the day we drove three hours east just to get sticks to burn later

I just realized I never posted this. Last November we went out to the Croatan National Forest to get some more samples for my research. At the end of the post are some pictures. First we got some well water samples with the help of a lady from the NCDENR. She was really nice and loved the kids. She let them help her with measuring water levels and getting the water out of the wells (which basically involves attaching a bailer to a fishing pole, dropping it down into the well, and then reeling it back in). After that we drove around the forest and collected branches from trees.

After we got back I peeled the bark off of the branches with a pocket knife, then chopped the wood into small pieces, then dehydrated the wood, then ashed the wood. Once the samples had become ash, I dissolved them in acid, separated the strontium out, and loaded the samples onto filaments for the mass spectrometer. So basically we took a three hour drive just so I could get some sticks to burn. : )

The results for the vegetation samples were hard to interpret. The Strontium-87/Strontium-86 ratios didn't seem to have any pattern and they didn't really even match my surface water samples from before. My advisor and I suspect that it's because I sampled a variety of different trees, and the trees are getting their strontium from different depths of soil. We're going to go back this semester and get samples from all of the same kind of tree (probably pine) to see if there are any patterns found from sampling the same kind of tree in different locations.

The well water samples had high Strontium-87/Strontium-86 ratios, but not the highest Strontium-87/Strontium-86 ratios I have seen from my data, so that seems to indicate that groundwater is not the source of high Strontium-87, but it is mixing with that source, whatever it is.

The blue thing is the well.

These are some very strange bugs that Ryan saw on a tree.

Heidi's first on-purpose hair cut

Heidi's hair was getting really long and I loved the length, but at the same time it was starting to look sort of scraggly and it was hard to brush it because the unevenness of the ends made it so they had lots of tiny tangles. I've been contemplating cutting her hair myself for months, but I was scared to try and have it be a disaster. I've seen some awful hack jobs on little girls and I didn't want to inflict that on Heidi. But yesterday as I was thinking about it I realized that most of the problems I've seen have to do with messing up the bangs, and since I wasn't planning to do bangs on Heidi (I have no desire to deal with bangs) that wouldn't be an issue. I watched a lot of youtube videos about how to do a basic straight-across haircut and that gave me a pretty good idea of how to do a decent girl's haircut.

This was a good youtube video that showed how to make the hair all the same length by starting in the back and making a guide which you use to judge the length for the rest of the hair.



Heidi's hair had a lot of different layers because it's kind of grown in spurts, so I chose a layer that went to about her shoulders and decided to aim for that to be the length of her hair. After I had cut everything straight across like in the video (it took a while for me to work up the courage to make the first cut), I used the tip at the end of this tutorial to pull pieces of hair back and cut them at an angle to get them to stack a little instead of having all the hair be one length. I think this was a good move because it seems to give more character and body to the hair in back.

And here are the results!

Before:

I know, Heidi, I'm a little nervous too!

After:

This is when her hair had mostly dried but was still a little damp.

And here's how Heidi's hair looked this morning. It looked like that when she woke up! All I had to do was brush it a little bit and stick the ponytail and clip in. So much easier than dealing with all of the tiny snarls and cowlicks that she had before. It feels so nice to run my fingers through her hair in back now because it feels so healthy and soft now that it's all the same length.

The change is most obvious in back where I evened everything out. I probably cut off 2-3 inches in the back. The front was a lot shorter than the back because she lost a lot of hair in front as a newborn, and it's still got some catching up to do, so I didn't change much in the front.

Ryan and Kevin got hair cuts this weekend too. Heidi was a little disappointed that I didn't use clippers on her like I always do for Ryan and Kevin. She insisted that she hasn't gotten a hair cut yet because the razor never came out. Personally, I'm not inclined to give her a pixie cut right now. : )

Snow Day #2

On the 12th we started getting our second snow storm of the year. In the morning I went to class as usual, met with my advisor after class, and then did some work on some of my samples. I went to check and see when the next bus was coming and found out that classes for the rest of the day had been cancelled. Then as I walked out of the building I saw a professor walking into the building alongside a student and he said, "Esta nevando, ¿no?" Then I looked up and, sure enough, tiny flakes were starting to come down. By the time I had gotten to my bus stop it was falling much faster and in fluffy puffs of snow. There was a group of girls on the bus who were talking about whether to go home or proceed with plans to work on some school projects. By the time we had gotten to my bus stop the snow was sticking and one of the girls said, "I'm just going to go home. The snow's already sticking and I have to go all the way to Cary." What went through my head was, "You're not going to make it to Cary." Honestly they probably should have cancelled classes about an hour earlier than they did.

