nathan and audrey

Hey Everyone!

Well life is moving so fast now. I completed and submitted my first paper for publication to the Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS) conference on February 8th, and since I have been playing catchup with all my other commitments. The first of which was to take care of my wife! We had a lovely full day (I didn’t do any work or school stuff at all) of just spending time together and relaxing. It was wonderful! I have also embarked on several new adventures: working on a team of three to develop our advanced operating systems project, the same with a partner for my advanced distributed systems course, research for my advisor, another fellowship application, UIUC recruiting stuff this week,  daddy classes, baby holding, and missing of lost ones. It has been a crazy adventure and will only get even more crazy.

Garbanzo is 34 weeks old today (well pre-birth age of course). He is due in only 6 weeks! Wooooo hooooo! I’m so excited. This is one of the most magical and amazing things to ever happen, and I cannot wait. It is going to be a huge ball of joy and intensity as we (our family) attempt to figure out how to do grad school, have a baby, and make time for mommy and daddy. The daddy class was so cool. As a dad there have been points during the pregnancy where the reality of things reached the next higher level, almost like a set of stairs. You get to one level and stay there for a while. Then something happens and the reality level goes up one. For example, it was really amazing when we found out we were pregnant; then when we heard Garbanzo’s heartbeat for the first time; then when we saw Garbanzo for the first time; when he kicked for the first time, and on the story goes. Well, the daddy class was surely one of these times, and it got me so excited!

Another thing that’s been on my heart a lot lately is the loss of Yume. We recently passed his 1 year anniversary, and it was very awkward. I didn’t really know what/how the best way to grieve was, what was okay, how far we should go back and remember, but I think we were just fine in what we did. We spent time remembering and crying about our sweet baby. It is interesting how we are given grace to go as far as we can in dealing with life and then things are held at peace (e.g., we didn’t process everything right when it happened last year). When we spent time a few weeks ago, everything opened up again and we started dealing with new stuff. I am really excited though. It has been really sad for the past couple of weeks, but I feel like I processed some things that were hindering my connection with Garbanzo. I never want to forget Yume, but at the same time I’m still a daddy and so I never want that loss to detract from my other children. It is very hard dealing with issues like am I moving on and leaving Yume behind, is Garbanzo not getting enough love because we are afraid of losing him? But, after we spent time remembering Yume, I really feel like I have been able to move past some of these things, and my connection with Garbanzo has increased a lot.

Well, that was a brief life update!

Thanks,

nathan

Well, I have been pretty much incognito for the past week due to my first attempt at submitting (it was just an attempt to submit for a chance to publish) a paper to a conference. The punchline to the story: I failed to complete the paper in time. It is extremely disappointing to work so hard for something and see it come to no where, vaporize into thin air if you will. I have been working about 14-17 hour days for the past week. It is truly amazing how much we can achieve given the right motivation. I didn’t know I could live reasonably off of so little sleep, although, I will not be making it a habit to get 3 hours of sleep every night. Even though I kept working under such conditions next time I will be better prepared (maybe I can’t say this, one thing I should learn is it never goes how you think) for the amount of work.

It is important to note that I was almost completed the paper. I have now learned and am in the process of sorting out how to handle time management of huge deadlines for the future. Read on for a description of the events.

Summary of Events

I would like to provide a brief description of what happened so everyone can know what I’ve been up to for the last week.

My team and I worked really hard last semester on this research as a class project. When we completed the semester our T.A. and prof suggested that we continue on with the work because they thought it had the potential to get a publication.I was in awe at that suggestion, I couldn’t believe that something I did could be publishable. Now of course that is the goal of going to grad school, but hey, I’m still just a small guy trying to get his first publication.

So essentially what happened was that everyone went their way for break and left the project. When we got back I had emailed the T.A. for suggestions on conferences to aim for. He sent me an email with several upper level ones, and suggested we make an attempt. The only problem with this was that some of the most desirable conferences had due dates in February, and we only had a crude implementation completed, as well as no data or experimentation yet. So off we went frantically trying to collect data an analyze it for the best results.

