Memorial Day Weekend

Mom is in town right now. She flew in on Thursday and will fly back home this Thursday. We've been having all sorts of fun with her, and this weekend was a 3 day weekend for Memorial Day! Plus, I've been taking lots of pictures with my new camera.

We've played lots of Liar's Dice. This is the face Spencer almost always gives me when I want to take a picture of him.

We did lots of hanging out.

 We played with Carrina, who is just a little ball of energy right now. She LOVES being outside.

 

She loves to walk with her big, unsteady steps. Her little friend found a puddle from a sprinkler that was running and they splashed their feet in it together.












 Mikayla came down from Idaho for the weekend, too!

We took a walk at Bridal Veil Falls and even fed the fish.
















 We visited Mom's parents' grave on Memorial Day.

 We took Carrina to the brand new splashpad at the park just down the street from Josh and Katy's apartment. She loved the sprinkler a few days before, but was a little hesitant about the busy, noisy splashpad.

 Mikayla getting some snuggles.

 We had a picnic lunch with hamburgers, pasta salad, chips, and watermelon. I love summer.

 Spencer, Mikayla, and Josh played some basketball.











Carrina clapped (her latest trick) and screeched for them.

MCAT

THE MCAT IS OVER!!! I can't even imagine how amazing Spencer must feel for having this test done, because I'm ecstatic and I didn't even take it. He started studying for it in January, and it has been his life for the past 3 weeks. Ben and Spencer took it together in Las Vegas because by the time they signed up for it months ago, all of the Provo slots were full except during finals week. They left Provo Friday afternoon, just a few hours before I got back from California.

I stayed at Sydney's apartment on Friday and Saturday nights. We video chatted with our boys on Friday night, watched Say Yes to the Dress, and painted our nails. It was great. Saturday we ran some errands in the morning, including a successful trip to Joanns and Plato's Closet. Then I spent the afternoon trying not to think about the test Spencer was in the middle of. I distracted myself by making him some pajama pants to surprise him when he got home. I've gotta say that I was pretty pleased with myself for finishing them up in just a few hours. Saturday night I went to watch a movie at Kyrie's. It was so nice to see her again, and we watched Les Miserables, which I hadn't seen yet.

Spencer and Ben took the test Saturday afternoon, and they drove back on Sunday. I was so excited when Spencer finally got home. I actually had a pretty hard time being away from him for an entire week. I love him. Lots. He got home just in time to change his clothes and run out the door to church (we were a few minutes late), and then right after church he went to do his home teaching. Then we FINALLY got to spend some time together.

Spencer said he felt pretty good about the test overall. He's not allowed to talk about it in detail, and we won't find out his score for about a month. He took a lot of practice tests and scored in the 30s on every one of them, so I am sure he did great. Just to be safe, he said he's not submitting any med school applications until he sees his score. Now we get to start filling out applications, gathering letters of recommendation, and finding shadowing hours for Spencer. I'm not nervous about getting accepted, but I'm anxious to find out where we'll be spending the next 4 years of our lives.

A Botanist for a Week

Monday through Friday of last week I was in southern California on a plant collection trip with my botany professor (Dr. Johnson) from this last semester, another professor (also Dr. Johnson, but we called him Robert), and two other girls in my major. It was a fun trip. We left early Monday morning drove pretty much all day. We got a taste of "roadside botany", as the Dr. Johnsons pointed out plants and told us about them as we zipped by at 60 miles an hour. We pulled out some bagels, yogurt, and fruit for lunch during one of our stops for gas. At some point we stopped by the Joshua trees in California to collect some plants. Then we finished our drive and ended up at a motel near Bakersville, CA for the night. We had turkey sandwiches and some fruit for dinner, and I called Spencer before getting ready for bed. We had early mornings all week. so we could get on the road.

