School update

So school is finally over for this semester. I am amazed I survived. 3 group work classes are more than I can handle, but everything worked out, and I am glad it is over. I start Spring classes tomorrow and I have a huge load. 10 credits (yes they only allow 9, but I got special permission) my 10th credit is Intro to Public Health. This is the intro class to my major, but I have never been able to fit it in my schedule. This is my last chance because it has to be done before I can do my internship. So the next 7 weeks are going to be very full and busy with school and work, but I think I can do it (my house may be a disaster however). After that I will have a break for the end of June through the end of August. Fall is my last semester and I will have my internship with Stouffers, one class for my major that is yet to be decided (I have proposed to substitute a class and am still waiting to hear back. If it goes well I will be taking Positive Psychology. I also may take Turkish language 101. I haven't decided. I am kind of obsessed with Turkish culture (music, dance, and language). I would love to be able to understand the songs I have, and someday I want to go to Turkey. So I don't know if I will, the only reason I am considering it is because I will still be working and I would like to have the late morning shift (10:30-2:00). The Turkish class is from 9-10, so it would work out perfectly. . . we will see what happens. Other than that I have 34 weeks until I graduate!!

Spring snow

So by now it is old news that we have had tons of snow this SPRING but here are the pictures I took of the storm on April 2nd. For those of you who don't have facebook I posted this story on there because it was hilarious. Around 6 AM I woke up to a loud crashing noise. In my half awake mind I thought we were under attack, or that our trailer was splitting apart (that's how loud this noise was). I turned over and saw Lin hovering over me. I must of had a look of terror on my face, because thats how I felt. Lin grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to calm me down. I however couldn't understand his repeated phrase of "its ok." as he shook me. I was still not fully awake and I thought he was still asleep as well. (Lin sometimes acts things out when he is asleep, its kind of creepy). I was worried that he didn't realize he was holding me and might hit me or something (no this has never happened I was just so terrified anything seemed possible.) Finally I screamed and woke myself up. Besides losing some heartbeats we were both okay. I couldn't go back to sleep however and was lying there awake a little while later I heard a sound just like our front door opened and closed. For those who don't know our screen door sticks and is very loud when it finally opens. I jumped a mile at the noise because i was still on edge. I woke Lin up and made him go check it out. The door was closed and locked and no one was in our house. Finally I just got out of bed. Still paranoid. I looked outside and this is what I saw.

 We think these branches are the ones that sounded like the door opening

 For all of the problems it caused it still looked so beautiful.

Luckily we didn't have any damage: not on the car, no windows broken, and our trailer is still hanging strong. Here are all the branches after the snow had melted.

 These are the ones that were on the car.

This is the culprit that caused all of the ruckus in the morning. It doesn't look as thick in the picture as it really was.

That same day that all the snow melted I came home to see this in my front yard.

So beautiful and springy, like the snow was never there.

Food :)

Since I have a lot to catch up on I thought I would just put all of the food pictures together because I love cooking and I love to take pictures of what I make when it looks especially nice. So I will share it with you.
February 27th:

 This was one of the last world dinners I made. It was from Spain. It is a tomato chicken dish. It was pretty good. The sauce is different because it is thinner than what we normally consider as tomato sauce.

March 6th:

 The last world dinner I made wasn't really a full meal. Lin and I made churros. DELICIOUS!

 We didn't have a star tip for our dough gun, so they are just cylindrical. I think they would have cooked a little better if they were star shaped, but they were still so good and super easy.

These are just two meals I make often but they looked so pretty I just had to take a picture:

Taco Salad:

I just love food that is full of color.

Lasagna:

Lin and I decided to make a cake, but it was 10:30 PM. We made it and were waiting for it to cool so we could ice it. Unfortunately we wanted to go to bed so we just iced our pieces individually. This is what we ended up with.

The other great thing about food is it brings ants. . . .ok so that is not that great, but our house is infested with them. They have been here every year and come as soon as it gets warm. This year they began in our bedroom and would mostly stay in the bathroom (these are weird ants). We found a small space in the ceiling, above our bed of course, where they would come in and out. Then they would travel around the piece of wood that connects the wall and ceiling into the bathroom. Soon enough we had them in the kitchen too. Even after spraying they are still everywhere. You can't leave ANYTHING out:

I know this plate looks fairly clean but they like it still. We have figured out that if you leave out something super sugary like icing, white sugar, or something else equally full of sugar the ants go into some sort of coma. They aren't dead, but they are super slow and its kind of funny.

Update!

