Shanny Turns 30!

With the whole 30 by 30 thing, Shannon obviously isn't too shy about announcing her 30th birthday to the world. Well, it's finally here. So, I think it's fitting to share a few photos through the years.

She's gone from this little chubber:

To a cute little kid:

And then through a few years that Shannon would only describe as "frumpy". Since it's her birthday, we'll skip past those and on to the girl I met:

And fell in love with:

And then, after I'd scared off all the other guys who followed her around in a pack . . . .

I got to marry her:

So, even at the ripe old age of 30, and as a mother of 2:

(Apparently this is the last picture we took with Shannon and both the girls in it.) Shannon is still my smokin' hot wife:

Happy Birthday Shannon!

(p.s. Shannon, if you're keeping track, and at this point, I suspect that you are, this is number 16.)

Weekend

Having every other Friday off means that we have extra time on the weekends to wear ourselves out.  Weeee!  This weekend we went to:

- The Whiting Forest.  This is the forgotten little brother of Dow Gardens.  They're operated together and your $10 annual pass gets you into both.  Whereas the Gardens are all prettified, the Forest is, well, a forest.  There are paths through the various areas that show a half dozen different types of forests we have in Michigan.  And, there are forts.  Julia loves the forts.

- Frisbee Golf.  Turns out we have a disc golf course in Midland.  (The sport can't officially be called "Frisbee" golf, because that's a brand name.)  There were a surprisingly large number of people there.  Probably a few dozen, if we could have seen them all at the same time.  We were not your typical group, because of two things we didn't bring and one thing we did.  First, we didn't have fancy disc golf frisbees.  They make special ones that aren't good for catching, but are good for flying long and straight.  Secondly, we didn't bring any beer.  And finally, we brought little kids.  The basic demographic for disc golf seems to be guys in their 20s, drinking and smoking their way around the course.  We weren't terribly good, but I still had fun.  We didn't get anywhere close to doing all 18 holes, because Julia was melting down.  Every.  Ten.  Feet.  This also filled one of Shannon's 30 by 30 requirements, so I hope I haven't stolen her thunder too much here.

- Basketball.  Yeah, me playing basketball at the church isn't that noteworthy, but it's still something we did.  Shannon came to play the organ, and the girls got to play with all the other kids that come.  The older ones had a lesson and everything in the nursery.  They learned about firemen, and had pictures to color and everything.

- Blueberry picking at Russell's Blueberry Farm.  We did this a few weeks ago, and this time Shannon wanted even more blueberries.  We picked about 4 pounds (for $7.50) plus, you can eat all you want for free while you are picking.  And, as always, fresh stuff tastes better than the stuff at the store.  Julia did a pretty good job of picking them, and then a good job of spilling almost all of the ones she picked.  Ella, meanwhile was eating them as fast as she could.  From our buckets, picking them from the bushes, or off the ground.  Hopefully mostly from the first category and not much from the third.  We tried to keep an eye on her, honest.

And now, it's Saturday evening.  The girls are in the tub, we're exhausted, and the house is a mess.  Something tells me that it isn't going to get cleaned up tonight.

(A disadvantage of the every-other-friday-off work schedule that I have is that it makes little daily tasks harder.  I work a little bit more each day, which makes things like picking up the house that must less likely to happen.  And then, when I get all that time back in the form of a 3 day weekend, we sure aren't going to spend it all cleaning!  Essentially, this is a system of converting 1 hour a day that might well be used productively, into an extra whole day of play each fortnight.  But, it's much better than the last job, where my hours changed 7 or 8 times in the last year I was there, and included early morning, 12 hour shifts, afternoons, weekends and just about everything but graveyards and Sundays.)

Self-feeding

Julia came into our room today eating one of her favorite foods, a peanut butter tortilla, and said to us: "I made myself a peanut butter tortilla!"  Now, it's not like this is a difficult recipe to master or anything, but she's never made one before, even with our help.  So Shannon and I shoot each other a look that says: "I'm afraid to go look and see what she's left behind in the kitchen."  I offered to go scope it out.  And . . . there's nothing to report.  The peanut butter jar is sitting on the table with the lid on, there's a knife in the sink, and, best of all, no peanut butter smeared on the table, floor, walls or carpet!  So, I guess Julia is about ready to take care of herself now.

