The British Virgin Islands

We went on a fabulous vacation January 1-9. Nate and I spent New Year's Eve in Chicago before boarding a plane to San Juan, PR at 8 am on January 1. We enjoyed the humidity in the San Juan airport before catching a small plane to Tortolla where we met up with the rest of my family - everyone was there!

After 2 nights on land and a few competitive volleyball games, we packed our catamaran sailboat and departed for 5 nights on the water. We had a wonderful time - lots of photography, reading, gaming (Bonanza! & Citadels), chatting and (of course) good food and drinks.

When we returned to the cold on January 9, we felt refreshed and ready to get back to real life.

Click here to see a set of our favorite pictures from the trip.

Looking for a Ugandan Husband?

Last December, before Nate and I left Uganda, I promised two friends - Michael and Gordan - that I would try to help them find American wives. It's ridiculous that I have not posted their pictures yet, but here they are - 2 great guys in their mid-twenties. Email them if you want to learn more about them! Michael can be reached at michaelkater2000@gmail.com and he can also give you Gordan's email address.

Gordan

Michael

2009: a pretty sweet year...

Nate and I were eating Japanese food on Christmas Eve, reflecting on everything that happened in 2009. Here are the highlights...
(click on the links to see pictures!)

January: We witnessed our first presidential inauguration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. After experiencing the love for Obama in Uganda, this was an awesome event to be a part of.

February: We moved back to Madison on January 26th, signed a rental agreement on an apartment January 27th and moved in January 28th. Nate also signed an acceptance letter from nPoint for a mechanical engineering job.

March: Our offer to purchase was accepted on a house that I fell in love with the first time I saw it. When Nate went back to work in February, I had employed myself with a house search. Our goal was to close on a house by summer, so what a exciting surprise when we closed on March 30th.

April: We adopted Ries, my favorite little dog ever! She has been such a joy to have around and it's hard to imagine life without a dog. We also traveled to DC for the Cherry Blossom 10-miler and to see my family. I accepted a consultant job at AIDS Network in April too!

May: After enduring a windy, rainy ultimate frisbee spring league, Nate stepped up to the big leagues and began tryouts for Madison Club - the top men's club team in Wisconsin.

June: A beautiful summer was underway. We got lots of exercise: Nate made the team mentioned above, we played together on a coed summer league team - The Poundnoughts, and I started training for a marathon.

Nate at a Tournament in Chicago

July: We spent the 4th in Washington DC. I also was offered a part-time position at AIDS Network, so I started working 20 hours per week instead of 2. Frisbee raged on and we missed 2 games to travel to San Francisco and Yosemite to tour, camp, hike and visit Georgia.

August: On our 2 year wedding anniversary, we hiked and picnicked at Devil's Lake near Baraboo WI. Nate's team stared traveling more for frisbee and I kept running.

On our Hike at Devil's Lake

September: Anne and Andrew exchanged rings in Madison. Labor day weekend was an exciting, festive time with beautiful weather for an outdoor reception. I also started a 2nd job at UW Health in the pediatric fitness clinic.

Anne and Andrew Ooms

October: Finally, marathon day arrived! Matthew and I ran together and were pretty happy with our time of 3:43. The next weekend, Nate traveled to Florida for Club Ultimate Nationals, finishing 10th out of 16 teams.

November: We enjoyed a lovely weekend in Sonoma, CA, tasting wine with my parents and celebrating the marriage of our friends Tyler and Erin. And as far as Novembers in Wisconsin, the weather was lovely.

December: We've been listening to Christmas music all month long, preparing for the glorious birth of Jesus! We also survived the first storm of the winter - about 18 inches! We'll travel to Oconomowoc to be with family later today. It's been a fantastic year.

Merry Christmas! Thanks for your love.

-Nate and Alicia

Seventeen Inches!

It is official...we are Wisconsinites again. We survived the first storm of the season. This picture says it all - it was a day of shoveling - not driving. It's nice to stay home. We'll bundle up for the next few days (weeks? months?) because now the temps are really starting to fall: -25 degrees with the windchill tomorrow. It's nice to be home.

Giving Thanks

Poor turkey! Somehow our bird was missing his wing. Boy was it tasty though! We decided to spend the extra money to buy a free-range, organic turkey from Sun Prairie, WI....totally worth it. The orange Home Depot bucket (not so local or organic) in the left-hand corner of the picture is where the turkey enjoyed it's brine bath the night before....we learned the importance of brining if you want a moist, flavorful turkey.













Now were at home shopping Black Friday sales online and listening to Christmas music on Pandora. Welcome Christmas! I will never forget reading a Bearenstein Bear book when I was a kid - it started off reading, "It was the day after Thanksgiving and the store windows were decorated for Christmas...." or something like that. I made my dad stop reading because I was sure he read it wrong. I guess when I was a kid I didn't realize that Thanksgiving and Christmas were so close to each other. Now it seems like Christmas will be here way too quickly!

For now, we'll continue to give thanks...

When 400th Place is a Victory

Matthew (my 20 year old brother) and I finished the Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday morning around 11:50 am. We ran together the whole time...talking much more at the beginning of the race than at the end. What a horrific thing to do to our bodies. No, that is exaggerating a little bit, but it definitely can't be good. It was an awesome experience and very interesting to find my time within 1 minute of my last marathon - around 3 hours and 43 minutes. I guess our bodies feel most comfortable at a certain pace. This morning as I walked down the stairs to take Ries outside, my legs finally felt somewhat normal. The days prior my quads just burned going down stairs. I'm pretty amazed at how quickly our bodies can clean up all that lactic acid...3 days after the race? How awesome is our Creator?!

