NEW BLOG!!

It's time to retire the whole "Cornfields-to-Kangaroos" Blog and start a new, grown up blog with my future hubby. SO, from now on, you can find my life at:

http://rcsweeney.blogspot.com/

Cal State Northridge

Ryan got word yesterday that he's now also been accepted to California State University - Northridge. He's now been accepted to three universities, and we're hoping for good news from Duke! More schools = more choices but I know just how blessed we are to have options. Ryan has a friend who has applied for two years straight to PT and PA schools and has received nothing but rejection letters. After hearing that I was terrified that Ryan wouldn't get in anywhere and then what? But, thankfully, the Lord has a plan and knows what we can and can't handle. I'll tell you right now, I could NOT have handled that. :)

Parable of the Burned Biscuits

Bishop Barrera occasionally sends me inspirational parables and such and I get so excited every time I see a new email from him. This is his latest and again, I loved the moral and thought I would share. Enjoy!

Parable of the Burned Biscuits

There’s the story of the mother who liked to make breakfast food for dinner every now and then. One night in particular she had made breakfast after a long, hard day at work.

On that evening so long ago, the mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned biscuits in front of her husband. The little boy sat waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet all the dad did was reach for his biscuit, smile at the mom and ask his son how his day was at school. The boy couldn’t remember what he told him that night, but he did remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that biscuit and eat every bite!

When the boy got up from the table that evening, he remembered hearing his mom apologize to his dad for burning the biscuits. And he said he’d never forget what his father said: "Honey, I love burned biscuits."

Later that night, the boy went to kiss his dad good night and asked him if he really liked his biscuits burned. He wrapped the boy in his arms and said, "Your Mom put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired. And besides - a little burnt biscuit never hurt anyone!"

Life is full of imperfect things.....and imperfect people. I'm not the best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like everyone else. But what I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other’s faults - and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences - is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.

And that's my prayer for everyone. That you will learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life and lay them at the feet of your Heavenly Father. Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to give you a relationship where a burnt biscuit isn't a deal-breaker!

We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship!

"Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket - keep it in your own."

The Lord has given us the perfect example of how to have a great relationship.... Now, and Always....

So Please pass me a biscuit, and yes, the burnt one will do just fine!

Weird Human Body Trick

Ryan thinks this is really odd. I guess I've just always grown up with it, so you can be the judge. (Turn up your volume!)

Also, I went to the zoo with Marisa's family and Ryan on Saturday. Even though it's the one thing Omaha has going for it, I haven't been in about four years!

I just love this picture and the boys just love Ryan which makes me very happy. Apparently Riley at one point told Ryan how happy he is that he's going to be his uncle!

Fingers Crossed

Ryan was bouncing off the walls today because he found out that he was selected to interview at Duke University on March 22! It has always been his dream to go to Duke and if he gets accepted that is absolutely where we will end up. So say a little prayer that they fall for his blonde curls and beautiful blue eyes!

Who Needs Caffeine?

I've been up since 6:30 a.m. working on my grad project. I thought I'd be exhausted by now (it's 2:51 a.m.) but I'm still moving right along! These little friends might have helped. They might also have something to do with the sock/sliding races we were having down the hall at school right around midnight, which was right about the time we realized our project was due in 60 hours! I LOVE COLLEGE!

40 hours of my past week...

Do any of you really know what I study or what type of things I do in school? Well, let me give you a little glimpse into my life. This semester is our final "Interdisciplinary Team Design Project" where we're split into teams with two structural, two mechanical, and two electrical engineers. Basically we go through the entire design of a building from start to finish. A few weeks ago we had to do an architectural design, then they gave us the real plans and I've been working on what is called the Schematic Design. In SD's you narrow down what types of systems you think you'd use, develop a heating and cooling load for your building, analyse cost, code compliance and noise concerns (at least that was the scope of this project). So I thought I'd share some of Joanna and I's progress.

The building we are working on is the new office building for a local Architecture and Engineering firm called DLR. It's actually located just a block from my dorms - I can see the site from my window! Anyway, the systems we're looking at are individual heat pumps being connected to either a boiler, chiller and water tower or a geothermal system that extracts and rejects heat into the ground. There's actually not enough space to do a full geothermal system so we'll have to do a hybrid that drills as many bores as will fit on the site and then makes up for it with an additional boiler and small fluid cooler (which is just a closed cooling tower).

So from there we had to lay out where our heat pumps would fall and zone our building. You split the building into zones by determining how much airflow is required by each. A program called Trace gives us a report that tells us how much cooling and heating is needed in the worst case scenario as well as how much air needs to flow through the building and how much of that needs to be outside air. This is a picture of the zones on the second floor:

We also had to coordinate with the structural system because they're using a system with cellular beams which are the giant beams with the holes cut out in the middle. I created this drawing in AutoCad to show how our systems will work together:

So yeah, we wrote a 12 page document describing our progress and we have a 10 minute group presentation and then a 10 minute individual presentation tomorrow. I can't wait for it to be over with!