Sleepless Nights

I didn't sleep very well last night. I woke up on and off for awhile then I was wide awake from about 2:00-3:30 this morning. Part of it was that I just couldn't quite get comfortable but another reason I just couldn't quite sleep was because I was thinking about having kids. We're not pregnant nor are we trying to get pregnant right now, but I recognize that we are drawing closer to the time when we will be ready to start a family. I've been noticing that God has been using this time as preparation to help me sift through my fears and expectations of motherhood.

The nagging thought that kept creeping into my mind last night was, "What if I'm not a good mother?" The question was solely based on the knowledge that when I become a mother, I won't get as much sleep. Honestly, I don't really like the way I behave when I don't get enough sleep (I'm talking 8-9 hours a night). I tend to have less patience and to be much more emotionally driven (instead of being guided by my usual, Vulcan-like logical side *nerd joke*). How can someone who is so dependent on sleep and who feels so cranky without it be a good mother to a newborn who wakes her up all night? I wrestled with this doubt for a good portion of time before turning to Jesus in prayer.

During the course of the conversation, He reminded me of what He endured on the cross "for the joy set before Him." He also reminded me that I'm a new creation, I'm not who I was before I gave my life to Him. He lives inside me and I am empowered to love sacrificially. I came to the realization that since Jesus endured the horrors of the cross and Jesus now lives in me, surely He and I can endure the lack of sleep that comes with having kids.

Once again, I'm drawn to the verses in 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind...[love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."

Studying for the Boards

We're hanging out at Starbucks this afternoon while Robbie studies for the Boards. Here he is hard at work:

After trying it out for a couple weeks, Robbie has given his stamp of approval to the Dental Boards Mastery app we purchased for his iPad. Also, this is the first week that Robbie has come home from lab and told me that he actually feels like his skills are improving (which is awesome because he is his own toughest critic). They started doing Class V restorations and he was able to bust out a composite one relatively quickly before the lab closed for the day on Wednesday. It's those little moments of success that I think really help keep you going in Dental School.

A Class V restoration is one that is along the gumline (the gingival 1/3 of the tooth).

We don't really have anything planned for Memorial Day. He's going to use the time off to get some more studying done. I will probably go to the pool to get a little sun (hopefully my pale skin doesn't blind anyone!). Tomorrow evening we're going over to our friends' house to have some sangria I made and to play some board games. Other than that it should be a pretty mellow weekend!

Pictures to Make You Hungry

My sister sent me some pictures of the crepes we had at Crepes a la Cart in Boulder, Colorado last weekend. So here are some pictures to make your mouth water!

This one was filled with pulled pork, macaroni and cheese, and cole slaw. It was like a BBQ dinner in a crepe! Sorry I didn't get a picture before we started digging into it!

This one is called Raspberry Delight. It was filled with raspberries and dark chocolate! YUMM!

Here's the inside of the Raspberry Delight crepe. The stuff on top was some kind of thick whipped creme.

The moral of the story is, if you are ever in Boulder, you should eat at Crepes a la Cart.

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!

In-Laws

I came across an article on Yahoo the other day that was about "10 Things Never to Say to Your Mother In Law." It included things such as "I didn't ask your opinion," "Why didn't you teach your son to..." and "I hope I inherit your armoire." I felt it was a straightforward article that was simply trying to get across the point that you shouldn't be mean to your MIL. Boy did it strike a chord with some of the people who commented on the article though! There were some truly vicious comments people left about their MIL's and I just couldn't stop thinking about the whole topic for the last several days. I am very fortunate in that I get along really well with my in-laws, but even if you don't see eye to eye with your spouse's family, here's a few of thoughts that might help:

1) I am called to show the love of Jesus to everyone, no matter who they are or how they behave.

As a Christian, I believe I am called to live in a way that shines Jesus' love to everyone I come in contact with, whether that is the teller at my bank, the homeless person on the corner of the street, the atheist who cusses me out and mocks my beliefs, the barista who makes my coffee at Starbucks, or my Mother in Law.

"You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don't even the Gentiles do the same?" -Matthew 5:43-47 (Holman Christian Standard translation)

I'm not called to simply tolerate or put up with other people, I'm called to love them the way Jesus loves them. The Bible gives us an excellent description of what Jesus' love looks like in action. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that when we love someone, we will be patient with them, we will be kind to them, we won't envy what they have, we won't brag about ourselves to them or be focused on ourselves when interacting with them, we won't act improperly around them, we won't be easily provoked by them, and we won't keep a mental record of any way they have wronged us. 