The rest of the day my news feed on Facebook was full of pictures and status updates from friends who had gotten stuck in the snow and had to walk home, friends who barely made it home and had seen lots of abandoned cars, and friends whose husbands had taken five hours to drive three miles home. The roads were really slippery and there were tons of accidents and abandoned cars. As much as I'd like to take some credit for us already being safe at home, a lot of it has to do with living so close to campus. I'm certainly glad I wasn't stuck somewhere facing the possibility of walking home with two kids.

Classes were cancelled on the 13th and 14th as well and the university told everyone except emergency personnel not to report for work. Usually they tell teachers and such to continue to hold office hours, so this was quite the snow. Overnight the snow melted slightly and refroze, so the bottom layers of snow were still powdery while the top layers of snow had turned icy. Ryan took Kevin outside to play in the snow for a while, and when you stepped on the snow it was hard on top and then your foot would break through to the soft layers underneath. There was also a lot of ice frozen on all the plants.

Apparently Kevin found this toy guitar at the playground and spent the entire time walking around strumming the guitar and slipping sometimes because of the icy snow, but he still wouldn't let go of the guitar so he could keep his footing better. It made some cute pictures, though.

Yes, these are flowers with ice frozen on them.

After the kids were down for naps, Ryan went back out to get some more pictures and then walked to his office to get some homework to grade. The snow was very good for making snowballs. He threw some at our bedroom window, but I opened it and told him I couldn't sneak out because my dad would probably find out and I would get in trouble.

Some people got creative on campus and made some sea creatures out of snow.

In the evening the snow had melted quite a bit on the roads and we decided to venture out and get some milk before the roads got frozen overnight. It was amazing to see all the abandoned cars still on the road. Some were stopped in the middle of the lane where they had gotten stuck. Most of them probably stayed there another day or two since all the slush on the roads froze again overnight and the roads were probably pretty treacherous. I wished I had a nice big snow shovel, because looking at some of the cars it seemed like a few scrapes from a snow shovel would be enough to be able to get the car out.

Snow Day #1

On January 29 we got a snow day! It doesn't snow here very often, so when it does it's a big deal. School was cancelled and everything (which was awesome since I had a quiz that day that I wasn't ready for).

Ryan got the kids all bundled up and took them outside, and I joined them a little later with the camera. Kevin and Heidi had a good time in the snow. It wasn't great snow for snowballs and snowmen, but we did try.

Fox prints in the snow

Heidi was done with the snow a lot earlier than Kevin, but when I offered to take her inside she didn't want to go in without Daddy, so we stayed out a little longer and then Ryan took her inside.

Kevin stayed out much longer. He was having a fabulous time. We found this cute little snowman that someone had made and Kevin picked it up and carried it around.

At one point he wanted to play but didn't want to let go of the snowman, so I told him to put it down in the snow and I would keep an eye on it for him. Unfortunately I got a little distracted talking about kindergarten to a friend and before I realized it some mean kid had grabbed the little snowman, carried it off, and stomped on it. I was hoping Kevin would forget about it, but later he noticed the stomped up snow and immediately recognized the little snowman. We were not successful in rebuilding him, but fortunately Kevin wasn't too upset about it. (He has his challenges, but fortunately when it comes to stuff like this he rarely gets dramatic.)

update

Kevin has started doing basketball with the YMCA this month and is really enjoying it. He is participating with his team a lot better than he did with soccer. I think it's partly because he has developed and is better at participating in a group and also partly because basketball is a better fit for him. Sometimes his mind wanders and he loses his focus, but that happens with all the other kids too. He always has a grin on his face throughout the entire practice. He is improving with his dribbling and he does a great job with his bounce passes.

His favorite things to draw lately are electricity and a jiggly-jiggly. Don't ask me what a jiggly-jiggly is, but whatever it is it must be something absolutely hilarious. It has something to do with grabbing the unused seat belts and tying them around the car seats. He draws zig-zags for electricity (inspired by the warning pictures on the big green electrical boxes).

All of a sudden Kevin has an opinion about how his hair should be fixed. After we comb his hair down flat he will spike up just the bangs in front. It actually looks pretty cute. I suspect that he likes the bangs spiked up because then they're not touching his forehead.

Recently we checked out Castle in the Sky from the library. I had seen the commercial many years ago and always wanted to see it, and I was not disappointed. We are pretty big Hayao Miyazaki fans in this house. The kids loved it and have asked to see it several times. I'm amazed at the little details they noticed. Yesterday (1/28) Kevin asked me to roll up his long sleeves "like Pazu," and later he told me he was drawing airships. They also build airships with the duplos and run around acting like characters from the movie.

