Arrival

I have a new niece! Alissa Hove gave birth to a little girl this morning, who weighed in at 7 lb, 1 oz and was 19 inches long. There's no word on the name yet, but the last I talked to Alissa, she said she was leaning towards Alexis. I can't believe I have to wait four more weeks to meet her!

Things are looking way up in Kevin's search for a job. He's been talking with both St. Raphael's and Yale University Hospital and they're both offering him pretty nice packages. The deal is much sweeter than it looked originally and he's been very excited about it the last week. It makes me feel really content to see him so happy. Now he just has to decide what floor and what hours (nights or rotating). He's also been looking up events and stores in the New Haven area. In July, there's going to be a jazz festival and a Shakespeare festival. There's all kinds of little specialty shops, food stores, and restuarants near us. There's even a little farm where you can go pick your own strawberries! Kevin thinks we might fall in love with Connecticut, and has even stopped using the phrase "when we go to Arizona." Now it's just "We'll see what happens." Doesn't that sound like fun? I can't wait to start our lives together - I can't think of a better way to do it than going off on an adventure in Connecticut.

It's raining today. Kevin's leaving tomorrow. I had a presentation this afternoon that crashed and burned. Group projects hardly ever turn out well - I hope my professor remembers this and is kind.

I had my first wedding related nightmare. The one where everything that could go wrong does (including finding a body at the chapel complete with police tape and search dogs - how very romantic!). At least it was one outrageous enough I could laugh about it.

SOLD

I put a "for sale" sign in my car window a couple of days ago, and accepted an offer from some guy named Ron. I'm letting the Centra go for $600. While I'd hoped to get more, I'd rather have that than nothing but a car I can't use and don't want to take to Connecticut. My dad's supposed to mail me the title today, and then I'm meeting Ron at the bank on Wednesday to make the exchange. I'm excited to have a little extra money to make the whole marraige/moving across Connecticut transition a little easier.

Apartment!!!

So, we got the apartment at Yale!!!! This may not immediately sound as exciting as it really is, so let me explain: Housing on the east coast is really competitive. Like really competitive. This apartment will allow us to eat something besides roman noodles for dinner every night. This apartment is located on campus so we only have to take one car to Connecticut, since both of us will be able to walk to work and school. The whole complex is graduate students, and most of them are married, so we'll have an instant social network. And, best of all, we get to move in on July 1st, which means Kevin can start working right after Michelle's wedding and we won't be poorer than dirt all summer. I think this will be so good for us. We were offered a two bedroom apartment, which means we'll have room for a work place so that Kevin won't drive me crazy if I'm trying to study and he wants to watch TV. This also means we'll have room for company, so pack your suitcases!!!

Miguel Andres Blair

In case any of you missed it, Miguel Andres was born on April 15, weighing 8 lbs, 5 oz. I was surprised at how quickly I totally and utterly loved him. He's a little bundle of perfection and anyone who wants to argue otherwise will be hurt, perhaps severely. Now, enjoy the masses of baby perfection:

Unexpected Trip

Last night around 10:30, Kevin and my mom talked me into coming home today. It was a long drive, but I'm really glad I made it. Tonight was a big family dinner at my Grandma's house, and it was really good to see everyone all together, eating and talking and everything. Tomorrow, Flower's going to the hospital very early in the morning to have labor induced! That was really the reason for the trip home. Miguel will be my first "blood" nephew, and I figured I really ought to meet him as soon as possible. I probably won't be in Missouri for his first birthday or first steps or any other major milestones, and so if I can make it home for this one (his birth), I probably should. I think it was the right thing to do, despite the long hours in the car (and the even longer ones for Kevin!)

It seems that things are finally looking up for my brother, who made a deposit on an apartment that he plans to move into next month. He's very excited about the apartment and very nervous about becoming a father. I'm nervous and excited for him. I can't wait to see his baby - he's going to be so beautiful. I just hope he comes before I have to go back to Kirksville on Sunday!

Joel and Kristin playing Hoopla at Amber and Elizabeth's apartment last Saturday.







Amber and Steve's wedding. Everyone's on their feet because it took the wedding party two and a half hours to get to the reception and everyone was really excited to finally see them (and no food + open bar + long wait = lots of drunk people cheering).





Laura (Kevin's brother's wife), me, Alissa (Kevin's sister), Jen and Matt Hunsaker (one of Kevin's good friends and his wife). We were all seated at the same table at the wedding and got to know each other much better since there was nothing to do but talk, drink wine, and slowly starve for many hours.




Alissa at her baby shower, with the quilt that I made her. She seemed to really like it, which made her maybe my favorite person in the world.











And finally, here is little Brayden, my soon to be newphew, trying to stuff an entire banana into his mouth. He was not happy when Uncle Kevin saved him from choking by taking the banana peel away.

