some great times together!  Here are our long-overdue updates...

Nathan:
Work was still a bit of an intimidation as I tried to learn all the new procedures and software and anatomy while trying to stick to project timelines.  But, I am still very happy for the change.  So far, I am working on a wire guide that will be used in hip trauma surgeries, a tool for extracting a particular implant from the big toe, and some instrumentation for a new product line that I'd love to talk more about but can't.  The change from hips and knees to small bones has been interesting.  Many concepts are the same, but the scale is completely different.  On the hip and knee side, all instruments were designed robust enough to be used as hammers because we always had surgeons who'd use them as such.  On the small bone side, there are threaded holes half a millimeter deep having too little space for even a full revolution of a thread, and there are cannulated drills thin enough to be bent by hand.  The scale is completely different, and every tiny bit of material possible must be preserved.

In early December, I attended my first cadaver lab.  Before the lab, I got to listen to a surgeon talk through several types of surgeries with other surgeons, and it is a bit mind boggling.  After dealing with fractures of just the femur or tibia, now there is rarely a "simple" fracture, and injuries are likely to have compound fractures through several adjacent bones each having it's own set of mobility and stability considerations.  After the first couple of minutes, it was actually pretty fun.  I was a bit surprised to find out that some of the crazy deformities that I've been seeing in x-rays were not just the worst case surgeries, but they are actually pretty common.  Even one of the cadaver feet had a pretty wicked deformity.  Then after the lab, we got a lunch catered by On The Border with some of the most massive brownies I've ever had, so it was a good day.

Kristin:
I'm doing good and enjoyed my birthday season!!!  (I celebrate my birthday from Thanksgiving until New Year's).  This year I turned the Big 3-0.  It's crazy to think that I'm that old...I don't feel it!

I've gotten involved in Bible Study Fellowship here, which has been wonderful (it's the only human conversation I get each week besides talking to Nathan and my doctor's office).  I'm in my 3rd trimester and finally enjoying cooking again.  It's been wonderful to have meals waiting for Nathan when he gets home.  See this marbled pumpkin cheesecake I made him?!

I've spent a lot of time working on my dissertation, and made significant progress on chapter 5 (will be finished first week of January).  I'm planning to get a running start on chapter 6 (the last one!) before Pebbles gets here.

I've been really fortunate to be able to reconnect with a few college friends living in the area, and I'm really looking forward to the day when we get connected with a new church community.  Until then, I couldn't be happier - I chose a great best friend the day I married, and these past few months have given me a wonderful opportunity to grow in my relationship with him.


Pebbles:
Pebbles is growing big and strong (at least judging by how much Kristin's belly moves!).  Pebbles enjoys several aerobics hours throughout the day but fortunately lets Kristin get sleep at night.  Kristin is finally looking pregnant enough to park in the "expectant mother" parking spots. :)

We're seeing a fantastic midwife at a wonderful clinic here - they are open Christians at the clinic and incredibly supportive of our desires for Pebbles' birth (we'll explain more about this in a later post).  Our midwife starts each appointment by asking Kristin what she's been studying in the Bible!  So far, we feel very fortunate to have found this clinic and to be working with our midwife.  We've finished our birthing classes and are confident as anyone can be about the labor and delivery.  We're feeling really overwhelmed at the thought of bringing home a new baby, though.  We've got lots of reading and shopping to do before February!

House Hunting:
We enjoyed spending our November weekends going to open houses in the area.  This was a good decision on our parts because we really didn't know what we were looking for (or weren't looking for) until we actually started going to visit homes.  By our third week of that, we were able to verbalize what we wanted in a home.  We found a realtor and narrowed our home search to McKinney and Frisco.  Frisco would be awesome because Nathan's commute would be much shorter.  You can get more house for your money in McKinney, however, and we're really liked some of the homes we've seen there.  We found one home we call "the dream home" simply because it's the first that really captured our attention.  It was gorgeous inside, had a lot of architectural interest, and was a place we could see ourselves living in.  It's still on the market, but we think we might still be able to find something that would fit a few more of our desires (i.e. den area, bigger yard, etc.).  We took December off for holiday travels, but we're excited to resume the house search in January (this time doing private tours with our realtor).

