Holy Family Resemblance, Batman!

Kristen, sometimes I think my baby is a mixture of your two babies made female.

Grace.

Cousins. Photos stolen from Kristen.

We're not Lion

We've got one cute baby.

Food Stylist

I think I want to be a food stylist when I grow up. I set up a photo shoot for work in my laundry room on Friday and it was lots of fun. Of course, I took over 75 photos and only used 4 on the advertisement. So I thought I'd share some with you.
For those of you who don't know, I work for a small company called Inspire Graphics. Right now my job is to manage one of their sites, scrapNfonts.com. I basically do a little bit of everything for the site. So this photo shoot was to create inspiring ways to use our fonts for Halloween. I love those little mice. They were fun to make. These little guys are coming to your house tonight, Emily.

It was fun to make up creepy names for food.

Reminder: I took these pictures in my laundry room. Please ignore the thick electrical cable (I would've edited it out if I used this photo for work). I did use the photo below for work (the one winner of over 50 food photos).

Let's get a closer look at these creepy Halloween delights, shall we?

Mmmmm... cookie fingers. Besides food, I took pictures of pumpkins, door signs, and the drink labels below.

Here was the food spread. Again, please ignore the electric cables and the gushing spray foam insulator around the back door. My laundry room has the best light in the house.

This little one was so patient while I made a disaster zone of the rest of the house to get these photos done.

When we enrolled in med school here in Kirksville, we knew that we'd be living here for two years doing our basic sciences class work then we'd most likely move to do my clinical rotations in another town. Our school has contracted with many hospitals in several different states to take a portion of our students on for our clinical trainings. This month our school held its lottery match to determine where each of the students will end up for the next two years of training. The second year students were required to generate a list of their top 6 locations and a computer would "match" each of the students to their highest preferred spot based on the number of available spots and the popularity of the site.

This is a stressful time for the students. Some sites are better than others for various reasons, and everyone has their own particular things they are looking for. Of course, there are a few hospitals which are the most popular because they are the larger teaching hospitals which hold many different residency programs. These places also tend to have a few spots available, but not enough to satisfy their popularity among the students. Also, we knew that they had three sites in UT, one each in Logan, Salt Lake City, and Provo with spots available for roughly 13 students.

During the past month, Britta and I have discussed what we wanted quite a bit, but haven't been able to make a certain conclusion. We did have what we thought was a good list which made the most sense for where I wanted to be career-wise and which would give me the best experience for the next two years. This list included the larger hospitals in Ohio and Michigan (and a smaller one in Illinois) and we were prepared for that possibility mentally. We didn't have any Utah sites on the list.

Then we prayed about it.

I didn't really feel that our list was complete and I just didn't feel comfortable with our choices, although they made the most sense to us academically and for my medical training. For a few reasons, we had excluded Provo from our list entirely, but each time I prayed about it, it would come up. Persistently. In the temple. At home. It didn't make sense to me; I had eliminated it from consideration in favor of what I thought were clearly better choices. I mentioned this to Britta the night before I submitted my final list and she recommended that I place it back on. I think we were going to put it back on, but lower down the list with a lesser chance of matching there.

I still didn't feel peace, though. It was not until I was in the process of submitting my list that I made my final decision on Provo. I knew that if I put it low on my list, I would not be going to Provo. I also knew that if I placed it high on my list I had a good chance of going to Provo. I knew if I placed it first on my list, I had no chance of going to the sites I preferred.

This is the logic which hit me then: if I believed that the impression to include Provo was an answer to our prayers regarding where we should be going, was placing it anywhere on the list good enough of an action on that answer? or would only placing it first be appropriate? I sure didn't feel that way about the other sites, that they were equally an answer to prayer, even though they were my preferred choices. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I needed to place Provo at the top of the list, and I did so, and submitted my list. It wasn't until I submitted the list that I felt at peace and confident that we were going to the right place.

So, there you have it. I hope you're ready for us, Utah, because we're a comin back.

Now, if only we can get season tickets to the BYU football and basketball games next year.

Pet Peeve

The buzzing of a mosquito hovering near my ear when I am laying in bed trying to sleep.

so pretty

Our little spider neighbors did this all in one night.

If you click on the photos to zoom you can see the rainbow of colors refracting off the threads.

Normally I just sweep these away, but they were so pretty I thought I'd take their picture first.

General Conference Weekend

Oh, how I love General Conference weekend! I have always looked forward to the traditional Peterson post-Priesthood Session Pizza Party and watching football between sessions on Saturday. (Although it is tough to do the pizza thing without my dad and brothers around, we have shared this tradition with our friends, the Staceys, and we have been able to have them as proxies for the other Petersons.)

This morning, I awoke to find Britta busy in the kitchen baking and entertaining Grace. This is what she was making. Britta knows I'm a sucker for sticky buns and cinnamon rolls, but I usually just get the pre-made canned variety. This was a perfect conference treat!

This afternoon Gracie decided to join us in enjoying conference. She was really enthralled by the speakers and really enjoyed herself (for at least FIVE minutes).

Although I love General Conference, I sure do miss my family at this time of year. I hope you all had a great weekend, too.

All About Grace: 5 month installment

Grace turned 5 months yesterday. Hurray! Here are some fun facts about Grace:

• She is an avid finger sucker. She sucks her middle and ring finger on her right hand when she is happy, nervous, traumatized, hungry, sad... you name it. Those fingers are the solution to everything.
• She prefers her fingers to solid food. We have made 6 or 7 attempts at feeding Grace solid food and for the most part, she will have none of it. We know we do manage to get a little mashed pears or rice cereal in there because her diapers will never be the same again...
• She is a serious baby. It takes a lot of coaxing to get her to laugh or even smile sometimes. Her Daddy is always up to the task and as a result, she is a total Daddy's girl.
• This week she has learned how to squeal and screetch. Sometimes I think we have a baby raptor in the house!
• Also this week she has decided she no longer wants to go to bed peacefully. I wondered if that would happen eventually. It was just so easy before!
• She is the cutest baby ever! (I'm totally unbiased, too, right?)