Arizona

We made it safe and sound to Arizona. It's so nice to be someplace different. I've grown very tired of grumpy skies and shifting weather. Here it's always nice and sunny and that is somethign I can get used to.

We applied to a couple of townhouses in New Haven to give us a couple of options in case we don't get into the University apartments. I really like them. They're a little more expensive than the apartments, but they have more space and privacy and they still fit into our budget. Kevin also applied to the other hospital in New Haven (finally!). So now we just have to wait and see what happens.

This weekend will be one full of parties. Last night we went to Mark and Karen's wedding reception (they eloped in Hawaii two weeks ago), and it was fun to see all of Kevin's old friends. He seemed to have a really nice time and I got to know some of his friends better. Today we have Steve and Amber's wedding, which should be fun even though Kevin's in the wedding party and can't sit with me at the reception. He has, however, promised to dance with me, so according to him, I'm a very lucky girl! Tomorrow we're going to see Mark and Karen's new house and then in the afternoon Alissa's having her baby shower. I haven't ever been to a baby shower before that I can remember, so I'm kind of excited about it.

I guess that's really all that's going on. I think it's been really good for me to get away from the mundane routine in Kirksville. I already feel a little less moody and a little more refreshed.

Well, I have one test down, three more to go. Two today, one tomorrow. I feel suprisingly ok about everything considering how little studying has been going on. I also finished my senior portfolio, which is something I'm very proud of. To graduate from Truman, every senior is required to put together specific papers (six of them) and write not only about those papers and how they reflect how we've grown at Truman, but also write about our Truman experience in general. And then we have to burn it all onto a CD since we're not allowed to hand in paper copies. It took me a few tries, but I figured out how to burn a CD on the school computers. Success!!

Should I give you the not so great news first? The hospitals that Kevin's been talking to only offer night shifts to new graduates. He's still looking into it, but it's not looking good as far as day shifts go. That means he very well could be working from seven at night to seven in the morning while I am at school from 8 am to 5 pm. This is not ok with me, and I'm really struggling with it. I've already gone almost two school years with only getting to see him on the weekends. Now I may finally be able to be married to him, only to see him for an hour at dinner time. We won't even sleep at the same time! It's very frustrating. Kevin keeps telling me that everything will work out, that he still has a hospital he hasn't even talked to yet that may offer him something better, and that no matter what happens, we'll find a way to work it out so we're both happy. He is so much more optimistic than I am. I have a bad habit of immediately jumping to the worst case senario, and I am really struggling to see things in a more positive light - like night shift employees make 10-20% more and it will only be three days a week. Unfortunately, I'm much better at thinking things like: he'll be gone all the time and when he's around, he'll be tired and grumpy. Like I said, I'm working on it. He hasn't even accepted an offer, so we really don't know what's going to happen yet. So no reason to worry yet, right? I wish it were that easy.

The good news is that I finally get to go to Iowa tomorrow! Then we get to fly to Arizona! I'm really glad we scheduled this trip. I wasn't sure when we did it, but I think I need a vacation. Plus, since we know we're going to Connecticut now, it will be really nice to spend a full five days with his family and do some real visiting that we may not have time to do during the wedding.

How gross would it be if I told you I bit off the very tip of my tongue in my sleep last night? Too gross? I think the stress of this semester is really starting to get to me.

Would you like to get your mind off that tongue thing I just told you? You would? Me too. A couple of my friends and I started the Lazyman's Triathalon at the rec center. We're in our second week and I'm really proud of the milage we've covered. We have to run 26 miles, bike 112, and row I don't remember how many miles. We have five weeks to do it, and we record our milage every day we come in. It's really been nice, having regular workouts with people I like. One more thing to miss when I move so far away.

I have all those tests I wrote about earlier this week. I have made an honest effort at the whole studying thing, but senrioritis makes studying very, very hard. I'm not used to school being this difficult for me. The ability to focus, something that I had in spades my freshman year, has eluded me these last few weeks. I have less hours than I have ever had, easier classes than I have ever had and I am making the worst grades of my college career. May 12 can't come soon enough.

I wish I could say this week has been every bit as productive as I needed it to be. Unfortunately, senioritis has a way of interrupting minutes that should be spent studying. I stayed in Kirksville this weekend with high hopes of getting a lot accomplished. My high hopes have been fading kind of rapidly.

My research partner and I did get all of our experimental trials run. We ran almost fifty undergraduates, although we'll have to throw one set of data out. Not only was one of the participants raging drunk (instead of writing down word lists, he wrote the word "beer" about twenty-five times - very helpful), but there was a huge thunderstorm during the testing time and hail actually starting to come in through the ceiling. I swear I couldn' t make this stuff up. Apparently, our participants found the hail distracting, because they remembered about half as many words as the people in other trials. Of course, instead of the hail, it could have been the drunk guy shouting or me running around the room in a panic because I was pretty sure the ceiling was going to cave in and we were all going to die.