We are just finishing a very busy three weeks!  We moved into a none-bedbug and cockroach infested apartment.  The last day we were moving out of the previous apartment Heather discovered a whole nest of dead bedbugs in a room we had used for storage.  From what the exterminator told us, if the bugs came in after we moved in they should have been living in the bedroom or the living room, places we spent a lot of time.  They should not have been in the extra bedroom, that wasn't close enough to a meal.  Take from that as you will, but we are pretty sure the apartment had bedbugs when we moved into it.

Yesterday Heather passed her Registered Dietician exam so she is now Heather Call R.D.  I am super proud of her and how hard she worked for that.  It is the culmination of almost four years of work for her.  After the test she said she just felt relieved but it slowly became happiness.  Unfortunately we didn't get much time to celebrate.  We were in charge of getting food together for a church activity last night and right as it started we got a call from our good friends the Stewarts.

The Stewarts just moved into the ward about a month ago from Oregon.  He called because mine was the only number they had for someone in the ward and their baby decided to come yesterday even though it was a few weeks early.  They called because their babysitters had another commitment and they needed someone to step in for them.  Heather and I grabbed plates of food from the activity and went to their house to watch the two kids until their Dad could be home.  It took a while but their third child was born early this morning and he and his mom are in very good health.  Busy day, but absolutely worth it!

As for me I just finished a week of TA training and will be starting classes on Tuesday.  It is going to be a crazy busy semester, hopefully I can stay on top of things, though I already feel like I am behind.  Three Sundays ago I was also asked to be the Sunday School President in the ward.  That means I am something like a "teaching specialist" and it is my responsibility to make sure the classes have teachers every week and make sure the teachers are all trained.  I've been doing a lot of reading for that to figure out everything I need to do, I think it will turn out okay.

One last anecdote from the last few weeks.  The week after we moved into our new apartment we were asked by a family at church to house sit for them while they were on vacation.  We agreed to do it and it was great blessing.  That week we cleaned an organized our house but went home every evening to their beautiful home.  They had this dog named  Indy that Heather fell in love with.  It was hard for her to say goodbye to Indy.  Anyways, so the anecdote...

Indy the dog.  She and Heather loved playing together and going on walks.

One evening while we were at this house Heather decided to practice the piano.  I was doing some work in a nearby room but as she played I couldn't resist going in to where she was and sitting down to listen.  She played a number of primary songs from church, they were all beautiful.  As I sat there I remembered my grandparents in Utah.  Sometimes Grandpa asks Grandma to play and he goes and sits in his recliner.  He closes his eyes and gets this smile on his face and the peace in their home becomes so very profound.  Usually Grandma plays church songs and that makes the spirit fill the whole house.  I felt like Grandpa sitting in that chair and Heather felt like Grandma.  I hope that in the future we can be more like them, there isn't a better set of role models anywhere.


    

We are slowly settling back into normal life after our visits to family.  Though at the moment we are facing some changes not so far on the horizon.  Since we moved in we've had a problem with second hand smoke in our apartment (all of our adjacent neighbors smoke quite a bit) and the complex we are in doesn't have another, similar apartment they could move us to.  The solution (just approved on Friday) is that we will be moving to one of their sister complexes at the beginning of August.  We will actually have a little more space at the other apartment and the company isn't going to charge us the extravagant cancellation fee ($1200) for ending our lease early.  All in all we feel pretty blessed with how it is working out.

Lately Heather and I have been getting into some new book series that we are very much enjoying.  Heather is reading the Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan.  We own his Percy Jackson series and really like them so when Heather saw these at the library she decided to give them a try.  (We also have some good friends who like them, shout out to Brigham and Stephanina!)  I've been jumping around to lots of different books but finally decided it was time for me to give the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan a try.  I know a number of people, who have somewhat similar tastes to my own, that have really enjoyed them so I thought they might be good.

The other day I had the chance to go out with the missionaries here in Chapel Hill to visit a family.  They are refugees from Burma, I'm not sure of all the circumstances surrounding that.  It was a really neat experience.  The two teenage kids spoke decent English but the parents really had a hard time understanding us.  In the end we promised to get them a Book of Mormon in their native language so they could read it, the dad was very excited about that.  Also, I guess there is a young man in our ward who is in a similar situation to the family and speaks what they speak (it isn't Burmese, but I can't remember what it's called) so the missionaries will try bringing him next time.  It was a neat experience despite the language barriers, it was nice to go out with the missionaries again.

It's Father's Day!  Not that I am a father yet but I still think it's a good day.

Heather and I just got back from a week and a half trip to visit our families.  We spent four days with Heather's family and four days with mine and two days at a wedding (one of Heather's friends).  It was a lot of driving (almost 2600 miles) but it was worth it.  In Kentucky we worked on the farm a lot, did some visiting, and found a huge patch of raspberries on the farm (though most of the berries weren't ripe yet).  In Indiana my whole family was there to say farewell to my brother James.  He is leaving to serve a mission in Chile next month and will be gone for two years.  He will spend his time there preaching and doing volunteer service for the community he is assigned to.  We are very proud of him.

