Lion vs. Lamb

Whoever came up with the March phrase "in like a lion, out like a lamb" had one thing right. The lion and the lamb both show their faces in March. As for when in the month they come, there is no consistency. Yesterday morning we woke up to a few inches of snow. It inspired me to take pictures of it's beauty and it's springtime contradictions. After looking at the pictures I wonder if the snow is supposed to be the lion or the lamb...

Hoo Hung Woo?

Last Saturday we threw a Chinese murder mystery party. It was a lot of fun to see friends and hang out and eat Chinese food, but I was disappointed with the plot of the game. We've done these parties before, but this one was far too complicated to keep track of. Regardless, it was a fun night. It turned out Scott was the guilty one! Do you think he looks the part?

Tech-regression

Two weeks ago, while at the library, Britta mentioned a problem with our display on the laptop. All the colors would go bad, the graphics would pixelate and we got an error message. It worked fine for a while after we restarted it . . .
But . . .
Not anymore! We are computer-less now, more than ever. (If you count not having internet as being computer-less, it practically is nowadays).
The funny thing is, the day we got the error message, I wondered if we had backed up our files. Now our computer won't even turn on.
Should we fix it? I think we need to get a quote . . .

Finally...

After much grief and headache, I finally have a somewhat respectable website for advertising myself. It's BrittaMarie.com. Much thanks to Brett for hosting me and helping me work out a lot of glitches. Also, I have to thank Scott for dealing with my freak-outs when the digital and computer worlds seemed pitted against me.

p.s. The galleries don't work in Mozilla Firefox.

We made it!!!

As of today, I have been accepted to the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine. I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally have an acceptance. I am still waiting to hear back from UNR and a final decision from Touro in Las Vegas, but with this acceptance in hand, at least we have a deadline in front of us as far as transitioning into our next phase of our lives and career. Whew! What a long and anxious wait it has been.

Just a few thoughts about the school . . .
from the website, "KCOM was the first institution of osteopathic education in the world and continues to provide leadership for comprehensive medical education, research, and healthcare. Consistent with the college's mission, KCOM is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report as one of the best medical schools in the country for rural and family medicine training."

My impressions: This easily had the best facilities of all the schools I interviewed with and I had the best experience here. In comparision, though UNR is an MD school, the class size there was about half as big as KCOM and the interview process seemed cold and detached to me. I do still hope to be accepted there, as well, to broaden our options, but we'll see.

Tuoro University in Vegas had the worst facilities, but perhaps the most prolific and charismatic staff. I really enjoyed my time there, though I felt as though I was in a warehouse at first.

I'll keep you all up to date as to any other news in this regard.
I know many of you prayed in our behalf and we are both truly grateful. About two and a half weeks ago, when everything was still unknown, I had a great feeling of comfort and peace regarding this decision from the Spirit, which was greatly needed. I am grateful, indeed. We love you all!

Speak Impediment

I have never been one who is good at conversations. In fact, conversing on the phone is one of my all time greatest fears. I credit some of this fear to a mix-up in the wiring of my brain in the vocabulary retrievement department. Sometimes the perfect word to use in a conversation just won't come. I know it exists in my head, and it teases me by sending words that are close, but not really.

Here are some examples. I was cleaning up my house and the next thing to do was vacuum the floors. I told Scott, "I'll just be in the other room; I have to rake the carpet." Just today as we were driving down the street, the sun was glaring off the snow and the wet roads. It was bright, so I pointed to the sunglasses and said, "You can put on those headlights if you want to."

I think this vocabulary retrievement disability was inherited by my mom. One of the examples I remember from her: She was cooking chili and it needed to be stirred to keep from burning, but her hands were busy. She turned to my sister and said, "Amber, can you rub the chili?"

Cousins!

My sister from New York and my sister from Vernal came over yesterday for lunch with their kids. They look so sweet and calm in this picture, but it was wild! I don't think our apartment has ever been so alive! It was lots of fun, though, especially spending time with my sisters. We spent the afternoon at the Bean museum.
When Bryson, 3, saw this amazing display of butterflies on the wall below, he ran up to the glass and pointed to the one little photograph of a butterfly in the bottom right corner and got really excited. "Look, Bitta, look, a butterfie!" I zoomed in the picture so you could see the one butterfly he saw... It was pretty amusing.

Yummm

Scott's Cookies

Valentine Boxes

Isabah (her legal name is Alisia) came over last night to decorate her valentine box for school. Decorating those boxes was one of the highlights of my elementary school years! We liked it so much in our family we used to decorate two boxes, one for home and one for school. Then we would make our own valentines for each sibling.

The trump of all boxes was in fifth grade, my last year making a valentine box. My brother helped me install a few christmas lights that would flicker on every time someone gave me a valentine. It was pretty cool.


Ahh... makes me want to decorate one myself.

Double Dribble! (Deja Vu?)

