I passed!!!

My boards that is. :) I got the letter in the mail yesterday that I passed - it's kind of a confusing piece of paper because there is no big green word that says PASS, there's just a blank that says "status: pass." So hurray, I don't have to look at biochemistry ever again! :) (Well, I'm sure that's not true, but it's nice to think that :) ) Anyway, none of us in my class can figure out exactly what our scores mean - we are only the second class to take the boards on the computer, so all of the previous standards of what a "good" score is are out the window. I guess as long as you pass that's all that really matters!
Well, tonight I am making "Irish Stew." I got the recipe out of the Taste of Home cookbook I got for Christmas. It's made with lamb - something I haven't really cooked with before, so I'm excited to see how it turns out. It smells good right now! I'm going to make some biscuits to go along with it too. I think it's appropriate since it's a blizzard outside! The wind is ridiculous!
Stay warm everyone!

Thursday, thursday...

Kate - I made a mistake in the last post. The oranges were 10 for $2 - they would have to be the size of a watermelon to be a good deal for 1 for $2!!! :)
Anyway, it's been a good day. I was in radiology this morning and got to make some radiographs on a teenager getting some braces - good practice! Then I had a oral pathology lecture and pediatric dentistry lecture in the afternoon - both two great classes. I just really enjoy school lately - it's so different that last year at this time. I do not envy the D1's at all because they have so much going on right now! They have gross anatomy and dentures this semester - both very overwhelming classes. Last year's D2's said that pharmacology is a really hard class, but I just can't imagine that it could be worse than gross anatomy!
Well, I'm very proud of my husband. He came home today from work and started right in on his physics homework. Good start for the semester, babe! :)
I hope it warms up here soon!

another post!

What is this? Two posts in one day??? :) The holidays really did a number on my goals of eating healthy and working out; however, now I think I'm finally heading back in the right direction! Tonight Aaron and I went to the City pool and we swam for awhile - it was actually pretty fun! I am absolutely awful at swimming - I would swim a little, then try to catch a breath and I would end up gasping! :) I need some more practice. I think Aaron wants to go back again, so maybe we will make that into something we do every week. This semester is going to be very HARD to fit in time to work out. Aaron and I don't have the most compatible schedules, and it's hard to leave the house after supper to go work out!
Anyway, on a related note, we picked up some groceries tonight and they had some blueberries on special. I made some bran muffins (Mom's recipe :) ), and so I threw some blueberries in a few of them to see how they would turn out. They are pretty good! Oh, and Hyvee has Disney naval oranges - 1- for $2! Good deal! So I got a couple of those... pretty tasty... Okay, it's definitely time for bed, so good night all!

Back to school...

Aaron is back to school today- his first class was at 8 am! Lucky for him I didn't have to be at school today until 9, so I dropped him off. I think he is excited to go back and get his pre-dental requirements done. It will certainly be a busy semester with both of us back in school again! We both had yesterday off which was so nice to catch up on a few things. Maybe the university needs to move to a permanent three day weekend??? :) Anyway, it's nice to skip Monday and already be a day closer to the next weekend. Hope you all are doing well! Stay warm!

Tired...

It was a long day today! I was at school at 9 this morning to assist a fellow D2 in the clinic, had a "working lunch" where I made an impression and poured up a cast over the lunch hour (my cousin is a D1 so I was also showing him how to do that since he will be doing it tomorrow for the first time in his dentures class), had oral pathology, and then from about 3 - 10 pm I was in the lab mounting up extracted teeth into plaster casts that the D1 students will be practicing drilling on! I wasn't supposed to be there that long today - I was originally planning on being done around 4 or 5! Well, I have a sort of "job" through the dental school where a group of us take care of these kinds of projects for the faculty when they need extracted teeth for a project. There were four of us assigned to this project - me, my friend Christi (D2), and two D1's who are new to the project. Christi and I did half of the project last week but the D1's were unavailable to be trained then. We had a hard time finding a time when both of our schedules worked together, so this week I was going to meet the D1's after class and train them on how to do it and then they would finish up their half. Christi and I left our supplies in the lab that the D1 and D2 students use, but we put the finished casts in a cupboard there. Well, today when I went to get out the box to add to it, it was gone!!! I looked all around for it and I couldn't find it. I asked all sorts of people - faculty, the cleaning crew, the lab monitor, etc. and nobody knew anything! So we basically lost all the work that we did before, and the school is out about $400 because the magnets we mount in the cast are $10 a piece! Christi was taking her boards today, so she didn't get there until closer to 4 - she couldn't find the casts we did either. So frustrating!!! We ended up doing 85 casts today and now the project is done - Christi is taking them home with her so they don't go missing too! We are still scratching our brains wondering who would take them and why??? Who wants plaster casts with nasty extracted teeth in them??? And who would throw away $400 dollars worth of equipment? Bizarre...
So that is my day, I've finally made it home now and I'm trying to veg a little before I have to go to bed. Aaron was a good sport tonight and he brought up pizza for dinner - thanks babe! :)

What a weekend!!!

This past weekend was pretty jam-packed for us! I took my Part I dental boards in Des Moines on Saturday, so Aaron and I stayed there Friday and Saturday night. Aaron found us a really good deal through Priceline, so we got to stay at the Marriott near Jordan Creek mall! As it turns out, my parents were going to be in Des Moines that night too, so we had dinner with them and they got a room at the same hotel. We had lots of good dinner conversation, and then lots of good political conversation - Grandpa Trunnell would have been proud. Maybe a little shocked that there was no yelling or slamming of doors! :) Saturday morning Aaron took me to the test center and I got done around noon - pretty good for 400 questions! :) Then we got to spend the rest of the day as sort of a date which was nice - it felt like I hadn't seen him it all in the past two weeks because I had been studying so much! We saw the movie The Bucket List - it was really good and really touching actually! Then we celebrated being done with the boards by going to 801 Steak and Chop House downtown Des Moines (Rachael - I had to go somewhere I could wear my new dress! :) ). The food was really great! And really good dessert! Anyway, Sunday we got to sleep in and then we headed back to Iowa City. We had dinner with Aaron's parents which was nice because we hadn't seen them since we went to Florida with them! All in all it was good weekend and I am so relieved to be done with the boards. I don't get my score for another two or three weeks - right now I'm just hoping I passed so I don't have to study for those again! Hope you are all having a great week!

Sanibel trip

Aaron and I are back home again after our whirlwind Christmas tour! :) We went back to Cedar Falls the Saturday before Christmas, and we had quite the drive! Our normal hour and a half drive turned into three hours due to the weather... thankfully we got there safe and sound and had a very nice Christmas with my side of the family! Then, Christmas night we drove back to Iowa City to get ready to fly out to Sanibel, FL early the next morning. I ended up getting about 1 hour of sleep and I think Aaron just stayed up the whole time - we were pretty loopy by the time we got to Florida! Next time I think I will try to go to bed earlier! :) We had a very nice time in Florida - the weather was beautiful just about the whole time we were there. The day we left it rained and turned a little colder, like it was trying to prepare us for going back to the below-freezing temps of Iowa! Anyway, here is a picture from our last night there outside a restaurant called Matzaluna. Good pizza there!


When we got back home last night, our puppies were very happy to see us! I missed them while we were gone... I bought them shirts when we were in Florida (they are from target :) ). I knew Reuben's would most likely fit - it's an XL, but I had my doubts about the XL fitting Chewie (that's all they had). Chewie's shirt is pretty tight on him... :) Reuben's shirt says "Got Biscuits?" and Chewie's says "Go fetch yourself!"