One thing that happened during this initial phase of work was that we didn’t have an advisor to help guide us. I was basically pushing the research forward with no idea of what to focus on. With this being my first publication attempt I felt really hesitant to move forward. I was unsure of wether we were spending our time on the right stuff and extremely unsure of some assumptions we were making for our research to work. Thankfully about a week ago I finally got some time with my professor and we discussed the project. To be honest that came to nothing, primarily, because we didn’t get the paper written on time, but it was still a huge hurdle. The same day I also met with our T.A., and he provided me with loads of good questions and topics that we should cover. After this confirmation of a direction I became really motivated to get working on the project. I started reading the previous research papers and started to see how our work was really novel. I noticed how the assumptions we were making in our research were the same assumptions that previous works had made, and not only did we have the same assumptions but our research improved on some of them.

As I started to read more of the previous works I really got excited and convinced that we had the “good stuff.” That we were guaranteed a publication. Hmm… no publication without a submission though . Nevertheless we charged on with renewed vigor. I was reading and writing our paper while my teammates were writing code to collect the thousands of data observations we would need to be successful.

Time-wise in the story we have gotten to Sunday, and still hadn’t collected any data. The paper was moving along smoothly, but it would hit a wall very soon without results. I incorrectly allowed myself to take time to work on the paper when I should have focused on the data collection code. Well, it turned out that on Monday one of the students became to busy to work on the project and I took the load of writing the code. So I spent several days frantically trying and testing out tons of methods to collect this data. Eventually on Wednesday night I had code it up and running on several machines collecting the data. This was an amazingly Euphoric feeling! I had made it! We were going to succeed because by the next morning we would have the stuff! See the image below for my data collection sweetness. Neat huh?

Well, that feeling faded fast as Thursday afternoon rolled along and we received our first set of results: 4% success rate!!!! I wanted to cry. At this point I really started doubting whether or not we could get done on time, but I pressed onward. I performed some analysis and improved our results to 23%, which was more than enough to push for the submission. The last day (yesterday) was a tumultuous attempt to collect these results and perform additional tests while writing the paper. The code to perform our experiments took a long time to figure out. I didn’t really start writing the final portions of the paper until 5pm, the paper was due at 1:59 a.m..

Throughout the rest of the night I went back and forth asking myself if I should continue to try and get done. I knew very easily that I wouldn’t be submitting my best writing, and that was unnerving. I didn’t really think it was wise to submit a poorly written piece of work. It was extremely frustrating though to have put forth such huge efforts and come up with no submission. At 2 a.m. I finally put the typing away and went to bed.

Lessons Learned

Throughout the process I have learned a lot of new things. I will be parsing these as I go along over the next several weeks, but I thought it would be a great idea to capture some of them right now.

• Time management.
• Results FIRST before you start writing the paper.
• It always takes longer than you expect on a tight schedule. Thus, plan less and start earlier.
• Getting bad results suck.
• Keep pushing even when it looks bad, and importantly when it looks good.
• Knowing when the data you have is enough, and setting a stopping point that will provide enough time to make conclusions and write the paper.

Summing It Up

This week was insane. I learned so much about my abilities to focus and work hard and how failure really sucks. I’m going to provide forthcoming posts that will discuss some of the lessons learned from this past two weeks, as well as some philosophical debate on whether or not one should submit a work that is poor in quality. These are in general more broad grad school questions that deserver their own post. In fact I had intended to place them in this post, but as the length grew I have decided to take them out and give my readers a break!

Oh, and as an astute reader pointed out, not all is lost. I have two more upcoming conferences to submit to, and now I have the right amount of time to get the paper where I really want it.

If you have done research or dealt with deadlines like this, let me know how you handled these types of issues.

Well, I haven’t blogged in about four to five months, and would like to start things off again with a post about a new routine I am attempting to incorporate into my daily life.

I have a terrible time waking up when my alarm goes off in the morning. My wife can tell you of her rude awakening to my morning snooziness when we first got married. I was generally a five to six time snoozer in the morning. She on the other hand had and still has the ability to get up on the first ring. Over the past few years I have thought of numerous ways to either fix the problem or presented arguments for its validity in my life. Currently, I’ve only improved my wake up number of snoozes to three, and even then I usually sit in bed for twenty to thirty minutes after the snoozing has finished.

In light of my recent hardships as a first year grad student, I have realized that I must start my days more focused and productive. Too often last semester I would get up mid morning (9-ish), but then start studying around 11 to 12. Therefore, I am resolved to test out waking up every morning at six o’clock. I am going to commit to this habit for a total of thirty days and test its effectiveness in my life.

