Master's Project

This is Sterling giving you an update on our recent news. As most of you know, I recently applied for graduate school at BYU. Well, after a long and tedious process, I was just advised by Dr. Larsen that he would like to recommend me to work on his sage grouse project coming up in March.

(Dr. Larsen)

Now, he cannot accept people into the graduate program as that decision is left up to the graduate committee. However, with a professor willing to sponsor me, I am pretty much guaranteed acceptance. So, hopefully the committee will meet soon and will officially accept me as a master’s student at the university.

What’s that you say? What is a sage grouse, and who gives a flying leap about them? Well, this is a sage grouse, also known as a prairie chicken:

This is a male, and during mating, they puff up these air sacs in their chest and perform a rather elaborate mating dance trying to impress the ladies who watch from the sidelines. They live in large open areas of sagebrush, and during mating season they gather in a more or less bare patch in the sage brush called a lek, and males strut their stuff.

So, who gives a flying leap about these birds? Well, for many years, they have been sought after as a game species for hunters, and they are also enjoyed by many people for the mating rituals that I have described. Recently, however, these birds have seen a dramatic decrease in their population. Several studies were performed to see if they should be considered endangered or not. While the controversy of listing them is still up in the air and in the hands of the politicians, the studies have discovered perhaps the main cause for their decline. As I stated, these birds live in large, open areas of sage brush. Many of these large areas have been reduced to smaller sizes. Additionally, the open areas are being dotted with various types of tall structures. Raptors, such as hawks and falcons, perch on these structures and can easily pick off the grouse.

(Notice the two oil rigs behind the grouse)

Because of the habitat problems, birds have stopped using the limited number of leks (strutting grounds) and overall have just had a hard time surviving.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not an environmentalist tree hugger. My license plate cover says “save a tree, shoot a tree hugger”. I don’t believe in the concept that we should preserve everything and that man is evil and destroying the planet. However, I don’t believe that we are entitled to exploit the world we live in with no regard for the consequences. I believe that we should be responsible stewards of this earth—using the resources we have, but ensuring that they will be well taken care of.

That being said, here is the purpose of my project. The state of Utah has five core populations of sage grouse that they consider to be vital to the survival of the species in the state. In an effort to find out what these populations need to survive, the state is willing to pay thousands of dollars (mostly from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses) to study each population. This way, we can ensure their survival, but also allow other entities to use the land around them without a major affect on future numbers. So far, the project has done wonders, and bird numbers are recovering quite well. However, the state has only conducted this study on 4/5 populations. Guess what, I will be studying the fifth.

Sponsored by BYU and funded by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and under the direction of Dr. Larsen, I will go out to the diamond Mountains near Vernal Utah to study this last major population.

(More or less the area, Vernal is in the background)

I will trap,

measure and weigh,

and radio collar about 100 grouse.

I will then track them over the next several months to record their migration routes, leks, and other habitat being used.

Over the spring and summer, I will be in Vernal at a bunk house for four days and three nights, and then I will be back with Erika for the rest of the week. I will probably have a crew out there working with me also. Starting in September, I will be taking classes, compiling data, and traveling to Vernal about once a week to collect more data.

So this is what I will be doing for the next couple of years. Things are not for sure until the graduate committee makes their decision, and even then, the project might not be exactly as I described it. But as far as I know, this is what awaits me.

And may I add as a side note, this is the most messed up and non-user friendly program I have used since elementary school when computers were being developed. I can't believe Google would produce a program so bad for posting blogs.

The Holidays

Ok, so time for the holiday recap. For Thanksgiving we went to Colorado to my Grandma Peggy's house. My brother David came with us and my dad flew out from Hong Kong because one of his best friends unexpectedly passed away a few days before Thanksgiving. So we went to the funeral down in Price, then continued on our way to Colorado. It was a nice weekend. We relaxed and played games and ate a lot. A friend of my grandma's friend taught us all how to play Texas Hold'Em. It's kinda fun to know all the rules and to actually understand the game more or less. I realized after we got back that we didn't take any pictures! Pretty lame, I know.

