Our little girl

Emmalyn Elizabeth
Born October 4, 2010

Clay calls her Emmie. Dad calls her Sweetpea. I call her Pumpkin. Phil calls her Monster.

Whatever she's called, she's the best thing we ever did.

(Photo taken by Shane Hopkins)

Not quite as long this time between posts...

Sigh...I suppose I am never going to be good at keeping up with this. But I'll keep trying.

Since April:
We have been to Houston (June) to see Mom, to the Panhandle (July) to see Dad
I went into pre-term labor twice (end of July and early September), but managed to hold off having the baby until early October (only 2 weeks early)
We had all sets of parents except my dad and stepmom visit us (and Richard and Leanda visited too)
I got promoted at work
My second paper from my PhD work is in press (finally!)
We brought the baby to Texas for her first Christmas

A lot has happened in a year...

Almost an entire year has passed since my last post...So much has happened! I decided to re-vamp my blog to keep a record of all our new "adventures". Phil and I are doing really well, as is Macy. We have moved twice (although stayed in the same neighborhood), been to England, Texas, Vegas, and New Mexico got married (again, this time in Texas - really a renewal of our vows), lived through our first "big" quake, worked really, really hard (still at the same company), learned a lot about ourselves and each other, and are working on a little bundle for later this year.

Phil and I have managed to stay pretty grounded and have grown closer despite (or because of) this all.

Fun!

It's been many months since my last post, and boy have things been busy!

I love my job, I really love Phil, and Macy, and have been enjoying "sunny" California (hahaha, I think the weather here is terrible, it's never warm enough).

Phil and I renewed our vows last week in the church at Quail. We have people from England, Ireland, Spain, France, and Portugal, some Californians, and a whole bunch of Texans! It was great! The Wedding Ranch in Clarendon did a fantastic job with our dinners and I can't say enough good things about them.

Sandra and the boys came out to visit last month and we had a blast. We went to the beach lots, and to Seaworld. Clay, however, tells everyone that the best thing about the trip was that Uncle Phil let him eat in the bathtub...

Breaking free...

I start a new job on the 7th - leaving the world of academics behind to work at a biotech company! It was a terribly difficult decision, but I am really excited to start work at a "real" job (even though it was really painful resigning from my current job).

Look out world, here I come!

Our Saturday adventure

See Phil's blog for the beginning commentary, then "Pacific Beach Standoff Ends After 11 Hours" for the rest of the story...

We were evacuated just before 11 am, when SWAT was called, and didn't get home until after midnight!! I guess they don't start counting time until SWAT shows up, the cops were there long before 11 am.

It's official!

I got my diploma in the mail today:


Just two days shy of seven (yes, 7) years since I graduated with my Bachelors degree.

My sweet nephews!

Clay loves Spencer, he's a sweet big brother!






Happy Spencer:



Mad Spencer:



I sure wish I was there!

Our wedding

Phil and I are happy to announce that we (finally) got married last month.


We semi-eloped; we got married here in La Jolla, and only a few close friends came. We will be having a "big" wedding next year on the same day - something more traditional, will all the family and friends we can fit in the church.

We had a lovely dinner at Piatti's afterward, and our very, very delicious cake was from the French Gourmet in PB. We "mini-mooned" at the La Jolla Shores Hotel, which was really lovely.




I can't tell you how perfect the day was. Libby came out and we had a mini spa day, and then we went to the hotel and chilled out with the rest of the ladies before the ceremony. The weather and lighting were perfect, and I couldn't have imagined it any better. It was amazing! Our friend Brian married us, Libby stood up with me and Ian stood up with Phil. Jo and Bjoern did the photos and video (and did them very brilliantly). Barry did a beautiful reading. It really was perfect. Truly the fairy tale wedding of my dreams :)


The whole gang: Ian, Ana, Barry, Phil, me, Brian (back row), Lichun (front row), Libby, Bjoern (back row), and Jo (front row)



Who doesn't love bubbles??



It was so romantic!


Happily ever after...

An Aunt again!

Spencer Brandon Aborn made his debut on Saturday, May 10. He weight just over 8 pounds and is 21 inches long! He has red hair like his brother :) I can't wait to meet him!

The streak continues!

I thought I left all my unfortunate incidents behind when I left Texas. Not so, apparently. It turns out that the "less than successful" bike ride left me with two fractures - a hairline fracture in my second metatarsal and a stress fraction in my third metatarsal. Sigh. Apparently it takes a really long time for these types of fractures to heal, and the more I use my foot, the longer it will take. SIGH.

Settling in...

I finally got a bike and have had several successful journies on it (and one less than successful journey involving a golf cart whose driver was on his cell phone and forgot to yield right-of-way...). I have to say that I miss a lot of things from home (in no particular order):
- Texas in general
- Family
- Friends
- Jason's Deli
- the heat (yes, really)
- Jamie Rae's magic spaghetti
- going to Target
- HEB
- the central time zone (I can't seem to coordinate PST with CST)
- having a washer and dryer inside my apartment
- Culligan water
- friendly drivers
- grass
- big trees
- lots of other things I can't think of at the moment...

FINALLY! Made it to California

Put a penny on Sully, wish me some luck...