In order to carry out my new wake up routine I have done what any great grad schooler does: google it! I read a few blogs [http://www.stevepavlina.com and http://studysuccessful.com] about how to wake up in the morning when you want to. I decided that I would give these methods a try and report my findings here. Steve Pavlina gives a detailed set of posts about the intricacies of the method. Study Successful describes a simplified version of the Pavlina Posts. If you have the time they are worth the read.

Onto the wake up routine! The approach is simple: practice waking up while you are focused and alert a bunch of times. For me this meant the following:

1. Get into night clothes
2. Set my alarm for approximately three minutes ahead of the current time
3. Get into bed and attempt to relax
4. When the alarm goes off turn it off
5. Perform a routine of stretching and getting out of bed
6. Stretch my legs
7. Use the restroom and go to the kitchen (I didn’t actually use the restroom every time, but stood there for a bit to simulate the time spent in the bathroom)

The purpose of the exercise is to train your brain and body to perform the set routine when it hears the alarm rather than allow your mind to give its suggestions about whether or not you should wake up. This brings up a very important concept that I have bought into over the past few years, which is muscle memory. I play guitar and am very focused on being one of the best guitarist. Playing guitar has several facets, but the most essential is the ability to let your muscles memorize the correct way to do a task, and let them do it automatically without brain intervention. This requires extensive practice. I will post more about this later, but for now suffice it so say that the practice routine above is set to accomplish the same tasks of muscle memory for my morning sleepy brain.

The reason why it’s important to practice this is that so often our morning brains are too sleepy. This morning brain doesn’t remember the important reason why we need to get up, or rather it finds it very easy to reason why we don’t need to get up. My morning brain convinces me that I can afford to sleep a little longer. This is toughest or nearly impossible when I have no immediate reason to get up in the morning. When I have a scheduled appointment my morning brain has less arguing authority, but when I have not appointments I sleep until my morning brain is done complaining about how it needs to stay in the comfy bed.

I performed eight repetitions of the above exercise in my first practice session and employed it into my routine the next day. The result, it actually worked. The first morning my alarm failed to go off, but I looked at my clock at about 6:15 and said I’m going to do this and started the routine. It was awesome because once I started stretching I was out of bed within a minute or two without any thinking or reasoning. This is a tremendous success because I am so terrible with getting out of bed when I don’t have to. I am very impressed!

I will be honest I think I need one or two more practice sessions to really engrain the routine into my morning muscle memory, but I think that it is well worth the effort. I will report back as to the effectiveness of the routine as I get further along into it.

If you really want to start waking up on time, take a look at the aforementioned blogs or just follow the simple method laid out in this article. Exercise your morning wake up routine several times in order to really get it engrained into your morning. Let me know if it works for you!

Hello All!

I know that I have yet to post in looooong time (specially in the blog world). I would like to start being more posty, and will start tonight.

An update on life…

We moved to Champaign-Urbana (always want to say Urbana-Champaign due to the whole UIUC thing) a little over a month ago. We were vigorously preparing for our journey the month before so that explains the lack of blog action. We are currently now getting settled in nicely. The house is almost all the way moved in (2 br, wash and dryer util room, garage, 1100 sq foot condo). We have several photos to hang, a few pieces of furniture to buy, and my portion of the office must be finished.

When we get further along I hope to create a post here with lots and lots of cool photos.

Audrey and I are getting to know the town pretty well now (it isn’t big). We have found our new Sunday date place (and new a priori to to coming to Champaign) in Panera. Oh my gosh! Panera is so amazing. If it only had good coffee it would be the best. I have yet to find a place to purchase my coffee beans from, mostly due to the amazing gift we received just before leaving town (a pound of tanzanian peaberry from Moons). There are parks everywhere here. We can go about 1/2 mile in two directions and come upon huge parks. Really cool. We live right across the street from a corn field and soy beans! Awesome!

I established my bike route to school, and ridden almost every day I go to school. In a similar vain I have found the ARC (rec facility at uiuc) to be an amazing place to work out. I have been lifting consistently now for a few weeks . The bike route is roughly 5 miles and takes around 20 minutes one way.

We are still trying to figure out the best places to hang and eat and get coffee at and all the other things you like to do in the city you know and love. We found this amazing yogurt place with some new friends last Saturday. It was amazing. You get a cup and put as much yogurt and toppings you want in it, and then they weigh it to tell you your price. For some reason mine was almost twice the cost of Audrey’s… oh well.

