Stuff and Things

I know it's been awhile since I posted, so this is quite the conglomoration of details.

I have included pictures from the Milwaukee Zoo. My family and I went on Labor Day. Jason isn't in any of the pictures because he was hard at work considering Labor Day and Memorial Day are two of the busiest of the year in emergency medicine. We chose to go to the zoo specifically because it was a location where we could get a wheelchair. You'll notice my sister Rachel has quite the boot and couldn't handle any activities where she would be on crutches all day. It's a pretty cool zoo with a great nocturnal animals exhibit as well as some other well done displays. Emily drove the wheelchair, and by some miracle no strollers or small children were hit. My dad even made it out with us which was really fun. (Rachel has currently moved up in the world and now has a walking boot for her broken foot.)



My parents bought me a sewing machine for Christmas this year and I have had a lot of fun working with it. A bunch of the women from church got together and learned how to make reversible skirts. I made one for myself and then my sister Emily picked out some fabric and designed one she wanted me to put together. You'll have to tell me what you think, but I think her prints compliment each other really well.



Now that the fall has begun I am starting my very last dental school pre-requisite. I have been downloading biochemistry lectures and trying to follow a regular schedule. My first exam will be this Thursday, we'll see how it goes. The exam will be proctored to me through the public library so it will be a regular testing situation, just in a different location. For the most part, the class has been very frustrating. The lectures frequently stop and it's nearly impossible to get through an entire lecture without some loss of information due to the sound skipping or the lecture slides blurring. Speaking of dental school, I am really looking forward to my interview at the University of Minnesota Dental School. Not only is it an honor to be invited, but it will also be nice to visit my old colleagues. As for the other schools I applied to I'm not so sure what will happen. Part of my application which was out of my hands was extremely pro-Minnesota. I don't know what other dental schools will think of that.

Work has been great. It's a really different clientele from the dental school but I'm enjoying it. I have a lot more exposure to working with kids now than I ever have before so it's been good for me. I went for a bike ride this weekend with one of the doctors I work with which was great. It's fun to have a lot of common interests with the people I work with and to actually get up and liking to work. They are both doctors I respect a lot and work well with.

phat me and mostly fixed house

Well, I finally got around to taking some pictures of the house. I was going to wait until the doors were installed, which was supposed to happen today, but alas, it just happened to be the only day all year that it has rained in the morning, so the guy that came to install them couldn't do it because he had to use his machinery outside to cut the doorknob holes, and such, and couldn't do it in the rain. So it's another couple of weeks of a door-less house. But we're pretty much used to that. Luckily we don't really get any visitors, so the door thing isn't really an issue. Anyway, this is our mostly fixed and moved into house. Notice the walls that are walls, not holes. And the new paint job.


For now the baby's room is my genealogy hub--my grandma died in June, and I got all her genealogy records that she had done a lot of by hand before the day of the computer, and a lot of computer printouts. So I'm trying to go through it all and get the info in a computer so I can free up the room.
Notice the closet doors in the computer/guest room--although the regular doors aren't installed, we do have closet doors, which is actually kind of weird after more than a month of not having to deal with a door to get something out of the closet.

Here's a couple of pictures of me getting phatter. And fatter. I'm a growing girl. And the kid is, too. She's quite a kicker these days, and it's pretty entertaining sometimes--I'm thinking about taking up belly dancing, since my belly dances on its own.

Mike got a job

Hey Mike got a job and we will be heading east. We will be in Connecticut in the Hartford area. Crazy crazy. He starts Nov 5 after he finishes writing his dissertation. I'll get ya'll some more details later.

:( :)

So, I bet you didn't know the bible has smiley and frowny faces in it. Jacob pointed a couple out to me in Sunday school this week. Check out Acts 10:36.

Harry Potter and the beginning for Steph

Ok so I know I'm a bit behind the times but this weekend I just finished Harry Potter...the first - ha!

I watched the first movie again yesterday as well and I was so excited I could be one of those HP nerds whose like 'that's not how it is in the book!" ha - good times.

Well anyway, I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading the rest now. On to Harry Potter 2~

Hey Colette...when is that baby coming again?

Irish Festival

It's amazing how quickly the summer is passing by. I didn't really enjoy the first two months because searching for a job is similar to waiting for impending doom. Not in the sense that I don't like working - you just can't enjoy the time off because you never know how long you need to make your resources stretch. I feel like the coming of fall will bring the reality that we are really in Milwaukee for awhile. Everyone here talks about how much worse Minnesota winters are - I hope they are right. I officially signed up for my Biochemistry long distance learning class this week so there is no pretending that the summer will go on forever.

We have had almost nonstop rain since Friday. Despite that I still wanted to go to the Irish festival. It's the biggest in the world and the Trinity Irish dancers are well known world wide for producing the greatest dancers. So I got my mom and Emily to volunteer to come out with me and armed with umbrellas we headed out. (Milwaukee is known as the city of festivals. All summer long there are festivals each weekend ranging from music concerts to many ethnic festivals.) We stood in the rain for over two hours watching the Irish dance schools perform. It was definitely worth it - until the dancing ended and I was shivering uncontrollably. We searched for a comfortable tent but only found space on the outsides and finally left soaked. Due to the rain we left our cameras - sorry there aren't any pictures. To add to the excitement I left our lights on (which were on in the middle of the afternoon due to the overcast weather.) After several pleas we finally found a nice gentleman who helped us jumpstart the battery. (Jason bought this super cool emergency car kit so I had my own cables and lots of other stuff if I needed it.)

In other news I began a second job this week. I had a working interview on Monday afternoon and began Wednesday. This clinic is also in Glendale about a mile from our home. The office is two years old and new from top to bottom. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of their digital radiographs - their kind of an awkward transition between the old films and the new sensors but I'll get used to them. All of their charting is digital - I love that! I've been having a great time figuring out the software and trying to utilize all of it. They have an intraoral camera too which I'll get to use. This job compliments my job at the perio office which is Monday morning, Tuesday and Thursday. It makes for a ten hour monday but I still have Fridays off. Between the two jobs and the Saturdays I have lined up for the winter I should be averaging about 32-35 hours a week. Plus I might be able to pick up an occasional Friday temp day. It may have taken much longer than Jason and I would have liked, but I feel like it's been worth it to find offices that I am happy with the people and the quality of dentistry practiced there. (Especially if I end up working there for more than a year.) Due to my part time status at each office I have to carry my own benefits - but there are worse things in the world.

In other news - I'm married to a zombie, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Jason mentioned that he hates the four am shift. For the most part I like it. I actually get to remember seeing him when he comes home between eight and nine pm. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sleep, conversation at the dinner table isn't exactly captivating. It beats the other shifts though, we'll see how we feel a couple of weeks from now.

Here's my dental school update: schools are beginning to send me notification that they have received my first application. Hence, they are politely asking for more money and more essays. Couldn't I just take another test? Actually, that wouldn't be much better. My goal is to have all of these redundant essays completed by the end of next week. Wish me luck, it involves documenting every single extracurricular I have participated in within the last seven years as well as talking about what an asset I would be to the school and the professon. Should be fun.