Church Hunting:
Wow.  We've been to little bitty churches, mega mega churches, and everything in between!  We've realized that we really won't be able to settle on a church home until we settle on a real home, so we've enjoyed just visiting around to different places.  Our favorite church experience so far has been Stonebriar Community Church.  Nathan picked it out to check out because it was in Frisco and is where Chuck Swindoll preaches (for those who don't know, he's a pretty famous author and has a radio ministry as well).  It was absolutely huge - we had to be shuttled in from remote parking!  When we got inside, though, we loved it.  It was the first big church we've been to where we didn't just feel like spectators.  The music was nice, the teaching was awesome, and the church had a nice family feel to it - very multi-generational.  We normally wouldn't consider making such a large church our church home, but we've decided to check it out again in January.  It's the kind of place that we could see getting involved in.

November Dates:
We took October off for dates since we moved, and we knew we wouldn't be doing dates in December because of all of the holiday travel, so we had to do dates in November!  We ended up keeping them pretty low-key since we still weren't all that familiar with the area.

For Kristin's date, she took Nathan to the Olive Garden for dessert.  We normally don't get dessert at restaurants, so it was fun to go there and get nothing but plates of sugar.  Nathan also tried the wine (something he's been avoiding lately since Kristin can't have it).

The theme of Kristin's date for Nathan was to meet his need for unconditional love and acceptance.  We talked about how we could show love to each other, how we recognize that the other loves us, and what we can do to build up safety nets in our marriage now so that we can weather the storms that life will eventually throw us.  It was a good and uplifting conversation.  And, of course, Nathan loved his desserts.

 

Nathan's date for Kristin was a trip to a local mall.  Kristin loves exploring malls and just window shopping, and this was a mall she had particularly wanted to check out.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that it had an ice skating rink! 

We've decided that of all of the malls in the area, this one is definitely our favorite (it even tops the Galleria).  The mall had a Cheesecake Factory, so we stopped in for a piece of Godiva chocolate cheesecake.  It was delicious!

There wasn't a theme to this date - just a night to enjoy each other's company.  We briefly drove through a neighborhood known for its Christmas lights on our way home.

Thanksgiving:
It was great to be able to spend Thanksgiving visiting family this year!  We headed to Lubbock to visit Kristin's grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.  Kristin's mom and dad showed up as well, so it was a full house!  As usual, we did some Black Friday shopping at the local mall.  Although Kristin is normally really excited about going, she wasn't too keen on losing sleep this year.  She refused to go to the stores when they opened at midnight and compromised with her mom on a 4am wake-up time. 

Nathan kept up pretty well until we hit World Market at about 11am.  He saw some pillows and, well...

So that was November in a nutshell! 

california bucket list: pumpkin patch

Kristin writing:
I've always loved the fall.  It's my favorite season, hands down.  I love the hot apple cider, hot chocolate, smell of a crackling fire, changing colors of leaves, and the coolness in the air.  And I REALLY love pumpkin patches.

We were really fortunate to live just down the road from an amazing pumpkin patch in Dixon, California.  The place is absolutely huge, and there's no limit to the varieties of pumpkins and gourds that you can find.  They also boast the Guinness Book of World Records largest corn maze!  Every year, I would drag Nathan out to that pumpkin patch - we'd pick out our pumpkins for that year (one for carving, one for baking) and then make our way through the gigantic corn maze.

This year, we invited a few friends from our Bible study to go with us.  We unfortunately didn't make it there before the corn maze closed (no, I didn't cry...just almost), but we still got to roam the pumpkin patch together and have a great time.  Here are some of my favorite pictures from that evening.

Yes, I like to pose with every pumpkin that I think is cute.  No, it doesn't make sense.

Monica (left) and Stacia (middle) - we were all pregnant!  

More posing with cute pumpkins.  I wanted to take this one home with me, but Nathan said no.  He had a valid point...we were moving in about a week.

Stacia and Justin.  They were expecting their baby to arrive any day.  Justin was attempting to look just as pregnant as Stacia. :)

The three of us picked pumpkins approximately the size of our unborn babies!  I begged and begged, and Nathan let me keep my "baby".

It's true...I like just about all pumpkins.

Ed and Monica were really into these cuties because they looked like the "one-up" mushrooms on the old-school Nintendo Mario Brothers games.

