All Not Quiet on the Western Slope

My internship at McGladrey ended a couple weeks ago, and after getting all moved in to our new apartment (a post on that to come), Amy and I were definitely ready for a little weekend getaway. We headed out to the Western Slope, over Grand Mesa with the Loucks bunch. We all stayed at the beautiful Cedaredge house, then trekked over to Montrose and Ridgway State Park for the Woodis Family Reunion. I enjoyed some good food, good company, and several rounds of bocce before cooling off at the swim beach. The first pictures are from Friday at Uncle Steve's house, where we had a real-life Pig Roast... a few from the party/sing-along at Ridgway, then finally some views around the Cedaredge estate. Bear in mind, however, that my pictures are less than representative of the entire fun weekend. I think we'll go ahead and mark our calendar for the next reunion in five years. Florida anybody??

SNE Conference in New Orleans

During my last year at BYU I had the privilege of doing research with two of my nutrition professors. We studied College Students’ attitudes and perceptions towards cooking and pulled data from a cooking assignment they were required to do outside of class. Each of us took a different aspect of the assignment and created our own abstracts to submit to the Society for Nutrition Education (SNE). Each of our abstracts were accepted and we spent the last couple months creating posters to present in New Orleans during the conference. The Conference went from July 11th-15th. I got to attend several classes, listen to several keynote speakers, attend a workshop, and present my own research. It was interesting to hear what other professionals are doing around the country and throughout the world. I learned and re-learned a lot of interesting and useful information.

One of my professors lived in New Orleans for two years while she got her masters. This was very convenient because she could show us around town without getting lost or ending up in areas we didn’t want to be…

New Orleans is always a party - Mardi Gras float full of people going down the street in the middle of the day and it's not even Mardi Gras!

Downtown New Orleans is full of colorful, intricate French and Spanish architecture. The not-quite-so-colorful building was New Orleans' first "skyscraper" reaching four stories into the sky!

Riding the trolley car with Shannon and the others to get some dinner in Uptown New Orleans. The hot, sticky humidity does wonders to your skin, clothes, and hair.

Dr. Brown, Me, Dr. Richards, and Shannon in front of an Andrew Jackson Memorial and Catholic Cathedral.

Experiencing the heat, humidity, and smell of the city is enough for me not to get excited about planning another trip there any time soon… however, hearing jazz on every corner was a special treat.

All in all I am very grateful to have had this experience and to have gone through the tedious process of doing research to get there. I owe a BIG THANKS to BYU for allotting the funds for me to travel and spend five days 'continuing my education' and providing me the experience of presenting my own research to others from around the world!!

Intern Capstone Conference

Near the midpoint of my internship at end of June, the firm flew all the interns out to Chicago for a Capstone Conference at the Q Center in St. Charles, an hour or so west of the city. We listened to a lot of guest motivational speakers ("You are the future!") and broke up into teams for a video/podcast/presentation contest. My team did a video, and while the results were fairly unimpressive, I think I did a pretty good job editing the thing given the time constraints. My more creative ideas fell on deaf ears (the number of Anchorman and Beer Pong references between all the videos was an ironic and nauseating commentary on our generation), but it was a fun process overall. The theme of the conference was "Map Your Future" and the objective, I guess, was to point us in the right direction as we start our careers, ideally with McGladrey. I saw the Sears Tower and Wrigley Field from the plane, but that's the closest I got... hope to make it out to Chicago again someday.

Think of each of these pictures as Where's Waldo? and then try to find me in each one. Here's a clue for you: Y the long cranium?

The J.A.M. Sessions

My new blog. Get curious.

The Envelope Please...

By the slimmest of margins in our poll, "Girl" beat out "Boy" 6 to 5, but majority loses this time around because our little baby is a BOY! Baby Boy Mitchell will be here in late October, and he was an active little bugger for the ultrasound lady today!

Baby Bump

Finally some pictures of the baby bump! The first picture was taken at 15 weeks, and the most recent is from this week (19 weeks). The baby is an active little squirt. I have been feeling it move a lot during the last 3 weeks and I love it! The movements are still pretty small, but Jeff has been able to feel it a couple of times as well. We are so excited!

Vote in the Baby Poll!

Just a quick plug for the little poll we posted on here... We are going in for Amy's ultrasound on Thursday, so please vote (over in the side column) whether you think it's going to be a boy or a girl!