So it has been forever since I have written. School was taking over my life. I am on break until Tuesday when Spring Term starts. I plan to update my blog on Monday I don't know if I will get everything on there because there is a lot, but I will try to get as much as I can. I also might schedule some to post later in the week so you don't have to read them all at once :)

Quick Update

Life has been very busy so I just wanted to give you a quick update (more will come later). I haven't done a world dinner in awhile because I couldn't find any lamb anywhere (that wasn't crazy expensive or in HUGE packages) but I am going to try to do one tonight. I am counting down the weeks until I graduate. 40 :) I have a paper chain because I am still dorky enough to want one. Life is great. Lin and I are excited about the future and still as busy as ever. I know this wasn't a great update, but I promise to post more soon.

New food idea

So if you haven't figured out by now I love food! I love to eat it, but mostly I love to cook it. I am not however a spender when it comes to food. I like and buy good food, but that doesn't mean name brands. I always try to buy things on sale. This past week I decided to get ground turkey instead of beef. I have tried turkey before and liked it, but then I couldn't find it at Maceys anymore. This past week when I did my shopping I  found the ground turkey in a bulk pack of four 1lb packages for $6 when I compared it to the beef it was a no brainer that I should try the turkey and see if it worked in the meals I was planning.
I am still not sure if I will get it all the time but it is cheaper, plus it is much healthier because it is so low in fat. The taste isn't much different, but it does have a smoother texture which is a little strange. I think we could get used to it though. To try it out I made taco salad on Monday and meatloaf tonight. The texture difference was more apparent in the meatloaf because it was a lot softer and didn't crumble quite like ground beef does.
So I would recommend trying ground turkey especially if you are trying to cut down on fat or just cut some costs it might be a helpful way. Let me know if you try it!

Shawn's Baptism

My brother-in-law Shawn got baptized on Saturday. It was really awesome. He is married to Lin's sister and is the same age as me (our birthdays are the same week even). It was so awesome to witness this special event and see the support of our family as well as his family even though they aren't LDS. My in-laws are AMAZING! There are a lot of us in the family (7 kids, 5 spouses 1.5 grandkids). It is awesome to see the support and friendship between everyone. Everyone tries to attend Jake's basketball games, everyone came to watch me in Christmas Around the World, and everyone was there for Shawn's baptism. It was great to feel the spirit and realize that someday Carly and Shawn can hopefully go to the temple and be sealed. I am so blessed to be married into a family that I truly love and consider family. I know so many people that don't really get along with their in-laws and I am glad that isn't me.

Sorry its been so long!

