So, my birthday is coming up but, since we have three May birthdays in the Helland family, we had a combined party last Sunday. It was really fun! Dad helland grilled up some burgers and sauages that were delicious! Then we opened presents. My inlaws were very generous! I got lots of clothes, jewelry, hair accessories and shoes! Thank you very much Hellands! Tanner and I were excited to give Joey a cool U of U hat, which I hope he enjoys. I feel like I betrayed my BYU roots by purchasing said hat, but, sigh, we sacrifice for family. Hehe! Sandy also got lots of cute summer clothes and headbands which she looks great in! I had fun shopping with her the day before for some of the fun summer clothes! Yay for shopping! hehe.
Now Tanner is really enjoying buying me birthday presents and keeping them from me until my actual birthday. He loves keeping me in suspense! Argh! I hate waiting! hehe, That’s all for now!
This month, Jessica took the GRE. (For those who don’t know, the GRE is the graduate school equivalent of the ACT or SAT – it stands for “Graduate Record Examination” and is what you use to get into a master’s or PhD program.) The GRE is a horrible test. The entire thing is done on computers, no calculators are allowed, and the test automatically adjusts its difficulty level to match the test taker’s abilities – so if you miss a question, the next question should be easier, whereas if you get a question right, the next one will be harder.
It’s not a fun experience.
While she refuses to let me share her amazingly high score, I thought I’d offer these points of comparison-
The average Yale graduate admittant (master’s and doctoral) scored a total of 1345 on the GRE. Jessica scored higher than this.
The average Harvard graduate admittant (master’s and doctoral) scored a total of 1347 on the GRE. Jessica also scored higher than this.
Engineering majors average the highest score on the quantitative section of the GRE, at 717. Jessica scored higher than this.
Humanities majors average the highest score on the verbal section of the GRE, at 545. Jessica also scored higher than this.
Yep, I definitely married a genius.
(And Jess will probably kill me when she finds out I posted this, so if you don’t hear from me again, I’m sorry! Haha!)
The terrible month of January is finally over! No offense to those who were born in this month. I actually envy you. At least you have something to look forward to. Instead, I get post-Christmas depression, a whole month of work with no holidays, and freezing cold weather (thank you Utah!). At least in February I can expect to be showered with roses and chocolate (hint hint, Tanner).
Anyway, our Christmas was fantastic and January found us trudging off to work again. The plus side was that Tanner got a well deserved raise! It still wasn’t enough for him to give up his dream of being an author, so he’s working on query letters now. There’s just something about being self-employed that sounds so tempting. I’m sure we’ve all had those days (usually Mondays) that we wonder why we put up with it all!
Other than “work, work, work” There’s not much to say about our January. We spent most the month trying to figure out what to watch on TV until our favorite shows were back on the air. Who’s idea was it anyway for the media to get a longer vacation than I do?! If I have to work, they should too, to produce great primetime viewing! hehe! We survived by catching up on Lost and watching the Star Trek movies. Unafraid of the social stigmas, I am willing to admit that I find myself highly entertained by all things Star Trek. Don’t judge me too harshly. – Now it’s back to Bones (the best show ever) and finally Chuck and Heroes!
Like the native Californian that I am, I feel that winter has gone on long enough and hope that ground-hog didn’t see his shadow. Come on Spring!!!!
We hope everyone has a Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Kool Kwanza. Happy holidays!
And for your enjoyment, there is a house JUST like this in my parent’s neighborhood. Pretty impressive!
Follow-up (11:00am):
It has been snowing like a <insert word of choice> here. In fact, snow was so bad this morning that we lost power for almost an hour, and now they’ve closed the only road into our subdivision because of high winds and huge snow drifts.
