Linguistics Senior Thesis Paper

Jake is currently working on collecting data for his Linguistics senior thesis paper. Please help him out by taking this survey. It only takes about 10 minutes.

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Thanks so much!

Reasons to Celebrate

We've had quite a few reasons to celebrate this month.

For one, it was my birthday! Jake made it a really special day. He took me out to dinner (twice actually...not on the same day though), surprised me with cinnamon rolls at work, and bought me Pride and Prejudice (the really long version). A lot of other people helped make it a special day too.

I applied to present my thesis research at a few different professional museum conferences and we had more reasons to celebrate when I heard back from them . I was accepted by the American Association of Museums and the Visitor Studies Association! Because of the cost of travel I had to pick just one, so I'll be presenting at the AAM conference in Philadelphia this May.

Jake also started hearing back from law schools, which gave us the best reason to celebrate. We've heard back from six (of the ten) law schools Jake applied to. He's been accepted to all six!
So now we just have to decide which one to pick.

Overall, we have lots of reasons to celebrate and many more reasons to be grateful.

Christmas Break

We had a fantastic Christmas break this year. We spent a week with our families in Colorado and then spent the second week in Utah. Overall, the break was filled with much needed relaxing. We read a lot and slept even more. In between our inert periods we did some really fun things.

We had dinner at The Roof in Salt Lake for Jake's staff Christmas Party. The food was good and the restaurant has a great view of Temple Square.


While we were in Colorado we spent time with our families and then did other things as well. We went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Denver Zoo, saw some movies, ate at Johnny Mac's, and just relaxed.


For Christmas this year I made my dad a bunch of sugar cookies, like he used to have each Christmas growing up.
Jake and I bought each other books for Christmas. Of course we left our shopping until the last minute (seriously, we tried to do it on Christmas Eve after everything was closed) so we got our presents to each other a couple days late. We didn't mind though, and we learned some valuable lessons on when stores close on Christmas Eve.

Overall, it was a fantastic Christmas Break.

Life's Little Cycles

A few weeks ago we finished another semester. We only have one more semester of undergraduate work to go!

The best news: I finished my thesis! Enough said.

Funny story:
During the week of finals during my freshman year our heater stopped working. While we waited to get it fixed, several of my roommates and I studied in the kitchen with the oven turned on to heat the room.
This semester past semester our heater went out, again during finals. Once again, I stayed warm by working in the kitchen with the oven on.

Life's little cycles amuse me.

Jake had a pretty rough semester because he was applying to law school. He has the applications all submitted now and we're just waiting to start hearing back from schools. These applications were stressful because the schools expect you to have outstanding LSAT scores, a stellar GPA, numerous extracurriculars, work experience, volunteer experience, a sensational personal statement, and personal relationships with professors enough to get fantastic letters of recommendation. Jake pulled together his application well, but it can be depressing to see all of your life's work reduced to a few sheets of paper.

After the whole process it was encouraging to get this email from one of Jake's professors:

Jake,

Thought you might want to know that you received the highest overall grade in 410 I have ever seen. You set the curve for every assignment.

Yes, you earned an A.

If you ever need a recommendation from me, I will be happy to write one.

Prof. Dant

No one deserves praise like that more than Jake does. He's awesome.

Thanksgiving Break Highlights

Last week's Thanksgiving Break provided us with a much needed break from classes. Jake spent a good portion of it creating a computer game, which is turning out to be one of my favorite computer games. In this game each player is a cannon and your purpose is to blow up the other players. I'm so good at it, I beat Jake every time.

Actually, that's not true. He destroys me unless I get a few lucky shots in.

We also spent some of break working on law school applications. That was not an enjoyable highlight, but it's awesome that they're almost out of the way!

My family came to Utah to spend Thanksgiving here and we did some things with them too.

Erik and I jammin' before dinner:
This piano can do back flips.


Dad carvin' the turkey:

All of us at dinner:
I think Aunt Peggy is poking out Rusty's eyes


Pictures of "broom" (rolled up newspaper) hockey later that night:


Holly is posed and ready:

My good-looking husband and me:

Present from Australia

Almost two years ago I got a letter from my friend Jaren who was serving a mission in Australia. In this letter, Jaren informed me that he had a present for me that he was going to haul all over the Outback and then give to me when he got home.


Last month Jaren got home from Australia and gave me the present. As the picture illustrates, Jaren is a fantastic gift wrapper.



I opened the present to find a small frame around a faded movie ticket stub. I won't lie--I had no idea what he had given me. Fortunately, I was on the phone with him when I opened it and he reminded me of the story.

During high school we were driving in my car. I was driving and Jaren was in the passenger seat. Jaren found the previously mentioned ticket stub in the car and commented that we should go and see the movie (it was for Harry Potter). As I looked down at the stub I started to swerve off the road (we were on Belleview... back before the expansion construction) and almost hit something. Since we didn't die that day I proclaimed the ticket stub good luck.

At least a year later Jaren was in Australia and opened his wallet to find this lucky ticket stub. After remembering what it was, Jaren decided that he was going to keep it for his whole mission as his lucky ticket stub, and give it to me when he got home. This ticket stub has been to the MTC, San Francisco, Auckland, Darwin, Alice Springs, Adelaide, Mildura, Angkula, Sydney, and Los Angeles.

It's now sitting on my bookshelf as my lucky ticket stub and an ever constant reminder that I really should drive more carefully.

Halloween

We were really excited for Halloween this year. Unfortunately, Jake was sick that weekend so we didn't end up doing much on Halloween night. But we did carve pumpkins earlier that week. Jake's pumpkin was scary and mine was afraid of it.