For Christmas, we spent the holiday with Sterling's family. They have this awesome tradition where they do fondue every Christmas Eve. We get cheese and crackers and veggies, and marinade beef in yummy sauces and then cook it in the hot oil in the fondue pot. By far one of my favorite traditions. I'm dead set on getting our own fondue pot when we finally move out of Utah. Sterling's brother, Preston, his wife Alisha, and their little girl Beca were all there as well. It was a lot of fun. Once again I forgot to bring my camera.

The only pictures I did manage to get were a few of Cami opening presents at our house Christmas morning. This is the only one that wasn't too blurry. Like most little children, she enjoyed the wrapping paper far more than the actual presents.

For New Years, brace yourself for this, we went to bed at nine. Yeah, that's right, we're really boring. But really, Sterling had to work at 6 the next morning, and I'm just always tired since I'm pregnant, so we just decided to go to bed. Our neighbors woke us up at midnight though. They were out on the lawn yelling for a good twenty minutes. At least someone knows how to ring in the new year right, it's just not us.

So, as far as jobs go, I kinda left it hanging there. So, to go backwards, he didn't get the Fountain Green job, but did get offered the animal control officer position at Saratoga Springs. We took it, but once he started working there, we found out it wasn't what they'd told us it would be. He would have had to be on call every single weekend and he was required to work after hours (staying after for police meetings and such, even though he's not a police officer) and he wouldn't get paid overtime for it either. It just wasn't good. So, he quit that job and we looked into Marines again. That's what I meant when I said it's coming full circle. Sadly, that's not going to work out. They don't have any other pilot spots open until October and we certainly don't want to wait that long. So, he's recently taken the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and is busy applying to BYU's Master's program. He's talked to a professor at BYU who will likely take him on (assuming he's accepted to BYU) and will be able to start in mid-March with any luck. He'll be studying sage grouse (a type of bird) out in Vernal. Then he'll eventually start classes in September and we'll go from there.

Right now, however, he's working as a supervisor of the housekeeping department up at Sundance. It's just a temporary thing until we hear from BYU, which should hopefully be the second week of February. For now though he's supervising a crew of ten hispanic women, few of whom speak English. His spanish language capabilities are really coming in handy right now. We're just happy that he has a job, however temporary it may be. The other day he was talking with one of the guys on his shift, Julio, and found out that he has a wife who works there as well who's name is Erika and they have an 18 mo. old daughter named Camille. Talk about coincidences....

As for me, BYU's new EMT certification class started up again. I was able to be a TA for it last year and get to do it again this year. It's always been fun for me to help teach this class. It's nice to have something to do to keep me busy, plus I get to earn a little money on the side.

Cami is finally going to nursey by herself! It's so nice to have to worry about her anymore. The only difficulty is that our church just moved to 11:00 which is when her nap time is, so by the end of nursey she's really tired and fussy. Last week she sat and cried for about ten minutes. Hopefully that won't become a habit though.

Because it's been awhile since I posted pictures, I'm just going to stick a whole bunch on here of Cami. I still haven't gotten any of me and my belly. Just keep forgetting, plus there's never anyone around to hold the camera for me since Sterling is working all the time. But here's some pictures.

This is at Cami's cousin Beca's birthday party. She had fun playing with the boxes.


This is Cami and Noah. His mom and I were due on the same day. Noah ended up being born 19 hours earlier than Cami. We joke that they're betrothed, but then I found out that Noah has been betrothed to several girls in his ward as well.



Cami playing in the leaves back in October. She didn't really seem to know what to think at first, but she had fun. While I was raking, Cami came over and started scooping the leaves up with her hands trying to help me. It was really cute.





Cami and Sterling just playing on the couch. This is what happens if you leave the two of them alone together too long.



One day I was really bored, so I decided to make a countdown for my pregnancy. It was probably one of the most depressing things ever because the chain just kept going on and on and on! Each of the colored ones represents a Sunday. We hung it on our bedroom ceiling fan like some bizarre chandelier. It's been very satisfying to tear a ring off each evening. As of now it no longer overlaps.

I have to say it's amazing how fast the second pregnancy goes. I can't believe I've only got 8 weeks left. I was talking to my sister about that the other day and she said she found the same thing. I guess it's partly because you're not obsessing over being pregnant like you do with your first. Also, you've already got one child to keep you occupied so you don't have much time to dwell on your growing belly.

