Orange & Blue Debut

I hope you all had a great weekend! We sure did! Friday, Jeff played hooky and went to the beach with some friends. I, unfortunately, was not able to go...all part of being a grown-up working full time! I did get to have a fantastic dinner at my favorite sushi restaurant on Friday night with Ashley. It was good to catch up and the food was delicious. Saturday we all got up bright and early and headed to campus to enjoy the Orange & Blue game festivities. ESPN's College Gameday was broadcasting live from the Swamp so, we spent a little time trying to get on tv and cheering as good-gators do. The game was fun, they estimate about 61,000 people attended (really, to watch a scrimmage). We managed to find a spot in the shade that we were really grateful for. We celebrated the game by treating ourselves to some chicken nachos at the Ale House, which are my favorite football treat and are so unhealthy that I can only enjoy them during football season (four more months 'till we can have them again...).

All-in-all, a pretty great weekend! It's great to live in Gainesville and even greater to be a Gator!

Pics of the College Gameday guys. Kirk is as handsome in person as he is on tv. Too bad he was a Buckeye...










Amy & Ashley in our orange & blue



Brent's last even as a UF student (That's why he has that sad-looking face...)


The team takes the field...

First Signs of Fall Football...

Anyone else ready for football season?? I am so excited for the Orange & Blue game on Saturday! For those not familiar with UF football, this game is the annual spring football scrimmage. Really, tens of thousands come to Gainesville to watch the team scrimmage. It's so fun and will be even more exciting this year because ESPN's College Game Day will be broadcasting from here! Tebow, Kirk, college football...sounds like a great day to me!

We had a nice relaxing past couple of days. We enjoyed General Conference at home and treated ourselves to a handful of the new, limited edition, strawberry milkshake oreos...they are so tasty! I highly recommend them! Jeff made it home from Texas safely and it sounds like he had a good experience at the conference. I'm just happy to have him home!

Hope you all have a good week!
Go Gators!

Coming Soon...

New on my "to-do" list is to create separate blog for just my recipes. It seems I update them too quickly! I'm hoping to start working on this over the weekend but, it'll have to take a back seat to my dissertation for a week or so! I'll post a bunch of the ones from past posts once I have it up so, stay tuned...

As a quick update, Jeff is in Dallas this week presenting some of his research at a conference. It's his first "business" trip and it sounds like its been a good experience so far. He comes home tomorrow evening and I'll be happy to have him home!! Just in time for a nice General Conference weekend at home...

I've been working on my dissertation with renewed vigor this week. My first paper is just about ready to submit for publication (I'm shooting for next week) and I've been busy running the statistical analyses for my second paper. They are coming along nicely and I'm hoping to have a draft of that paper ready by the end of May. I think I may have convinced my committee chair that a December finish is definitely feasible and I'm still pretty optimistic that I can do it.

As an interesting commentary, I was watching the NBC Nightly News last night which included a story about a research study that concluded that humans really don't need to drink 8 glasses of water a day. While this was interesting, I thought Brian Williams' concluding comment was great, something like, "This further supports our view of research...just keep waiting and eventually a study will be published that confirms your way of life." The geeky, research scientist in me thought this was funny. :-)

Tasty Dinner

Jeff and I just had a lovely dinner on our little patio over-looking the golf course and we enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd at least share the recipes since you all couldn't enjoy our little patio and the beautiful spring weather!

The recipes are for a chicken, rice & veggie soup and goat cheese drop biscuits. The soup recipe is from one of my favorite blogs, the "Picky Palate," and the biscuits are from on Oprah show that I heard about. Check out my "What's cooking..." section on the right!

I hope you all have good things coming your ways this weekend! We're looking forward to some time at home and the warm, Florida sunshine! (For those of you who aren't lucky enough to be in Florida...I bet you wish you were!)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, All!

We've had a nice weekend. We were able to attend a BBQ at the home of one of the UF dental school admissions committee members on Saturday afternoon and were really glad we stayed in Gainesville to attend. The food was delicious and it was a great opportunity to meet the College of Dentistry's Dean, Dean of Admissions, and admissions committee members in a casual setting. Since Jeff is applying in May, we thought this was an opportunity that he shouldn't miss.

With that, however, we weren't able to go to my mom's for our traditional Easter gathering in Tampa. We were disappointed about that but, we did have our good friends, Brent & Erin over for Easter dinner. I made my first brown sugar glazed ham (actually, Publix made it...I just glazed it and warmed it up!) and tried a new dessert recipe (see pic below and recipe in my "What's Cooking..." section). It was all tasty and we always enjoy spending time with Brent & Erin. They're leaving Gainesville soon for Washington and we'll definitely miss them!

I hope you all enjoyed your Easter celebrations! Amid all of the bunnies and candies, it is wonderful to be able to remember and celebrate the atonement and resurrection of the Savior among family and friends!




Our Easter Chocolate Trifle...Yum!

Vegas Pics

At long last, here are a few pics from our Vegas Vacation last week. We had a nice trip and aside from our flight issues (the one we missed and the dreadful red-eye home) and the two days we spent in the car driving through the desert (although good conversation made this bearable)! Also, I apologize for the underlined font, I can't make it go away!

