Leaving on a jet plane...

Right now Dan and I are waiting to board our flight to Phoenix, AZ. The airport isn't nearly as busy as we thought it would be which is always a good sign! Hopefully this stays true for the Phoenix airport as well.

Recap from 2 weeks ago.... Last Tuesday a snow day for Dan. We braved the snow to make a trip to our favorite store. I would like to give a shout out to my husband for being such a trooper and letting me take a million pictures of him.

 For dinner that night we had eggs and hashbrowns. I tried perfecting over-easy eggs for Dan. I think I did alright.

On Wednesday Amy and I went to a boot camp class and decorated gingerbread houses afterward. It was my first time decorating gingerbread houses and using a kit really made it easy!

Over this past weekend Dan and finally decorated our Christmas tree. I also got to open up some early Christmas presents. I LOVE what I received. I now have a recipe for whatever occasion I need! I'm looking forward to testing many recipes when we get back home (especially from my baking book). The baking recipe book is really great. Each chapter is divided based on type of pastry/baking item (cookies, bars/brownies, pies/tarts etc.). At the end of each chapter are some tips on how to avoid common mistakes that can cause bad results... like flat, brown cookies for instance.

A 3D present made by my clever and crafty husband :-)

mmmm Top Ramen

My lovely presents!

Our Relief Society Christmas dinner was canceled due to snow so I made my peanut butter kiss cookies for my neighbors and I also took some to work. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.

Peanut butter kisses

The last two days have been spent in preparation for our trip home. We are so excited to see family and friends. See you all very soon!

All ready to go home!

Christmastime is in the air!

With Christmas around the corner I have started decorating our duplex:

 Notice the vase with Christmas ornaments in it? I came up with that idea all by myself :-) The nativity scene is something we got last year from Jim and Joy.

Our week so far has been great. It started off with receiving this package last week from Grandma and Grandpa Ashcraft:

Thank you both so much for the dried fruit and jerky. Dan and I have demolished the elk jerky and I am loving the dried pumpkin!

On Friday I had my intern friends over for a baking party. We made chocolate chip cookies, lemony raisin oatmeal bars, and gingerbread cookies! For some reason I still to this day cannot perfect ANY chocolate chip cookie recipe I try. They ALWAYS turn out flat and hard. YUCK.

Here they are rising...starting out perfectly!

Out of the oven... somehow between picture 1 and 2 the cookies changed their mind and wanted to disappoint me. Despite the lack of appeal I still took them to our Ward Christmas dinner Saturday night. To make up for these cookies I also made chocolate, white chocolate chip cookies. These cookies are always a hit!

Anna cutting the oatmeal bars. YUM!

Decorating the gingerbread cookies

RPK

The last picture is of our professor. Pictured are high heels and cell phone in hand. Amy also put on some nails after this picture was taken. I'd say it's a pretty accurate take of our professor ;-)

Amy also gave Anna and I lovely Christmas gifts:

My gifts

Amy is a very talented artist and hand-painted designs on wood cut-out letters. On the back she wrote a little note. I also got super cute bookmarks, a portable 3-ring hole punch and Christmas lollipops. Thanks Amy!

Saturday I had the best intentions of being productive. I had requested the day off so Dan and I could go to our Ward Christmas party. Well it started out great with a bowl of oats and driving to the gym for my spin class. After a 20 minute drive I arrived to a closed campus gym. Apparently Saturday started the new Christmas break hours and the gym is only open Mon-Fri 10am-8pm. You won't believe how sad I was. I get so excited and stuck on a plan that when something changes or destroys it I get upset. So after a few minutes of huffing and puffing outside the gym and rechecking the locked doors I gave up and drove home. After telling myself that it was ok and with it only being noon I still had much of the day left I felt better.

After arriving home I decided to be brave and run outside. It was sunny and the roads were mostly clear of snow. I ran to our neighborhood track, ran 1 mile on the track (which was not snow-free), and ran back home. Overall, I say it was a successful run. I tested out my new running beanie and I LOVE it. My favorite thing about it would have to be the hole in the back that serves in place of a ponytail. Thanks mom!

