In-laws in town

Tuesday evening, Ross' mom, dad, and sister drove up from Texas to visit Kansas City for the first time! Wednesday morning, we went to Village Inn for breakfast and then spent all morning walking around the Plaza in the sticky heat. We ended up at Blanc Burgers for lunch and then came back to the apartment to chill in the AC for a while.

Around 5pm, we drove out to Lawrence so they could see KU.


We walked around campus for about 40 minutes.

Ross and Emily

Ross and me standing beneath the campanile

KU's Sigma Kappa house from a distance

Such a pretty campus

Around 7pm, we headed to one of my favorite Lawrence eateries: Wheatfields (not related to the Omaha chain)! It's a bakery serving sandwiches on fresh-baked bread and they try to use mostly local ingredients. They also have a killer dessert case.

Loved this painting by a local artist

Painted mailbox. They don't call it "The People's Republic of Lawrence" for nothing!

That's all for now, but we're headed out to Amish country tomorrow!

First Day of School!

Ross had his first day of grad school on Thursday! I wish I'd taken a picture, but I was grumpy and attempting to sleep before night shift. He loved the Interaction Design Scenarios class even though he was skeptical of the title at first.
On Mondays and Wednesdays he will have a Junior level Industrial Design studio. When he met with his advisor and found out he could join that studio, he was as excited as a kid in a candy shop! On Wednesdays after studio, he has Design Strategies. All of his classes are afternoon/evening classes and he's still working at Old Navy in the mornings.
I'm anxious to see how much we actually see each other one school gets into full swing. I'm hoping he'll be around more than he would be if he were in architecture grad school. But since we don't have any couple friends with Interaction Design school experience, it's hard to say.
In the meantime, I've been working 4 nights a week and trying to sleep during the day. It seems like it'd be so easy. After all, I'm always exhausted and we have really good blackout curtains in the bedroom so it's not the light keeping me awake! Mystery of mysteries, I guess. It sure does frustrate me, though. Here are the good things about night shift: it pays more and I don't go home with sore feet like I do after a busy day shift. I won't list the bad things. I'm just ready to see the light at the end of this tunnel!
On my days off when I'm actually coherent we have been settling in a little more, I guess. I made foccacia the other day to warm up the apartment. I'm SO GLAD the sub-zero temps are gone (for now), but I'm ready for spring weather and sunshine.

Poolish: a pre-ferment made the day before out of water, yeast, and flour

Kitchen Aid blender with a dough hook. Love it!

I had to fold and let it rise about 4 times

No wonder foccacia is so good. Look at all that olive oil!

Next time I need to cut the recipe in half...

We have actually gotten out of the apartment, too! Tuesday was my friend Amanda's birthday (we went to nursing school together). She and her husband Chris live in Ft. Worth right now but they came up to apartment hunt this weekend! That's right, we have friends moving up here. I know I've mentioned them before, but we're just so excited! Any other friends reading this can feel free to join the trend (*ahem, Brittnye*).
Anyway, Amanda was nice enough to invite us to her family birthday dinner on Tuesday night at the Cheesecake Factory in the Plaza. We had a lot of fun!

This picture doesn't come close to doing it justice. I love the Plaza lights in Kansas City!

Ross, me, Chris, and Amanda. Amanda's eyes were closed in all the pictures we took.

Cheese (cake)!

It still hits out of the blue...

I just saw via facebook (of course) that my friend Elizabeth is visiting Fort Worth soon. I was so excited! Then I realized... wait... now I'M not in Fort Worth. And I'm left feeling doubly sad.
Ross and I just spent a fun, albeit brief weekend in Omaha and it was so weird to keep thinking that I did NOT have a 12 hour drive home afterwards. Bittersweet, that's for sure. However, I'm loving this weather! I guess it's making up for the miserable cold rain that we had the week we moved up to KC. Now I'm at work on zero sleep... not the best way to end the weekend.
Also not good: we did not have any mail from KU when we got back this afternoon! Ross' acceptance letter should've been here last week... and now this week... They only have 15 applicants. Just make a decision, people!

Missions

Night shift makes me very contemplative, but it dampens my thought process at the same time. Tonight is the last night of five 12-hour shifts in a row. That means 60 hours of work in 5 days, during which most people were asleep! (I don't know how some people work 60 hours a week, every week). I'm exhausted, yet it's weird to think that when I'm off work, I have absolutely NO plans. How do you fill a day when you don't have school or kids or pets? How do you make a day useful/valuable/worthwile instead just watching re-runs to pass the time? Life is such a wonderful gift and I can't tell you how many days I have spent just "passing time"! It's kind of depressing.

Right before we moved out of Fort Worth, Christ Chapel was talking about a medical mission trip to India this spring. I really wanted to get involved, but with the move I didn't think I should try to be a part of a group residing in another state. However, the organizer contacted me this week saying they were desperate for more nurses! I'm going to apply for the "scholarship" and hopefully go to India February 11-21. I'm so excited! I'd been looking into Mercy Ships and Doctors Without Borders. I've been a nurse almost 2 years now. It's time to use my skills and my blessed education for a greater good.

Speaking of education, we're still waiting to hear from grad school. I can tell Ross is getting very restless and he's also frustrated that he has a college degree and can't find a job! If anyone has connections in KC, we'd be so grateful. He wants a job in the architecture/design/art realm, but at this point any job will do.

We have a lot going on right now and it's hard to put all of it into words. I often read something and it will strike a spark of recognition in my mind: 'yes, that IS the idea I was trying to form into words!' Therefore, I basically collect quotes. Here are a few that apply to my life right now.

*Tough times never last, but tough people do.*
-Robert H. Schuller

*Babies are such a nice way to start people.*
-Don Herrold

*Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate*
-Captain Jack Sparrow

*Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure).*
-Elizabeth Gilbert

*Who knows whether we have come into the kingdom for such a time as this*
-Esther 4:14

*For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin-- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time to still be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. Happiness is a Journey, not a Destination.*
-Alfred D. Souza