Oh, Ed.

Posing again with my "baby".  It was such a cute little pumpkin!  I'm so glad Nathan let me keep it.

Even though we had just gone out for a steak dinner, Monica was still hungry.  I blame it on pregnancy hormones. :)

This gourd looked like a duck.  I wanted to buy it as well, but I settled for just a picture.

Monica and Ed found Mario!!!

 My "baby"!

So, you ask...what did you end up doing with your "baby"?  Well, it rode in the car all the way from California to Plano, decorated our mantle for a few weeks, and then we ate it.  We're cannibals.

Our marbled pumpkin cheesecake tasted good, though! :)

california bucket list - corndogs and apples, oh my!

As much as we were ready to move from California and back toward our families, there were a lot of things we loved about where we lived.  When we found out that Nathan got the job in Dallas, we made a "bucket list" of things to do before we left.

One of our favorite things about Davis was the Farmer's Market.  The Farmer's Market (believe it or not) is one of the main things that drew Kristin to graduate school at UC Davis, and we often loved to walk there during good weather to have a picnic and people watch.  Nathan's going to miss the bolani guys...Kristin's going to miss the corn dogs.

She got to have one last corn dog before they left, and it was delicious!  She wouldn't let them sell her one that had been precooked a few minutes earlier.  She demanded a fresh-dipped, fresh cooked one and enjoyed every second of it.

Very unflattering picture here...just focus on how delicious the corn dog looks.

Another of our favorite places is Apple Hill near Placerville.  Every year, when the leaves start to change colors and apples start weighing down the trees, we head up to Apple Hill for a morning of looking at crafts, taste testing apple butters and apple wines, and eating lots of apply goodness!

This year, the first thing we ate...apple cider donuts.  So good.

Kristin got to smell her favorite variety of apple, the Gravenstein.  It's not a type of apple we've seen outside of California, but it is by far the best.  It literally smells like apple cider and makes a great apple crisp.

Then there were all of the buildings and stalls with crafts!  These buildings feature Gooseberry Patch items, so of course Kristin has to go check them out.

We stopped by the pond to watch a little boy fish for the first time.  They had that pond so well stocked that he caught his fish within a matter of minutes.

And of course, we couldn't forget to sample fudge at the Fudge Factory!

We ended our morning with lunch and a piece of buttermilk apple pie.

Yes, it's true...our bucket list has just as much to do with food we like to eat as it does with places we like to go.  :)

pumpkin carving

As we do every year for Halloween, we decided to carve a pumpkin.  Normally, we would go to a pumpkin patch.  In Plano, the only "pumpkin patches" we found were in church parking lots.  The churches would have a section of the parking lot roped off, some hay scattered around, and pumpkins lying on the concrete.  It was really funny!

We decided to go to the "pumpkin patch" at a Methodist church down the street from us.  It was an odd experience, walking through a parking lot to pick out a pumpkin, but the proceeds went to support their youth program.  Here's the one we picked!

Nathan started by cutting out the lid and emptying the contents.  We were too lazy to save any seeds for roasting this year...made the process go a lot faster!

Then, we taped up the design Nathan created and began punching it out with a tack.

 

Then...we carved!

And here it is...this year's design...

Winnie the Pooh!  Watch out for the bee!!!

we moved!

This is apparently the year for announcements!  First, we announce we are having a baby...now we announce that we've moved!  As of last Wednesday, we now live in Plano, Texas.

I think most people who read this already knew that we were moving, but many of you might not have heard why we moved or how the move went.  We figure it's time to give the full story. :)

The Explanation
Let's just start by saying that God works in awesome ways.  We had been praying for years that Nathan would be able to find a job in his field (orthopedic engineering) that would be within a day's drive of both of our families.  That's a pretty tall order, especially considering that orthopedic engineering jobs aren't that common in this area of the country. 

About a month and a half ago, Nathan got a call saying that he had a phone interview that day with a company that he'd been interested in for quite some time.  In fact, he'd actually done two previous phone interviews with them in the preceding years, but the jobs never worked out.  As you can imagine, the interview went great (despite prepping for an interview with a different company and thinking the interview was two hours later, thanks to some bad recruiter information) and ended with an invitation for him to come to Dallas and interview in person with the company two weeks later.