On one other note, I have recently started using the GTD methods as written in David Allen’s book on GTD. It has been an extremely interesting process to look into. I think in the future I will implement it more fully, but for now the demands on my life are not quite high enough to use it in its fullness, but I can say that it has already made my organization of tasks and projects and filing so much easier and more efficient.

I wil be posting more about the grad school part of life in another post, so don’t worry about lacking that exposition.

For now I will finish. I hope this website becomes more useful as we use it more to post on life and stuff. Thanks for reading!

-Nathan

Lately, or rather for my whole life, I have been extremely spotty with getting up when I want to in the morning. I am so bad that my habits have caused and adaptation in my wife to the snooze lifestyle.With that said it has been increasingly frustrating not getting to work when I want to over the past few months. There are usually a lot of things that I need/want to accomplish in a given day, and if I get up too late it doesn’t happen. One thing that I have been trying to make routine is an exercise regiment with weight lifting at least 3 times a week. I don’t think I have achieved 3 times a week in over a year. One of the biggest reasons for that failure is lack of early start time in the day. I have flirted with the possibility of getting up early and working out to start the day off, but I can’t get up on time to make that a viable option. So I have been left with hoping I get up early enough to allow afternoon workout time.

This morning was exceptionally annoying in that I actually got up at 6:15, but couldn’t leave on time. I have always been peeved with my inability to be consistent at waking up. The reason why I’m ranting is because today, and I don’t even know how I got there, I found an interesting blog article about waking up when you want to. The article is  http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/ by Steve Pavlina. This article gives a really awesome technique to change our bodies to wake up when the alarm goes off. The essential component to his method is muscle memory. The article is definitely worth the read.

The Method: train your body to physically do what you want when you want. When we allow our brain to control whether we get up with the first alarm or not we are allowing an untrusted source the opportunity to change what we really want. Yes, our brain works against us in the morning. The reason why our brain can’t be trusted is due to the fact that it is usually still extremely sleepy when the alarm goes off. This makes us more susceptible to the nagging excuses we always have for being lazy. Mine is… hmm… its so nice here in bed, and Audrey really wants me to stay, and I can sleep a little longer and be on time… my body must need sleep since I’m not getting up right away… and whatever other junk I come up with. Steve’s article offers practical advice on how to change your alarm waking habits.

The basic premise is to practice waking up with the alarm. You create an environment where you really aren’t asleep, but simulate sleeping and waking to the alarm. By doing this 3-10 times per training session, and for a few training sessions you can make progress on your waking habits. You really should read the article because Steve articulates the method much better than I do. I buy into this technique because I have been and athlete my whole life and know how important muscle memory is, and in addition to that I have played guitar for several years and learned muscle memory is a key component there as well. So, I really think this method should work. It is really simple.

The reason for me posting this article is that I’m wondering how getting serious about my wake up time will help my daily productivity and natural rhythm during the day. I think I will try it, but of course after I talk to Audrey. I’m so sick of starting my day off with the frustration that I wanted to be at work at 7 a.m. but I look at the clock right before I leave and it is 7:23.

That website has several other great articles on productivity, and are great reads.

-Nathan

Hey All-

So I have been getting some questions about why haven’t we updated our blog in forever, and of course questions about that whole month when the blog didn’t exist.

So here is an update on what happened during that time frame.

The lack of blogging started as we were getting ready to move into Nate and Val’s house back in April. We were so extremely busy that we didn’t have the time to do anythign but pack and move. At that time the server had to be moved, which is why there was a redirect to my buddies website notifying readers that the blog was down. When I got to the new location my server had some hardware issues, and would not get back onto the internet, thus starting the two month hiatus of nathanandaudrey.com. A couple of weeks ago I got the blog back up on the net and this is my first entry since then.

Life has been extremely hectic for the last few months. We have been working hard on selling our corolla and getting our living situation figured out for Urbana-Champaign.

An update on where things are currently at:

• We have found a place in Champaign about 4.8 miles away from the building I will be working in. Audrey and I have signed the lease and are now just waiting to move. The official move date is July 25th.
• I will be starting an R.A. position working with Professor William Sanders. The proposed start date is July 29th.
• We are currently trying to sell the corolla. If you want to buy or take a look at it contact me. I have a craigslist posting for it, but I need to create a new one, because last week right after performing the initial posting I got into a minor fender bender. GREAT! Things always work out so well. What can you do though? Just press into the heart of God and find some peace.