2) The only thing that can enable me to truly love others is to spend time alone in the presence of God, getting to know Him and receiving His love.

I don't know about you, but showing Biblical love can seem really difficult (if not impossible) at times. The only way we can love others like this is to have been in the presence of Jesus, receiving His love. When I realize the fullness of God's love for me, it transforms me and overflows to the people around me.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another... We love because He first loved us." -1 John 4:7-11, 19

3) The only actions I am accountable for are my own but God can use my actions to change another person.

The only person's actions I can control are my own. God calls me to trust Him to hold others accountable for their actions and to leave justice up to Him.

"Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the LORD. 'But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." -Romans 12:17-21

I especially love the part that says, "So far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men." I have experienced such great freedom in the realization that I am only responsible for me. If I have done everything within my power to be loving and kind towards someone, yet they still choose to repay me with hostility/meanness/rudeness, that's on them.

Our culture teaches us that if someone hurts us, we have every right to get back at them. But God offers us a higher road to take. If we choose to show kindness to someone who doesn't deserve it, God can use that to deeply convict that person and possibly bring about a change in them. If you can grasp a hold of how much of a power bomb kindness is, how much more effective it is than retaliation and bitterness, it will change your life.

4) My relationship with my Mother In Law does not have to go along with the world's expectations.

Just because the world's expectation is that the relationship between a man's wife and his mother will more than likely be strained, competitive, conniving, etc. it does not mean I have to go that route and feed the stereotype. In fact, the story of one of the most beautiful relationships between two women can be found in the Book of Ruth between Ruth (a Moabitess) and Naomi, her Jewish Mother In Law. Naomi lived in Moab with her husband, their two sons, and their sons' wives for 10 years but after her husband and sons died, she decided to return to the land of Judah. Her Daughter In Law, Orpah, decides to go her separate way, but Ruth makes a beautiful declaration.

"But Ruth said, 'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.' When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her."

I realize more and more that my Mother In Law is a woman, just like me, has fears and desires and hopes, just like me, and needs the love and grace of God, just like me. She wants to feel needed, included, valued, and respected. What woman doesn't?! The more I see her through Jesus' eyes, the more my friendship with her and love for her can grow.

Some of the things I appreciate about my MIL are that: 1) She raised the man I love and played a part in helping him become all of the things I so appreciate about him. 2) She is really good at asking questions and showing interest in what's going on in my life. 3) She has amazing gardening knowledge (something I could definitely learn from her about since I always kill my plants). 4) She is really good at coming up with practical solutions to problems.

My dad told me that my mom's mom always said to him, "I don't like being called your Mother In Law. I prefer Mother In Love," meaning that her relationship to him was so much more than just a slip of paper that said he was married to her daughter. I pray that I can be a Mother In Love to my children's spouses someday!

Robbie and I with his family at our wedding. My MIL is in the red and my FIL is on the far left.

What to Do When You're Bored

There's really no way around it-- having a husband in Dental School can leave you with a lot of spare time on your hands. Here's my super creative list of things you can do if you are feeling bored:

1) Exercise-- go for a walk, go for a bike ride, take a group fitness class, go swimming, pull up a workout video on youtube (or buy a fitness DVD) and follow along in your living room, look up equipment-free exercises on Pinterest and create your own workout routine. 

2) Get a job (or volunteer) somewhere-- you don't have to make it your career, but it's just something to get you out of the house and interacting with people (I think this one is more important if you are an extrovert. Me? I like having all my quiet alone time).

3) Explore the city where you live-- visit a zoo or museum or garden or sculpture park; I especially like to try out new places in my city using Groupon.com.

4) Go to Barnes and Noble and read a book or magazine.

5) Keep a journal or blog--about being the wife of a Dental Student, about crafts, about recipes you like, about cats wearing funny hats, whatever you want. Sometimes it can be so therapeutic to just put your thoughts down on a page. It's also amazing to look back at the things you've experienced.

It's a blog within a blog... Have you seen the movie Inception?

6) Go to SuperTarget-- I can seriously kill so much time at Super Target without buying a single thing. I just like looking at stuff!
 