Tuesday was my birthday and our first big collection day. We went to some places where the species we were looking for had been collected in the past. When botanists go on collection trips they will collect what they are looking for, and whatever else they find interesting in the area. When they get back from their trip, they identify each plant, mount in on a paper, and file it away with the date and location. All of that information is put into a database. We were looking for Gilia capitata, so Dr. Johnson looked up a bunch of locations where other people had found it in the past. Anyway, southern California has had a very dry spring, so at first all we could find were dead, dried up plants, but we saved the seeds from those. When we finally did get to a place with some mostly living ones, I was the one  to spot it first! I felt like a pro. It was pretty exciting, but then Dr. Johnson came around the corner and had also found some. That became a common theme on this trip. :-) We pressed the plants that we found and moved onto the next location. That evening when we stopped for the night Dr. Johnson took us all out to eat at Denny's to celebrate my birthday. We even bought some ice cream from a little grocery store. It was really nice of them. I got a lot of calls and texts on my birthday, and that was really nice. I was a little sad to not be home with Spencer for it. We got to talk for a while that night at least. 

Wednesday was a lot like Tuesday. Drive through the twisty mountain roads, stop to tromp around looking for "interesting" plants and Gilia capitata, get back into the care and repeat. I almost never got carsick, but all those twisty roads were rough on me. I put my head down on my pillow and closed my eyes every time we got back into the car to keep from feeling nauseated. Tuesday was similar, but I didn't have as hard of a time with car sickness. Emily and Annelise did though. We stopped somewhere for the night. To be totally honest,  I usually had no clue where we were. Sometimes we'd drive for 20 minutes between sites, sometimes 2 hours.

On Thursday we made our way up to Lake Tahoe. The scenery of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is absolutely stunning, and we stopped at a couple really cool places to wander around and explore. I was feeling really ready to be home. I was ready to be done collecting plants and to be back with Spencer. It seemed like every time I found something to show Dr. Johnson or Robert, one of them had already found it or it wasn't actually "special". Sometimes I think they told me it was just to make me feel better. I was feeling a little down because I knew that we'd be getting home on Friday, but Spencer would already be gone for the weekend to Las Vegas for the MCAT.  We stopped in Reno that night. 

On Friday we just drove home. We stopped for lunch and did one final collection at that spot for fun. I was anxious to get home, even though I knew Spencer would be gone already. Seriously, I missed him so much. I texted him in the morning to ask him what time he and Ben were going to leave for Las Vegas. When I got his text saying they were leaving around 1:30, I cried a little. I knew he would be gone before I got back, but it still made me sad. Maybe I was being a big baby about it, but we hadn't been apart for that long since before we were married! I missed him a lot.

Overall the trip was fun. I got a little homesick, but it was a great experience to have. I know for sure that I don't want to be a botanist, and that's okay. haha. It was fun to get to know Annelise and Emily better, and we all got a good review of our plant classification class. It was fun to use all those things I studied during the semester to try to identify some of the plants we found. I think we'll be having some classes together this fall, and Annelise and I will be doing our student teaching during the same semester. I think my career in botany is over, but I also think it would be fun to make a little flower press to use with the kiddos at the family vacation. We can go find some wildflowers and dandelions to press and use to decorate something. 

Pressing some plants

Joshua Trees

Me with Gilia capitata on my birthday!

Navigating the old-fashioned way.

Me in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Some cool lichen

Robert pressing plants in the rain.

These are parasitic plants next to a tiny pine tree.

Lake Tahoe

Birthday Stuff

Well, I did it. I turned 21! My birthday this year was a little bit weird. I was out of town (a post on that is coming soon) for my actual birthday so the celebrations were a little scattered.

On Saturday, the 11th, Katy planned a party for me. Mikayla even came down from Idaho for it! She was staying at Josh and Katy's so Spencer and I headed over there Saturday morning to see everyone. We had lunch and played Taboo together outside in the beautiful weather! Seriously, I am loving the beginning of summer. We went up the canyon and had a campfire with tinfoil dinners and s'mores in the evening. It was so much fun to hang out with family and to play with little Carrina of course. She is at such a fun age now, and she loves being outside. My birthday package from Dad arrived that day, so I brought it along to open it with everyone. He got me this awesome set of bobble heads, which have joined our other bobble heads on top of our dryer. They bobble when it's spinning. :-) Oh, and I got a very cute card that made me smile, and some gold dollar coins for clothes shopping!

