V-day, Waiting, and Fam update.

Our Valentine's Day tradition is to go out to eat Sushi, so this year we were excited to try a place in Philly! We looked on Yelp and finally decided on a place called Harusame and I can honestly say it's the best sushi I've ever eaten!!! Of course we usually go to cheap places, so maybe that's not saying much, but still it was delicious. AND what's even better is they had DR PEPPER!!! Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is. I've learned that Dr Pepper not as popular in the east, so it is almost never served at restaurants. I had come to accept this but it was such a wonderful surprise when I found out they had it! It made my day. The service was awesome, atmosphere was great, and since it was Valentine's day they gave all the women a box of chocolates and a rose when they left. Needless to say, they come highly recommended in my book.
In other wonderful news, we have two beautiful new nieces! One was born on Justin's side of the family on January 26th, two days before Haddy's birthday. Her name is Amelia Veda Funk and she is adorable! Our other new niece is my sister's new baby Isla Claire Murray, born on February 10th and I love her so much! Sadly, we don't get to meet these new additions until the end of April at the soonest, but thankfully we have technology so both families frequently send us pictures! We also have another new niece/nephew due at the end of May we are excited for!
As many know, Justin is finishing up his Master's degree here in April, and he has applied for PhD programs so we are playing the (frustrating) waiting game. At first I was discouraged by the fact we hadn't heard from anyone yet, but then I remembered we applied to all these same schools last year for their Masters programs and we didn't hear back from anyone until March. So that made me feel a little better....but I still hate waiting. Justin has been nervous about hearing back from the schools. He has an incredibly narrow and rare research interest, and there are pretty much no professors doing exactly what he wants to study (it's a brand new field called Social Entrepreneurship and it's so new they pretty much just have business people teaching a few classes in social work programs, but no Professor specifically working on it). He also applied to the only four programs that fund your entire PhD, so they are super competitive along with not having perfect research match-ups. But we know there is a plan for us! And I am more and more impressed by my wonderful husband's abilities everyday! Even if we didn't get into any of the programs I know Justin will excel in whatever path he takes. Most likely he would work for a year and apply to PhD programs again the next year. Yes, it would be a setback, and sometimes it's hard to have faith when you can't see the bigger picture, but I know that if we do have faith then what's supposed to happen will happen. I love my little family so much, and I know we can get through anything together.
As for the family: Haddy is so wonderful. She is on the verge of walking, she's totally off formula (yay!), she speaks her own language that sounds similar to how a laser-gun sounds, and she kind of has mcgyver hair. She is so so beautiful, and so much fun to play with. I love being her mom and getting to see her cute face everyday.
Justin is beyond awesome at what he does. He's so passionate about learning and he loves his classes. His Professors all adore him, one in particular raves about his papers to the class on a regular basis, and has even nominated him for an international social work award. One time I picked Justin up from class and his Professor walked him out just so he could talk to me and tell me how stellar Justin is. He said he's been teaching for over 20 years and he knows he'll go far. I completely agree, Justin has so much drive and I absolutely know he is going to help change the world someday.
Me: Well, I'm sick again (surprise surprise). This time my dr thinks it's the flu. Blech. But today I'm feeling a little better so hopefully I'm on the mend. That's pretty much all that's going on with me....
Well, that's all for now. There are no pictures, sorry, just me talking forever. But we are going to New York in a couple of weeks so I will put a bunch of pictures up from that.