Heidi is obsessed with favorite colors. Her favorite colors are pink and purple. And if you ask her what her favorite anything is, she will still respond that it is pink or purple. Favorite food? Pink. Favorite book? Purple. Favorite movie? Purple.

Heidi loves to learn little songs and poems. Some of her recent favorites are Where is Thumbkin? and Popcorn Popping. She does a pretty good job of quoting the nursery rhyme Ladybug, Ladybug from memory and does so every time she sees a ladybug or a picture of one. I keep trying to get a video of it, but she won't do it for the camera.

Ryan enjoys the Asterix and Obelix comic books and he's been checking out 2-4 of them every time he takes the kids to the library. The kids enjoy looking at them too. However, I do not like reading comic books out loud and pretty soon I started refusing to read the books to them. (I read a lot of books to the kids, but I reserve the right to refuse to read them books that drive me nuts. Mainly this applies to dumb children's books that have an average of two words per page and should never have been published, but comic books are just awkward to read aloud.) As a result of this, I have this conversation with Heidi at least once a day:

H: Mom, you not like Ashes? (Asterix)
M: I have no objection to Asterix, but I don't like reading comic books out loud.
H: Oh. Well, I like Ashes.
M: I know.
H: Daddy like Ashes.
M: Yep.
H: Kevin like Ashes.
M: Mm-hmm.
H: You not like Ashes?

Ryan has needy students who would happily keep asking him questions until midnight.

We've all had a cold except Kevin. I was the last to get it, and I'm really bummed because I was being really diligent about handwashing and hoping it would pass me by. And just as I thought it was going away after about a week, I seem to be either getting a relapse or a different cold. I hate having a sore throat. Now I have a tickle in my throat that makes me hack and cough. In the morning I wake up with a really dry throat and I have to drink copious amounts of water to eventually get it bearably moist. I was trying to take a break from sugary things for a week so I could reset after all the Christmas treats, and now I'm having to eat lots of cough drops, although I wouldn't call cough drops a treat no matter how sweet they are. Maybe sometime I can get my sugar back into a normal balance again.

I am blessed to have fairly good pregnancies, but I'm ready to just be done, and considering that Baby will probably be two weeks late like Kevin and Heidi, it feels like there's still so much time left. I just want to meet the baby. Oh, and maybe I also want to be done with all the homework and quizzes and have my honors thesis all finished, which all has to be done before Baby comes. Since we have all the kids' clothes and infant cloth diapers stored in their closet and we have the crib and a swing, I feel like there isn't really anything to do to prepare. On Saturday we got a bigger car seat for Heidi so we can pass her convertible car seat down to the baby (and we saved 25% because of the Babies R Us Great Trade-in Event), so that's taken care of too. Mainly I am trying to get rid of stuff so that we can find a place to put the crib. And of course the apartment office has been so helpful by deciding to tell us we can't keep bikes and strollers outside our door anymore, which means I have to find a place inside the apartment for those too. I keep telling myself we can deal with apartment living for a little longer. We have been very blessed to live in clean and affordable housing close to campus, but we're looking forward to the time when we can get a place with a garage and an extra bedroom.

Speaking of getting rid of stuff, I got rid of an incomplete travel chess set after it took a dive out of the hall closet and landed on my toe. My foot was throbbing in pain and I was desperately trying to get all the pieces picked up while trying to cope with the pain, but I couldn't seem to get the box to close, and finally I just got so mad at the thing that I threw it in the trash. It felt awesome. It would have been nice if I didn't have to hurt my toe to decide it was time to get rid of the chess set, though. Something similar was the motivation for selling five dozen of my Mason jars a couple of weeks ago. I was trying to rearrange things in our closet and a box of jars fell in such a way that all of them broke all over the floor. I had to call out the door and ask Kevin to bring me the vacuum because I was stuck inside behind all the glass. When I realized that I hardly cared about the jars and was only upset because I had to clean up so much glass while the kids were terrorizing the rest of the house, I decided it was time to admit that I will not be canning for the next two years and it's not worth it to store all those empty jars and risk breaking them when we move. It has definitely made our closet less crowded, although Project Reclaim My Closet still has a lot of work left.

