Precious

I got to take a few pictures of this lovely girl today. There wasn't really enough light, so we waited for the afternoon sun to grace their west-facing windows. But then, it snowed. I'll have to hold out for another sunny Friday or Saturday.

oh! and we get to find out next Friday whether we are going to have a boy or a girl. So, let's hear your thoughts. Do you think this first Jones baby is a boy? or are you seeing pink? I really don't have any inklings, so next week will be a big surprise.


Winners of the previous contest: all of you. Good job friends! You are smart to know that only Scott could produce such a manly-hot candy bar wrapper, and I have indeed been obsessed with turquoise lately.

This is worth looking at

So, today, during my usual blog-surfing, I discovered this on Design Mom. Apparently there is some legislation out there trying to protect children from dangerous materials (yucky stuff) that some Chinese toys were made with. However, the laws would affect all handmade items as well. I've been reading about it here and here. You should check it out and then do something about it. I emailed my senator, joined a petition, and emailed the Consumer Product Safety Commission to advise them to revise the act so it protects where it needs to, but without hurting artists and other small businesses that do good stuff.

Happy toys mean happy kids. Do something!

First Time

This is definitely the first time I've ever had a snow day. That's right. They canceled school today. I'm actually kind of excited to have the whole day for homework, lunch with Scott, and finally tidying up some things.

Meanwhile, school has been going great. I like the classes that I'm in, and the professors are great. One of my classes is on American childhood. Our big assignment is to create a documentary film or book or something. My two graduate amigas and I are going to do a film on American Girl dolls. Did you ever drool over those catalogs like I did? My grandma started sending them to us when I was quite young, I remember. Anyway, one year for Christmas, Mom gave me a "savings plan" packet that was published by the American Girl people that was supposed to help you save up for what you wanted in the catalog. I saved my pennies and bought a doll. It was so cool. Our project is going to focus on the heirloom aspect that these dolls have compared to other toys a girl might play with as a child. So fun!

Mostly, it's just great to get to think critically about things again. I love that feeling of agitated excitement when I get ideas and questions and connections all swirling around in my head. It's like pressure in a teapot. So hot and so cool at the same time.

My job is also quite fun. Like last week, I got to get rid of several pairs of jeans I had been saving for a someday quilt. We put them on the American Studies bulleten board. It's pretty hot as far as bulletin boards go. This week has been full of editorial assistant duties. I get to help put together this book series that my professor edits on Jewish culture. Right now it's a lot of emails and letter writing, but it's cool to be a part of it. My future duties will also include designing a newsletter, helping put together a website for the communications department, and transcribing oral histories. How fun! You're totally jealous. I can tell.

Enjoy your snow day! Do some art or something.

Museum Fun

At the Hershey Story Museum you can design your own candy wrappers. Scott and I had the most fun with this feature of the museum.

Here are the fruits of our labors:


Can you guess who designed which label? The person who guesses correctly will have the satisfaction of knowing us better than the folks who don't guess correctly. I'll tell you in a few days the truth about the wrappers.

If you want to come visit us, we might take you to the museum. It's pretty well done, but according to Scott not worth a repeat visit. Once is enough? I like the wrapper designing, however, my finger wasn't big enough to really get the touch screen to respond well!

1st anniversary: Paper

I never showed you the awesome anniversary present Scott made for me. According to whoever made it up, the "traditional" gift for the first anniversary is paper. I made Scott a photo book of our first year of blogging (pictures later). And he made me a beautiful set of bookmarks. He designed them himself. There are too many to count, and they are in all different sizes for use in a variety of books.



With a semester's worth of reading taking up an entire shelf in our bookcase, these lovely bookmarks are already oh so useful. It makes me feel so special to have such a thoughtful, creative husband. And who else has such gorgeous place holders in their books?

Oh, and cause we really ought to start documenting the belly, here's me at 17 weeks:

The Little Perks

I needed to print an article yesterday so I could read it by tonight. When I pressed print on the library computer at school, I got this wonderful little message. A window popped up telling me that I had 110 pages left of on-campus printing and that I could pick up my pages in room 102.

It took me a while to wrap my head around it. The school is letting me print over 100 pages without ever loading money onto a card or toting dimes or anything! I'm pretty sure they made up for it with some "facilities fee" but either way, I love it! Definitely will be taking advantage of that one. And you want to know what's really cool? They printed on both sides, so not only did they use less paper that way, they used less of my allotted pages that way, too!

I know, I know. Not the most exciting news. But those little perks are fun.

What (in my bliss) I forgot to mention

I got the scholarship! Did I tell you that I was hoping to possibly get this mondo scholarship for graduate school? Well, my adviser at school said that if I did well on the GRE he would recommend me for what they call a "graduate assistantship" which boils down to a tuition remission AND a living expenses stipend for an entire year. The dillemma was then a matter of, "Do I wait to start school in the fall hoping that I get the assistantship or do I just start now and hope to get smaller scholarships later on?" Then something amazing happened. I was informed that a one semester assistantship opened up and if I did well enough on the GRE etc. then I would be elegible to be considered for it for this Winter 09 semester.

Blessings were bestowed, for my brain was able to function for the GRE (including the math section). I reported my scores to my adviser, then we went to North Carolina for Christmas and waited for news. Then, two Fridays ago, I got an email congratulating me on receiving a graduate assistantship for this semester!! I am still so stinkin' excited and happy and grateful! I get to go to graduate school and get paid for it!

I started frantically signing up for classes and searching Amazon for all my text books. Then, last Monday, I went to school. I got lost in this big funky building that has all the classrooms in it, but eventually found the American Studies office and met the other graduate assistants. Everyone has been really nice so far and I'm quite excited about my classes. I've made some friends and the "assiting" part of my assistantship will keep me busy 20 hours a week doing things I enjoy like transcribing folklore archives onto the computer, editing publications, and designing a newsletter for this big conference that is coming up. How cool is that? Get to go to school and get paid to do things that I already like and want more experience in?

