Ben's Summer Project

I absolutely can't compete with Jenn's incredible bulletin board, so I'm not even going to try. But I have been working on my own summer project:

Amidst trips to Scotland and Anchorage and visits from family, I've been preparing for my "special field exam," which was looming over my head all summer. The special field exam consists of you reading a boatload of papers, and then you get to sit in a room with three professors for an hour and a half while they ask you questions about the papers. If you do well enough, you pass and you officially become a "Ph.D. Candidate," which means that the only thing left to do to get a degree is write a dissertation. If you don't pass, then a Ph.D. might not be right for you. As it turned out, my reading list was 240 papers long (covering behavioral, corporate, and consumer finance), with each paper averaging about 40 pages or so of pretty dense material. After slogging through all of that reading all summer, I took my test the last day that Brady and McCall were here and passed! Wahoo!

Since I didn't get an MBA before coming to Harvard, I still have to take 5 MBA classes in addition to writing a dissertation. I started getting those out of the way this semester, which began yesterday. I've got three classes this semester: Financial Intermediaries, Private Equity, and Entrepreneurial Finance. As I posted before, MBA classes are vastly different from Ph.D. classes, and I still feel like I'm getting the hang of them. I think if I switch to my snappy dress shirts and polish up my Excel skills I should be fine. Should be exciting!

Brady & McCall

So . . . check out the cool couple we enticed to Boston to come visit us this year . . .

Aren't they adorable? They are also probably two of the most fun people in the world and hilarious to be around! We had an awesome week with them.

Didn't get enough pictures, but I loved these:

Kite-flying on Cape Cod

Ellis carefully making sure his shirt was full of sticky sand

Brady and McCall heard a rumor that Boston has really good root beer. Wonder where that came from??? But they really wanted to be sure to have the best Boston root beer ever while they were here, so we had a root beer taste test with the 4 best ones we could find. The contestants: Virgils, John Buckman's, Mug, and Wild Willy's.

Some of us took the taste test very seriously.

Others took it very, very seriously.

Others just like a good excuse to drink more root beer!

BTW, the winner: Wild Willy's -- a mere 5 minute drive from our house! Of course, Ben, the root beer connoisseur, still insists that the sophisticated taste of Virgil's (available at your local Trader Joe's) is the best.

We did lots of fun Boston things that aren't pictured here. We also ate lots of really good food, which we were happy to introduce them to. I'm still dreaming about the night at Pizzeria Regina and the cannolis and red velvet whoopie pie from Mike's. Mostly I'm dreaming about the whoopie pie.

I also can't bypass the opportunity to document this story: On one of our many nights staying up late talking, we were sitting by the computer planning out where we would go for the best clam chowder. We were planning on going to Cape Cod the next day (specifically Chatham), so I turned to the computer and typed "Best clam chowder in Chatham" into the Google search bar. Well, our dear McCall was sitting off to an angle, and you know how sometimes the letters c and l put together can look like a lower-case d? Well, they did, so she thought I had typed "Best dam chowder in Chatham." With no hesitation whatsoever, she reached her finger up to point out my mistake: "You spelled the swear word wrong!" she said. It took me a minute to figure out what on earth she was talking about, but we all busted up laughing for like 5 minutes. Then we quoted McCall's eager spelling correction several times for the rest of their stay. I love how she had no trouble believing that I would type such a phrase into the Google search bar, and secondly that she thought I would really misspell one of my favorite curse words :) That girl is so funny and unabashed, in a very cute kind of way. We sure love her. Thanks for marrying my brother, McCall! And thanks to both of you for [submitting to our bribes and coercion and] coming to visit us!

Anchorage, Alaska

While Jenn's parents and Tanner stayed with the boys, Jenn and I spoiled ourselves and took off for another dream vacation by ourselves, this time to visit Shug and Paul in Anchorage, Alaska. The trip was exactly what we were looking for: incredible scenery, plenty of relaxing, some hiking, a little fishing, and most importantly, lots of time to catch up with some of our closest friends. Here's what it looked like:

Day 1: We drove up to Hatcher Pass (through famous Wasilla, AK!) and took a short hike to this incredible vista. I kept saying how it reminded me of backpacking with my dad, except that in Alaska you only have to drive for 45 minutes and hike for less than a mile to find this kind of pristine land.

On the way back down the canyon, we stopped to pick these fireweed blossoms to make jelly with.

Day 2: We drove to Girdwood (about 30-45 minutes away) and got some incredibly large and yummy sweet rolls to kick off the day. Then we took a short hike through a rain forest (really!) to get to this awesome hand tram:

It was a lot scarier than it looks! Imagine being suspended by a rope 200 feet above a rushing, icy river! Jenn was sure she was going to plummet to her death!

The view from the tram was incredible.

Shug and Paul thought it was incredible too.

This is the view looking straight down.

Shortly after the hand tram, we found the place where all fresh spring water commercials should be filmed.

After the hike, we tried salmon fishing on Bird Creek River. We saw a few swimming upstream, but didn't have any luck.

After fishing, it was time to make our fireweed blossom jelly! It turned out great, and Shug and Paul even let us take home three jars!

Day 3: We stayed home and slept a lot, played games, went to the beach and watched the airplanes take off right over our heads, and saw a bit of Anchorage. Sorry, no pictures!

