We Went Hunting for Houses and Found Christmas Instead!

Now that this whole graduating thing is done we move onto Phase 1 of becoming real people - finding a place to live. We haven't found the 'perfect place' yet, but at least we're learning about the type of places we should be looking. We've taken Luke with us each time, and despite telling him to stay with us and not play with the toys around the house, he's been surprisingly well-behaved. We found one house that we both like, though it's a little far from Microsoft and at the high end of our price range. But here's the best part - it's less than 10 minutes from a Denny's! When Marinda saw it she said to Luke "I grew up on Denny's" to which Luke replied "I want to live inside Denny's."

After Amit's defense last week everyone's been asking "how do you feel now?" The truth is, it's sort of anti-climactic. There was a sacrament meeting talk today by someone else who just finished his PhD and he talked about this issue - how you accomplish this huge thing, but it doesn't really make you happy afterwards. Another recent grad compared it to going through a breakup (he's not married, so I guess dating analogies are relevant) and needing time and distance to 'reset'.

Amit had his very last day of his top-secret "summer internship" on Friday. We obviously can't give details, but he got to go to a fancy office building in downtown Seattle to give a presentation with with the three assistant professors that were advising him on this project. The presentation went great and high-level executives with decision-making power seemed impressed. The university will probably get bigger grant for projects like this in the future, but of course, we're not going to see any of that money. Anyways, yay experience?

On Monday Marinda took Durandal to the vet because his eye was swollen and irritated. It turns out he's fine - it's just an old-man thing for bunnies. So now he's completely fine. We were joking that he was faking it because his medicine tastes so good.

So all that is interesting, but there aren't any pictures!  The pictures tell what we, or at least Marinda and Luke, were really up to this week!  CHRISTMAS Prep!

First, Marinda finished designing our Christmas Card for this year.  What a great job!

Front

Back

Then Marinda and Luke went crazy baking five million cookies to give to friends.

What a big helper!

Our secret ingredient is cute smiles!

Yes we need to buy a real cookie cutter someday...

Maybe Toothless wants some?

Then those two went to a fun play group Christmas party, complete with cookie decorating and a photo booth.

These always make the cutest pictures!

Luke's grand creation!

"No, it just doesn't look right!  There's too much frosting - here, I'll remove some..."

To top off the week, we did our yearly pilgrimage to Candy Cane Lane to see the lights.

Two years later and he's still freaked out by this polar bear!

Okay, all that is cool, but the most important thing you should take away from this week's entry is that tomorrow we leave for Hawaii!!!!! And no one is as excited as Luke. Marinda got him a backhoe for playing in the sand and he's super-excited about it. Every time anyone asks him about Hawaii he says "I'm going to play with my backhoe in Hawaii" and they get a really confused look on their face.

Sunshine here we come!