7) Clean-- it may just be me, but I feel like there is always something in my home that could be cleaned whether it's laundry, the bathtub, the kitchen, the cat litterbox, the windows, etc. My favorite thing to do is pull up Pandora on my phone. start my Hillsong United station, and place my phone in a bowl to amplify the music while I clean. I have had some of the most wonderful times of worship while doing the dishes.

I found this trick on Pinterest. It really works at amplifying the sound!

8) Join a Bible study (or invite other women over to your house for one!)-- my friend and I have been doing the Esther Study by Beth Moore and it's been such a great time! We split the cost of downloading the videos for the weekly sessions and meet up once a week to watch them together. Then during the week there are 5 days of personal study at home that take maybe 20-30 minutes each day.

9) Hang out with other Dental School wives-- if they have kids, offer to babysit for them so they can have a break. Their husbands are just as busy as yours so they know what you're going through!

We are awesome Dental School wives

10) Go to Hobby Lobby-- not only is there a lot of fun stuff to look at, but they also offer craft classes. I am thinking about taking a Bob Ross painting class at Hobby Lobby. I'll let you know how it goes!

11) Write a letter-- to a grandparent, to an old friend you haven't seen in awhile, to your husband to tell him how much you appreciate him. Who doesn't like receiving letters?

12) De-clutter/Organize your home-- go through your clothes and pull out items to donate; go through your makeup (or lotion or hair products, etc) and toss anything you haven't used in the last couple months; Pinterest has tons of pins on how to organize your home on the cheap

13) Pinterest.com-- do I really need to explain this one? :)

14) Visit thrift stores and garage sales-- I haven't done this yet, but I think it would be fun. Especially if you were just looking at Pinterest and got a great idea but didn't want to spend a ton of money to accomplish it.

15) Try out a new recipe-- Robbie particularly appreciates when I make him gluten free baked goods as a surprise for when he comes home from school.

16) Wimp.com-- this is a site that picks 5 fun and interesting videos each day that are family friendly. Topics range from funny animals, to science, to funny pranks, to sports, etc.

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.

Meeting Kate and Joe

Today we were able to meet up with Kate and her soon-to-be-Dental-Student husband, Joe. They are moving from California to Pennsylvania for Dental School so we were able to grab Starbucks with them on their way through Denver.

Joe and Kate, we had such a great time meeting you both! Robbie and I both think that Joe is going to make an excellent Dentist and that Kate will be such a wonderful help to him throughout the whole process. Thanks for stopping in Denver! :)


In other news, Robbie and I forgot that they were sweeping and re-striping our parking lot this morning so we went outside and our car was gone! VERY luckily, the office had only spot towed it to the other side of the apartment complex so we got to play hide and seek with our car for 10 minutes before we were able to find it. Definitely beats paying $300 if they had decided to have it towed for real.

Also, I finally decided to join Twitter today (for the sole purpose of getting more traffic for my blog). I haven't had enough time to really mess with it at all and I'm not at all familiar with how it really works. If anyone has any pointers for using Twitter, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Lastly, I'm going to the eye doctor tomorrow for a check-up and *drum roll*.... to get fitted for contacts! I've tried contacts in the past and have never loved them, but I've decided to give them another try. I actually really like how I look in glasses so I'm getting an updated prescription for my glasses as well. Sometimes I like to think that my glasses make me look like Alexandra Cabot, the Assistant District Attorney from Law and Order: SVU. Especially when I get a really serious expression on my face like this:

 Maybe I should start wearing more pant-suits. I'm pretty sure everything I know about the law and my rights, I learned from Law and Order.

Dental School Wife Club

I spent a good deal of time today searching for blogs about Dental School and being the wife of a Dental Student and was surprised at how few there really are! I found a couple that were from several years ago but they hadn't been written on in 2 or 3 years. I did come across a fun blog called Decorating Through Dental School written by the wife of a Dental Student, but it is focused more on home decor ideas on a budget and less about Dental School itself. I've also been reading an excellent blog called Diary of a Dental School Wife written by the wife of a soon-to-be Dental Student.

While it's not a blog, I did come across the website for the Alliance of the ADA and they happen to have a Student Spouse program (which I happened to join for $5 because I'm just that cool). Here's a description of the program:

As the spouse of an American Student Dental Association (ASDA) member, you are eligible for a Student Membership in the Alliance of the American Dental Association. Membership in the Alliance provides opportunities to interact with others who share common concerns and interests, as well as opportunities to participate in special conferences, workshops, and community programs related to dentistry and dental health.

