First Day of School

It's that time of year again. Today was the first day of class, and I can tell already that this is going to be one busy semester. I'm taking 19 credits, and Spencer is taking organic chemistry. Among other things. I think we'll survive. I was feeling a little unprepared and anxious last night, but before we left for school Spencer gave me a blessing. I'm so grateful that he can do that for me.

My education class got off to a good start. It's only a first-block class, and two of the weeks will be spent in classrooms observing. The other weeks will be spent learning how to teach effectively and stuff. Our first assignment is to make a 10 to 12 minute lesson plan on any topic in life sciences to teach tomorrow. We have to specify what grade level it would be for and they're gonna take a video of us. At the end of the semester we'll teach the same lesson again and be able to see our progress. I'm thinking about doing punnet squares or something, but it's hard to remember how in depth a high school biology class goes. It should be fun. Actually, I really hate being video taped.

Animal diversity sounds like it will be a pretty good class. It's being team-taught, and both professors seemed really passionate about what they do, so that's always good. It also has potential to be a really boring class, but that just depends on how much I enjoy the subject matter. It has a lot to do with evolution and phylogeny. I heard the lab for that class has dissections each week though.

I'm taking intro to bioorganic chemistry, too. I keep thinking it will be so easy because it's not o-chem (it will be easy compared to o-chem), but it is a 4 credit class, so I think I'll have my work cut out for me there. The professor seems really nice though, and she had good reviews on rate my professor.

The last class I had today was bioethics. I think this class will probably have some dull reading, but we're going to cover some pretty interesting topics. I like learning about the different aspects of ethical issues (like medical ethics, research stuff, and things like abortion), and they are definitely issues I don't want to be ignorant of. Which I kind of am right now for most of them. Besides, a good ethical debate is always fun.

I'm not really sure how Spencer's classes went, because we only saw each other for a little while to eat lunch and he had to work on an assignment that was due (due on the first day of class.. dumb) so we didn't get to talk very much. So, now I'm at work and Spencer has work, then class until 7. There's nothing to do at work at the moment so I thought I'd update this and then take a look at what I need to do for that lesson plan assignment. Here's to a fresh start and my junior year of college!

Strengthening our Relationship

Spencer and I have had a really wonderful 8 months of marriage so far. I think we have a really strong relationship and great communication, and it doesn't hurt that we've took most of our classes together during winter semester and summer term. :-) We've always been able to spend most of our study time studying together because we've been in classes together, and we've always had time to sit together for a few hours each day, even if it's in a lecture hall. This fall we don't have any classes together. It makes me sad every time I think about it, because we've always had classes together since our very first term here.

Katy got me a book called For All Eternity by Dr. Lund for my wedding. It's a book about communication in marriage, and it is so good. I highly recommend it. Anyway, one of the things he recommends doing is the "Magnificent Seven", and Spencer and I decided to give it a try, partly because we know that our time together might be a bit more limited in the fall than it has been so far. Here's how it works.

Each day you give:

1. A verbal "I love you" with eye contact
2. A 5 second kiss
3. A 10 second expression of verbal appreciation in person or on the phone
4. A 15 minute "Honey Do", which is basically 15 minutes of service chosen by the other person given with a positive attitude. It can be used each day or saved up for a week for one 1 hour and 45 minute chunk on Saturday. 
5. A 20 second hug
6. A written expression of acceptance, appreciation, or affection. (We're going to do ours in a Journal to keep them)
7. At least 30 minutes (total) of talk time

We do most of these things each day already, but we can always work on them. I've wanted to try this out ever since I first read the book, and I think this is a good time to do it. Things get so busy during the semesters, and our schedule is looking like it will be extra hectic this time. I think this will help us make sure we are continually strengthening our marriage and keeping our focus on each other.

SHARK!

Here's a little sneak peak of Calvin's Christmas present. :-) I'm pretty dang proud of it. Also, several of the hours I spent working on it were also spent watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, so I felt cool. 

Dinner from Janny and other happenings

Alright, I had a nice post here and I came back to put some pictures on here and the first paragraph has disappeared! I don't know what happened to it, but I'm a little sad because I don't know what I wrote. When Benjamin came out to school here Auntie Janny gave him some money to take us all out to eat. After much debate we ended up deciding to try Bombay House, and Indian place in town here. It was so good! The food was amazing! I ended up finding a copy cat recipe for their chicken tikka masala, which was pretty dang close to the real deal. We still want to go back to try some of their other dishes though. YUM!