It was a good time.  It was good to talk to our parents about our new home.  We had lots of fun playing with nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters.  Space was a little tight in Indiana and we ended up in the basement but it was worth it.  Being able to be with our families forever will be a tremendous blessing and I hope that we can live up to it.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about see http://mormon.org/family/)  

HAPPY NATIONAL DOUGHNUT DAY!!!

Well here we are in North Carolina!  We don't have all of the boxes unpacked yet but we did get our new driver's licenses yesterday.  Our new apartment is definitely bigger than the one in Logan but at the same time there is less space to store things.  We used the last of our gift cards from getting married to buy a couple shelves for the kitchen since it only has a couple cupboards for storage.  We also got a couch from Craigslist and a couple of pieces of furniture from Goodwill.  All in all it is shaping up very nice.

Heather currently has three (or maybe its four) job applications that she is waiting to hear back about.  Of all the jobs she is most excited about a couple of pediatric nutrition jobs in the UNC Healthcare system.  We could definitely use some prayers on that front though.

I have been working for one of my new professors this past week.  He only has enough money to hire me for two months this summer but I hope I can find some other project to do during August.  For my Physics buddies who will understand this: we are working on a Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system.  Right now I am writing a LabVIEW program that looks at data from one computer and uses it to tell another computer whether it should open or close some shutters between the source elements and the sample.  Technically I believe the setup is called "phase lock epitaxy."  It isn't a new idea by any means but our lab has never done it before so it is new to us.

Pictures are forthcoming in the next post!

It is official, I will be a Tar Heel this fall.  Within the Call family Heather and I have dubbed ourselves the "Carolina Calls."  We are excited to be going but it is happening very fast.  Currently we are in the process of deciding what to take and what to leave behind.  Logan has been a pretty awesome place for us and we are sad to leave but we are very excited for what the future holds.

The plan is for me to do summer research in the Physics department and Heather is currently applying for jobs in different labs on campus.  She wants to work for a year and then try applying again next year.  She will also be studying for the RD (Registered Dietitian) exam this summer.  I will also be correcting the formatting problems on my thesis and probably doing some more analysis for my USU advisor while he looks for a new student.  Hopefully between those things we can find time to get to know our new neighborhood and enjoy the fun of living in a new place.

I (Robert) just finished a visit to Case Western Reserve University yesterday.  I was checking out the area and the Physics program to see if that is where we would like to spend the next five years.  Cleveland was impressive to say the least.  Once we got into the city I only saw two fast food restaurants: one Popeyes, and one Subway.  All the other places were small restaurants, many of them one of a kind.  So they get and A+ for food.

They also get and A+ for opportunities for Heather and an A- for opportunities for me.  Everyone was very cordial when I spoke with them.  Professors were excited about their research and students enjoyed being there.  It is only about 1.5-2 times the size of USU's Physics department so it felt like a nice fit for me.  It was a wonderful trip which makes my decision very difficult.

I have not visited UNC but I have talked to many professors there via phone and e-mail.  A couple of guys I know have also been accepted there so I talked to them about their experiences.  It sounds like a great place but definitely different than Case.  In they end I'm not really sure where we will end up for the next few years but we are going to try and decide before the end of the week.

By way of a quick update about Heather: she found out recently that her service hours are due April 15 instead of May 1 like she had thought so life is getting very busy for her.  I'm confident she will make it through but she is stressed pretty badly right now.  Hooray for looking ahead to the end of the semester!

Here is a quick news update from us a little more than half way through the semester.  Thursday morning we got the call that Heather's Grandaddy had passed away.  It is a sad time for her (complicated by tests on Thursday and Friday) but we know he is in a better place now.  She flew out early Saturday morning to be with her family and attend the funeral.  I am going to work hard while she is gone to try and write as much of my Master's thesis as I possibly can.

A few weeks ago I was accepted to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH.  We are still waiting to hear from the other schools but I will be visiting Case Western later this month to check out the program.  Anyone who has helpful advice about a possible move to Cleveland please comment on this.

Today our nephew Matthew was blessed in church.  My Dad flew out for the occasion and stayed with me last night.  This morning on our way to the blessing we stopped at the cemetery in Brigham City and looked around for my great-grandfather's gravestone.  Dad found some Bywaters (his grandma's line) pretty quickly but it took us 20-30 minutes to find B.C. Call's.  It is a massive stone inscribed with his and his wife's names on the front and their kids names on the back.  

B.C. Call's gravestone at Brigham City cemetery

Obviously I never met B.C. Call but Dad remembers him quite clearly.  He was a tremendous man.  He was the first player-coach of the Brigham Young Academy (now BYU) football team.  Later in life he became a lawyer and was made an honorary Indian chief for the legal help he gave to a Native American tribe.  I think my favorite story about him is about his reputation in Brigham City during the great depression.  People knew to send any vagrants or drifters who came through town to B.C. Call's house because he would give them a place to stay, food to eat, and help them find work.  When asked why, he said that if any of his sons ever found themselves in that kind of situation he hoped somebody would do the same for them.