Updating

Every time I get on the computer with the intention of updating my blog, I always spend way too much time checking everyone else's blogs and by the time I'm done with that it's either too late at night, or I'm just no longer in the mood to sit down and type an extensive post for my own blog. Today it's the latter. Maybe if I just started being better about updating more frequently, my updates wouldn't seem so arduous.

Ah well. Since I'm not in the mood for a long post, let me just write on here that, yes, we are still alive. I am still very pregnant and getting more so. We had a great Christmas and Thanksgiving, which, hopefully, I'll blog about before the year is over. I'm sure I've almost completely lost my readership since I never blog anymore. We still don't have a job and things are... well, coming full circle in that area. We'll just leave it at that for now. I'll explain when we know more. Cami is still adorably cute and has been climbing everywhere. Sterling is trying to teach me spanish. Trying being the operative word there. And that's really all that's happening at the Fenwick household. All in all, things are going well here. Thanks for asking. :)

One last random thought, have you ever noticed that in movies, almost nobody shuts the front door when they walk into the house. There will be five feet of snow outside and people just walk in without shutting the door. Ever. Also, did you notice that when people talk on the phone in movies, they never say 'goodbye', they just hang up. I notice both of those things a lot and, frankly, they annoy me. We watched "Julie and Julia" the other night and they did both of those things quite frequently. I think from now on I'll never tell people 'goodbye' on the phone. I'll just hang up randomly and leave them talking to themselves for a good five minutes before they realize that I'm no longer there. After all, that's how it's done in the movies, right?

Good excuse

So, for once I actually have a good excuse as to why I haven't blogged in almost a month. You ready? Here it is: our laptop is broken. See, our regular computer is upstairs in Cami's room and our laptop is usually downstairs by the couch and that's where I usually blog from. But, since it's broken, and the only time I find to blog is when Cami is napping, I can't do it because I'll wake her up. You see my problem here? But I figured that I should get back to it, since it has been so long, so brace yourself for a few pictures and a bunch of mindless rambling.

So, first things first. My sister mentioned on her blog what we're having (we got our 20 week ultrasound) so I figure it's time for us to make an official announcement:

It's a boy!!

We're super excited. I really wanted a boy and even had a dream the night before the ultrasound that it was a girl and I was SO upset in my dream, which of course made me feel really bad when I woke up. But it's a boy!! We got quite a good look at his 'out-door plumbing' unit (that's what the ultrasound tech called it. Made me laugh pretty hard), but for his sake, I won't post that. What I will post are some of the other pictures we got. He wasn't very cooperative and we never got a good profile picture, or a cute one of his feet or anything.

This first one is the best profile picture we could get. He had his arms up by his head the whole time and we even saw him sucking on his fingers. Too cute!


This second one is a profile with his mouth open. I've always thought that pictures like this make it look like you've got an alien growing inside you, but at least they're always cute when they come out.
So, there's our little man. I'm very, very excited for him to come. I think it'll be a blast to have one of each.

Random question: for those of you who have kids, what was their heart rate? Cami was always really high, about 170, and this little guy is down around 145. They say that's pretty normal, girls are high, boys are low. Did any of you notice that same sort of pattern?

I've been meaning to get a picture of my non-existent baby bump, but just haven't yet. I'll have to post comparison pictures of my pregnancy with Cami to this one, I really have almost no stomach, even halfway along. No, I'm not complaining to be so tiny, but for those of you who have been pregnant, you know that stage you go through where you've got a little bit of a bump but not much and people look at you and wonder "Ok, so is she pregnant or is she just fat?" And you make a point of telling everyone that you're pregnant, just so they'll stop wondering. Yeah, I've been there for the past three months! I'm okay with being tiny, but I guess what it just comes down to, psychologically at least, is that basically, I still just look fat. :(

Anyways, moving on. So, October, let's talk about that and we'll work backwards from there (to September and then maybe I'll be caught up after that). Beginning of October: My birthday!! I am now a quarter of a century old. Wow. For my birthday I got pajamas, new couches (there's a whole story that comes along with that, but we'll save that for September), an hour long relaxing massage, and earrings. I never got a picture of that cake, it was store bought, but it was a great day. Sterling took me out to dinner and then to a movie. Can't remember now what we watched, but we had fun.

