so this is christmas

Aaron and I get a long Christmas break this year, and we took full advantage of that. My sister got home from her mission, so we got to Utah early enough to be there when she got to the airport.

Some of us were more excited than others that she's home.

 We ice skated.

 I cut off a lot of hair.

 We lasertagged. (I got 2nd place both games. YEAH.)

We took a snowy family photo and printed it out with the Andrus family motto and gave it to my dad for Christmas. Want to know the irreverent family motto?

"The Andrus Family: None better, damn few equal." 

Merry Christmas!

now that it's past christmas, here's a post about thanksgiving!

Aaron and I lovvvve Thanksgiving. Getting up and doing nothing but cooking all day is actually a blast for us. This year, we had our friends the Hubers from church and Teresa from lab over for dinner. We did the turkey, stuffing, gravy, salad and banana cream pie, while our friends provided mashed potatoes, rolls, vegetable sides, and more pies. Four pies for five people wasn't too bad of a ratio. Mmmm. 

After all the feasting it seemed appropriate to do the P90X ab work out, so that's what we did.

amazon's screw up was our amusement

We had a mysterious package delivered to the lab on Monday. One of my labmates was expecting a stir plate to arrive and had been told by Amazon it would get there that day. Imagine our surprise when we opened it and found instead...

over a thousand pregnancy tests.

wut.

We haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

kellie and laura take over philly

A couple of weekends ago my former roommates and wonderful friends came to visit Philly. We hit all the highlights- the historic, the artsy, the creepy, and the delicious (which is not pictured: gelato + Reading Terminal Market). 

 Historic Independence Hall!

 Historic Ben Franklin's Grave!

 Creepy Eastern State Penitentiary!

 Artsy Rodin Museum!

Roof deck view of the city partially obscured by our neighbor's stupid umbrella that I hope he takes down for the winter!

It was so nice to hang out with old friends for the weekend and play tourist. Thanks for visiting, ladies! Come back soon!

some words i found online that i liked

"We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, 'You can be anything,' and we heard, 'You have to be everything.'"

via

That last line, man. I like it.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, and yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

- Kahlil Gibran, snippet of "On Children"

(I can't remember where I found this, but I feel like it was a great blog post somewhere.)

i got an iphone. you've been warned.

Aaron and I finally caved and got our own phone plan and also got smart phones. Aaron had been using a flip phone, so...it's a big improvement. I've been taking shameless self portraits with mine, and also random lab photos because I can. I have a phone with a camera more than 1 megapixel now!

safety glasses- this season's must have accessory.

Isn't our lab pretty? We have windows! Other groups aren't so lucky.

bienvenue aux états-unis, elder!

My younger brother, Jeff got home from his two year mission to France a few weeks ago, and I got to fly home to see him (thank you Mom and Dad!). It's weird and great to have him back. 

It's interesting to me how your relationships with your family change as you get older. When I go home, I kind of mostly want to see them instead of trying to fit in social events with every friend I ever had at BYU. I'm starting to realize that my siblings are really awesome in a not-just-because-you're-my-sibling way, and I want to hang out with them as peers rather than as my younger brother and sisters.

Too bad I'm figuring this out after I moved 2,000 miles away. I guess there's always Christmas vacation, right?

Sunday smores wearing sandals and socks. We love a good alliteration.

compare and contrast:

this article "Turning Practicality into Passion" about a new male BYU faculty member and this article "Developing a Taste for Research and Mini-Muffins" about a new female BYU faculty member.

Stacey is awesome and a fantastic scientist, and I'm really happy for her that she got this position. However, I'm really disappointed in how they wrote about her. From the college's facebook description (how I found the article), "I'm not sure which I like more: Research? Or Muffins? For Stacey Smith, she may have found a way to combine both!" First of all, it's misleading. I thought she was randomly doing some sort of food science research at first, which would be strange considering her training is all in hardcore physical and materials chemistry. Second of all, it undermines her scientific accomplishments. Two thirds of the article is about her life outside of science, compared to maybe a sixth of the male professor's. What is she going to be researching at BYU? Who knows, but she does enjoy running!

It reminds me of the first paragraph of the New York Times obituary for Yvonne Brill, a brilliant rocket scientist:

"She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. 'The world’s best mom,' her son Matthew said."

Now, this is not to say that I'm anti-muffin or think we should ignore female scientists' lives outside of science. I'm sure that Yvonne Brill considered being Matthew's mother one of her greatest accomplishments, and motherhood should never be trivialized. I just don't like that whenever we talk about female scientists we have to remind everyone that they're female or make them cutesy and domestic. Muffins! Beef stroganoff! Can you imagine a NYT obituary for a male scientist talking about his cooking skills in the first paragraph? No, because the story would be about his SCIENCE. As it should have been for Yvonne and Stacey. As it should be about any scientist, regardless of gender. That's all I ask.