Saturday night Dan and I went to our ward's Christmas dinner party. We arrived late so we ended up sitting at the last table to get called for food. I was starving by the time we sat down to eat. During dinner, a show was provided. A few families from the ward got up and shared how they remember Christ during the holidays. Here's a pic of my visit teaching companion and her husband:

I had so much fun. We left the party early to meet the elders at an appointment they had with a couple. I think I've mentioned them before on the blog. We've met with this couple before. They're engaged and the guy is planning on getting baptized in January. While the girl is not interested in investigating she sits in on the discussions and goes to church with him. We're hoping to invite them to dinner sometime soon. They're both very nice!

Sunday night Dan and I played the bean game (not the real name of the game). We decided to include one more player to make the game more fun and interesting. See if you can pick out who we included...

Dan and Leo the Lion

Overall it was a pretty close match. Leo came in third while Dan and I tied for first!

Today Dan and I received some more games:

Last summer Dan and I had several game nights with a few other married couple friends. We played this game every time! I'm looking forward to a game night reunion soon!

Well that's about it. Tomorrow my agenda includes cuddling with the hubby, making funeral potatoes for a funeral, going to a fusion strength work out class, and going to our relief society Christmas dinner. There's a contest for soups, breads, and desserts. I'm entering peanut butter kiss cookies: http://www.bakedperfection.com/2008/12/peanut-butter-kiss-cookies.html. Can't wait and I hope they turn out better than my chocolate chip cookies. Have a good night!

Thanksgiving weekend and more...

Winter has officially arrived in Ohio

Notice our Christmas decorations

 A few weeks before Thanksgiving Dan received his scores from his GRE test. He ended up scoring above average in every category! I married a smart one :-) Great job hunny!

Thanksgiving weekend was very enjoyable. Especially since we got to spend most of it with my mom. On the way to get her in Cleveland I ran into some serious traffic on the freeway. What should have been a 1 hour trip turned into three:

Bumper to bumper traffic

 Thanksgiving was spent with three other families. 2 of them are in our ward (I've mentioned them previously on the blog). We all contributed food for the dinner and I think everything turned out great! Mom got some great pictures from that evening and I uploaded them to this blog but of course the uploader thingy isn't working properly so I can't post those pictures! Hopefully it'll fix itself soon.

The day after Thanksgiving mom and I drove to Grove City, PA (we are about 20 minutes from Pennsylvania) to a popular outlet mall. It was pretty busy but we found a few good deals on some clothes. Getting a pair of great looking jeans for $15 is unheard of these days but I got some! The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing.

Since Thanksgiving weekend I've finished my first semester at YSU. I did well in both of my classes. Surprisingly, we get 6 weeks off for Christmas break. Isn't that insane??!!! So far I have spent my break hanging out with Dan, reading Harry Potter, watching reruns of the Office, cleaning, cooking, and obsessing over these guys:

The Whiffenpoofs (Yale University)

Tomorrow I'm having my intern friends over for a baking party! Then on Saturday Dan and I are attending our Ward Christmas dinner. Will update on Sunday! Happy holidays and we will see many of you soon!

Faith in God

Another good week has gone by with only 2 weeks left until Thanksgiving! This week was very easy for me because I didn't have clinicals at all. I may have even gotten lazy. I am ashamed to admit that I even watched New Moon with the director's commentary (yes I'm a Twilight freak).

Dinner last Sunday with our friends from church went very well. The Warners even invited us to their house for Thanksgiving! It was so cute watching the excitement their kids had for Halloween. In light of Thanksgiving around the corner I decided to test out some desserts to make for the special holiday. Thursday afternoon I made a chocolate mint torte. It turned out really well. Unfortunately I discovered that I'm not really a "torte" girl. I prefer brownies and cookies...any baked good really.

Since I had Thursday evening off Dan and I went out to dinner and then bought one of these at Home Depot:

Snow Shovel

For our sakes I HOPE (fingers crossed) we won't be using this tool very much this winter. After we returned home from dinner I discovered this mess:

Torte spill in freezer

My dislike for tortes might have something to do with the above picture. After all, this would not occur with baked goods. The only way brownies can be messed up is if they are overcooked...or undercooked.

Friday was a great day. First off, our place has not changed too much from the first pictures we took of the place (remember the ones with empty rooms?). We still have unopened boxes lying around and things sitting on floor out of lack of space to put them somewhere. Also, no photos/frames have been mounted on the walls. Well on Friday that last part changed. It's not much but 3 months into our stay I started with this:

Pictures

Check back 3 months later and we just might have frames up in the living room! One room at a time people...
That afternoon I made a last minute decision to go to a spin class on campus. Outside of going once since we've lived here I have not been to spin since last spring (how sad!). I guess I can only stick with one form of cardio and running has been dominating for the past 6 months. Needless to say that spin class kicked my butt!