Also, in October, Sterling's mom and his Aunt Ruth organized a barbeque up American Fork canyon. It's a tradition to do one every October. Last year I was there with a really bad kidney infection. Not fun. This year was better. We ended up taking a lot of family pictures, Preston, Sterling's brother, was our photographer. He's got a talent. I was prepared for it, so we weren't color coordinated at all, but here's some of the outtakes.

It was so pretty up there with all the fall colors and the river running right by everything. I was just gorgeous and the light was perfect for taking pictures. If only we'd had matching outfits.

Here's two of Cami and her cousin Beca, Preston and Alisha's little girl. She's three months younger than Cami and is the spitting image of her father. It's pretty funny actually.

Cami's 'deer in the headlights' look. It's pretty much her standard look when confronted with a camera.
For the rest of October we've just continued with our job hunt. We went out to Fountain Green, it has a population of about 900 people and you would walk from one end of the town to the other in about 20 minutes. It was small and sad and Sterling and I decided that we didn't want the job there, so the search continues. We have some promising things opening up in January, so we might just have to wait on something permanent until then. We'll see though.

Finally, Halloween. Um, we didn't do anything, and I mean anything for Halloween. We didn't even carve pumpkins this year. I know what you're thinking 'what a bunch of party-poopers. Yes, that would be us. We had some creative ideas for costumes for our little ward Halloween party, but nothing that could be pulled together quickly. I had big plans, but time flew by and suddenly the ward party was upon us! Sterling wanted to go as a duck hunter, with him in his waders and camo, me as a black lab hunting dog, and Cami as a duck. I thought it would be super cute, but we had very little time, and money with which to throw it together in time for the party.

Halloween evening, we escaped Orem and went up to Sterling's mom's place in Midvale. We never get trick-or-treaters anyways (not in the three years we've lived here), so we partied up there instead. She got a total of two. That's right, just two. We ended up watching some 'scary' movies on tv, namely Final Destination. Yeah, I didn't sleep that night. No it's not really super scary, but it did enough of a number on me that I've filled my thriller quota for the month.

So, that about sums up October, more to come later (hopefully sooner rather than later, but we'll see how it works out.)

News feed

I’m going to go through a bit of retro-blogging for the next couple posts, since, once again, I’ve failed to keep my goal of blogging more regularly. There’re no pictures with this post, I just wanted to do some quick news catch up. But, first things first, since I haven’t made any updates on my pregnancy situation, I’ll do that now.

I went in for my second ultrasound and everything is looking better. The bleed hasn’t fully absorbed yet, but it’s on its way, also, the ultrasound tech said I might have a minor case of placenta previa. For those of you who might not know: that’s where the placenta attaches over the opening of the cervix. It’s usually very bad because the placenta often detaches from the wall causing a miscarriage. However, in my situation, it’s only a partial and as the baby grows the placenta will move farther and farther away from the cervix. Whew! What a relief to know that everything will most likely be okay. Thanks for all of your prayers on our behalf. We appreciate them all! Still no determination on the gender; that will have to wait for the next ultrasound the first week of November. Getting closer all the time!

To move on, during the last month, Sterling and I have been a little worried about what we were going to do next. Sterling’s seasonal job with the Division of Natural Resources (DNR) was supposed to end on Sept 30. Fortunately his boss has let him extend work until Oct 22^nd. However, we were faced with the dilemma of no current job prospects once it ended. He had applied several places but nothing was happening as fast as we needed or wanted it to; then suddenly, this last week, things exploded!

He went in for a job interview with the Saratoga Springs Police Department as an Animal Control Officer and was told that he’s one of the top two candidates. Then, he got a call from the Idaho State Highway Patrol and they want him to come up for an interview on Oct 19^th. They want to hire him too. And then we get a call from the Division of Wildlife Services (I think that’s what they’re called) saying they want him to come in for an interview for a Fish Hatchery position down in Fountain Green, UT. (It’s just south of Nephi, off a random highway). So now we face the dilemma of which job to accept. Funny how things can flip so quickly on you. I’m not trying to sound ungrateful that so many great opportunities suddenly came our way, especially in this economy, but it’s just frustrating still. We’ve talking it over a million times, but are still not closer to a decision on what we’ll do yet.

So there’s a quick catch up on, pictures will be forth coming in following posts as I enter the retro-blogging stage yet again.