The last week and a half or so we've had Benjamin staying with us and James's stuff between their housing contracts. James was gone all last week for his geology camping class, and having his stuff there was fine. We just put it all behind the couch. Luckily, we have a pretty big living room. I feel bad for Benjamin. He has been so bored. All of his friends went home for the two week break, so he didn't have anyone to hang out with besides us and our married friends. haha. Also, there isn't much to do in Provo for free. He's been helpful with the dishes especially, and has kept his stuff organized, so it hasn't been too bad, but it's surprising how stressful it is to have house guests for that long. Part of it was because Spencer and I don't mind eating left overs or whatever we can find for dinner, but I feel bad not having a real dinner when other people are here. And it didn't help that I never took the time to think about meals earlier so we ended up running to the grocery store a lot or just not having an organized dinner. I hope Benjamin and James didn't feel unwanted while they were staying with us. I tried my best to be a good host, but let's be honest. We're on a student budget. In the end they had a free place to stay and they didn't starve, right?

James got his key for his new apartment on Saturday, so we moved most of his stuff that night, and then he finished moving it yesterday. Benjamin's friends are moving back into the dorm now, so he wants to go move in early to hang out with them before classes start. I told him that's okay with me if he wants to do that (he'll have to pay for his own meals until his meal plan starts later this week), but we're also fine driving him up to campus and picking him up at night when he's done hanging out or whatever, so we'll see what he decides. It'll be nice to have our apartment to ourselves again whenever he decides to move out, but I really have no problem with him hanging around for a few more days.

Last Friday night we had a dinner party at Nate and Laura's new apartment, since they are finally back into town after their wedding. Their apartment is beautiful! Way nicer than ours, but that's what happens when one of you has a real job. haha. I like our apartment, but I'm kinda jealous of their open, big kitchen with so much cupboard space. We have teeny kitchen and we're (I'm) struggling a bit with our limited counter space and cupboards. We have lots of drawers though. Like that's useful. Someday maybe I'll put up a wall shelving unit or something. Anyway, the dinner party was fabulous! We tried out that Chicken Tikka Masala recipe I mentioned and everyone loved it. Nate also made some vegetable curry that was good, and we had naan and Ben and Sydney brought desserts. We played some games and had a fun time. We invited Benjamin to come along, but he decided to just stay home instead of hanging out with us and our married friends. I don't really blame him, but I think he would have been less bored than staying at our apartment. Plus, dinner would have been better there. :-)

On Saturday Sydney asked me if I wanted to go help her make peach cupcakes, so I did. They were so good. I never would have thought of making peach cupcakes, but it works. And the peach frosting was awesome. They boys played on their computers while we chatted and baked. It was so fun. Then we went home to whip up some pizza dough, crockpot mac and cheese, and frosting for Benjamin's cake. :-) We were just ready to put the pizzas in the oven when Benjamin and Keslie got back from the dorms where he was helping her move in. The food was good, and it was a fun little party for Benjamin's golden birthday with Benjamin and Kelsie, James and Miranda, and Spencer and I all there. We skyped with Dad and Christy for a little bit and all sang happy birthday to Benjamin together. I've gotta say that his chocolate chocolate chip cake with peanut butter frosting was pretty dang good. Everyone else seemed to agree.

Peach Cupcakes

So, that's about all that's been going on. Spencer and I have been working in the mornings and hanging around in the evenings. I've started working on a new project for real now. I'll write about that in another post though. They'll be Christmas presents for Ryan, Calvin, Sophie, Jane, and Katie if I can get them all done in time and I'd have it a surprise for their parents, but I stink at keeping secrets and I'm excited to show you all what I've done! :-) Just no showing the kiddos.

Just Kidding

Okay, I might have lied about the new project. It turns out that making slipcovers would probably be more expensive than it's worth. It's not really cheaper to buy them, especially if you want ones that actually fit your couches nice and snug, but it takes a lot of fabric to cover two couches! I can't just do one, because that would look silly. The biggest thing is that we're not planning on taking these couches with us when we move across the country (to somewhere) in two years. I'm not willing to put that much money into free couches that we'll only have for two more years. :-( If we were taking them with us then I totally would. *sigh* Now I don't even have a project. I was pretty excited about figuring this one out and making a pattern and everything for them. It would have looked so nice, and I was even going to make some fun throw pillows to accent them.

Anyway, school is done. :-) So that's nice. Spencer and I both did well on our final for anatomy. He did 1% better than I did, but that's alright. We're not actually competitive with our grades. For the next couple of weeks we just have work and hanging out with everyone. Benjamin and James are moving into our 1 bedroom basement apartment tonight. That should be interesting fun. Just kidding. :-) We're happy to help them out between their housing contracts. Plus, James will be gone for a geology field study (i.e. camping) class all week, and will just be here for the weekends. Benjamin was really helpful when he stayed with us before summer started. He helped with the dishes and around the apartment and didn't complain about us being busy all day with work. I do hope that some of his friends are still in town though. Then he'll at least have something fun to do. We're not very fun most of the time, and most of the fun things we do are on our pass-of-all-passes (season pass to 7 peaks, mini-golf, etc.) so it would be free for us, but not for him. But I guess he can't really complain about having a place to sleep and eat for free. The hardest thing about it will be finding somewhere for all their stuff that won't be in the way too much.We'll work it out, and we'll probably even manage to have some fun.

