Happy first day of spring! In celebration of the changing of the seasons, a nor'easter is headed our way, bringing 3-10 inches of snow overnight. That's cool though. We'll see how it looks in the morning, we might work from home instead of trudging out in it.
For the most part, we did enjoy the snow! Every snow so far has been light and powdery. There's a really great sledding hill across the street from our house. One Saturday our friends Mark & Kimberly came and brought their little ones to sled. It was great because with their kids around it gave us a good excuse to get out there and sled too :)
It snowed a lot and stuck around for a while but honest to goodness it didn't affect our day to day lives too much. And while I'd prefer it to be warmer it wasn't that cold. Except Valentine Day's weekend. There were warnings out for "life threatening cold". Sunday school was cancelled at church so that the temperature might get above 0F before we came to church.That's how cold it was. To walk across the street from our car to church felt like knives stabbing into our lungs when we were breathing. Mercifully, that same day we flew out to California for a week for work, where it was 80F!
We had the Monday off so we enjoyed time in San Francisco. We went to the Exploratorium Museum and mostly just enjoyed being outside and seeing flowers in bloom and leaves on trees. We also saw a pretty epic sunset from the Presidio.
Although we were working all week out of the Mountain View office, it was a really great break. We enjoyed some of our favorite foods--Chick fil a! Krispy Kreme! We visited Daiso (a Japanese dollar store we enjoyed when we were living in LA).
But more notably we accidentally tried out a different work rhythm than what we'd been keeping and it seemed to work a lot better. We ate dinner at work and got in around 7:30pm every night. Then we had at least 2 hours of free time before bed--no dishes, no cooking, just rest! So we decided to try that out here, and although it's getting us in a little later in the evenings than before I feel like we're resting better, spending less time on public transit, spending less time on chores, and in general our schedules are aligned better.
We also decided that last Tuesday would be our final week doing small group at Park Street. It's been a struggle to stay out late on Tuesdays and we felt like we were spending the rest of the week trying to catch up from lack of rest, and we also wanted to free up our schedule to pick up things at our new church. We've decided to pursue membership at Evangelical Baptist Church in Newton, which is just a few minutes from our house. They don't have small groups so we're still figuring out how to best participate in that community besides Sunday morning church, but there are several opportunities.
Last week we did a ski trip at work, which was super fun. I tried to snowboard. I can snowboard for like 10 feet, so I guess that's an accomplishment. Here is a video of my coworker attempting to snowboard down a hill. He is more skilled than I am:
Then we went to SC for the weekend for a wedding.
We ate barbeque at the Smokin Pig, which is quite possibly the best barbeque in the world.
I got to catch up with my advisor, Dr. Hodges, and one of my "brother" Ph.D.s, Evan:
I also got to see Mrs. Hodges and their daughter Jordana, and deliver the quilt I had made for the Hodges:
We met the newest little Minto:
And then we headed in to spend some time with our families.Patrick went to Columbia to have dinner with his family and I went to Fort Mill to see my sisters and grandparents.
On Monday it was in the 80s. We skipped stones in the Catawba River.
...and when we returned to Boston that night it was 40F and raining. But that's okay :)
Otherwise nothing too interesting going on. We're hosting an Easter dinner next week so I'm sure I'll post some pictures from that next week!
