16-June-2010 8:33pm 8lbs 10oz 21.5inches

Tell us which one you like better!

See more pictures here.

Pittsburgh, here we come

On July 28th we will be getting in our sporty little PT Cruiser (oh yea we got a new car...I guess I should talk about that...OK I just did) and moving to Pittsburgh, PA.  Ok so not all of our stuff fits in the PT Cruiser so there will be a moving truck taking our stuff as well.

We have already signed a lease agreement on an apartment in Pittsburgh and we took this picture from our new living room.

For anybody that believed that I took this photo from our living room....I have some great stuff to sell you! ;)

I (Justin) have been accepted into a very exciting dual PhD program at Carnegie Mellon University and the Universidade de Porto (in Portugal).  We will spend two years in Pittsburgh, and then three years in Porto, Portugal and then I will walk away with a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from both schools.

We first made the decision to go to graduate school about this time last year.  We weren't sure where we would go, or where we should even apply, but we felt that it was the right decision for our family.  So I decided to visit the University of Idaho and Washington State University (WSU) to ask questions and get a feel for what graduate school would really be like.  I was dumb-founded when WSU offered to not only waive my tuition, but actually PAY ME to go to school there.  That lead to Stephanie needing to deflate my head as it had grown largely out of proportion, and then I started applying to any and every school I could imagine myself going to.  I figured if WSU was going to give me the red carpet, I should see who else would before committing.

Countless hours of writing application essays and filling out my entire life story countless times on each schools application later...I had applied to the following Schools:

MIT

Stanford

UCLA

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

University of Utah

University of Washington

University of Texas-Austin

WSU

Ohio State University
Every school except MIT and Stanford (who simply said sorry Charlie) made similar offers to the one WSU had made.  Most of them even paid for me to go and visit them!  So I spent five weekends in a row traveling to different schools, trying to decide which one would be the best fit.  

I was very excited about the offer CMU made and the possibility of going to Portugal. Stephanie, on the other hand, took quite a while to warm up to the possibility of living in Portugal for three years.  But none the less we made our final decision and now we are awaiting to embark on a journey of a lifetime as a young family!

Baby Update

Well many people have been asking us if we are ready for Seth to arrive.  I would ask if Seth is going to be ready for us!  We are so super excited to bring home a bundle of joy that our apartment is jam packed with baby stuff!

Just look at our spare bedroom:

I took this picture from the door so there isn't much room left in the room.  The stroller is jammed alongside the rocking chair which is squeezing next to the crib.  Then we have the bassinet and car seat in the middle of the room because quite frankly there is no other place to put them!  Well we may be drowning in baby stuff, but we sure love it!

A little while back a surprise baby shower was thrown for Steph at work.  They gave us a diaper cake, we thought it was picture worthy, so enjoy!

Seth Ryan Wagner

Here is Seth Ryan Wagner. When we were first married, I asked Justin what boy names he likes, he humored my question and without much thought, said that he liked the name "Seth." I hadn't thought much about that name before, but I liked it and agreed that it was a good name. When I was pregnant, we both kind of assumed that if it was a boy, we would name him Seth. It was a boy and the name stuck. Besides, doesn't he look like a Seth in this picture? :)
Justin's middle name is Ryan, and in both of our families, the oldest son has the same middle name as the dad, so this was an easy decision. Something fun we found out about the name Seth is that in the scriptures Seth was one of the first son's of Adam, and it said that Seth was a righteous man and was just like his father. Justin was pretty excited to hear that because he thinks it means that Seth will be an engineer just like him :)

31 weeks down, about 9 more to go!

This pregnancy has been going great! We are going to a birthing class this Saturday, and we have a crib and many other baby things set up and ready to go, so hopefully we'll be prepared when Seth comes...well as prepared as possible :)

It's a boy!

We were very excited to find out that we are having a boy! Justin was especially glad, even though he might have been paying more attention to the numbers at the side of the ultrasound then the pictures of the baby. (typical for an electrical engineer;)

Baby!

We are proud to announce that we are going to have a baby! Stephanie is 6 weeks along and the due date is June 17th!