Friday I arrived at work only to discover that I did NOT...I repeat did NOT... have to work that evening. What an amazing feeling that was! It's like waking up at 6am Saturday morning thinking you have work/class and then once you're actually awake you realize it's Saturday and so you go back to sleep. Yes, it was that great. So I drove back home and spent the evening with Dan. He may have convinced me that night to watch a certain Transformers cartoon movie. Cartoons sure have come a lonnggg way since 1985.

Yesterday morning I decided to be ambitious and run 4 miles despite the 35 degree weather. I was fully decked out in all of my winter gear (including gloves). Using all of my winter clothes in November makes me wonder what I'm going to do for December-March. After my run I made these AMAZING lil' pumpkin cakes. You MUST make them. They're very easy and quick to make:

YUMMY deliciousness

I used real butter with them because I didn't have Smart Balance butter. But I recommend using the lightened version, it's cuts 100 kcal out from each cake! Recipe can be found here: http://preventionrd.com/2010/09/11/fall-fling/. Saturday evening I went to work. It was a rough night. I didn't have a great section and I kept getting sat with large parties so my service went downhill...and so did my tips.

This morning I woke up to this wonderful surprise:

BREAKFAST IN BED! Yes, that is a heart shaped piece of toast with jam on top. I know I've already typed this but my husband is the best anyone could have. Thank you babe!

Ignore my greasy post-work hair

This evening we had the sister missionaries over for dinner. It was so much fun getting to know them. We all  loved Dan's jokes. They even helped us polish off the last bit of chocolate mint torte! Dan made an amazing dinner (blue rice included!).

Tonight I started listening to the young adult CES fireside online (http://lds.org/video/ces/index.html?lang=english). So far Elder Ballard has spoken some great words and asked some questions that has caused me to ponder my personal faith, steadfastness, and obedience towards God. Some of his questions that triggered my thoughts were: Are you happy with the direction your life and faith in Jesus Christ is going? Do you love God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Are you doing the simple everyday things in your daily life? Are you saying your prayers every morning and every night? Are you reading everyday from the holy scriptures? My answer to every question SHOULD be yes but sadly it is not. Elder Ballard then went on to talk about how we let life's distractions get in the way of what's truly important in our lives. We are all targets of Satan who tempts us to drift from our commitments to others and from our covenants we make with the Lord.

It's important to know that all of us have imperfections and that it's ok to have them. We each have our struggles that challenge us everyday. BUT it is also important to know the purposes of those imperfections in our lives. Imperfections challenge us to grow. To become better than we currently are. Without struggles life would have no meaning. That may be a little too general of statement but if you know the purpose of our life here on Earth then that statement makes sense. There's a favorite scripture of mine that sums this up perfectly: "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things...if Adam had not transgressed..they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin." (2 Nephi 2:11-23). Basically what I'm trying to get it is that struggles ARE good for us if we approach them the right way. Good example: Having a busy schedule challenges me to correctly prioritize what things need to get done first. If I simply pray for help in this area (that I struggle in) and do the best I can then things will work out.

Have a good week everyone!

5 Mile Race: Complete!

Happy Sunday to everyone! This week has been pretty great and we took lots of pictures so brace yourselves :-)
On Monday I ran my pre-race 5 miles. There's a high school track a mile from our house so I ran there, did 3 miles on the track and ran back. The last mile was pretty rough considering it was all uphill. I completed it in 48:27 which is 9:41 min/mile pace. I felt happy with the time. My post-run breakfast:

My energy booster

Eggs with spinach, mushrooms, and garlic. Yummy banana pumpkin muffin (recipe: http://preventionrd.com/page/5/) with almond butter and honey.

The internship is improving so far. Unfortunately I haven't been able to do a ton of patient counseling. When you only get a few minutes it's hard to make much of an impact on a person. In a few weeks we are doing presentations on case studies (includes power point). I was getting worried because I haven't been able to find an interesting case that would be good for the presentation. Well Tuesday morning I found one! Without going too much into detail I'm researching stages of drugs and pregnancy as well as depressed immunity during pregnancy (the impact upon the fetus and mother). I am sooo excited!