When I told my dad about it, he said, "You better keep paying your tithing." And I laughed because that's what I had thought, too. I just feel really over-the-top blessed. Even my adviser, who is the head of the whole American Studies department said that the stars must have aligned for me because in all his time there he had NEVER seen a one semester assistantship open up. Crazy, huh? Even having cleaned the 2nd bedroom out in our little apartment, I still feel like there's not enough room to receive all the good things the Lord keeps blessing us with. So, keep paying your tithing, and meanwhile, things are going to be okay.

The Tastiest Cheese

We went with my friend Kristen to the Pennsylvania Farm Expo last Saturday. Supposedly it is the largest farm expo in the country. It was basically like a state fair (I've never been, but that's what I imagine anyway) only way bigger and indoors.

We saw quilts and apple pie contests, horse and rider competitions, science fair projects, a hand carved canoe, big shiny farm equipment, a momma pig feeding her little piglets, cooking demonstrations, really clean cows, and every kind of chicken you can imagine. Oh yeah, and a butter sculpture. Kinda makes you wonder why butter is so expensive when folks carve whole scenes out of it.

I thought these little corn nuggets were very cute.

This one had a fabulous hairdo.

The aforementioned butter sculpture of fury. Where's the toast?

My favorite part was the food. We had pulled pork barbecue sandwiches which we washed down with ice cold fresh apple cider. Then came the cheese. I saw people walking around with these little skewers of fried cheese and I just had to try them. These dairy farmers took fresh mozzarella and battered and deep fried it on a stick then gave it to you with a little dipping sauce of marinara. IT WAS SO GOOD! The cheese was moist and elastic without being rubbery. It had such a fresh cheesiness to it. The batter on the outside was so delicate, crispy and thin. All it did was hold the cheese inside. The sauce was delicious with the cheese, but not even necessary. I ate two cubes. Scott ate the third and said that was all for him. He and Kristen made me not eat the last one for fear of a stomach ache. If they hadn't been there, I would have eaten it anyway.


Of course we left a lot of food untouched, but we're saving it for next year. Things like hot honey waffles and ice cream, maple cotton candy, potato donuts, milkshakes, fried veggies, fresh fish, kettle corn, and whoopie pies. One thing at a time, right?

So, if you can ever get away in January, come visit the Joneses! We'll take you to the biggest farm show in the country and you'll love it.

Tagged for the very first time

This is post number 100. Get out your party hats! I won't bother giving you 100 of anything, cause I can't think of 100 anythings. (Remember the 100th day of school and everyone had to bring 100 of something to share? what did you bring? I think I brought some pretty random stuff at times, like 100 really old chocolate chips or some almost stale animal crackers. Just thought we should remember how fun it was to be in 2nd grade.) Instead, here are about 9 random facts from a "tag."

Becca got me in just the right mood with this one. And the upside is that it's short. So, here's a little glimpse of me at the moment.

Two names you go by:
1. Nancy
2. Butter

Two things you are wearing right now:
1. snowman pajama pants from Mom
2. "From Israel with Love" t-shirt

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1. To eat anything without fear of stomach retaliation
2. Warmer weather

Two things you did last night:
1. ate dinner with some new friends from church

2. made banana bread

Two things you ate yesterday:
1. banana bread
2. pork with sauerkraut

Two people you last spoke to:
1. Scott
2. Heather (on the phone)

Two things you're doing tomorrow:
1. go to SCHOOL!!
2. vacuum, finally

Two states you'd like to visit:
1. New York
2. Florida

Two favorite beverages:
1. water
2. concord grape juice

photo from grangemaple at flickr

Remnants of Christmas part 1

We told you about the Holiday Ball that Scott and I went to, but I wanted to show you a few more pictures. Scott's fellow graduate student is the other lovely gal in green. She was kind enough to take a few pictures and to send them to us later. Lovely people to spend an evening with even if we were surrounded by increasingly drunken medical students. :)

Fun stuff

We started watching a "Bollywood" movie last night. It makes me want to redecorate my entire life in bright yellow, orange, red, pink, green, and blue. Or at least have a party with some amazing fabrics and colored plates.

Did you know it is relatively easy to make marshmallows from scratch? I followed the recipe on Melissa's blog and they are lovely! I just don't know how to cut them without taking up the whole pan with the knife/spoon/spatula. Now we have WAY too many marshmallows, and though it seems silly to re-melt something we melted to make it look like that we just might make some rice crispy treats with them. This will be difficult because the only success I've ever had with rice crispy treat making is when Laura was standing right there to say, "okay you can add the cereal now" and "that's enough cereal already." Wish me luck!

Also, my friend Kristen and I made English muffins last night. They aren't very pretty, but they taste way more on the English muffin side than the pancake side, so I'm pleased. Who knew Engli-shmuffins had yeast in them and you cook them on the stove?

Back from the South

We hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We sure did.

We drove to my mom's house in North Carolina (she moved there last fall) on Christmas Eve. The drive was plenty long and dark. Thankfully, we had borrowed a gps from our friends and that's the only way we would have found her rural, rural house. She lives in a cute little spot surrounded by cotton fields where her nearest neighbors are a horse and some graves. :) Heather came out, too, so we just had a party. We watched way too much Food Network, ate great food, played some fun games, and saw some pretty places. What did you do?

I find out tomorrow whether I may get a scholarship for graduate school! Cross your fingers. Either way, I'm starting classes next week.

So, here are a few pictures from Christmas. I'll have to go into more detail later about the fun gifts Scott got me and vice versa. But for now, feast your eyes on what our fun camera can do!