Day 4: We drove down the Kenai Peninsula to the confluence of the Russian and Kenai Rivers to try fishing one more time. This is the only place where I've seen a reserved fishing spot for handicapped people! We also rode across on this crazy ferry, which is equipped with an air horn to warn fisherman if a bear is sighted. Unfortunately, we didn't see any bears. We did see some fish, but none happened to be attached to our hooks.

Some of us were fishing seriously...

And some were maybe not quite so serious.

After catching nothing at all, we took a short hike to Exit Glacier, which is part of the Harding Icefield near Seward. We could not get over four things: (1) How big glaciers are; (2) How blue the insides of glaciers are; (3) How far the glaciers have receded in recent years; (4) This ice has been there since the Ice Age!

Day 5: We had a great time at Shug and Paul's ward, and then in the afternoon we made buttons with Shug's button-maker. Well, mostly Jenn made buttons, while the rest of us slept. Here are the fruits of her labors:

Here's the spread of food we enjoyed on Sunday afternoon. Shug and Paul are AMAZING chefs, and we enjoyed all-the-stops-pulled-out meals every night. We didn't take nearly enough pictures of the great food we had, so this picture is going to have to be enough.

Day 6: We went up to Eklutna Lake to go kayaking. This was tons of fun! We had never used a serious kayak with a rudder and water skirts. We were glad to have the skirts because the waves were crashing over the bow and the water was freezing!

I have to put a picture of Settlers of Catan on here, because we played it every night. In the end, Paul won 3 games, Shug and Jenn each won 2, and Ben tried really hard.

A huge thanks to Shug and Paul for being the greatest hosts and best friends ever! We can't wait to go back for another visit someday, and really hope they'll come visit us soon (wink wink). In the meantime, Ben will be practicing his fishing and Catan skills...

For those of you still with me here at the end, I pestered Shug and Paul with questions about Alaska while we were there, so here are some bonus Alaska facts for you!

1. If you cut Alaska in half, it would make Texas the third largest state in the nation.

2. At its narrowest, Alaska is 50 miles from Russia across the Bering Strait, not counting some islands (which are closer).

3. The end of the Aleutian Islands is closer to Tokyo than Anchorage.

4. There are 300,000 people in Anchorage, and 600,000 total in Alaska.

5. You feel the pull of gravity more in Alaska (or anywhere far from the equator) due to a lack of centrifugal force.

6. 5% of Alaska is covered in glaciers.

7. At the solstices, Anchorage gets about 4 hours of daylight in the winter and 4 hours of night in the summer.

8. Edinburgh, Scotland is only 6 degrees latitude farther south than Anchorage, while it is 13 degrees farther north than Boston. In other words, Edinburgh isn't much farther south than Anchorage. No wonder my parents are so cold all the time!

Newport & Martha's Vineyard

The party summer continues! Grandma Lori, Grandpa Dave, and Uncle Tanner came to join us for an idyllic week (before Ben and I abandoned them and left for Alaska for another week!). We thought we would take a trip down south to Newport, RI and Martha's Vineyard. Enjoy the pics!

Classic Henry & Ellis moment -- throwing rocks in the water at the beach in Newport.

(Henry told Brady last week that Tanner is his favorite uncle :)

Look at these two love birds. Just enjoying their beachside sunset!

It took 12 tries to get this picture with everyone almost smiling at the camera. These boys love their GraLori and BompaDave!

This was our view off the deck in our AWESOME Newport suite. We actually had two decks with a great view and plenty of space. We would have been happy to stay at the hotel the whole time we were in Newport (Ben did for one day while we went shopping and he read academic papers -- party pooper!).

Cool guys touring the Breakers -- the Vanderbilt summer mansion which is nestled along the famous and beautiful Cliff Walk.

Ferry ride to Martha's Vineyard. Ellis was most excited about the orange seats! He got his own seat and stayed in it for about 1/3 of the ride.

Ice cream on the Vineyard.
We rented bikes and rode from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown. It was a lovely 6-mile ride along the beach.

After this fun weekend with my family, Ben and I headed to Alaska while Grandma, Grandpa, and Tanner stayed home with the boys. It was quite possibly the most fun week of Henry and Ellis' lives! They have been talking about it nonstop. We don't have any pictures from their adventures together, but we know they had a great time. We miss you guys!

More Virginians!

We've been in constant vacation mode for the past several weeks, so sorry that this is somewhat stale news...but we've got to post about all of the fun we've been having!

A few days after Katie and her family left for the long drive back to Virginia, Kara and Dave showed up for some Boston fun with their kids! We had such a great time partying with them. Somehow we fit four of their five kids on the floor in Henry and Ellis' room while they were here; I don't think the kids got much sleep but they had a lot of fun. The adults, meanwhile, got even less sleep and had every bit as much fun as the kids did. Aside from late night games, Kara and Dave also fit in a fair amount of touring, getting to the Museum of Science (a highlight for them, I think!), the Freedom Trail, a Duck Tour, Lexington, Concord, and even a Harvard campus tour in the dark. Good times. In fact, there were so good that we must have forgotten to get out our camera much, because we only ended up with a few pictures from Lexington and Concord:
As you can see, we struggled to get everyone to be still enough to snap a picture! Good times, though. We're so glad to have both Kara and Katie's families within a day's drive of us! Come back soon, Kara and Dave, we loved hosting you!