Way To Go Adam!!!

On Good Friday, Adam participated in an aerospace competition and got third place!! The competition included a written 11 page max report and a 20 minute presentation. He presented on his master's research which is about the effects of space weather (specifically protons) on satellite imaging detectors. He did awesome!!! The competition was at the AIAA Region IV Student Conference 2010 located at NASA JSC in Houston, TX. The conference even put us up in a hotel for free! There were about 12 students in the master's division and Adam did a great job! After the awards ceremony, I made him pose in front of the podium even though he didn't want to. He will thank me later.

Isn't he a cutie.

less than a week, less than a week

While we were dating, I had an internship in the Washington D.C. area for 12ish weeks. Every time Adam and I would talk on the phone we would chant, "less than a week, less than a week" even though most of the time it was way more than a week until we were together again. It made us feel better. So now, "less than a week, less than a week" until we can stop this graduate school nonsense. I think if we didn't have each other, this would be impossible for both of us. Thank you Jesus!

This week has been very research heavy for both of us and that is no fun to blog about. I am putting off my extreme budget spreadsheet and house buying calculator for a while because I was slacking in the areas I get paid for [read: not as fun things]. I hope we can both finish in the June time frame so that we can go on a little vacation before Adam has to start a real job in July.

On Friday night, we had a Disciple Now type thing with our Youth Impact junior high and high schoolers. It was fun/crazy! I think the kids loved it.

Last post I was already over the "that's all for today" sign off, but I'll try it again today.

that's all for today

The beginning of home hunting

We spent the second half of spring break in the Dallas area hanging with friends and looking for a home. We checked out two apartment complexes and talked to a mortgage guy. No offense, but apartments are just lame. We only looked at two, but they were highly rated on apartment finder. Why would I pay someone $1000+/month for a teeny kitchen?? It just seemed silly. I'm pretty sure that we would have to sell 30% of our belongings before we fit into one of those.

The meeting with the mortgage guy went great! I was very impressed about how much they will let us borrow just based on Adam's salary (because we don't have a number for mine yet). And then I was even more impressed when we realized how big of a house that would buy in this fantastic home market. We are pretty much sold on buying a house, now we just have to figure out the logistics. It's like a multi-variable optimization problem... if only one of us had taken optimization. It is just like Dr. Hurtado tells me, life is a two point boundary value problem and we are just trying to figure out the path between the end points.

The problem is that we have no savings and our mortgage guy says we have to pay at least 3% down on closing. We will have that money once Adam starts working because they were so sweet to offer him a signing bonus. So then we wait until after he starts, but where will we live until then???? Also: When do we start really looking for houses if we aren't closing until August? Who knows a real estate person that we can trust that knows the Grand Prairie area? 1 million other questions... to much to think about now. It is fun to see who can find the cheapest and best house online. Did you know that google maps has a real-estate feature. Very helpful!!

Hello World

Hey Hermano-s,

This blog is going to be a place where I will talk about what is going on in our lives. We are currently 66.7% through our first year of marriage and loving it. I think this first year of marriage has been wonderful and one of the reasons for that I believe is that we have been living here in College Station. We are kind of secluded with not as many friends our age to hang out with so we have been able to spend some great quality time together.

Using this blog I will be able to share with everyone some of the challenges and exciting things that happen to us. We are so excited for what God has planned for our lives!!

loves,
KJ (& AJ)