2 jobs, 2 dogs, 2 competitors

I was thrilled to get one job in July and surprised to get a second job in September. I now work half-time at AIDS Network and 12 hours per week at 2 different clinics associated with the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics. I'm an out-patient dietitian working with obese children and pre-diabetic adults. I love nutrition counseling, so I think I'm really going to like this job.

Tomo una clase de espanol tambien! ((I'm taking a spanish class too!) Sorry to any real spanish speakers reading this...my grammar is probably really poor). Although there are days when I feel annoyed by the 10 minute drive to MATC, I really like learning a language I might actually use at work.

Ries has enjoyed having her cousin(?) Romeo around this past week. Sarah and Dan are in Baghdad for the year, and Romeo was afraid to enter a war zone, so he stayed in DC with my parents. This week he's hanging out in Madison just to mix it up a bit. Yep, Romeo likely has frequent flyer miles just like Lucy. It's a big world...gotta explore.



Nate's been busy with ultimate frisbee. Tonight he returned from MN where his team, Madison Club, won sectionals. In two weeks they compete at regionals in Indiana, and, if they do well enough at regionals, they will travel to Florida for nationals. Meanwhile I keep trying to squeeze in training runs for the marathon. I can't say I'm where I hoped to be less than 4 weeks from the event, but I think I'll be okay. Matthew and I are running together, so we'll motivate each other. Anyway, it's better to under train than to over train, right?

So many hikes! So few breaths!

Here is a picture of Nate and Georgia in front of Half Dome - if you look closely you can see the line of people pulling themselves up with cables attached to the rock. Scary!

Yosemite-5577, originally uploaded by Nate Bosscher.

Click on either of these pictures to be taken directly to the rest of our pictures on Flickr.com. Once you're there you can click on "San Francisco (set)" or "Yosemite (set)" to watch the collections in a slide show.

San Francisco & Yosemite

A few weeks ago, Nate and I went on a quick trip to California to visit Georgia, Nate's sister, and to check out San Francisco - one of those cities we just figured we'd love. It was a wonderful long weekend. Two nights in our tent in Yosemite National Park helped us to really, really appreciate subsequent nights in a hotel in San Francisco. As you can see by the picture, it was fairly cloudy and cold in SF, but the weather in Yosemite was drastically different (normal for the region) - with temps reaching 94 on our hike up Half Dome.

About Half Dome - HOLY COW - it was hard. 15 miles round trip took us about 8 1/2 hours. I still am hoping that I find out I am anemic or something, cause its seriously sad how difficult it was for me. Altitude at the top was less than 9,000 feet, but there were some very steep climbs. Maybe I'll just use the excuse that I was hiking with the best college Ultimate Frisbee woman in the United States....so surely she is in way too good of shape for me to expect to keep up with her....? Anyway, of course while drinking a cold Anchor Steam with our feet in the cool river, we were thrilled we embarked on the journey.

In San Francisco we put in quite a few miles as well. Have you ever started off for your destination thinking you'll get on a bus as soon as one comes but then one never comes so you keep walking and walking and walking? That's what we did from our hotel near Fisherman's Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is pretty sweet - especially the short hike through the park to the beginning of the bridge. Thankfully we found a bus to make the return trip. We didn't ride a trolley car, but we did have some excellent food. We were really excited about our meals at The Slanted Door (Vietnamese) and Greens Restaurant (vegetarian) - both highly recommended by friends and our guide book. I told Nate that my only complaint about San Francisco is that you feel a lot of pressure to be hip and dress really cool. Otherwise, with a very high paying job, I would totally live there.

San_Francisco-5723, originally uploaded by Nate Bosscher.

Don't Count Me As "Unemployed" Anymore!

Ever since my internship in Denver, CO in 2005-2006, I have been interested in the relationship between nutrition and HIV/AIDS. I'm excited to say that I will continue this work in Madison! I've been consulting as an RD for a non-profit called AIDS Network since April, but yesterday they hired me to fill one more roll - Treatment Support Services Coordinator. So basically I sit down with folks living with HIV/AIDS and try to offer the support they need to take their HIV meds (antiretrovirals) on schedule. I will continue offering nutrition counseling, but now I will have set hours totaling 20 per week.

It's fun to realize that I sort of have a professional theme developing - HIV/AIDS nutrition. Denver, Washington D.C., Uganda, and now Madison!

In other news...

We traveled to D.C. to celebrate the 4th of July with most of my immediate family this past weekend. John Paul and Grace drove up from Virginia Beach and Sarah is living with my parents in DC for the summer before she leaves for Iraq next week. Missing was Matthew who was back in WI visiting friends, and Sarah's husband Dan, who was vacationing with his family in Colorado. We played lots of games (ultimate frisbee, volleyball, the key-word song game, Dutch Blitz, and Foodie Fight) and even planned a New Year's vacation when we'll all be together! After a lovely BBQ at the Navy Yard on Saturday night, we walked the 2 miles to the National Mall for some fireworks! Good times for sure.





Thanks for checking in,
-Alicia