And yet I'm still busy...sorry.

We have a little video and some pictures from a weekend trip to Syracuse. I'll get to those, once I finish my last paper and last final EVER for Yale.

Come Tuesday at about 11am, I'll be free from homework and grades for a glorious four months.

Unfortunately, Justin will be in Tanzania for three of those months. He'll be doing his dissertation research (hooray!) but without Juma and me. As Juma would say, Poopie.

it's done

I just sent my thesis off to my professors. WOOT!

goings-on

I'm taking a little time off my school duties to let you know what's been going on at the Beckham house.

Juma finally lost his first two teeth. Unfortunately, they had to be pulled out by the dentist because one of his big teeth was coming in behind. Fortunately, the tooth fairy pays extra for that.

Juma finished up his first season of basketball; the best part was the trophy. Of course.

He touched the ball during games. Twice!



Next sport: baseball. Justin is assistant coach, and Juma has three friends on the team.


We drove down to Baltimore last week to check out the city and Johns Hopkins University. On Friday Justin and Juma had a great time exploring the town while I was visiting with professors and other prospective students. On Saturday we all went to a children's science museum, where we extracted some wheat germ DNA (Seriously! They have an experiment set up for small kids to do this), lay on a bed of nails, took mini-lie detector tests (Juma's a terrible liar, but Justin and I...), and tried on a space suit. On Sunday I let JHU know I'd be coming next fall.




Connecticut's weather has showed us it's spring: volatile and usually wet. But at least the flowers are peeking through.

plans

I decided to go to Johns Hopkins next year for a PhD in public health. Still busy with my thesis. Sorry.

-Sarah

thesis

excuse my silence while I write my thesis...

a new niece

Congratulations to Justin's sister, Andria, and her husband Matt--they are the new parents of a darling baby girl, Amelia Larie Lewis.

I have yet to see pictures...

aquarium

We decided to go non-traditional this Valentine's day and spend the day together as a family at the aquarium in eastern Connecticut. It was so cool we bought a membership, so we'll be making the trip back there to spend more time with the beluga whales,

sea lions






rays




octopus




leopard sharks





and penguins.




Juma wants to be a marine biologist when he grows up.

Or a paleontologist.

Or a marine paleontologist.

Or a professional Star Wars Legos video game player.

new pet and new house

I discovered that my phone, the phone-computer connection cord, my computer, and I were all in the same room and the same time, so I finally downloaded some pictures. See how lazy I am?

So here's Juma's new pet habitat:



and his new pet, Leo the Gecko:




Also, I snapped a couple pictures of our new place, but just outside and the main stairwell, since taking any pictures inside our apartment requires me to clean up a bit first. Again: lazy.

I know there aren't great pictures, but they give you a small idea of what the building is like.

the changing of the pets

Juma's pet snake, Sam the garter snake, died a few days ago. He was a good, quiet, non-stinky pet (until he died--pee-yuuu!). We "returned him to the earth" on Friday. Goodbye, Sam the Snake. We'll miss watching you eating rosy red minnows bigger than your head.



And as per our tradition, we got a another pet immediately. Now we have a house gecko named Leo. He lives in the same tank as Sam did, but fancied-up to fit a tropical lizard. (I told Juma that Leo means lion, but that only made him think the name was more appropriate for a lizard. Who can fathom the mind of a six-year-old?)

I'm obviously really good at promising to post pictures and then not getting around to it, so maybe I won't even promise this time. I did at least take a picture of the new lizard. I'm just too lazy to get the picture off my phone right now...

moving

We moved in to the new place this weekend--the longest weekend of our lives. We haven't got everything over here yet, but we've slept here two nights now. We're still getting used to the new noises of this house (like the garbage collection at 5am Monday morning) but so far, so good.

This place is much, much bigger than our last place, which is nice. Though Juma managed to find something to complain about: He has to walk really, really far from the bathroom to his bedroom after he gets out of the bath. All wet and cold. And this place is colder; it's the nature of these old buildings. Thank goodness we don't have to pay the heating bill.

I'll take some pictures once we get settled in more and post them.

Update: And on the first day here, I did a load of dishes and three loads of laundry. Oh, the simple pleasures of life.