On my actual birthday I was in California on my botany trip, but my professor brought us all out to eat at Denny's to celebrate and we bought some ice cream to share that night. It was fun. I also received lots of lovely texts and calls from friends and family. 

When I got home from California on Friday, Spencer had already left for Vegas. That was sad, but he left me a nice note saying that my birthday presents were in a box on the table. I called him and asked him if he wanted me to wait for him to get home to open them. He said he didn't really care because he already opened it and played around with it. haha. I waited until we video chatted that night so he could see me. It's more fun to open presents with people there, anyway. I stayed the night at Sydney's apartment since we're too wimpy to sleep in our apartments alone.

Mom got me some gift cards to Joann's and Applebees, which was perfect! Spencer and I don't really need more stuff, but it's nice to be able to go out on dates and not worry as much about how much it will cost. And I am in love with Joann's. I already used her gift card to make Spencer a quick pair of pajama pants while he was gone.

Spencer got me exactly what I wanted! A new camera!! I told him I wanted to get this one sometime before our big graduation trip we're planning because both of our current ones tend to take blurry pictures, especially in low light. After all, this will be the trip of our lives, and I want nice pictures to remember it by. I LOVE this camera. I was so excited when I opened it. It's a Cannon Powershot SX260, if you care.

Life

Life never seems to slow down for us. Spencer has been working so hard at his MCAT prep, and I'm so proud of him. He probably studies for about 10 hours a day, and he would probably do more, but I come home from work and demand his attention for a while. I know this test is really important, but after working for 8 or 9 hours and trying to find something to make for dinner (I'm bad at meal planning) I just want to enjoy my spring term off of school and sit around doing nothing with my husband. I try to keep myself busy so he can focus, but I think I need to try a little harder. The more I think about it, the more I think it's a good thing I'll be leaving Spence alone for a week before his test. :-) He'll do great on it. 

Work has been going really well. We've been busy, which helps the long days pass faster, and I've been learning some new things. Like how to use real computer commands and code to upload and analyze data. It's a little stressful, actually. My boss is leaving this weekend, so I have to be able to get the data to the users while he's gone. In my free time at work I've been studying off and on for the GRE. I need to crack down on that more, but I've at least started. I've realized that while my biology vocabulary has increased a ton during my time here, my general vocab hasn't. What's the best way to learn 1,000 vocab words in two months, anyway? Other than that, I finally got my textbook from Amazon for my independent study course, so I started that last night. Hopefully I'll get it done pretty quickly. 

A couple days ago I found a PT clinic that is willing to let me volunteer/shadow there to get some hours for my PT applications. They want me to shadow there for like 12 hours a week, which is great for my PT applications, but not so great for my paycheck. Someone in my ward also put me in touch with his uncle who is a PT, so I'll probably start shadowing there on Saturdays. It will be good to see two more clinics and get to know the PTs. I need letters of recommendation in couple months, after all. I'm going to the first clinic for 4 hours this afternoon and I'm excited, but a little bit nervous. Up until now I've only shadowed at a pediatric clinic and with a school PT (also pediatrics) and I've decided that I don't want to do pediatrics like I had originally thought. Now I'm a little nervous about finding out if I really want to do PT. haha. I guess that is the point of shadowing, but it will be pretty sad if I decide after all of this hard work that I don't even want to do it. I'm still not really sure if physical therapy school is going to work out or be right for us anyway. Why are life decisions so hard??

In other news, I made homemade wheat thin-like crackers the other day. They were good. I was bored and came across the recipe on a blog, so I gave it a shot. It's mostly exciting because crackers are stupidly expensive, and these were pretty easy to make.