We still have a LOT of unpacking to do, and things to finish up, but I did all my HR paperwork today, so the ball is rolling for a new start in San Diego!

Phil and I are very happy to finally be together, and Macy is too, sort of. She was really freaked out by the whole move, and has yet to settle in to our new place. Once she gets used to it, I'm sure she'll love it as much as we do.

A miniature pumpkin

We had dinner at Barry and Ana's sometime near Halloween (sorry, the dates run together a bit for the last 3 months or so), and they had carved the cutest mini-jack-o-latern I'd ever seen!



I think that's the last of the major updates for now, sorry it's been so long. Hopefully there will be lots of exciting things happening that I can write about to keep y'all entertained...

Granny Virigie's 100th birthday...

Granny Virgie had a massive party for her 100th birthday. It was loads of fun! There were lots of people there that I haven't gotten to see in a long time. She got a letter from the President, a flag that had been flown over the Captiol in DC, and a bunch of other stuff. We all had a good time, and Granny Virgie seemed to enjoy herself.

Me and Granny Virgie


Dad, Me, Clay and Blake


Ava, Delbert, the grandkids and gret-grandkids

The tractor cake!

I got Sandra a tractor cake pan (okay, so it was really for Clay mostly), and Clay and I made a cake it in.







Of course, Clay had more fun eating the icing than actually icing the cake.

My defense...

It official! I passed my defense - or as my boss insisted on calling it, the "final examination". It went pretty smoothly considering all the chaos leading up to it (like last minute changes to the presentation),



and my committee seemed pleased with the talk, etc. I got a good number of questions (and I was able to answer them all), and some great feedback from the audience and from my committee.






The boss even bought champange and gave a toast.









Of course, it wouldn't have been the same without Macy to help me prepare and to give me a good-luck cuddle before I left.



Phil was there too, and that meant a lot! (So were my good friends Joel and Libby, also in the picture below, and Jamie Rae, and Stacy).



Now all that's left are corrections and getting my papers submitted...

Macy LOVES laundry day, especially the part where you get the laundry out of the dryer:








I decided it was because the clothes are so warm, and not because she likes to muss up the clean clothes. So, to test this theory, I got a heating pad, put it on the bed and turned it on low. Sure enough, in no time at all, Macy had clamied it!



Unfortunately, the heating pad is now covered in Macy hair, so I guess it officially "belongs" to her...

The answers to the three forbidden questions:

How's work going? Very, very busily. Stressul. Better than it has in a long while, though.

When are you going to graduate/defend? I defend on November 26 at 2:30 pm (that's 50 days from now! Holy crap!) I "walk" at graduation in May, either the 9th or the 10th (A&M has two days worth of graduations, and the day for my college has not been posted yet).

What are you going to do next? Move to San Diego! I have a post-doc job interivew in 2 weeks, and hopefully something will pan out. There are several labs that I would be interested in joining, but it's a matter of timing and funding as to which one.

General update

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but haven't found the time. We got a lot of rain there for a while, and we were bombarded with frogs! Big, noisy frogs and small, cute ones like this:

Macy is pretty good about not biting the big ones, she just chases them, but she can't seem to help herself with the little ones! She is getting better, though.

Macy has really adjusted well to living in an apartment again, although she will only go outside with me. For some reason, she barely even acknowledges Jamie Rae's offers to take her outside. She used to do that to Joel and Dave too, so I guess it's not that big of a deal.

A couple of weeks ago I took her to work and while we were waiting on a gel to run we went for a long, long walk. It didn't seem that hot outside to me, but apparently Macy didn't agree:


When Phil came to visit recently, we went to the Co-op to get Macy some shampoo, and decided to get her some of their "home-made" goodies. Unfortunately, she was allergic to them!

It was very tramautic to me, but Macy seemed quite unbothered for the most part.

Sandra and Clay came to visit a few weeks ago, and it was great! On Saturday, we took Clay to campus and walked around the pre-game festivities. He seemed to enjoy himself a lot, but when we finally got back to the pick-up, he tuckered out pretty quickly:

He sure doesn't miss anything when he's awake, though. When they came to pick me up at work on Friday, I showed him the big blue 37 degree incubator and a few other things. On Saturday we popped back in so that I could pull some plates out of the 30 degree incubator and when he saw me get them out, his face lit up and he said "It's a little incubator!" (The 30 degree is only about 1/3 the size of the 37 degree incubator). Friday night Sandra showed him my Aggie Ring and said "Aunt BB's got one just like Mom's". He took both our right hands and stared and stared. Then he took my left hand and said "Where's that ring?" We told him to ask Uncle Phil. Later when we talked to Phil, Clay asked him about it, and Phil told him that it was still in the shop. Clay got very frustrated and said "Just go pay for it! OH MY GOSH!" and threw himself on the couch in disgust. Apparently he thought Phil hadn't figured that part out yet and should have.

Things are busy as usual. My defense date is November 26th, so things are actually a little bit busier than normal, but then again, they're always busier than they seem! I am going to San Diego in a few weeks - Gill and Jimmy are coming over to visit, and I will do some more experiments at UCSD - and I am very excited about that, but also very stressed. Still it will be good to see Gill and Jimmy and Phil (especially Phil).