This post is really random, and I'm not actually talking about much, so sorry. I'm at work with absolutely nothing to do. It's been really slow this week.

AnnaMarie's post about doing her grocery shopping once a month got me thinking. Actually, that's not quite true. Her post got me looking at someone else's blog about how to grocery shop for a whole month, which then led me to a post about doing your cooking just once a month, and THAT got me thinking. So, in a round about way, it was AnnaMarie's post. Basically, I've been thinking about how I have 3 evening classes a week this fall, and Spencer has 1, so we'll be on campus late 4 days a week. I really have a hard time feeling motivated to make a nice dinner when we get home at 7 or 8 and I'm starving and we have homework to do. So, what do we do? We either eat something fast (and super unhealthy) like mac&cheese or sandwiches or quesadillas. Or we pick up a pizza from Little Caesars. I hate it. It doesn't help me feel healthy, and I have a hard time making time to workout when classes get rolling anyway. So, I was thinking it would be great to make like 6 dinners worth of freezer meals every other weekend. We'd just have to pop it in the oven and it would still be a good meal. BUT, we have a teeny tiny itsy bitsy freezer. If only all my good ideas didn't cost money. We'd have to buy a little freezer, which cost too much. Maybe we'll get lucky and find someone selling one on craigslist for a good price. Until then, we barely have enough freezer space for our bag of frozen chicken and our ice cube tray. (Sometimes a thing of ice cream.) I could probably still fit like one or two meals in if I'm careful about how much frozen meat we keep in there and never have ice cream, but there won't be any big-scale multi-meal preps going on unless we get a little freezer. Oh, the life of a frugal college student.

A New Project

Ever since I finished up that baby blanket I've been itching to start a new project. This is kinda strange for me. I am not a crafty person, I'm not very creative, and I almost never do things that are original and unique. Luckily, the internet is full of ideas from people who are all of those things! I've found lots of fun quilting ideas that I want to try someday, but since nobody else in the family is expecting a baby any time soon, and we don't really have a need for a quilt, I figure I should try my hand at something else. For now. I really did have fun making that quilt. Besides, sewing is expensive, so I really shouldn't do projects I can't justify spending the money on. I've decided to be brave and try making some slipcovers for our couches! I found a pretty good tutorial online. :-) Our couches are kinda gross. Josh and Katy got them for like $10 from who-knows-where, and then we got them from Josh and Katy. Besides that, they have this green and brown plaid type fabric on them. Hopefully in the next week or so Sydney and I can make a run to Joann to find some fabric and a run to DI to find some old sheets or something to use as a template. I'm a little design retarded so I need Sydney's help to find some fabric that will look nice in our apartment. ;-)

Besides that, we're just working on our finals. Yesterday we took our Humanities final. I feel like it went pretty well, but we won't get our scores back for a while, plus a lot of the grading is subjective. Our professor is pretty generous with points though. I need like a 94% on the final to get an A in the class though, and I'm not sure if I managed that or not. It depends on how much she liked my essays I guess. Either way, I'm glad it's over and an A- is still a good grade. All I have left for general education requirements is a religion class (old or new testament) and a writing class!

We'll take our anatomy final tomorrow, so tonight we'll study a lot for that. We are both done with work at 12 today and since we don't have classes we get to go home for lunch and to spend all day studying. It will be good. I think we'll be ready enough for it. I'm not entirely sure where my grade's at for this class because the syllabus is confusing and the lab and lecture portions are combined for the final grade, but I think I'd need a really solid A on the final to get an A in the class, so I'll probably have an A-. Which is alright, but I'd be happy to get the A. I did my best in the class though, so I'll take what comes. I just hope I can keep my GPA up through fall so I can get a good scholarship for my senior year through the university. I guess I'll get what I deserve and need in the end. :-) Speaking of scholarships, it's time to start looking for some women in science type scholarships now that I'm a junior. Actually, it was probably time like in April, but Dad just reminded me about all of those a month or so ago and I had totally forgotten about them. Most of them aren't available until your junior year when they really know that you actually are going into science. I'll look into those after my finals are over though. I'm excited for our little break.