Two games in one week! Scott's in heaven! I scored some free tickets to the BYU basketball game against UNLV today and it was awesome! I'm such a bigger fan of college sports than of pro. There's just so much more electricity in the air, the fans are more motivated and loyal. It's contagious! Scott and I both wore our "cougar blue" and we beat the #25 ranked UNLV team. No, we whooped them! For over half the game BYU was up by at least 20 points. UNLV didn't have the lead once. Ironically, our seats were at approximately the same angle and height as they were at the Jazz game.

Go Jazz!

We had some friends who hooked us up with discount Jazz tickets on Wednesday night. They played against the Spurs, who have the third best record in the NBA, and won! It was a fun, high energy game. It was also my very first pro basketball game. Pretty cool, eh?

Little Warrior

This is Isabah. Her name is Navajo for "little warrior". She is my little six-year-old friend and has posed for me for some of my illustrations. She's got great facial expressions and is a very cute girl. I'm friends with her mom.

She and her mom and I had a sleepover last night because Scott is in Missouri interviewing for med school. We had fun. Cross your fingers for Scott!

Dumb Computers

I'm with Sarah on this one. Changing these blogs is a pain. Lately I've been trying to teach myself HTML and XHTML to see if I can create webpages and change the format of this blog. I've had some success understanding how my blog is put together, and even figuring out how to make some changes. This started when I was still signed up under the old blogger. But, it seems that anything in computerland labeled as "old" means "soon to be eliminated". So yesterday I decided to change to the new blogger.

I think by new they mean "as complicated as possible so no one can change our genius creations". So much for my knowledge of XHTML. Now they're using xml something-or-other. And what are widgets!? I'm lost, again.

What's a normal kitchen?

In the past two months I've cooked in five kitchens. It can be so disorienting to cook in someone else's kitchen! I don't know where anything is and there's never all the same seasonings and ingredients I'm used to. In a couple of the situations there were foreign ingredients I didn't even know existed. It's been interesting to see all the possible food options out there and how each family has such a different approach to eating and cooking. "Normal food" can have very broad interpretations.

Right now Scott and I are staying with Scott's cousins, the Beans, while their parents are in Malaysia. One thing I'm grateful for while we're here is a dishwasher. I love our apartment and little kitchen, but I do miss a dishwasher.

The secret artistic life of Scott

By now, most of you have learned of Scott's secret passion for poetry (well, not so secret anymore). Another passion of his which I didn't know about until two years after we were married is his passion for photography, specifially close up images of nature. We occasionally go for walks in the spring and summer and Scott always brings the camera to take pictures. Some of these pictures have been taken on vacations, but most of them have been in or around our house and neighbor's gardens. He's rather good, don't you think?

This picture of the temple reflection was taken during Brett and Sarah's wedding in Portland. It's one of Scott's favorite.

un-Idol-ized

Do any of you watch American Idol? I've been a fan for a few years, but I was disappointed with the first couple episodes. First of all, they seem to be dragging on the bad auditions more than in past years. Now you not only see the bad song, but the discust in the judges faces and body language, the awkward pleas by the clueless bad singer to sing another song, the patronizing insults from the judges, the shuffling exits where the singer always tries to escape out the locked door, the judges humorlessly calling out "other door". Not only that, but they let the bad singers sing their ear splitting song much longer than they need to to know that the singer is bad. It's tedious, almost unwatchable. It's way too contrived. I just want them to skip to the top twenty. That's when the show starts to get good, in my opinion.

Maybe I'm just a little personally offended, too, because Simon said that my dear, beautiful town of Minneapolis has no talent!

Happy Birthday to Amy

We celebrated Amy's (Scott's sister) birthday on Sunday. The festivities included dinner, ice cream cake, sparkling apple cider, a pinata, and we ended the night with a game of apples to apples (which, appropriately, Amy won). A fun time was had by all, I hope. I had fun, anyway. Here are some highlights.

Puppy Update

Our landlords posted a classified ad in the newspaper on January 1st for "Free Puppies". By January 3rd they were all gone. I already miss my daily dose of puppy. Luckily on January 1st, before any of them were taken, we snuck one up to our apartment and played with her for a few hours. We wore her out, as you can see. She zonked out on our carpet. Isn't she cute?

BYU-Class of '06

Look out America,
Look out you, too
A new Cougar product
has come burstin thru.

Semesters of physics and
labs and organic chem
physiolgy, psychology,
personality, biochem . . .

philosophy, genetics,
embryology, . . . (ahem)
(couldn't put humpty
together again?)

After a major undecided
and three little changes
A bachelor's of science
held in my phalanges

Now that's its over
whatever is next
it'll still be a while
before collecting big checks

Here's for sitting and waiting
and wishing for the best,
to see if medschools
are at all impressed.

Small Christmas

Christmas in Nevada this year was small! With seven children in Scott's family and six in mine, the idea of a "small Christmas" was like speaking in a foreign language. Luckily we had Gary's new Playstation 3 system to distract us. It was definitely the highlight of the weekend (along with blu-ray movies on the new HD TV).

