I passed my defense!

Yesterday was my honors thesis defense. It went really well. I was nervous going into it, but I didn't need to be. The questions that were asked were fair and I got really good feedback on how to improve my thesis before it is published.

Since you may be wondering, this is what my thesis is about:

In 2006, the Reidhead family donated a collection of over a thousand Southwestern whole ceramic pots, hundreds of arrowheads, shell jewelry, etc. to the museum where I work. They had collected all of these artifacts over a period of about 20 years. They excavated most of the artifacts in their collection themselves at archaeological sites near their home. I went to visit them in Arizona last summer and interviewed some of them about where they found the objects in the collection and what they did with them from the time they dug them up until they donated them to the museum.

It's a really interesting story. I think it will be published electronically as well, and I will post the link here when it is so that anybody who wants to read it can.

I submit my final, final draft for publication next week. I am really excited to be almost done, and really excited to be graduating with honors!

Too busy.

I am very stressed. Next week I have an orchestra concert, a midterm, my honors thesis defense, and 16 writing conferences with my students. I am tired of thinking about all of them, and so I am taking a break. Actually, I've been taking a lot of breaks. Maybe what I am really doing is procrastinating...

Here are some pictures I promised to post a long time ago, but never did. Enjoy.

The Palmyra temple at my mother-in-law's wedding in August.

Us at the Oregon Coast.

My cousin, his son Nate, and my aunt. It was Nate's birthday.

Zack really liked his brother's birthday cake.
Mmm, mmm.
My dad, my sister, my cousin, my uncle. They had a joint baptism in August.

My viola teacher

My former viola teacher, Anna Rapp, was featured in an article in the Oregonian yesterday. She is one of my very favorite people. She was an incredible teacher, very inspirational. When I was taking lessons from her, I actually practiced. :-)
Now she has cancer. Reading the article brought back lots of fun memories for me, and made me a little sad.

The link is here if you want to read about her.

Thanks to the Highway Patrol, and other advetures

This evening, we drove up to Salt Lake to have dinner with 2 of our friends. We exchanged Christmas gifts, celebrated a birthday, and had a very nice time at dinner.

On the way home, immediately after getting on the freeway, the car started swerving and shaking and it was really, really loud. We pulled over to the side, and discovered that our friends' snow tire had a huge gash down the side of it and had nearly come apart. Not sure what happened there. Anyways, we (Peter and Mike, actually) had to change the tire. Not 5 minutes after we stopped, a friendly highway patrolman stopped to see if we were ok. He lent us his jack and wrench, and soon we were on our way again. The ride was still a little bumpy because the spare was not quite the same as the snow tires, but all in all it was fine. We were very appreciative of the highway patrolman stopping to help us and make sure we were okay!

Once we got home, we tried out the new games we had given each other for Christmas. Zombie Fluxx is really fun, more fun than I thought it would be. I am glad we have regular Fluxx, though, just because I don't really like the pictures of zombies and brains on the Zombie Fluxx cards.

Then, we went to Gloria's Little Italy for some gelato. It was FABULOUS, just like the last time we had it. They have moved from 300 S to Center street and University--a much better location for them. So check them out, if you're in Provo. :-)

Other news--at least for now, we are no longer taking care of Grandma Moss on the weekends. She got the flu and is really going downhill, so Peter's aunt, who is the one managing her care, thought it would be better if there were other people there to take care of her. We miss Grandma, but at the same time it was really nice to have the weekend in Provo.

Visit from Megan

Peter's cousin Megan and her boyfriend James came from California to visit Grandma Moss yesterday. We got to spend the day with them too since we were up taking care of Grandma. Here is a picture of Grandma and Megan. I had not met Megan before, and so it was fun to get to know her a little bit. We enjoyed getting to know her boyfriend too.