I guess I'm just wishing there was more of a sense of community among Dental School wives. While I am in no way trying to say that having a husband in Dental School is anywhere close to the challenge and sacrifice of having a husband in the military, I am certainly jealous of the sense of camaraderie and support military wives have with one another. It's like an unspoken club where everyone just seems to understand each other a little better because of the shared experience.

I want to hear the stories of other Dental School wives. I want to hear what they have enjoyed, what they have hated, what have been their joys, what has made them cry, what they have learned, how they are growing, what has made them laugh. That's what I hope this blog will be-- a place for other wives to read about what I experience as Robbie goes through Dental School, to gain encouragement from it, and to share their stories as well.

1) WHAT I HAVE ENJOYED ABOUT DENTAL SCHOOL

I like the routine. I like the predictability of seeing his whole schedule for the semester and knowing what time we'll need to get up in the morning, what time he will likely get home each day, what time I should bring him lunch, when we can go on vacation, when he will be extra busy so I can plan accordingly, etc.

I have also enjoyed being a stay at home wife. Before we moved, I worked full time but now I have more time to do the things I really want to do like keeping my house in order, planning yummy meals, working out, doing crafts, writing a blog, etc.

2) WHAT I HAVE HATED ABOUT DENTAL SCHOOL

Not being able to help him more. In spite of the fact that I am trained as a Dental Assistant, Robbie has already surpassed me in his dental knowledge (by quite a bit!). As a Dental Assistant, I was focused on the task of assisting-- keeping the dentist's line of vision clear, handing him the next instrument, taking treatment notes, but I didn't pay as much attention to the techniques the dentist was using. I wish I could be more help when Robbie asks me what bur the dentist used for certain fillings or how the dentist used a specific instrument. It makes me feel helpless at times when he is confused about something and I have no way of helping him.

 3) WHAT HAS BROUGHT ME JOY

Knowing that I am making a huge difference by doing the simple day-to-day chores. I get so much joy from being able to have a hot meal ready for him when he comes home, that he doesn't have to stress about whether or not he has clean scrubs to wear, that he has more time to study and practice in the lab because he doesn't have to go to the grocery store or get the oil in the car changed. 

4) WHAT HAS MADE ME CRY

Praying for Robbie after he has had particularly rough days. Praying for him to have victory and to experience success but that his joy won't be determined by the grades he gets or how well he feels he did in lab. Visiting our church back home and missing the community we had there. The end of the first semester made me cry in relief not because it was awful, but because I finally knew that we would be able to do this.

5) WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

That I can be very selfish at times and that the purpose of marriage is not to make me happy, but rather to make me holy. Happiness is an awesome by-product of marriage (and believe me, I get a lot of happiness from my marriage), but the true purpose of marriage is to make me more like Jesus and to help my spouse be more like Jesus (which in the end leads to something much more permanent than regular old happiness-----it leads to joy).

6) HOW I AM GROWING

Before I met Robbie, God brought me to a place where I knew that even if I never got married, Jesus was enough. For the first two years of Robbie and I's marriage, I really desperately wanted to have children. But over the past year, God has been freeing me from that sense of desperation to be a mother and replaced it with a quiet confidence that even if I never have kids, Jesus is enough. So if I become a mother, that's wonderful. If I don't, I will still praise Him!

 "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will leave this life. The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. Praise the name of Yahweh!" -Job 1:21

7) WHAT HAS MADE ME LAUGH

Finding fake teeth tumbling around in my dryer. Translating for Robbie when he pulls out all sorts of Dental jargon while telling his parents what he's learning in school. Corny Dental puns (see t-shirt below). How there always seems to be an episode in crime shows where the Dentist is the murderer. Steve Martin singing the Dentist Song in Little Shop of Horrors.

If you're a Dental School wife, please share your experiences in the comments!

Settlers of Catan

I just have to gush for a minute about how much I love the game Settlers of Catan. If you haven't played it before, allow me to give a brief explanation:

Three or more players are competing to build settlements on an imaginary island called Catan. The board is made up of hexagonal tiles that have one of five resources on them-- brick, wood, ore, wool, or wheat. You gain points mainly by building settlements/cities, but you can also gain points from having the longest road, having the biggest army, etc. Each tile has a number on it. If someone roles the dice and they add up to the number on a tile where you have a settlement, you get to collect that resource. You can also trade your resources with the other players to get the ones you need.

