Road Warriors

We were going to try and blog about Feb. in March and that never happened, so here is the cliff note version prior to my recounting March. Zaida grew, Eden worked and Adam wrote his thesis. That about sums it up. I did take a trip down to Missouri and Oklahoma the end of the month to meet with my major professor since he retired in December and fled the Intermountain west, I also toured Oklahoma State University to see how I liked it.

March however was a more eventful month. Due to the imposed furlough at the University Eden had spring break off so she and Zaida accompanied me to Nebraska. The purpose of this trip, besides freezing, was to determine if the University of Nebraska was where we should go. I met with professors in North Platte, where they have an extension center and then the next day went to Lincoln to tour the main campus and their facilities. Upon completing the tour I was very impressed with the facilities and the program and haven't seen anything like it.

My older brother, Ryan, and his family live 4 hours east of Lincoln so we went to visit them. We went to see the sights of Coralville, however the only thing we got to see was the mall, the outlets, and hobby lobby. It didn't help our cause that the temperature was -7 the first day and about 20 the following two days. Ryan and Rachel were gracious hosts and did give us the windshield tour of the flood zone and the campus of U of I. However, I have made a conscious decision to never visit them again in the winter due to the cold temperatures causing us to only have shopping for an activity.

The rest of the month we were busy as Zaida determined it necessary to start trying new foods. We found that she hates rice cereal, pears, oatmeal and loves potatoes and bread. We found out this week that she will eat sweet potatoes, but I think that is due to the ability to read the label and see the word potatoes, she is a very advanced individual. She also got two teeth, earlier than we expected, but they are here, and she reminds me often by grabbing my hand and putting it in the chomp zone before I can remember that she has teeth.

We went to Vernal for a lamb sale, but half way there my dad called and said he wasn't coming with the lambs, we continued on our journey anyway and had a good time visiting the Bingham clan. It was good to see them again and I enjoyed helping Jake by tearing out trees in the pasture.

I defended my thesis on the 26 and now am finishing up the revisions on my thesis as graduation nears. We also made a final decision on where we will be living next fall. I was lucky in that I was accepted to all three schools that I applied, but we are headed to Lincoln. So if anyone is in Nebraska in the next 3-4 years let us know we would be glad to have you stop in. I will be changing my focus from animal nutrition to animal reproductive physiology, but will still do a lot with nutrition and reproduction interactions so I am pretty excited. Eden's job ends June 30 so we will be moving in mid July.