Nathan worked hard preparing for the interview - he had to put together a 20 minute technical presentation as well as do the usual research on the company that one does before interviews.  In Dallas, he did his presentation followed by a full day of interviews - the day ended with a verbal job offer! 

Ironically, the day got even more exciting, as he got stuck in the Dallas airport because of a storm.  His luggage ended up in Denver on an airline he never had a ticket for, and he had to take a cab home because Kristin's car broke down. So he made it home around 4:30am.

A week later, he got the official written job offer, and at that point we called our families to tell them the good news.  Our prayers had finally been answered...we were moving to Texas!  The crazy part was, we had just 3 weeks to move!

It's amazing how all of the details worked out.  We found an apartment online that "looked good" and decided to go with it.  Kristin got all of her health insurance for prenatal care worked out and ended up finding an amazing clinic here in the Dallas area through a referral from someone we've never met.  We managed to pack everything up AND say goodbye to most of our friends without losing too much sleep.  And, fortunately, our fathers blessed us by coming up to Sacramento and helping us get moved to Plano.

The Move
We had planned on doing the move in two parts. 

• Part 1 - Nathan and his dad would load everything into a stock trailer and leave Sacramento on late Monday afternoon (the 17th).  They would drive straight to Dallas with minimal stops and arrive at our apartment by Wednesday morning (the 19th).  
• Part 2 - Kristin and her dad would leave Sacramento early Monday morning.  They would stay in hotels each evening and make frequent stops since Kristin has to go to the bathroom more often than usual now.  They (optimistically) planned to make it to Gallup, New Mexico by Monday night, Dallas by Tuesday night, and then they could check into the apartment and prepare it for Nathan and his dad.

Things never go according to plan!  Instead, we all left on Sunday afternoon and made it to Bakersfield, CA by that evening.  After spending the night in a hotel, we once again left separately.  Kristin and her dad took their time and made it to Albuquerque that night.  Nathan and his dad hurried, locked the keys in the car at a rest stop, waited an hour to get the car unlocked, and then ended up spending the night at Albuquerque as well.  :) We once again left separately on Tuesday morning, and all made it to Plano within a 2 hour span.  Unfortunately, we arrived an hour after the apartment office closed, so we had to spend the night in a hotel once again.  We checked into the apartment complex on Wednesday morning and had everything unloaded by lunch time!

The first thing to enter our new apartment - a pumpkin!  Kristin drove into California six years ago with a pumpkin in her car, so she decided that it was only appropriate to drive out of California with a pumpkin in her car.  It's now decorating our mantle.

Life in Plano (so far)
We've finally gotten our apartment in functioning order.  The place is nice with the only downside being the extremely small kitchen (Kristin had to repack some of her kitchen boxes because there wasn't enough cabinet space to hold her stuff!).  We managed to get our driver's licenses and car registrations, although it took several days.  Apparently the process isn't any easier in Texas than it is in California...we spent 2 1/2 hours waiting at the DMV and had to get Nathan's car inspected twice (with an additional 300 miles of driving after the first inspection to get the check engine system to reset).  It was an adventure!

Some fun things about where we live...

• There's a llama farm just down the street!  It's random but very fun.
• We can now shop at Hobby Lobby and eat at places like the Black Eyed Pea.  Chick-fil-A is right down the street!  So far, we're still learning our way around, but we figured out how to get to and from Wal-Mart the first day.
• We're within easy driving distance of at least 4 shopping malls, including the Dallas Galleria.
• Nathan's commute is still just about 25 minutes, and none of it is on a freeway.
• Nathan loved his first week of work.  He got cookies/brownies/cake/ice cream 4 days this week, free lunch 2 days this week, and went to work dressed up like a zombie today.  If he puts on a few pounds over the next few months, don't blame it on Kristin being pregnant.

What's next?  We're going to start house hunting soon (and have no idea what we're doing!).  If you have any tips on how to pick a mortgage banker, let us know.  We'd also love prayers as we look for a church community to get plugged into.  Kristin's main goal is to make some friends - it's getting a little lonely now that Nathan is going to work all day!

Before we left California, we made a "bucket list" of all of the things we wanted to do before we left.  Over the next few weeks, we plan on putting those pictures on here alongside our latest adventures in Texas.  Until then, see y'all later!