Oh, and apparently some cool person taught Kevin how to play Button, Button, Who's Got the Button? because while I was icing my toe he wanted to play it. He didn't seem to have a problem with the fact that the game doesn't really work with only three players, because to him and Heidi it was still just as fun to find out who had the button every time. At any rate, it makes me wonder why we have any toys when we were able to get an hour of fun with nothing but a button.

science and religion

Apparently Bill Nye the Science Guy has agreed to participate in a debate about evolution with a creationist. I haven't read about the debate extensively, but I'm seeing things about it occasionally on Facebook or sidebar advertisements, so recently I've been thinking a lot about the idea that science and religion disprove each other. It seems like most people are convinced that you can only believe one or the other. I used to think so too, but now I don't. I have been studying geology for four years and my experience has only strengthened my faith.

My impression is that when religious people say they can't believe in science, what they generally mean is that they are uncomfortable with evolution, the earth being 4.6 billion years old, and the creation. I think most of us were trained up in Sunday School to believe that God created the earth in six literal days, that it all happened "magically" (not quite the right term, but hopefully you get my meaning) just because God said so, and that Adam and Eve were made from scratch by God. So when the idea of an old earth and evolution are brought up it seems to conflict with our religion and we feel like we have to reject it. That doesn't mean we object to the science that has been used to develop computers, cell phones, advanced medical treatments, faster and more efficient cars, or flushing toilets.

I admit that there seem to be conflicts there. Over time I've gotten to the point where I don't have a problem with the earth being old or with it taking more than six literal days for it to be created. Considering the history behind where we got the Bible, I don't think we necessarily have to take the word "day" literally as 24 hours. When I consider the creation of the earth as told by geology, I think it's pretty amazing that God and Jesus Christ knew all that and much more and that they planned everything so that a planet would be created where humans could live.

However, I do still have some problems with the theory of evolution. I do think there is truth to it. I think there is plenty of evidence to support it. But it does rub wrong with my conception of the creation of Adam and Eve. Evidence from the geologic record seems to indicate that there was a progression from ape-type creatures to humanoids to humans, and there are things about that idea that I don't really like. I believe that there is something special about the human species, namely, that we are God's literal spirit children. I'm still stuck on the ideas I picked up in church to some extent, and that makes me inclined to think that God created Adam and Eve from scratch. With modern science it seems conceivable that someone could create life from scratch (in a test tube, if you will). But if He did create them through the process of evolution, that would seem to mean that Adam and Eve had parents who didn't quite make the cut. Does that mean their spirits weren't quite good enough to belong to human bodies and be God's children? That seems harsh to me and I don't really like it.

At this point my conclusion is that we don't know enough. Our understanding of spirits is pretty minimal, and I think that's one reason why it's hard to fit the things we know about spirits with the theory of evolution. I'm okay with waiting until we have more understanding. Scientific evidence suggests that there is truth to evolution. I think we should continue to study and teach it because if we understand evolution we might be able to use that understanding to bless our lives. But I also know that my faith is true and real. My personal experiences have proven that to me.

I think the best way to receive answers is to continue to obey God's commandments. Many answers to our gospel questions don't come immediately. They come when we continue to be faithful and obedient. Gradually (through study and experience) we learn and understand concepts until eventually we are prepared to understand the question we started with long before. If we continue to learn and grow in the gospel, we will gain further light and knowledge concerning spirits, the creation, the nature of God, and other gospel principles that are important in understanding why we are here and how we got here. If we reject God and refuse to accept the scriptures, we will never experience that growth. So, interestingly, it seems to me that in order to fully understand science we have to also accept religion, because at some point the two will meet in the middle and the issues will be resolved. If we reject religion, the two will never meet and we will miss out on important parts of the whole picture.

Goodreads Review: The Hiding Place

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are some powerful lessons here about how God can teach us to forgive and love others more perfectly. I loved the way Corrie's father taught her that even though she couldn't love Karel in a romantic way anymore, God could help her learn to love Karel the way He loves Karel, which is a perfect love. And later she realized that it had happened because God had changed her heart.

I also appreciate the theme that God prepares us for the things that we must do. Because she learned to love Karel the way God does, later on Corrie learned to have perfect love for cruel people who didn't deserve or want her love. When she offered a prayer to God saying that she would give herself to save His children, He gave her dreams to prepare her for the possibility that as a result of her selfless offering, she would endure terrible things. And I also think it's really cool that she was blessed with the spirit of discernment so that she could tell which people she could trust to help with hiding Jews in danger, as well as other talents that helped her to save many lives.

When I read this as a teenager, I thought the title referred to the secret room on the top floor of their home, but now I realize that she was referring to how Christ is a hiding place and a refuge for all of us.


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