Highlights from Semester 1, Year 2

Another semester down! Robbie is in the other room in his post-finals coma but, being the morning person I am, I couldn't sleep past 6:30 so the first thing I wanted to do was get a blog post written.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Robbie's semester just ended yesterday. It feels like he just started his second year maybe a month ago (though the -4 degrees F outside confirms to me it's not September). I have heard from numerous sources that the first semester of second year is supposed to be the hardest mostly because of the volume of classes. (Seriously. 27. Credit. Hours. When I told my best friend that she asked, "Isn't that illegal or something!?" haha)

Honestly, it went by so quickly that I didn't have much time to mope. It's sort of like that feeling of ripping off a band-aid, only this semester was a GIANT band-aid and now I'm just feeling a little dazed and thinking, "What just happened?" Not only did I go from staying at home to working 40+ hours a week, but it seems like there was something planned with friends or family almost every weekend. I made the hour drive up to Fort Collins more times than I can count.

Here are the highlights of what happened this semester.

1) BABETOBERFEST
We threw a fall-themed baby shower for my oldest sister, Altair. I really owe a lot to Pinterest for inspiring the food, decor, and activities. We served a baked-potato bar, bratwurst, and lots of little finger foods.

That is a red-velvet cream cheese ball. Thank you Pinterest. You have opened my eyes.

My sister, Deborah, being silly with the mommy-to-be, Altair.

You can't go wrong with mini pumpkin pies. They were fantastic!! Thanks again Pinterest!

I made pre-printed pages of the whole alphabet and each guest drew a picture with crayon.

Here is one that I made. You know you're a 90's kid if you know who this is.

2) RODIZIO GRILL DATE
Rodizio Grill is an amazing Brazilian restaurant where the servers walk around with huge skewers of all different kinds of meats and if you want some then they will carve chunks off onto your plate. I loved all the food but my favorite part was the fried plantains. It's normally way too expensive for us to go, but I snagged a deal on groupon that gave us half off.

Robbie loved the little thing used to signify to the waiters if you wanted more food. When it was on red, they knew to leave you alone. When it was on green, they knew to bring more food. I think he just liked the concept of having unlimited access to more food any time he wanted.

Enjoying some really nice wine.

3) CHAUNCEY CAME HOME
I seriously love squirrels but one squirrel in particular is my favorite. His name is Chauncey. He has big fluffy red ears and he's tame enough to take a nut from your hand. I hadn't seen him since last winter and I thought he had actually died but one magical Sunday morning, there he was outside our sliding glass door. I of course got really excited and opened the door right away to give him some walnuts.

You can see how excited I am and how unimpressed Riesy is.

After putting Riesy in the office, we opened the door and he came right in to get a nut.

Look how fluffy he is!!

And so plump!

4) OLIVE TIME
I got to spend lots of time with my niece, Olive. She was probably the main reason I made so many trips up from Denver this semester.

I love her dimples.

Stop it. Stop it right now.

 5) BABY LUKE WAS BORN
My oldest sister had her baby just a few days before Thanksgiving. We got to meet him the day after he was born but then Robbie and I both got colds so we haven't been able to spend much time with him yet. I can't wait to hold him some more once I'm better!

He was a big boy at over 8 lbs.

The proud papa

8) MY FRIENDS GOT ENGAGED
My friends, Dan and Chelsea, finally got engaged! He was smart enough to have his dad hide in full camouflage to take pictures. This makes my heart so happy.

7) WORKING AT THE DENTAL SCHOOL
What kept me most occupied this semester was working at the Dental School. I cannot say enough how much I love working there. The people are awesome, the work is interesting, and I get to have lunch almost every day with Robbie. You can't beat that!

Robbie saw his first patient. This was before the appointment.

I have no idea what any of this even means.

Exhausted and covered in dust from working in the lab for hours.

Placing teeth in a denture wax-up.

Me being cool with my awesome scanner in the Instrument Dispensary.

I am so thankful for all the wonderful experiences I had this semester. So many exciting things happened with my family. Praise God for bringing so many blessings into my life so I could cope with the stress of the last few months. He is so good!

Time to Catch Up

Wow, three weeks since I last posted! I bet you all thought I had drowned in the Colorado floods!

In spite of the fact that I have family living in each of the cities that were hit the worst, none of them had any damage to their houses/cars/etc. Thank goodness! On Thursday the 12th, Aurora got pounded with rain and they decided to close the campus due to flooding. Although we live within 5 minutes of the school, it took us an hour and a half to get home because they completely closed off our street and we ended up going in a big circle with traffic. Before we left campus, two of Robbie's classmates decided to take advantage of the new lake developing.

Gotta love Dental Students.