The ants go marching

A few quick hitters from Michigan:

Julia really, really likes to type her name whenever anyone is at the computer.  Even if she is busy dressed up in her candy corn outfit, complete with high heels, giant flower headband and pom poms, she still wants to use the computer.

We have a small ant problem at home.  And I don't mean that the ants are small (though they are) but that the problem is very small.  We find ants very regularly, but only a handful at a time.  It's like in Michigan ants don't believe in working together in large groups.  So, we find a few, get rid of them and then they are gone for a few days.  But they keep coming back.  It's not like we don't have huge amounts of food on the floor at all times.  Apparently these ants just aren't very good.

Ella cannot be contained in a small space anymore.  Attempts to hold her are futile.  Even with food, books, toys, you name it, you can't keep her on your lap.  Any attempts result in tears and screaming.

In related news, we're going on a 3 hour long plane trip in 2 weeks.

In further related news, we're going to Utah in 2 weeks.  I think I've talked to both of my Utah readers in the last week, so this isn't really news for anyone.

Finally, we played soccer yesterday at the local high school.  ("We" being the elder's quorum and friends.)  I hurt today.  But things are made somewhat better knowing that of the 8 goals scored, I had 2 of them, and an assist on another.  This is not indicative of my soccer skills.  This is indicative of luck.

Licensed Michiganders

I hope we've learned our way around town, because we no longer have out of state plates to blame if we get lost.  Shannon went out and got us new license plates today.  It's fun that one car ends in 001 and the other in 002.  I'd post pictures, but standard internet protocol would be to then blur out the plate.  Which kinda defeats the point.

By the way, if anyone has insight into why people blur out license plates on the internet or TV, go ahead and share that knowledge with the rest of us.  Makes no sense to me.

Boat Rides

The weekend before Memorial Day, we went to Canada to see Niagara Falls. Shannon had never been, and I hadn't been in over a decade. It was a short weekend trip, but we enjoyed it. While there, we took the boat ride on the Maid of the Mist, which was excellent. I'd recommend it to anyone who goes to Niagara Falls. The ride was pretty intense for the girls, but they both survived it. It was amazing to be that close and experience the power of the falls; it made me feel a bit like those reporters on tv getting drenched by hurricanes.

Then we thought about taking another boat ride. This one would have been longer (a three hour tour, I think). But in the end, we decided against it.

Do as I'm Doing

So, it was probably sub-optimal that I moved to the other side of the country, and then quit blogging. But, amazingly, only a week or two ago I had an actual request from someone that I update my blog. So, my adoring fan, this one's for you. (If you even remember who you are.)

I've been thinking lately about the difficulty in keeping in touch with my sisters. (Not doing anything about it, mind you. Just thinking about it.) Over the last few months we've been busy with moving and kids and life in general. And my sisters have been busy with moving and kids and more kids, and jobs and college and life in general. (Aside: I seriously don't understand how people survive with more than 2 kids. My house is about a foot deep in toys and blankets and clothes and mess. Is my sister's house 2 feet deep?) The specific thing that stuck out in my mind was that I'm really not sure that any of my sisters could give a description of what I do for a living these days. (Whether they could do that before I got a new job, we may never know.) So, for my sisters, and anyone else who is tagging along on this adventure, here is what Clark does at work now.

Hi, I'm Clark, and I'm a Process Engineer. My business card says that I'm a "Bulk Growth Process Engineer". Let's look at that title one piece at a time. "Bulk Growth" describes the fact that I grow big things. "Big" is relative, and in this case it means something you can hold in your hand. Our finished product is silicon carbide wafers. (see picture below) The bulk growth step is first, in which we grow crystals which are then sliced into wafers. One of the last steps that we do is to grow an epitaxial layer on top of the wafer. The epi growth is very thin, only a few thousandths of an inch. Which is why we get to describe our growth as "bulk". My dad gave me a hard time about the "Bulk Growth" part. I guess it sounds less than flattering.

