We are doing well and have officially survived 7 weeks of life with a newborn! We do miss the freedom to sleep exactly when and as long we want, but Juliet is a joy in our lives. She melts our hearts with big dimpled smiles and cute noises and shrieks (not to be confused with her angry shrieks, which are significantly less cute). She is growing out of her clothes so fast, it seems like something that fit her two days ago doesn't anymore. She has lost a lot of the hair she was born with, so she kind of looks like an old man with the baldness on top and hair around the sides. Some hair is already starting to grow back on top though. She is a champ at nursing, which Amy is grateful for. We have been to lactation clinics for help a couple of times since she was born, but now we're getting the hang of things and she does really well. Amy likes to watch Grey's Anatomy while she nurses when Nathan is at class. Juliet is almost always very mellow and content. We feel lucky that she isn't super fussy or colicky, and it is pretty easy to soothe her when she does get fussy. She is becoming a good night sleeper and will almost always do a 6-hour stretch between her last feeding of the night and the first one she wakes Amy up for. That has definitely helped us feel more rested!
Friday, November 6, 2020
October 18, 2020 Update
Sunday, August 23, 2020
August 23, 2020 Family Update
Hi family,
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
October 2019 Update
Hello family,
September 2019 Update
Hey everyone!
July 5, 2020 Update
Hello family,
The last couple months have been great for us. Here are a few of fun things that we have done:
- Arches and Canyonlands camping with L&C - they already sent lots of pictures of that, it was fun. We will send a few more in another email.
- Trip to Virginia for Amy’s sister’s (Laura) wedding – we drove to Laramie and picked up Amy’s siblings Josh and Maria on the way to DIA. Then we flew from DIA to the DC airport and drove to Blacksburg, VA. We got in on a Friday night, the wedding was on Saturday in an horticultural venue on Virginia Tech campus, and we began heading home on Monday.
- Trip to Laramie – we visited Amy’s family for fun. Since Amy’s parents are retired, we just hung out and watched movies and stuff. We taught them the chickenfoot domino game that Austin and Rhi taught us.
- Amy’s brother Josh moved to Provo – since living with your retired parents isn’t all it’s hyped up to be, Josh decided to move down to Provo early to start working and enjoy the social aspects of being in a college town. We are excited to have him here.
Since Nathan’s internship was cancelled he was deciding between a couple professors for research opportunities. He ended up getting hired by Dr. Andrew Fry and works in a combustion research lab. There are several ongoing projects, but he is currently working on a project that is being funded by the Department of Energy to help improve the performance of a coal-fired power plant in Payson, UT. He is working with several other people to design and build a probe that they can use to gather air flow data from the inside of the flue-gas duct of the power plant. He enjoys this research since several of his friends from school are also working with him. With the loss of his internship, he is also considering grad school as a more viable option after his bachelors degree.
Amy is now 32 weeks pregnant and is starting to feel some of the not-so-fun side-effects of pregnancy. She often gets pretty bad heartburn, her hip has been hurting quite a bit, and she gets too hot to sleep at night. We have been remedying these side-effects with heartburn medication, reduced physical strain, and an intricate system of fans that carry air from the swamp cooler to our bed at night. However, these downsides are dim in comparison with the joy that we get from seeing and feeling baby Juliet (yes, we are pretty certain that her name will be Juliet) move around and kick Amy in the ribs. Amy is also now officially graduated after the University finally sent out her transcript. She has been spending lots of her time getting things ready for Juliet, but is also thinking about eventually teaching online English classes to Chinese children through a program called VIP Kid. Amy’s birthday is this Tuesday and we are gonna party like animals.
We had a fun 4th of July double header on both Friday and Saturday. We had lots of yummy food, plenty of fireworks, and surprised Amy with a birthday cake. We are excited to see everyone in just over a week at the family retreat in Keystone and are thankful for Mom and Dad, and Jared and Jane (but mostly Jane, really) for paying for it!
We will send some pictures of a bunch of stuff. It will probably be in 2 emails.
Love,
Nathan and Amy
April 18, 2020 Update
Hi everyone,
December 15, 2019 Update
Hello family!