Something else I've been busy with is making the invitations for my sister Altair's babyshower. They wanted to have more of a couples shower so I had to make sure the invitations weren't too cutesy (lest I should scare of some of their guy friends). We're going to have bratwurst and a baked potato bar so we decided to call it Babetoberfest (like Oktoberfest only a baby shower).

Robbie and I also headed up to Fort Collins last weekend for my sister's birthday. She had a Hawaiian themed party so I made a quick stop by the thrift store to grab a Hawaiian shirt before going over. As always, I had a great time holding my favorite niece, Olive.

Don't you just want to squeeze those adorable chubby legs and arms?!

This semester of Dental School has been flying by for both of us. I've been busy with work and Robbie has been crazy busy with studying and projects. In his Removables lab, they have been hard at work placing teeth in their wax up for dentures. One day this week I stayed on campus with him until about 7 while he and his lab partner worked on their denture.

This is the wax-up prior to having the teeth placed.

Apparently placing teeth in wax is a very messy process.

I'm always so impressed by him and the things he's learning!

This portion is ready to be sent to the lab to be fabricated into an upper denture. The pink wax that's holding the teeth is melted away and is replaced with acrylic by the lab.

If you're a Dental nerd or just curious about the process of Denture fabrication, here's a great video I found on YouTube (complete with a British narrator). Most General Practitioner Dentists do not place teeth in wax-ups themselves because it's too time consuming (the lab places the teeth). The school wants the students to know the process so they understand the need for all the measurements and specifications for their wax-ups.

My job is still going really well. Yesterday, my supervisor and I spent the whole day counting/organizing inventory since we don't have students in our clinic on Fridays. I'm getting a lot more familiar with the materials we have in the dispensary and where they are on the shelves (which, let me tell you, is quite a feat since there are SO MANY different materials). Robbie and I have both been getting over a cold, too. I got it first and decided to be nice and share it with him a few days later. We're both feeling a lot better now though.

Now you all know what we've been doing the last few weeks! I hope you found it very educational. :)

Baby Shower

What a busy weekend! My sister Deborah was in town from Las Vegas so my mom, my sister Ariane, and her husband Randy, and I went to Boulder with her to eat at Crepes a la Carte. We also got to have my favorite chai in the world at the Dushanbe Tea House.

My mom and Deborah outside of Dushanbe.

Me "smiling" for the camera, Ariane and her husband Randy behind me and my mom on the right.

On Sunday, we threw the baby shower for Ariane at my sister Altair's house.

That is in fact a giant uterus on the wall. I made it so we could play pin the sperm on the uterus! Everyone got a sperm to put their name on and taped it on the uterus, then the mom-to-be closed her eyes and taped an egg on the uterus. The person whose sperm was closest to the egg won $5 to a frozen yogurt place.

Deborah made bubble bath punch. You put sherbet in the punch and it gets all foamy and bubbly.

We decorated onesies. These were the ones her guests made. The "Miso Cute" one was the winner and received a $5 Starbucks gift card. :)

An adorable fat kitty that Deborah painted

An olive riding a chicken (the baby's name is going to be Olive and Ariane has a bunch of chickens)

Another onesie I made just telling it how it is.

This one is my favorite that I made. It's Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars! Once it's dry I'm going to write "It's a crap!" on the bum. If you get this joke pat yourself on the back because you are a nerd.

As you can probably guess, decorating the onesies was my favorite activity. We also did a Mad Lib that Deborah and I wrote about Olive and we played Baby Scattergories. Overall, I think it went really well but by the end of the day I was absolutely exhausted.

I barely got to see Robbie at all this past weekend because I was so busy with family so it's nice to be back at home with him now. While I was at the baby shower, he got to hang out with his family and see the new Star Trek. Robbie's been hard at work studying for the Boards using that application I mentioned in a previous post. He also told me that they had their first periodontics lab today. Dental School just keeps moving right along!

Summer Semester Starts Tomorrow

I am so glad Robbie had a couple days off before summer semester begins. It's crazy to think that in less than three months he will be done with Boards and will be in his second year of Dental School! One of Robbie's classmates highly recommended an app called Dental Boards Mastery that is supposed to help prepare you for the Boards so we will probably be getting that soon. It's pretty expensive ($50) but apparently many of the questions are almost word for word what they are on the Boards. The students are able to choose when they want to take them so some of his classmates have already taken the test. Robbie plans on taking them towards the end of July.

We had a fun couple of days visiting our extended family in Fort Collins over the break. I had my eye appointment and am trying out contacts for 10 days (so far I don't absolutely love them, but they're not that bad). Robbie went shooting with his parents at a nice outdoor range in Nunn, Colorado. In the meantime, I went shopping for maternity clothes (not for me, silly!) with my mom and my sister, Ariane (the pregnant one).

Ariane, smuggling a beach ball under her dress.

We're throwing her a baby shower one week from today, so I'll have some pretty great pictures to share after that since I'm in charge of the games and activities.