So it has been a very long time since I last wrote; I have had a lot to write about but no time to write. Things have been crazy in our life right now. School is INSANE I knew that 15 credits would be difficult (I have done it before) but my classes are in some ways ridiculous.
First off two of my classes are practically the same. Over the course of the semester we work in groups to write an intervention/marketing plan. That is the basis of our grade. Along the way we turn in worksheets that help us work through the process of forming these plans. This idea actually is exciting to me because it feels more like what I would potentially be doing for work rather than just lectures. In my social marketing class it is going pretty well. My teacher designated a topic (Reducing Morbidity in Hispanics with diabetes) and we have gone through research and segmentation to come up with our target population. Currently we are working on coming up with our solution to the problems of our target population.
In my methods of health promotion class we are basically doing a similar project but we picked our own topic based on a recent publication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They published the Six Winnable Battles in December. My group is focused on the battle of Obesity and from there we have narrowed in on environmental influences in low income areas. This project is not working nearly as well. This is the first semester my teacher has done this project and while it is a great idea and he has great intentions (trying to get us published as undergrads on a brand new subject) it is so overly organized that it is unorganized. . . .We had these worksheets to do which were beastly. They were super detailed and confusing and while he thought they explained his intentions none of the groups did them how he wanted. After we had struggled to complete a worksheet we would have a lecture where we learned the purpose behind the worksheet. Unfortunately it always seemed to me that if I had known the intention BEFORE I had done it I would have done it differently because the way we did it wasn't helpful in the scope of things. So then the next worksheet would be handed out and it was like starting over when it should have been building on the last one. I just feel like this class is very backwards. Our teacher wants us to find and understand what he wants when we all feel he should just come out and tell us his expectations.
On top of this project and worksheets we have reading, reading write-ups, thought papers on video segments, and of course the midterm. If it were up to me we would just focus on the project so we could do a good job. So while I like those classes they are wearing on me.
This past week has been especially hard. I don't normally like to talk about my health problems because I hate being asked if I am okay and frankly I don't like talking about it. This past while however my medications have been off. I have been thinking my thyroid medication was off but my doctor's office phone number "is unallocated" according to the operator. Since I don't really know what that means I have been unsure whether to just find a new doctor or if there is a new phone number. I don't know. Finally Valentines weekend I started having problems. I thought I was getting the flu but I never really did, I just felt crappy. Then my blood calcium level plummeted. This meant my hands started to cramp up, I had digestive problems, and overall I just felt achy and twitchy. Monday I stayed home from school and I decided I had to find a doctor. I called up the Springville clinic to see if they had anyone that could regulate my medication. They did, so I made an appointment for Wednesday. Tuesday I forced myself to go to work and school. The cramps and pain would go in waves, but I was having a hard time holding a pencil and I couldn't type. Wednesday I went to the appointment and they drew my blood. It takes a few days to get the results so nothing very helpful yet. After the appointment it was downhill for me. My symptoms started getting more constant and more severe. Finally I called urgent care to see if there was anything they could do to get my calcium level up. When I originally had this problem the nurses taking care of me just had me taking extra calcium but online I had found things that said for severe symptoms IV treatment is necessary. The nurse told me to go to the ER. So at 9:30 in the middle of a snowstorm Lin drove us all the way to Timpanogos Hospital. As we drove I got worse and by the time we got there I was having a hard time talking. They put me on some anxiety medication while they waited for blood test results. This helped my cramping some but I also ended up needing oxygen because I felt like my lungs were cramping. My calcium was super low (3.2) It is supposed to be between 8-10 normally. They put me on a calcium drip of some sort and said I had to stay laying down because getting that much calcium can cause heart problems. So after two 30 min treatments  and 6 hours later we left. We got home at 3 AM and I got up at 5 to go to work because I  had no way to get a sub that early in the morning. My boss let me leave as soon as I got the breakfast food out and the lunch cases full. That afternoon I was feeling so much better. Low calcium can make you depressed so it had been a very rough week mentally as well as physically. On Saturday I found out that my Thyroid level is super high which would cause my calcium to be lower because  the thyroid hormone takes calcium out of the blood to put in the bones. Basically I just haven't been able to keep up with it by taking supplements and slowly my calcium has been slipping lower and lower. So now that we know all of that hopefully we can get some maintenance going on. So in answer to all of your questions, "Yes I am fine. It was rough, but we are working it out."
I have the best husband though. He spent part of that ER visit sleeping on the floor of the hospital until we were the only people in the ER and the nurses gave him the bed next door. He has been great to take care of me, not mind that I haven't cooked or cleaned, and have been super irritable all the time.
We had a  make-up Valentines date on Friday. We cooked steaks, fries and made home-made ice cream. He has been amazing!
So on top of that fun excitement I have 3 midterms this weekend. My methods one was crazy hard but it is done, my Environmental health class is take home, open note, etc, but I haven't done the reading so those questions take some searching, and my social marketing one is on Tues/Wed. So much for a nice long weekend.

Week 5

We have moved on to. . . . . Spain!

The first week in February I made Pork with Orange and  Peasant Potatoes. The potatoes were delicious. Basically just a fried scalloped potato but delicious nonetheless. They were fried with fresh garlic which gave them great flavor.

The recipe for the pork called for either chops or ribs. I went with ribs because they were on sale. One thing I  learned (or attempted to learn) is how to de-pith and orange. I didn't even know what the pith was. . . I still am not perfectly sure either. I know it is the white part, but I kind of think it includes the thin skin around each slice as well. I don't really know. So after looking online for instructions Lin and I worked on de-pithing the oranges. I definitely need practice on that! The pork was yummy though. Basically it was browned and then the orange slices were placed on top and the whole thing was steamed until the pork was done.

The oranges because surprisingly bitter ( I think just the skin was) but the pork had a sweet, orange flavor. Overall it was pretty delicious.

(This is the only meal I have had the time to make this month so a few weeks were missed)

Week 3 & 4

Since I am working to catch up I am going to post these two weeks together.

On Jan 22 I made Beef Stroganoff which is a common Russian dish and a Beet Caviar appetizer. I love beets but I felt like the seasoning the recipe called for overshadowed the earthy taste beets have. It was much to strong, so I didn't like it much and Lin doesn't like beets at all. So probably not making that again. The Stroganoff was delicious. Nothing too different from how I learned to make it originally. A lot of people around here seem to use ground beef but in the real thing you use a cut of meat (I used flat-iron) and cut it into pieces. It tastes a lot better that way I think.

The next week I made Chicken in Garlic and Sourcream. It was also delicious and as Lin said, "This is the most likely to fit in our usual meal selection" The only thing I would have done differently from the recipe is use skinless chicken. The skin didn't really brown up and it was kind of soft and blubbery. Yuck!

So that wraps up our month in Eastern Europe!