One of the favorite games was an off-road racing game with unlimited lives and spectaular crashes. Here's a picture of Sherri playing it for the first time.

The reason for the face? Here are some of her spectacular crashes on the beautiful new TV.

Do you hear what I hear?

In honor of it being the week of Christmas, I would like to share some Christmas thoughts about a song I've gained a greater appreciation for. First, I would like to write all the words, and read it like a poem... try not to think of the melody as you read.

Said the night wind to the little lamb,
"Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky, little lamb,
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star, dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite."

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,
"Do you hear what I hear?
Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,
Do you hear what I hear?
A song, a song, high above the trees
With a voice as big as the seas."

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,
"Do you know what I know?
In your palace warm, mighty king,
Do you know what I know?
A child, A child, shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold."

Said the king to the people everywhere,
"Listen to what I say.
Pray for peace, people everywhere.
Listen to what I say.
The child, the child, sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light."

My first thoughts have to do with the voice. The name of the song is "Do you hear what I hear" after all. The night wind is what had the voice, and it was telling of the star with a voice as big as the seas. Perhaps we can assume this amazingly large voice was an angel, appearing to the shepherd to tell him of the birth of Christ.

My second thought is about the bravery of the shepherd boy. Can you imagine having the responsibility to tell the king about this amazing vision and newly gained knowledge you've received from an angel? How very brave.

But my final thought is for the king. He must have been a very humble and righteous king to know the truth of the words of the shepherd, and especially to know that this child, Christ, would bring goodness and light. We have no record of such a king at the time of Christ. But we do know that the wise men were led by the star from the beginning of the song. Maybe this song is a little window into the nation that one of the wise men came from. It's kind of fun to think of other prophets and kingdoms that we have no record of, but we know existed.

Of skunks, schools, and stilettos

We arrived in Nevada on Friday and guess who came out to greet us? Pepe Le Pew! (We think he's in love with T.J., Alisha's cat, who is black and white, after all.) Gary and Scott tried all sorts of fun things to try and get him out of the garage without being invasive, but this skunk was very small and could squeeze into another smaller, more secluded place. At last we looked on the internet and discovered that skunks don't like the smell of ammonia. Go figure. They don't seem to mind their own smell, but their touchy little noses can be picky about others. So we put out a bowl of ammonia with a rag in it (to help perpetuate evaporation) a couple feet away from his hiding place, and he was gone by morning. And he didn't leave any offending smell aside from the residual ammonia.

On another note, Scott got me my first pair of stiletto heels ever for my birthday this year! It took me a few days to be able to walk in them without the constant feeling that someone was trying to trip me. Now that I'm more used to them, I feel like I have attractive feet and I'm fashionable all at the same time. (For those of you with normal sized feet, when you wear a size 11 shoe, it's quite an occasion to find fashionable and attractive shoes that fit.)

Tomorrow is another big day for Scott with an interview in Reno. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers!

Eleven Puppies!

Our landlords have a black lab whom we love and play with whenever we can. Just before Thanksgiving she gave birth to eleven puppies! Unfortunately, since they don't know what kind of dog the father was, they don't feel right about selling them legitimately. So what do you do with eleven puppies? Well, you take their pictures, of course!

I love how their faces are all scrunched up and wrinkled.

They just started opening their eyes. You can see their eyes are still foggy so they probably can't see much yet.

Most of them are dark brown/black with a little white on their tummies. Some have white noses and white feet, too.

Can you find all eleven?

Viva, Las Legas, Baby!

Do you like my allusion to your blog, Amy?

Here Britta and I are in Sin City, Nevada (actually, Henderson) in a nice hotel room. I was really quite scared at what I was going to get for my price range here. (I read some reviews of hotels around here and the customers talked about prostitutes, dirty and dingy run-down rooms, and I just wasn't looking forward to it.) Anyhow, we got into a Holiday Inn Express. And I paid significantly less than I was afraid I would have to. Thank you Priceline!

We are here because I am interviewing for medical school at Touro University, an osteopathic school. This is a relatively young school, a subsidary of the Touro University system based out of New York, with another campus in California, which is one of the top-rated schools (the California one) for primary care medicine in the US. I figure that if they ask me why I want to be a doctor on Monday, I could tell them that I feel like I can do anything, because "I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." I wonder if that will work.

On the drive here Britta and I were thinking of what ridiculous, middle-school level nickname we would be given by the paparazzi if we were a celebrity couple. . . you know, like TomKat, Bennifer, or Brangelina. . . (thank goodness we aren't celebrities at all, who could really live with a monniker like that?) After tossing around a couple, and thinking of some for our siblings, we came up with one we liked. From now on, you may call us "the U.K." (see if you can figure it out). "Your Majesties" would be fine, too, afterall, we did stay at a Holiday Inn Express.