Though tremendous laziness is 90% of the reason we haven’t posted lately, I’m going to blame 10% of our neglect on this:

That's Baby Moss, in case you couldn't tell. I always used to laugh at people who would hang ultrasound pictures on their fridge because it always looks like a grayish blob to me, and now look at me. I'm doing the internet equivalent of posting an ultrasound picture on the fridge. And I'm not apologizing at all.

We found out a couple weeks ago that Baby Moss is Baby Girl Moss, and we’re very excited for her to come. We expect to see her in this many days:

We got the countdown clock for Christmas and it's very comforting having something that seems to know down to the second when I'll deliver. It had better be right or I'll be very disappointed in it.

Being from a long line of shoe lovers on both sides, I knew she was definitely our daughter when she held up her foot during the ultrasound in a clear appeal for us to buy her shoes. Not that we really need any encouragement.

And, because we have them, here are some more grayish blurry shots of her. I won’t label them so you can have the fun of trying to decipher the blurry shots on your own.

Except for photographing food, I really don’t know how to use our SLR but I brought it with me to New York anyway. I love looking at buildings, and New York has wonderful architecture.

The Flatiron Building is one of my favorites:

Empire State Building:

Random building with numbers on it. (Does anyone know what this is? The numbers that were lit up would change periodically.)

Subway with Chrysler building in background:

We took a little boat tour, which I highly recommend. It was such a great way to see the city.

The Freedom Tower, going up on the World Trade Center Site:

Some random dock that I thought looked cool:

The skyline looking down Manhattan:

The Statue of Liberty:

I just like this picture because of the girl waving goodbye:

The Brooklyn Bridge:

I’m a big fan of the Art Deco style, so when I found out our hotel was one of the best examples of Art Deco in New York, I got pretty excited. I wish I had brought a tripod to get good pictures of our hotel, but I still got a few.

 Other assorted New York pics:

Central Park

Businessman on Wall Street

Atlas on Rockefeller Plaza

I could probably have taken pictures of everything I saw there. I can’t wait to go back.

I went to New York last weekend and I have so many pictures to post, but I thought I’d post about a little vacation that Devon and I took yesterday. Here’s how it went:

I woke up a little early and called in to work. Then I woke up Devon to come join me. I knew the perfect spot for us to spend the day. It wasn’t far from our house and had a water feature.

We spent most of the morning in the water, but spent some time shopping for new things for the house, too, like new glassware . . .

. . .  and a new faucet on the sprinklers outside.

We also put some new shades on one of the windows and got inside right before it rained and hailed.

All in all, it was a very full day.

I think I need a vacation to recover from this vacation.

A few weekends ago, Devon and I went to Yellowstone with Ryan, Aubrey and the kids. It was a last hurrah before they packed up and moved to the land of green mountains, no stores, and all-you-can-eat Ben and Jerry’s. (aka, Vermont.) If you are looking for some awesome pictures of the trip, please bug Ryan to get you the pictures. Why do I think Ryan would have some great pics? I’m not sure . . .

Isn't Tate the cutest baby in the world?

For those of you who haven’t been to Yellowstone, it’s an amazingly cool place. I was expecting to see lots of pretty trees and some waterfalls, but the geothermal features were my favorite part. Most of Yellowstone is over a volcano, which means there are places were mud boils and hots springs are all over the place. There’s a good reason that no one believed the first explorerers who came back and described it.

Boiling mud. We told Elle it was chocolate milk, and afterward we saw white mud pit and she asked what that one tasted like.

There are also wild animals all over. We saw lots of these things. We didn’t even know what they were, but we took a million pictures of them. Someone later told us they were elk.

Our trip was cut a little bit short by this:

That’s poor Rhett being sick by the side of the road. I’ll spare you the details of the first time he got sick, but let’s just say the poor guy had just eaten a big lunch and we all got to witness a geyser of our very own in the van. Considering that he was terribly sick far away from home and still happy he had come to see Old Faithful should say something about how cool Yellowstone is.

Devon’s pictures from Brian’s photo contest a few years ago was used for the cover of this month’s Cancer Cell journal. Go here to see the original (Jun 14) and his name credited.

Devon: Ever since I’ve been taking this algorithms class, I’ve started to think in terms of algorithms all the time – even to solve problems in everyday life.

Nicole: Really? Do you think algorithms can help you mow the lawn? Or vacuum?

silence

Devon: Sure. Mowing the lawn is just a convex hull problem . . .

Nicole: I married a super nerd.

silence

Devon: Actually, no. It’s a traveling salesman problem. Convex hull is how the Roomba works.

Nicole: I stand corrected.

Guess who doesn’t have to do yard work today?

Yep, us.

Okay, here’s the truth about our past couple weeks. See the previous post if you’re wondering what I’m talking about.

During Kathy’s visit:

Truth, we had Chinese food in an American diner. It’s actually one of our new favorite restaurants because the food is good, but it is a little weird being in a dinner and eating California rolls.

Truth, we saw Rikki wear a moustache in public. Kathy and I went to Rikki’s final concert of the year, and during part of it she held up a moustache to her face while she sang the male part of a song.

False, we did not eat our weight in strawberries. However, we did eat a ton of strawberries. I think it was two or three pounds worth in one day. As you can imagine, it was awesome.