Other than that things are going as normal. Oh, one more thing. I will be a guest speaker at UNM ECE building on June 29th at 1:30. I will be presenting on the IEEE 11073 standard and some work that our group at UNM has been performing over the past few months. If you would like to attend send me a comment and I will get you the exact information.

Thanks for reading! I hope you are having a wonderful day!

-Nathan

Hey Everybody-

The following is a video I recorded to discuss a bit about my graduate school selection. There will be a more detailed analysis in a post to come about the princeton visit. Thanks for visiting.

–nathan

I am an avid coffee drinker (see discription about college student somewhere else on site), and thought it would be cool to list how I make my perfect cup of coffee. I would have to say that I am becoming or already am a coffee snob. In terms of what I know about coffee and the fineness of my palette I would place myself in the novice to intermediate category. I love coffee! It is the only thing at 2 am that will do the job right so I can finish studying and get up at 6 am and drink another cup in the morning to go to school for that test or project. It is the ultimate relaxing drink for me too. I love to just have a nice cup of coffee.

There is one thing about drinking coffee that is extremely important to note. The quality of how good the coffee tastes is completely dependant on what you like and don’t like. For a long time I wanted to be the best at tasting good coffee, which made me focus no what other people thought was good. I started to realise that it didn’t really matter what anyone else said about the perfect cup of coffee. The only thing that really matters is how your taste buds like the coffee. So, as where I cringe at the thought of drinking a cup of instant Folgers, someone else has a paradise in it. This is extremely important to remember when  you are developing your coffee palette. Now, of course one can train their taste buds to upgrade from instant Folgers and taste the real liquid goodness, but I understand.

With that said, onto how I make my perfect cup of coffee.

Important things you must have to create my perfect cup of coffee:

1. Beans: must be whole beans and ground right before you make your coffee. I usually go with a straight version, of which my favorites are Guatemala, Sumatra, and Tanzanian Pea Berry. Also I like my beans a little bit more darkly roasted, but I have still yet to test out the full palette . I go to a roaster that does a great job. Here is a plug for her: Moon’s Coffee and Tea http://www.thuntek.net/coffeemoons/moonsite.html. She roasts her beans on the Vienna to Full French Roast style. If you don’t know what that means maybe I should create a post about the roasting levels. I do believe at a certain point you roast too far and lose the flavor of the regional components of the coffee. So, I like the darker roasts but also enjoy the lighter ones for different reasons. Audrey likes the darkly roasted ones!
2. Beans should also be of the pure variety, meaning freshly roasted. The beans should be no older than 2-3 weeks (of course I drink coffee from beans that have been out for longer periods, but these beans will create sub par coffee). If you buy beans at a grocery store they might not be that fresh, I don’t know this for sure its just a guess.
3. A good burr grinder: I have a capresso medium quality grinder. You must have a burr grinder to produce evenly ground beans!
4. French press: I use an 8 cup Bodum.
5. Purified Water.

To make the perfect cup (standard 16oz-ish mug of coffee):

1. Boil the water: I have an electric water heater dealio that does a great job.
2. As the water is boiling put about 3 scoops (from a 6oz scooper) of whole beans into the coffee grinder.
   1. Note: I use less than the standard “Starbucks” amount because I like to taste the flavors in my coffee when its done. Now, some people like the hard Starbucks style, go ahead, but I like to drink my coffee black allowing me to sample the full flavor palette of the coffee. If the coffee is too bitter to drink black it becomes freakin gross, and I don’t know if I have ever enjoyed a cup of black starbucks coffee. I always end up needing cream and sugar to make it taste okay.
3. Grind the beans at the coarsest grind possible. You do this because the coarser the beans are the less particles you get in your beverage at the end, and because the beans are soaking in the water getting more flavor out of the beans than a standard drip coffee maker.
4. Once the water is boiling: pour the ground beans into the french press.
5. Pour the water into the french press. There is an art this as well, I guess, some people pour better than othes. I don’t know what causes the goodness or the badness so I won’t comment on the perfect way to pour. Fill it up half way if you are using the 8 cup bodum. So this means that it makes about 4 standard cup size.
6. Start a timer for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
7. When timer is done SLOWLY press down the plunger on the french press.
8. Pour into your favorite mug (the coolness of the mug can make a difference if it is your convfort drink) and enjoy!