The community education department of our hospital offers a 4-day diabetes course every month. If we went to 2 classes we're allowed to skip one clinical day. Luckily I had more days off of work than usual this week so I went to 2 classes. They were very interesting. I liked how everything was simplified so that the average person could understand diabetes i.e. referring to sugars and starches in body instead of glucose. Diabetes is such a complex disease! After one of the classes I got this great dream to open a diabetes wellness center/gym. Kind of like weight watchers for diabetics. There would be fitness trainers, exercise physiologists, dietitians, and certified diabetes educators. Clients could exercise, getting educated on their disease, and get help with meal plans and exercise plans that take into account their type of diabetes. Diabetes is so common that I bet I would get business. Thoughts on that anyone? I should look into getting a CDE credential.

Monday night's dinner was chicken/pork tenderloin with au gratin potatoes and steamed veggies (thanks Mom for the pork and potatoes!):

Au gratin potatoes

Everything tasted delicious! The potatoes reminded me of McD's hashbrowns. Texture, taste, everything.


Wednesday Dan and I went to our ward's 'trunk or treat' activity. It was pretty fun.

 
Institute was that evening so we also went to that. We're covering Doctrine and Covenants so this evening was sections 18 and 19. Institute's great. Our teacher actually lived in Dallas, OR for 18 years so we were able to share some good Oregon stories!

Thursday was Dan's BIG day/moment of truth! His GRE test went very well. He scored above average in math and reading/vocab. He'll know his writing scores in a few weeks. He found out his scores are more than high enough to get him into the PhD psych program at Ohio State. CONGRATS BABE!

Dan and I received a $50 Target gift card from uncle Steve and aunt Myra (thanks!) so Thursday afternoon we went on the perfect date. Our date consisted of spending $25 on the other person (Dan's idea). So we split up and searched around Target for gift ideas for each other. It was so much fun!

Excited for his gifts!

We both loved our gifts! I hope to do this date again in the future. After Target we went to a Chinese buffet. The food was bad because it was cold. If it had been hot I'm sure it would have been better. According to the Chinese calendar Dan and I are not good companions. Dragons and dogs do not mix. Whoops...oh well :-)

6:30 Saturday morning came fast and started out like this:

On the road to Cleveland

Once we arrived and I picked up my bib number things started to get exciting. Here's are some pics that Dan graciously took of my race:

Crowd before the race

Double-knotting my shoes

Stretching

Concentrated/Mean look on my face

Me running alongside yellow shirt girl. Last mile.

Thank you Eclipse soundtrack for being my motivational running playlist. Overall the race went well and I felt pretty good for the first 4 miles. The last mile was pretty rough because it was uphill and my hips were starting to hurt from the cold/lack of warm up. I started out really slow so that I wouldn't getting tired too soon and so that I could finish strong. The good news is that once everyone was spread out no one passed me. I gradually increased my pace which allowed me to pass several people.... So I have a story about yellow shirt girl (pictured above). At the start of the race she was about 20 steps ahead of me. I made a goal to stay in pace with her so that I didn't slow down. So through out the entire race I stayed about 20 steps behind her. On the last uphill mile I was feeling pretty great that I had stayed with her. On the hill I starting speeding up in preparation to pass her when all of the sudden she slowed to a walk. Ummm hello?? I'm pacing you don't stop!
So once I caught up to her I told her to keep going. She replied that she was dying... Once I got her to start running again we finished out the race at the same pace until about 100 feet before the finish line where I sprinted past her :-) My final time: 47:00 minutes which puts me at 9:24 min/mile. I finished at my goal pace!

Me and Dan after the race

Here's are a couple videos Dan took. The first is the start and the second is the last mile of the race:

After the race Dan and I walked down the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Dan took some great pics of the city.

My favorite

The alley that Dan raced down to try and catch me finishing

My favorite #2

Cleveland Browns' Stadium

Celebrating with a McRib :-)

 What a great day it was! I'm thinking about training for a half-marathon in the spring.

Church today was great! We got acquainted with 2 other younger couples who both have kids. Dan and I spoke with one couple about training me on caring/interacting with kids and babies (don't get any ideas...). We're having dinner with them tonight! Have a great week!