Quotable

I stumbled upon this quote today from Katie Hammontree- a girl my age who died of leukemia a few years ago. I might have posted it before but I love it so I'm posting it again.

I am a Christian. Not because my grandfather is, not because his grandfather was…not because Grove Level planned the best activities when I was in middle school. I am a Christian because I have studied the life of Christ and it is good and it is love…and it is triumphant.

I have never thrown my arms up in excitement or run around the sanctuary or shouted out to God during a sermon or fainted or swayed or been “slain in the Spirit” or spoken in tongues…or handled snakes (smile).

It’s all I can do to clap in time to praise music…but I can hear Him whisper and I have felt Him only inches away if any at all and He has touched me and my insides stand in attention and my heart is red and it beats hard and fast and if you turn me inside out like an orange there would be some fantastic celebration with parades and ferris wheels and fireworks and marching bands and jelly beans and pinwheels and fire eaters and hula hoops and…fat ladies in polka dots and lions and popcorn and acrobats.

I pray that you might know my insides and realize that although I don’t believe as you do…I believe with passion and with love and with direction of thought and purpose…not with a simple, gross obedience to a church or a pastor or a cause….All I know is that in the end it will be as God has planned and man can not interfere.

And God is love. Love is everything.

Travel Insanity

This week Kerwyn and I embark on the coolest adventure yet in our married life. We're traveling to Finland, India, Nepal and Italy. How you might ask could we afford all this? It is due to the sheer insanity of the itinerary that we got an unbelievable ticket price. Oh, and we spend less and save to have money to travel with. Your next question would logically be "why?". As a lover for travel I say "why not?". We wanted to take some sort of epic trip before I go back to real work in July and as I mentioned a while ago I really felt like we should go to India together as this is our last chance to do so for a long time. As we started looking for flights to India we found this crazy itinerary and booked the flight at 2am one impulsive morning. Here are the predicted highlights of the trip:

• enjoying an authentic Finnish sauna experience
• serving alongside an Indian surgeon in rural India
• walking the streets of India with my husband (man have I dreamed of this for a long time!)
  
• an elephant ride safari in Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal (on Kerwyn's bday)
  
• 22 minute (white-knuckled) flight on Budda Air to Kathmandu
• boat ride on Ganges River
• 2 overnight train journeys in northern India (I imagine lots of people grabbing my blonde hair and even more shouting "chai, chai, coffee, coffee, chai")
  
• touring the Taj Mahal
• wandering the streets of Milan
• gondola ride in Venice
• gelato, gelato, and more gelato followed by a few good crepes
• two and a half weeks of uninterrupted time with my husband

God is so good and I am full of gratitude and anticipation for all that we are going to experience together. I promise lots of good pictures and stories when we return!

Jockey Insanity

The above picture is the locker of Calvin Borel, the jockey who has won 3 Kentucky Derbys including the last 2 Derbys.

The major take-home point from the "behind-the-scenes" tour that we took is that jockeys have a crazy job. For the Kentucky Derby they have to weigh (with all their gear) exactly 126 lbs. Not one pound more or less. So before their weigh-in if they need to lose weight there is this tub of torture that they go into. Before they get in they pour rubbing alcohol all over their body to dilate their pores. Then they get into the 130 degree water for 10 minutes. They get out with blisters and burns all over their body but 2 pounds lighter. They told us that to lose 2 lbs in the sauna they have it would take 3 straight hours in the sauna. So obviously they have major eating disorders among many of the jockeys. To add weight they have weighted saddle pads of varying weights. They get paid roughly $80 to ride a horse in any race (it varies based on what their agent negotiates) and they get around 10% of the prize winnings. They can ride in 8 or so races a day- all of which could require a different weight.

Sounds healthy right?

The last picture is the paddocks where the jockeys get on their horses to ride them onto the track.

Kentucky Derby

Kerwyn and I took a trip to southern Indiana and Louisville for a couple of days just because. We toured Churchill Downs where the Kentucky Derby will be this Saturday. It was seriously the most enjoyable museum I can remember visiting. Kids would love it because it is really interactive. We even got to play a videogame where we were the jockeys riding fake horses and racing each other. It was fun.

Doesn't Kerwyn pull off the jockey outfit far better than I do?

Nail Polish

I'm going to go a little girly on you here for a minute. Every month I get a Birchbox in the mail with fun deluxe samples of products (hair, makeup, nails, perfume, skincare...). It is like Christmas every month when I get the box (thanks Shannon for the great recommendation!) all for $10 per month. It actually saves me money because I don't wander through Sephora and end up spending way too much money.
This month's box included a nail polish from Zoya that is phenomenal. It is the first nailpolish I've had that doesn't get rubbed off by my rock climbing shoes or really anything else. There's no chipping or anything. They have eliminated all sorts of chemicals that people are allergic to which is also a bonus. I was just on their website to consider ordering a few other colors since I haven't had new nailpolish in years when I found this deal for Earth Day. Basically for $4 per bottle you can have all the nailpolish you want and then you can send them your old nasty crusty ones and have them safely dispose of them.
So if you're needing some new nail polish I've gotta recommend this stuff. That's it. I'm done being girly. I'm going to go amputate a leg or something to balance out my hormones now.

March Madness

This year I decided to become more involved with march madness. Previously my only real involvement was my senior year in high school where lots of students wore the same t-shirt for a month straight. While I don't think I did anything crazy this year I did watch more basketball than normal. The men's tournament was fun since Butler did so well, at least until the championship game. Either way they were fun to follow. My real attention was on the women's tournament as my parents are season ticket holders to ND women's basketball. Mom, Kerwyn and I drove to Dayton, OH for the sweet sixteen and elite eight games. They were a blast to watch as ND played great basketball.

One of the items on mom's bucket list is to attend a final four basketball tournament so we already had tickets to the women's final four in Indy before we knew ND would be in it. It only got better as ND beat U Conn in the final four, a team that receives a vast majority of the attention in women's basketball. That was a fun night! The championship game was not quite as good. ND lost in a close game to a team I truly believe they were better than.

Throughout the tournament I realized that its not as fun to cheer your team on when you have fans of the other team nearby. Fans are crazy and obnoxious and some have voices that make you believe they are using a megaphone as the gentleman behind us had. For this reason I think my basketball cheering in the future will likely be from home unless I can get assured tickets within my teams section.

Regardless, it was a fun time with my mom and she can cross it off her bucket list. Thanks for letting me share the experience with you mom!

Spring Fun

Sorry for the lack of regular posting during my epic year of fun (aka research year). Since my last post lots of fun times have been had (and lots of fairly mundane hours writing abstracts and manuscripts). The highlights that I can recall at the moment include buying a new car, lots and lots of rock wall climbing including a double date with 2 very good friends of ours, March Madness (which I'll post more about later), reading several good books, and trying to grow a yard.

Last year we had a major drought and heat spell that killed many previously nice yards. I am still recovering from our weekend of digging up large dead portions of our yard and planting new seed. Our friends Brad and Ashley rented a slot seeder and we joined the fun in trying to improve both of our yards.