Enjoy!



The Bride & Groom, Clark & Rachel



Jeff & little man, Charile, ready for the wedding.



All of the boys, except for Elder Jake who is in Canada...



Rachel & her cupcake cake. Those little things were so tasty! Just like twinkies (from what I can remember)!



Amy, Kim & Jan



Charlie in his Gator Jersey...a gift from Auntie Amy & Uncle Jeff. Little Gators are so cute!



Another one of our little Gator.



Jeff telling Chad how to double his money at video poker. Jeff was actually pretty good at this. He put in a dollar at one of the machines at the airport and ended up with $5 about 10 minutes later!



One last picture before we adjourn until Christmas!

Good News!

We received some good news at the office this week...our big NIH grant was funded! We are really excited about it. We've been working on getting it funded for 2 years and it'll keep us in business for four more years. It's extremely difficult to get grants these days so we are *very* grateful and excited!

As a side note...I'll post some pics from our Vegas Vacation this weekend!

We're Headed to Vegas!!....Oh Wait, No We're Not!

I haven't yet filtered through all of our pictures from the latest Tobler-family Vegas Vacation but, I promise to post some in the next couple of days. Until then, here's a quick story to wet your appetite.

So, Jeff and I were scheduled to leave Orlando last Thursday night at 8:20 pm. I had some grant details to wrap up before I left town and Jeff was taking a midterm that afternoon. We planned to leave Gainesville around 3:30-4 pm. So, I'm sitting in my office, watching time continue to pass...and pass...until 5 pm when Jeff finally called to tell me he'd finished his final. This was an hour or so later than what we had planned but, I thought it wouldn't be such a big deal, we'd make up some time on the road and did we really need to be at the airport two hours early anyway?? We were making good time, in the rain, nonetheless, until we were stopped dead in our tracks on the Florida Turnpike. There was an accident and we sat in essentially the same spot for an hour and a half!! Things eventually got moving for us around 7 pm but we were still about 30 minutes away from the airport. We had a white-knuckled, rain-soaked ride the remainder of the way and managed to make it to the terminal about 7:45 pm, parked in the $17 per day parking lot at the terminal, and ran with our luggage into the check-in area. Of course, the US Airways counter was at the farthest possible point from where we were...so we ran some more, pulling our luggage behind us. We made it to the counter, sweating and out of breath, at 7:55 pm thinking maybe we had just made it but, alas, it was not to be. They said our flight was "restricted" and that we'd have to go in the morning. (We think they may have given our seats away since we were cutting it so close!)

So, feeling hungry and completely disappointed, we next had to figure out where we were going to stay that night. I tried to get in touch with my sister, Ashley, who lives about 30 minutes from the airport but, no luck there!! It's been weeks since I've been able to get her on the phone! So, we drove from airport hotel to airport hotel looking for a room. At the 6th, nastiest one, we booked their last room and spent a miserable night in a stuffy, "pig in a prom dress"-type hotel room and flew out to Vegas at 8 am the next morning.

We were happy to finally make it, even though we were to spend the next 6 hours in the car on the way to Phoenix! It was nasty couple of days for which we have no pictures. I think that's a blessing...we'd rather forget those two days anyway! And you can just picture us with our disappointed faces and tired eyes!

More stories and pictures to come!

Viva Las Vegas!

Gone to Vegas....We'll post pics and stories when we return!

Busy Week!

After a fairly relaxing weekend, Jeff and I have a busy week ahead of us! Jeff has a midterm this week, I am giving my formal dissertation proposal presentation on Wednesday, and we both have plenty of work-work to get done before we head to Vegas for a week on Thursday night! I had decided that I wasn't going to take any vacations until I completed my dissertation but, since I had to go out west for Clark's wedding anyway, I figured I might as well take a few days. I'm thankful I did. We're still in grant-writing mode at work and a little break from work (and school) is very welcome!

Jeff's big adventure this weekend was playing tackle football on Saturday morning. He usually plays flag football each week but, Saturday was a full-tackle game. He came home really dirty, sore and bruised but, he said he had a lot of fun. He even went for a run with me after he got home...it's been the only time so far where he's set the slower pace!

A few other weekend highlights: (1) dinner at Napolitano's with Cassie & Craig...big menu, tasty food, and good company. For those of you in Gainesville, I definitely recommend this place. (2) dinner at the chinese place in the Haile Plantation village center with Brent & Erin, again very tasty with good company! This is our favorite chinese place so far...somehow, it's a lot less greasy than the others. (3) new glasses for Jeff and new Nike shocks for me...I don't think Jeff's had new glasses in 6-7 years and it's taken me 5 years to find a pair of tennis shoes that I like--they all usually look like astronaut shoes! (4) And last, but not least, our sacrament meeting yesterday was really uplifting. I was reminded that we need to just do the best we can, keep moving forward, and things will all work out. (It was also fun to watch the two little ones in front of us jump and run figure-8's sporadically throughout the meeting!)

I hope you all have a good week!