Queso, Michael Phelps, and Cookie Cake

Kolby and I finally got around to celebrating my birthday, which was back in August. We were in Ghana on my actual birthday and then my birthday present didn't come in the mail until this week so we've had to delay the celebration. What did I ask for for my birthday that took so long to arrive? The MICHAEL PHELPS: INSIDE STORY OF THE BEIJING GAMES dvd, of course! Isn't that what everyone requests for their birthday? I know it may sound strange/random, but we were in Africa for the vast majority of the Olympics - obviously without access to any television - and missed the whole Michael Phelps phenomenon. So, neither of us had seen a single second of any of the races. Spoiler alert: He wins all 8.

Our evening started with a yummy dinner at Ninfa's, my favorite Mexican food restaurant in Waco. I got to order all of the things that we're usually too frugal to spring for like QUESO, a topping for our fajitas, and a coke! I mean it just doesn't get much better than that. Then it was two full hours of Michael Phelps commemoration followed by a delicious dessert --- a mondo cookie cake that Maya had ordered for me. She's so thoughtful.

It may not have been the most conventional of birthday celebrations, but it was quite perfect and certainly worth the wait!

Help?

I'm getting to spend this beautiful Saturday cooped up at my desk studying for a microeconomics test that will most certainly be the death of me. I vaguely remember the head of the economics department telling me (years ago) that if I plan to go on to graduate school in economics then I should use my undergraduate electives towards upper-level math classes. But what fun would that have been? Not nearly as much fun as taking classes like "backpacking & camping" and using the spare time to plan a wedding! The fun was short-lived. So if any of you math guru's out there have any insight on the following topics, it would sure save me some time on Wikipedia.com:

Quasi-concavity, homothetic functions, Euler's theorem, Marshallian demand vs. Hicksian demand, log-function rule, matrix determinants, second principal minors, bordered Hessian matrices, Lagrangian multipliers, monotonic transformations, Cobb-Douglas utility, the envelope theorem, or Shepherd's lemma.

Seriously, who comes up with this stuff?

Wedding Album

We finally got to see the design of our wedding album this week, via e-mail. Who knows when we'll actually have it in our hands, but this certainly suffices for now! Here are a few pages:

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What a wonderful, wonderful day!

Memory Lane

I was cleaning out some stuff around my computer today and came across a CD with pictures of Kolby and I from high school. I thought I'd share my walk down memory lane...

Dressed as G.I. Joe & G.I. Jane for a costume banquet... age 16.

In St. Louis, Missouri on a church mission trip... age 17.

At youth camp... age 15.
I think I may even still have braces at this point. And, if you think Kolby is lanky now--- check out those legs in this picture!!!

I feel like we've changed a lot since then but when I take a look at pictures like these it seems like we're exactly the same and that no time has passed at all. It was this time of year at a high school football game EIGHT years ago that we awkwardly talked about how we both liked each other.
And that's how it all began...

www.25cloth.com

My older brother's t-shirt company has a new initiative for this quarter. Now, every t-shirt you buy will provide a chicken for a poverty-stricken family in India. Chickens can produce up to 40 dozen eggs per year, providing these families with a steady source of food and income.

Check out www.25cloth.com and buy a shirt that can change the life of a family in India!

Here are some of the t-shirt designs: For $20 you can have a cool shirt and know you've helped a family in need... so why not join the Two-Five movement?!?!

Heartbroken

I'm sorry for the back-to-back dog posts. I promise I won't make a habit of it! Today was the first Saturday in MONTHS that we've been home at our apartment so we took advantage of the leisurely day and cooked a big breakfast. Maya assumed that because I was in the kitchen cooking-- it must be dinnertime. I tried to tell her that it's not time for her dinner yet, but she obviously didn't understand. Thinking she must have misbehaved so badly that she didn't even deserve her dinner for the day, she retreated to the living room so ashamed of herself that she even had to hide her face. She is still being a mope about it... silly dog!

Such a Lady

Maya hasn't gotten much face time on the blog lately so I thought I'd post a couple of new pictures. She crosses her front legs like this pretty much anytime she's laying down... such a little lady.

We think Maya is the best dog... ever. She's the happiest dog in the world but also very calm. She's totally silent and possesses none of the annoying dog habits like jumping on people, begging for attention, getting into things she's not supposed to, etc. She is also a snuggler, especially when it's getting close to bedtime. And she's BEAUTIFUL! I'd say 9 out of 10 people that I pass on the sidewalk when I'm taking her on a walk comment on how pretty she is. Add that to the mystery of not knowing what breed of dog she really is (obviously mostly husky, but she only weighs 33 pounds so she's got to be mixed with something else) and she's just the whole package. I couldn't recommend rescuing a dog from an animal shelter highly enough... especially ones that are full-grown like Maya was when we got her. Such a joy!