Fall Hixson Happenings

So we haven't written in a super long time, but want to give a brief update of recent Hixson happenings.

Nate's birthday cake

Sep. 19 Nathan turned a quarter of a century old.  We went to a fancy italian restaurant in the North End for dinner, and went to what I thought would be a cool star gazing night at Harvard's conservatory.  It turned out to have a lecture beforehand that I thought was kind of boring, but Nate actually liked it, so that was lucky.  Then we got to see the full moon in their telescopes.  Unfortunately, that's all we saw because when the full moon is out, it's too bright to see other constellations.  After that we went to JP Licks, a local ice cream place that is AMAZING, it was seriously the best ice cream we've ever had. We also had a little lunch party at the park with some friends from the ward and a friend from Nate's work. I made this peanut butter ice cream cake for him.

Every year Boston has a rowing race on the Charles river where fancy smancy crew teams race.  It is a really big deal where lots of people come, and there are booths around everywhere with different stuff.  We watched lots of teams, but know now that if we go again to get a program and sit next to the announcer to be able to tell who is winning.

If you look under the bridge, you can see some crew teams

Everyone talks about how amazing new england fall is, and the leaves have turned so we can now confirm that it's not an exaggeration. IT'S BEAUTIFUL. We were able to see lots of pretty trees on our way to northern Massachusetts to go apple picking last weekend. It was a cute little family run farm that had like 20 different kinds of apples and lots of other fresh produce.  Everyone in Boston likes to do it, so we had to try it out.

SO MANY APPLES

School for me has been crazy recently, I had lots of assignments for classes, a test tomorrow, and I am applying for a competitive 3 year NSF fellowship (which I don't know if I even have a chance at).  I also finished up my first rotation, and have now started a new one.  Hopefully, after thursday my load will be lighter, and I won't be so crazy (I'm sure Nate is getting pretty sick of stressed out Kathryn)

Nate has also been busy at work.  In two weeks, he has his first of 3 big presentations for his year long fellowship. He is pretty busy preparing for that to try to be ready in time and is hopeful that the project that has been taking a lot of him time will soon be completed so he can focus more on his presentation. The project that's almost done is BostonSchoolsHub.org- a website his program has made that allows families to search all schools in Boston, regardless of whether they are district, charter, or Catholic. The website won't be live until later this week, so sorry if it doesn't work and you were curious enough to click it- but try again at the end of this week!

We've also been busy with our new church callings. I got called to the Young Women (again) but this time there are a few more, which means lots of ride giving, but it means I will learn to navigate and drive the streets of this crazy town.  Nate just got called as a ward missionary, specifically working with the elders quorum.  We think it's kind of funny we have essentially the exact same callings as our last ward. Nate and I also got called to serve together as Temple baptistry coordinators.  We do this a couple times a month, and just got trained yesterday.  We are still learning but excited for this experience.  Neither of us have ever been temple workers before.

Nate invited a group of 4 other coworkers, his team at New Sector, over for dinner this week.  He told them I like to make cakes, so I had to try to impress with this pumpkin cake with maple cinnamon cream cheese frosting.  It turned out to be pretty tasty, although lots of work. We also made them some homemade pizza for dinner.  So it turned out to be a fun, tasty night.

the spiders were made with melted chocolate and lots of patience

Finished project on my fancy crystal cake plate-Thanks grandma!

Halloween was pretty fun.  Nate and I were bank robbers (old school hamburglar style).  We had fun dressing up for the ward party last week, and then again on halloween for some friends' party. I am also quite proud that at this year's ward chili cook-off, I took home 1st place with this chocolate chipotle chili. There were 12 chili's and it was a blind test with 3 judges. One life goal down.

Us with our punk rock friends at the halloween party