During Grandma Moss’s visit:

False, Devon did not teach Grandma Moss how to play Rock Band, partly because -

Truth, Grandma Moss came home late almost every night. She’s got a lot of family to see when she visits, and this was a short one, so she was out until all hours of the night. Yes, I felt a little weird that a grandma was keeping later hours than me.

Truth, I held a newborn and lived. I have a slight fear of newborns, mostly because they seem so fragile and I’m afraid their head will fall off right in my hands. The darn thing is so wobbly! Yes, I know this will lead to all kinds of entertainment when Devon and I have a newborn of our own, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The newborn in question was my newest nephew, Tate. For those who don’t know, he’s the cutest newborn ever.

During my parent’s visit:

Truth, we watch cinnamon gummy bears be born. As some of you may remember from this post, I love Sweet’s Candy. They make the best cinnamon bears in the world. Yep, I’ve tasted them all and theirs are the best. I found out that there were free factory tours at the Sweets Factory in Salt Lake and made my whole family go.

My favorite part was seeing my two year old niece’s mind be blown by seeing all the candy. She kept pointing at all of the bins and murmuring, “Candy . . . candy . . . candy.” Plus they have a factory store at the end and I got a bunch of cinnamon Santas for $2. Score.

False, we did not drive through a copper mine. There is one here, and there are bilboards that try to tempt you to take a tour, but my family decided not to take the tour for some reason. Why? Oh, that’s right. Because it was a copper mine.

Truth, we did find a store that sold Kinder chocolate and went hog wild.

For those who haven’t yet experienced Kinder chocolate, it is yummy chocolate made by a German company. They’re likely most famous for their eggs, which are hollow chocolate eggs containing a little toy.

The eggs are sold all over the world but they are banned in the US because we have a law that prohibits embedding “non-nutritive items” in confections.

Yet we still sell these:

Hmmm.

Anyway, that was our month, pretty much. Now it’s just back to work and school.

Sigh.

Why the long break between posts? Well, Devon and I won $1,000 for a purchase we made with our Mastercard, so we drove to Vegas and went shopping for a few weeks.

No, that didn’t actually happen. But we have been super lucky lately to have family visit us off and on for most of April. Devon’s mom came at the beginning of April for a long weekend, then Grandma Moss came for a week and then my parents and sister came for a week. Our house is feeling pretty empty with just me and Devon here.

Instead of a normal summary of what we did (you all know we are anything but normal) I’m doing the “two truths and a lie” summary of our family visits. You’ll have to guess which one is the lie. I’ll reveal the answers in a future post.

During Kathy’s visit we:

1. Had Chinese food in an American Diner.

2. Watched Rikki wear a moustache in public.

3. Ate our body weight in strawberries.

During Grandma Moss’s visit:

1. Devon taught Grandma Moss how to play the drums in Rock Band.

2. Nicole went two days without even seeing Grandma Moss because she was in bed before G. Moss got home.

3. Nicole actually held a newborn and lived to tell the tale.

During Diane and Kent’s visit:

1. We watched cinnamon gummy bears be born.

2. We drove through a copper mine.

3. We found a store that sells Kinder chocolate and went hog wild buying everything there.

I mentioned earlier that since my Skymiles were expiring, I decided to trade them in for magazine subscriptions. It turns out that even though I didn’t have enough Skymiles to make even a 1/4 of a trip, it still translates to a LOT of magazine subscriptions. Delta gives you a small list of magazines to choose from, so I ended up choosing a lot of magazines that I had never heard of or didn’t care much about in order to use up the miles. Might as well, right? Well, in case you are ever in the same boat, here’s our review of each magazine, from best to worst:

1. The Economist – I’m sad to say that I hadn’t heard of this magazine before I subscribed, but now I notice references to it all over. It’s a weekly news magazine that has great articles. It has coverage of news from around the world and seems to have information that is different from Time.

2. Sports Illustrated – This has interesting articles, even if the only sport you are interested in is baseball. I now know more about concussions than I ever thought I would. Devon likes that they write about hockey, which most sports news programs ignore until the playoffs.

3. Time – They lost some of my respect when the entire tone of the Person of the Year article seemed like it was trying to make people think Mark Zuckerberg was NOT an unfeeling robot. Mostly the articles are good, but a little fluffier than The Economist.

4. Entertainment Weekly – Since we rarely watch live TV, I never know what movies are coming out because I never see commercials for them. Skimming through this makes me seem less like I live in a grass hut in the middle of nowhere when my co-workers talk about movies with me.

5, 6, 7. Golf Magaine, Golf Digest and ESPN Golf – I’m lumping all three of these together because I can’t tell them apart. I think our mailman must think we’re excellent at golf by the amount of golf magazines that we receive each month. Either that or we’re terrible. Devon’s actually pretty good at golf and I’m terrible so I guess both might be right. I actually find the magazines interesting to read. I’m still terrible, but now I know why.

8. Money – It was a choice between this one and People En Espanol. Devon thinks I should have picked People, and I think he’s right. I could brush up on my high school Spanish and looks at pictures of famous people at the same time. Win-win. The magazine Money itself isn’t bad. It would have great advice on what to do with ours if we had some.

9.Teen Vogue – Not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy (like that didn’t just do it) but there’s no way I’d let my teen read that magazine. It seems geared toward a 20-something model in LA. With no morals.

10. Glamour – See Teen Vogue.