June 15, 2019 Family Update
Dearest Familia,
Life continues as normal (mostly) for us here in Provo, UT, 84601 United States of America, Planet Earth, system: Milky Way. We both did spring classes and Amy’s ended a couple weeks ago since she was teaching in a Portuguese immersion school and school has already ended. Nathan is taking a physics and biology class along with doing research. Finals are this week, which he is dreading, but excited to be done with classes and get a break from college for a couple months. His research deals with Nuclear Engineering and specifically a reactor that runs on molten salt fuel and coolant. He may continue to work for this professor if he can get paid during the summer so that he doesn’t get too bored.
We got season passes to the local waterpark in Provo (Seven Peaks) and have already gone once. Other than that, our summer plans are basically visiting with family and we hope to go camping and hiking. We have been tending our garden, which took a hit several weeks ago from a bad hailstorm. Luckily, most of it has recovered just fine and we replanted what didn’t. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, pumpkin, beans, peas, carrots, kohlrabi, green peppers and beets. We have also started a compost pile in the backyard and are hoping that it will give us some good compost to use in the garden next year. We are trying to get in better shape. Nathan likes to run, but Amy is not a runner… so Amy rides a bike alongside Nathan as he runs. He has a route that he runs that is about 2 miles.
Amy will be busy in her free time this summer as she sets up her classroom at Larsen Elementary in preparation for her internship in the 4th grade starting August 19th. She has 3 other 4th grade teachers on her team at the school who she has already gotten to know quite well from her practicum last semester. They have been helpful for Amy and she is excited to work with them. We have bought about 500 books for Amy’s school library, and they were filling our office for quite some time, but we finally got to take them to her classroom once she got her classroom keys.
Amy is still a beehives advisor and Nathan a teachers quorum advisor. Last week was a combined activity that Amy was in charge of planning, and we did water balloon games. It had been hot and sunny all week, but of course after all 300 balloons had been filled, a storm moved in and it got cool and rainy right before the activity. Luckily it didn’t rain too hard and everyone still had a fun time. It seems like we have a 3rd secret calling in the ward as date-night babysitters. I guess word has gotten around that Amy is great with kids and we now have a frequent list of families that ask us to babysit for them.
We decided to volunteer as New Student Orientation Group Leaders for the incoming summer class students at BYU. We went to training on Friday and it seems like it will be pretty fun. It is pretty much just a mini EFY for the freshman for two days, next Friday and Saturday. Honestly, we’re just in it for the free food, t-shirts and gift cards, but we get to be leaders together so it will be fun anyways. It will just be like babysitting 30 freshman for two days. There is another girl matched with us as a group leader, and she probably wishes that she was paired with some cute single guy and not some lame married couple.
Amy’s parents will be here in a couple weeks (right before Mom and Dad come to Utah) and will stay with us one night. Jenny recently got her PhD, just in time to retire. They also finally got their mission call to serve in the Bogota, Colombia temple for 6 months. They were initially denied because of Larry’s seafood allergy, but they persuaded them to let them go as long as they bring 20 epi-pens with them. Josh is halfway done with his mission, and we’re excited for him to come to BYU when he gets back. It will be just like when Nathan got home from his mission and already had family at BYU. He probably won’t want to live near us, but that’s fine, he is allowed to have a social life and meet girls.
Well, that’s about it from us. We should hopefully have some cooler pictures of our summer adventures for our next e-mail.
Love,
Nathan and Amy
PICTURES:
1 – Us with Jenny at her graduation.
2 – Us in the student athlete building on campus. James (basement tenant that plays on BYU football) took the young men on a tour.
3 – Amy on her bike before we went running.
4 – At the waterpark.
5 – Our chocolate addiction continues. We tried making these weird frappe things, they weren’t that great… (also, no coffee involved).
6 – yes, more chocolate. If there is fruit underneath the chocolate then it doesn’t count as dessert.
7 – Amy showing off her new school.
8 – Amy’s classroom!