Friday

Yesterday was quite the day. Apparently my phone's alarm didn't save when I changed it back to 6:30, so it went off at 5:30. (We went to campus early on Thursday to study some more for our midterm.) Spencer turned it off without looking at it so I got up and showed and when I got out Spencer told me it wasn't even 6 yet. It was nice to be able to back to bed for an hour! Then when Spencer got up to shower I decided to be nice and make us some eggs and toast for breakfast. This month one of my goals is to do something specific each day to show Spencer that I appreciate and love him. I tell him a lot, but I need to work on showing it more. It was a good morning and eating a real breakfast always makes you feel better at the start of a day.

Work was... frustrating. I've been the only one at work for the last couple days and on Thursday I have class all afternoon and evening, so nobody's samples were run. And of course, we get like 10 times as many plates as usual. So yesterday I had to catch up on all of that AND do the stuff I knew I'd have to do. I ended up being at work like an hour later than I was thinking. Plus, I had to deal with everyone calling and stopping by asking why they don't have their data. "I'm really sorry, but everyone is out of town except for me and I had class all day yesterday. I'm running them right now." One lady was like, well, will you guys have more employees in the fall so the turnaround will be normal again? Yeah, sure. There have been like 2 days all summer that we haven't had a one day turnaround on the data. And to my knowledge we're just losing an employee and I'm cutting back on hours. Not everyone was rude about it though. Most people were just wondering, but it's frustrating when you're already scrambling to get your work done so you can leave at a decent time.

After work was great though. Ben and Sydney invited us to go to 7 Peaks with them since we all have a pass of all passes. It was only our second time going this summer and from 6 to 8 pm is the perfect time to be there. The lines are nice and short. Plus, everyone's going to return their tubes to get their dollar back. We brought some cash to buy tubes off of people on their way to return them, and as we were standing there these two guys came up and were like, do you guys want our tubes? They gave us 2 double tubes for free! Perfect! They didn't have wristbands to turn them in for a dollar, so they must have bummed them off someone else earlier. We did most of the tube slides and the big half-pipe looking one. We were all starving by the time we left so we stopped by Ben and Sydney's so they could change and pick up some spaghetti sauce. We had noodles at our place so we all went back and had spaghetti together. Then we were gonna play a game of league of legends together. Ben finally convinced Syd to give it a try and I broke down months ago. It's totally geeky and kind of embarrassing, but the all the boys in the Otto family play it together (including their dad!) and they got Spencer into it when he lived with them. I figured if he had fun with it, then I could learn to play and it can be bonding time. I never yell at Spencer except when we're playing that game. He gets me to play with him once in a while though. And he doesn't play too much. Mostly when I'm busy or sleeping. Anyway, we couldn't get it to work on Sydney's computer, so we ended up playing a regular game together. We got Killer Bunnies a few weeks ago, and we hadn't had a chance to play it yet, so we broke it out and figured out how to play. It's not a game most of the Moore family would like because it's too complicated at first, but it's fun. A little weird, but funny. Ben and Sydney left around midnight and we went to bed without studying anything, but I think we'll be okay for our finals. We're gonna crack down today, Monday, and Tuesday. And if we need to wait until Thursday for the anatomy final we can. It was nice to have a real Friday night and to not spend 2 hours in open lab for anatomy!

No pictures because I'm lame and never take any.

Woot Woot!

Done with Anatomy lab, and it feels great! :-) We both feel like the test went pretty well. We won't see our scores until tomorrow though. A lot of people were saying that it was way harder than the midterm, but I felt like they were very similar. There was twice as much information to cram into your head, but I didn't think the pins were any more difficult. A lot of people probably felt like that because the midterm was weeks ago, so they don't remember it being as hard as they thought it was when they took it. Anyway, I felt good about it, but I don't know that I did as well as I did on the midterm. Spencer said he felt better about this one. We'll find out tomorrow!

Today was our last day of class, which is really nice because class days means being on campus until 8:45, which is terrible. Just two finals to take next week and we're free for (a short) summer break! I won't miss humanities, but that's just because I don't appreciate art. I won't really miss anatomy, but I will miss having Professor Tomco. She's a really great lecturer and always had fun stories. For example, she has a picture of a part of a brain she dissected on her wall at home, because the arbor vitae was really pretty.

The arbor vitae is the white part that looks like a tree, so she made a print in black and white and turned it, and she said people compliment her all the time on the beautiful abstract tree picture. Anyway, it was a great class, but I'm happy to be through it. Our bodies are really amazing creations.

Lab Final in 3 hours...

Our anatomy lab final is in three hours! Then we'll be done staying on campus until 8 studying cadavers and bones and models. We'll be done cramming hundreds of terms into our heads! Really, there are well over 1,000 terms that could be on the final. Only 50 of them will be pinned though. I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm mostly anxious to have it be over. Anatomy was a fun class, but I'm so ready to be done. It's a LOT of work. I know that I could identify just about everything if it was a point out the structure test, but I'm a little worried about forgetting words and pretty worried about forgetting how to spell them. I should go study some more.