When life throws a curve ball

It's nice to have a glove and the ability to catch.

Ok, so maybe that's a silly metaphor, but we recently got thrown a curve ball. Fortunately everything turned out fine. Disclaimer right here: this is pregnancy talk, so guys (if there are any guys who read this), if that makes you uncomfortable, stop reading now.

I went running this morning and finished with an intense pain in my lower left stomach. I came home, put Cami down for a nap, and went to bed myself. I tried to do some yoga but didn't feel good at all. Several hours later I started bleeding. Pregnant women aren't suppose to bleed, so of course I got worried. The cramping continued, so when Sterling came home I called my doctor for an appointment.

As we sat waiting to go, I prepared myself for the worst. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, that sort of thing. It could be a miscarriage, that I knew. It could be an ectopic pregnancy, though I didn't feel like I was about to die, so probably not. However, it could be something simple. I mean, some women bleed throughout their pregnancy right? Krista (my sister) mentioned that a friend of hers bled every time she did physical activity. So it could be that, right?

Prepared for bad news, we went to see my doctor. She said she wasn't going to listen to heart tones because it's too early anyways and she didn't want to get us anxious before the inevitable ultrasound. We were told that yes, it could very well be a miscarriage, however, it could also be something else. There are two sacs around the baby, one around the other. It occasionally happens that the outer sac pulls away from the inner and fills with blood, then breaks open, which means bleeding. Simple, right?

The ultrasound tech was really busy, so we waited for quite awhile before we finally got in to see her. She set everything up, spread the cold gel on my stomach and went to work. She searched around for different things and we could see the little baby in there. So small and so sad, because we might have lost it. After a few minutes she pointed out where the bleeding was coming from and paused over the baby where we could hear it's heart beat. It took me several long seconds before it hit me. "So it isn't a miscarriage?" The tech looked at me as though I was really slow, which, let's face it, I am. "No, it's not a miscarriage. There's a heart beat." She was a little patronizing, but I figured I'd have to let it pass with this news. So, I didn't miscarry!! Great news all around, right?

But there's more. The bleeding was indeed from the two sacs separating and filling with blood. She said there was a rather large area, but that she had seen cases where it was this bad and it had resolved on it's own, which is good because there's nothing they can do to fix it. So hopefully it'll resolve on it's own, like she said. My doctor told me not to go running anymore, only light walking, no heavy lifting (anything heavier than Cami), and basically to just go home and keep my feet up. So for now we're in the clear, but things could turn south and we just need to be careful. I'm getting a follow up ultrasound in three weeks to see if it's resolved.

We got a little ultrasound picture of our little baby. The picture is really dark, but I'll try to scan it and post it tomorrow. It was so cute to see the little tiny features. Not that you can make out much when they're that tiny, but it was still fun. For now, we're doing okay. I still hurt, but things are looking up.

Fangs and a new arrival

So, I figure it's about time that I actually put a post on here that we're expecting again! I already put it on my facebook page, so most everyone knows, but for those of you who don't... well, we're having another baby!! I'm due on March 21st. We'll find out in November-ish what we're having. We're both hoping for a boy, but you never know. So far this pregnancy has been okay. I've had worse morning sickness than I did with the last one, though I haven't been throwing up uncontrollably, so that's a plus.

In other news, Cami has a whole bunch of teeth coming in. It's frustrating and exciting at the same time because of course she doesn't want to eat anything when they come in cuz it hurts. She's got four on the top and three on the bottom, but for the longest time she only had two on the top. But it wasn't the normal front two teeth like you'd expect. No, our child had fangs. Her two incisors (maybe they're the canines, we can't tell yet) came in long before the front ones did. She seriously looked like a little vampire for the longest time. And if you let her get hold of your finger any more, she'll stick in it her mouth and has nearly drawn blood a few times. It hurts. My best friend commented that we have our very own little Renesmee (for those of you who know Twilight), which just made me laugh and roll my eyes. I bet none of you knew that I married a vampire, did you?

I tried for the longest time to get a picture of her fangs. The only way she'll show them smiling is if you flip her upside down or make her laugh. If you try to pry her lips apart to see her teeth, she clamps them closed as tight as possible. But, we finally got it.

It's a little fuzzy, but you get the general idea. My own little vampire child. *sigh* Just what I always wanted.