Well, there you have my way of creating the best cup of coffee. I’m sure there are over a billion ways to achieve this, but hopefully this will help you on your coffee journey.

Let me know how you make your perfect cup in the comments.

–nathan

I have had almost 10 days with my beloved Blackberry and I thought it would be a good idea to cover some of the stuff I’ve learned.

The first thing is that I love this thing. It is currently revolutionising my life. I am an avid reader of Life Hacker, and am all about the getting things done (gtd) lifestyle. I myself am preparing to embark on the crazy journey of being a grad student, which emphasises getting things done on time. The problem with life is that there is always so much to do.

In general I have a lot of trouble tracking my tasks because of a few problems (pre-bberry of course).

1. I don’t always have my pen and paper/organizer with me
2. Writing things down isn’t the only aspect to gtd, after you write it down you have to continually look at the list of tasks and prioritise the list so that you are doing the right thing at any given moment
3. I use several different methods to track gtd life: google calendar, remember the milk, filofax planner, and pieces of paper all over the place. There has been no way to centralise my gtd life tracking
4. There are so many things to get done I never have all the information in one space, so how do I know about that meeting in 15 mins if I didn’t make sure to see it somewhere else

In the past I have pretty much just written some stuff down and remembered what I could. The process was not streamlined at all. The reason why I say this is because the bberry answers all these problems. It does this in sevearl ways, but the primary function is that it allows me to centralize my gtd life. I have on my bberry my list of contacts, calendar, chat clients, internet radio, web browser, task list organizer, and several other things. The centralization of these aspects of my life are leveraged by the fact that the bberry is always with me. So when I’m sitting at school doing some research and I remember that thing that someone asked me to do I can add it into the bberry, give it a due date and priority and see it get into my list of things to do. This has streamlined my gtd process so much.

This leads into the fact that the bberry plugs into google extremely easily. I have my bberry calendar and addresses automatically synced from my google account as soon as there are updates. This allows me to input information into other devices like a desktop in google calendar and know that it will be on my bberry with not work done by me. In addition to google I have Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook applications installed that allow me to easily update each of the sites from my phone, and in the case of Facebook I get updates on my phone whenever I’m contacted by other people.

All of this connectivity has helped my life so much, but there is also a negative to this. When you get information as it is happening you have to learn how to ignore some of it. I am currently learning this process.

List of Basic Useful Applications I’m using now:

• Gtalk
• Gmail
• Facebook
• Slacker Radio
• Opera
• Flickr
• GoogleSync

This list will surely grow as I get more connected and learn how to work this process much more cleanly, but for now it has been an amazing upgrade to my gtd life.

Next steps: learn the shortcuts for the applications on the bberry so I can be faster! Check this out: http://www.bankersball.com/images/Blackberry-Shortcuts.pdf

–nathan

Hello Everyone

Audrey and I are friends with a couple, Chuck and Jenny, that have been entered into a contest by a photographer friend. The contest “Name Your Dream Assignment” for photographers is described as follows:

What is Name Your Dream Assignment?

Name Your Dream Assignment is a contest for photographers of all backgrounds. We’re looking for the most creative, inspiring photo shoot idea out there. The photographer with the winning idea will win $50,000 to bring his or her dream assignment to life.

How will the entries be judged?

From March 3 to April 3, 2009, the ideas will be open to a public vote. The Top 20 ideas with the most “pics” coming out of the vote will then be judged by an expert panel, who will select the winner based on the originality and creativity of the photographer’s idea. The panel will also take into consideration skill and experience.

The dream described by the friend:

Adoption Journey

I’d love to fly to China with my best friend to document the adoption of her baby girl!

My closest friend since high school is adopting a baby from China. I’d love to go with her to document her story, and the process of bringing her new daughter home, as well as the stories of those around her on her journey!!

To vote:

1. Go to http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/ellenbensonphoto/adoption-journey/
2. Click “pic it” button as seen in the image:
3. This will direct you to a registration screen
4. Enter you registration information
5. Open the confirmation email
6. Click on the link in the email
7. Go back to the website and clikc “pic it” again
8. Your vote has now been saved.

This has been a tough long process for Chuck and Jenny and it would be a tremendous blessing to see them win, or at least get into the top 20 for further consideration. The voting ends April 3, so please, if you can, go vote for them.

-nathan