The first time I played it, I was concerned that it was going to be too complex for me to enjoy it but it's remarkably easy to learn. Since you get to collect resources all the time (even when it's someone else rolling the dice) and because you are constantly trying to trade with the person whose turn it is, the game is more interactive than other turn based board games.

The game itself can be pretty expensive compared to other board games ($40 most places) but there are several downloadable versions of the game online. I do believe there's an app for smart phones as well! (In fact I know there is an app because I have it on my phone. haha)

I randomly came across this site which shows images of a giant homemade version of Settlers of Catan that someone made for their backyard and now I totally want to try to make one!

I also love this super-nerdy shirt I found online that says, "Don't settle for less." I will have to remember this months from now when Robbie asks me what I want for Christmas!

Second Semester is Almost Done!

I can hardly believe that Robbie will be done with his second semester of Dental School after this coming Tuesday! Second semester seems like a total blur compared to first semester. At this rate, I better start planning his graduation party already!

The school had a nice little barbecue outside today with free burgers, hot dogs, chips, and drinks so I met Robbie on campus and had lunch with him. (Don't worry, he grabbed my food for me so I wasn't sharing any of my potential germs with the public. I'm still not feeling sick at all but I know that strep can have an incubation period of 3-5 days so I'm still not completely in the clear.)

This week the first years had three finals and a lab practical. This coming Tuesday he has another final and another lab practical as well. The students also had several fake teeth that they had to get graded before the end of today. They had to make 10 preps (teeth that have been "prepared" for fillings by drilling the right size/shape of hole) and 10 restorations (fillings that have been placed in the preps and carved to have accurate anatomy, occlusion, etc.)

This semester they covered Class I and Class II amalgams as well as Class I, Class II, and Class III composite restorations. Here's a chart I found that gives a breakdown of the classifications of restorations:

I honestly couldn't remember all the classes he took this semester so I asked him to list them for me:

1. Principles of Direct Operative (lecture and lab)
2. Occlusion (lecture and lab)
3. Ethics
4. Microbiology
5. Cariology
6. Physiology
7. Immunology
8. Pathology
9. Infection Control

It all seems like a lot when you list it out that way, but all you can do is take it one day at a time. If you focus too much on "what's to come" you can get totally overwhelmed. And worrying about it won't change anything.

"This is why I tell you: Don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: they don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? Can any of you add a single cubit to his height by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Learn how the wildflowers of the field grow: they don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown in the furnace tomorrow, won't He do much more for you-- you of little faith? So don't worry saying, 'What will we eat?' or, 'What will we drink?' or "What will we wear?' For the idolators eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Matthew 6:25-34

 "Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 4:6-7

Quarantine

I'm back from my trip to Vegas! My sister and I had a really fun time being dorks together. Some of the highlights were: getting some sun by the pool at our hotel, the free breakfast buffet that came with our hotel deal online, meeting Big Bird, having delicious sushi at King's Fish House, eating frozen popcorn, and coming home to a bouquet of flowers on the table.

Unfortunately my sister had what we thought was a cold the whole time I was there so I was on super germaphobe alert. Last night she texted me and said she went to the doctor and they told her she has a sinus infection and possibly strep throat! Poor thing! Needless to say, I am now in quarantine for a couple days because it would be awful if Robbie got sick during finals or during his short 5 day break after finals this week.

That's one thing about being in Dental School-- you do not want to get sick! I have had a cold a couple times since Robbie started school (always given to me by my friends or their kids) and I've managed to only get him sick once out of all those times. Imagine sitting in lab for hours when really all you want to do is go to bed (Robbie actually puked and almost passed out when he was sick). There's very little capacity for taking a day off from school unless you are dying in a hospital bed somewhere. Therefore I am not able to kiss my husband for a couple more days and I am sad.

Deborah and I at the Las Vegas sign.

Anchovy toast tapas at Firefly

Meeting Big Bird's drug addict cousin

This is at a place called Popped where they take flavored popcorn and shoot it with liquid nitrogen to make a  yummy cold treat! You can actually see the vapor coming off it because it's so cold!