I'm on here again... Robert might worry he's created a monster. I just have to say I am sooo excited today.  I am a nutrition coach for an elementary school as part of a grant on of my professors is working with.  I don't get paid, I am strictly a student who volunteered to help.  I had grand dreams of transforming the children in the school to vegetable eating machines, who didn't just eat vegetables, but loved them.  After a year of working with it, and having many days of anger, frustration, fears, and tears, I have begun to feel that fulfilling feeling that can only come from success...even thought it is a small success.

I implemented a program I called the "Golden Apple" there that I based off of their "Golden Tennis Shoe" program already going at the school.  The idea is that the kids could gain points for doing food related activities or writing projects.  I had mentioned prizes at the beginning of the school year, but let's just say participation was very, very low.  It was low, that is until today.  About two weeks ago I had the PE teacher post a poster in the lobby next to my "Nutrition Corner" that showed pictures of the prizes and listed the leaderboard of those who had earned their small amount of points.  This week I went in to pick up any papers from my box and it had SO many pieces of papers with drawings of fruits or vegetables, recipes, and ABC's of fruits and vegetables.  I also have a place to do my parent classes that I have had in the works for months.  My first Tasty Table was even performed at the school last week and it feels SO good to have things actually going.  I feel like I'm doing what I was sent there to do.  I had abandoned my dream of starting a school garden there, but after 6 months of trying to push myself (and others) I realized it just wasn't the best time, but maybe the next nutrition coach can make it work.  Even though I let that go, now I feel like the other things being done are starting to succeed with more time to work on them.  

My biggest lesson learned: Even if you have a LOT of good ideas that can make a difference you really have to think about what is achievable with the people around you.  Also, sometimes a few really good and well executed projects are more easily achieved and successful than a lot of great ideas that you won't have time to do well or effectively.

So this is officially my first blog... Robert has done the ones prior to this.  The deal was simple. If I wanted to change the background, I had to make a post.  So here it goes.

Life has been rather hectic this semester and graduation can't seem to come soon enough.  At least what appear to be my two biggest projects are done now.  Still between Andy Anderson's anatomy class and my advanced micronutrient class I have a LOT of learning to do.  The other classes don't seem to require as much brain power. I just need to get all my hours and try to keep my GPA up.

So far in my anatomy lab we had just been studying the bones and not looking at the cadavers.  Tonight was the first night when those bags were opened and the smell of stalled putrefaction was allowed to fill the air.  (Thank goodness  they hit the switch that circulated fresh air in and attempted to suck the foul-smelling air out.)   I must admit it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but still, looking at a dead person is not exactly ideal before coming home and trying to sleep. All-in-all I just think I will have trouble with memorizing the muscles... not where they are, just keeping straight where they originate and insert.

Robert and I are still waiting to hear back from graduate schools.  Frankly, I believe he has a better shot than I do, but we'll see if anyone is interested in the skills I have to offer.  We did hear from Case Western Reserve University, but the official letter hasn't come.  So we will wait for the final say, but the preliminary seems to have been passed easily.  They make a pretty compelling offer, but we'll see what the other schools have to offer us and make our decision then. Let's just hope they do so soon.  I am ready to make plans for the summer and fall and to know what direction life and our Heavenly Father are taking us.  Patience has never been a very good virtue of mine (that's generally Robert's forte), but I am working on it.

My grandaddy is approaching the end of his life.  It has been good and difficult (bitter/sweet) at the same time, as well as a time for reflection.  He has been separated from his eternal companion for nearly 20 years and it will be a great reunion I am sure when they can finally be together again, never to be separated again.   I think this is something he has looked forward to for a while now.  Still, for those whom he is leaving behind it is more of a struggle.  I worry mainly for my mom and uncle, but they have accepted what is to come, which is a big part of beginning the necessary process of letting go and of grieving. My prayers are with them every day, but I rejoice in the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that we have the opportunity to be with our families for all eternity.  How blessed is the Plan of Salvation that we can return to the presence of our Heavenly Father and live together in our families.  Grandaddy, though you may leave us here, we will see you again.

Christmas Break is almost over but Heather and I made the most of it.  We took the train out to Elkhart, IN where my brother Phil picked us up.  We spent the next days split between my parents and Heather's parents.  In fact her whole family was there which was a lot of fun.  We went to the Dayton Air Force Museum, recorded our own copies of home movies, played lots of games, went to the temple, and enjoyed a break dancing demonstration from Heather's two year old nephew.  It was awesome.

The train was a new experience for us.  It took about 34 hours to go from Salt Lake City to Chicago.  The seats are bigger than an airplane and you have a lot more leg room.  All in all it wasn't a bad experience, it kind of forced us to relax since all we did for a day and half was sit in a chair and entertain ourselves.  Here are a couple pictures Heather took while we were on the train.

Top picture is the old train station in Grand Junction, Co; Bottom is
the sun rising in southern UT.

School starts on Monday and I think we are ready to get back... I guess we'll see.  I need to write my thesis this semester and Heather finishes her program.  We are still applying to graduate schools.  That is going to be the hardest thing about this semester is waiting to find out where we will be in the fall.