Next comes "Process Engineer". The engineers are divided into three groups: Manufacturing Engineers, Process Engineers and R&D. I haven't used an analogy yet, so it's about time. If we were in charge of a fleet of cars, the MEs would be in charge of all the many day to day things. Oil changes, tires, fuel grades, tune-ups, that sort of thing. R&D people are at the extreme other end. They're in the back room drawing up some wild ideas for building a completely better car. You know, put the engine in the back, headlight that turns with the wheels, 6 wheels, fins, wankel engines, and all that good stuff. A lot of their ideas are probably going to fail miserably, but that's ok, provided that stumble into some really good stuff once in a while. In the middle are the PEs. PEs take something that is already working, and make a significant change, but without completely starting from scratch. The analogy here would be to re-build an engine, but leave the rest of things alone. (You like the car analogy? I'm trying hard to fit in in Michigan.)

So, before this gets any longer, what do I actually do? Well, today, I sat at a computer all day and drew pictures. (That's what I told Julia. And it's true.) We grow our crystals inside what is basically an intricate little graphite bucket. We put a wafer in there, along with a bunch of silicon and carbon, heat it all up until it's glowing and the silicon carbide vaporizes (it's like 2000 °C in there) and then condenses on the wafer, which slowly grows. Once it has grown big enough we let it cool down, take it out and slice it into lots of wafers. (We save some to repeat the process.) These graphite buckets are a bit more complicated than your average bucket, and we're regularly trying out minor modifications. One of my jobs is to produce the drawings that we send out to get the parts manufactured. Then, I set up experiments where I vary a few parameters, throw everything in the furnace and let it run for a few days and see if it worked or not. I collect up all the data and eventually get around to writing up a report detailing the findings. Is it better? Is it worse? (Or, better in some ways but worse in others.) And what have we learned in general about the whole process?

So, I feel like this has turned out both very generic and simplistic, but way to long at the same time. That's what you get for asking an engineer what he does.

Valentines day post: My new love

Some time ago Shannon brought home some Corn & Black Bean salsa from Meijer*. I'm in love. We seem to always be out of either salsa, or chips now. Just thought you should all know.

*Meijer (pronounced like "Meyer") is like Super Target out here. It's named after the owner, Fred Meijer. As far as we know, he's not related to Fred Meyer.

Birthday Report

I'm now 29. Woooo.

I am pretty much awesome. I got my birthday off because I exude awesomeness. So we went skiing. If there is anything more awesome than me, it is my wife. She is awesome. And hot. But mostly awesome. So she took me skiing in the city forest. We only fell down a couple of times. Did I mention it's cross-country skiing? I was disappointed that we didn't see any cross-country snowboarders. That would have been awesome. Also, rad.

So then we had a nice, relaxing day. I got some mail. I opened some awesome presents, including Cinnamon Toast Crunch from Julia (though no one is sure why, it was all her idea), and Shannon made me Monkey Cake, which was a creation from my own brain. Julia has been suggesting that I have a Monkey Cake for months, so it had to be done. And since Shannon is not cake decorator extraordinaire, we had to come up with a back up plan. We made a chocolate cake that included marshmallows, chocolate frosting, and pecans on top, and then sliced a banana for garnish. See, Monkey Cake. I think I need to send it in to a recipe contest. Maybe Sandra Lee can feature it on her show. It's Semi-Homemade!

Cocktail time! Gotta run!

The Book of Julia

Julia likes to read scriptures with our family.  Each night we try to let her "read" at least one verse.  We read it a few words at a time and she repeats what we say.

Tonight, Julia pulled out her Book of Mormon and asked who wanted to read a scripture.  She says a few words at a time, and we repeat what she says.  So far, she has a couple of favorite scriptures "memorized":

"And it came to pass . . . . that I Nephi . . . . did go . . . . go to the wilderness."

"And it came to pass . . . . that I father . . . did die."

"And it came to pass . . . that I Nephi . . . go and get the plates."

She's obviously his upon a few of the literary patters of Nephi's writing.  It is also interesting to see which things she is remembering from our reading.  (The second verse she likes is referring to Lehi dying.  Apparently this was pretty memorable.)