Morphology Assignments

In my Morphology class, we are somewhat in an art class at the same time. Morphology is the study of the structures of the teeth. Where the natural divits and bumps are, what the root surfaces are like, etc. So for our assignments/class work we were told to buy a bunch of different substances at the beginning of the semester. Ivory Bar Soap, Modeling Clay, etc.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, she gave us all a piece of thick sidewalk chalk. We were told to pick any shape and carve it in 3D out of the piece of chalk with our instruments. (We have 2 sets, one to practice/carve with and one to actually clean each other's teeth with that we sterilize)

This was my final product that I brought back to class for a grade...
I did that with this...


Pretty Cool Huh? Good thing she didn't collect it or anything. I didn't even get a grade for it... Oh well


Then today, we started some more fun!

We started working with our clay. We were working on the canine today and learning all of the particular things about it. So we had to sculpt a canine out of clay... this is how mine came out...


Not as bad as I was expecting it to be...

Then right before class ended she tried to hurry through and get us working on our soap canine...

It isn't even close to being done, we were just cutting away the big chunks, and we're going to make it more detailed next week, but here's the start of mine...

This soap carving, we're not doing as much with our instruments, at least not now. We probably will when we go to put the detail into it, but for right now we're just using this...


I'll try to continue to post pictures as we go. I'm sure there will be many more interesting sculptures that will come from this class. We eventually will work with wax too...

Nursery!

As you all know, Dan and I were called into the nursery at the beginning of the month. We have been in there now 2 Sundays and we absolutely love it. I know a lot of people laugh and joke about being in the nursery, but it has been so good for us. Not only do we get to play with those sweet children who are so innocent and genuinely loving, but we have met a lot of people from our ward who we haven't really known very well until now.

We have always kind of felt like outcasts in our ward, which is interesting because many of the people in our ward are very much like us. Newly married, college couples. However because of that, everyone kind of does their own thing and we have only really had 1 couple who we've really made friends with.

Since being in the nursery, we have gotten to know a lot of the people who work down there; and while many of them have different situations than we do, they are all so down-to-earth like we are. We mesh with them so much better, and can actually sit and have conversations with them without feeling awkward. In our building, the primary is on the bottom of the 3 stories, and that's all that's down there. The chapel is on the middle floor along with most everything else, and then some of the primary classrooms are upstairs. So unless you have kids, or a reason to go downstairs, which we hadn't until a couple weeks ago.

We are so grateful for our callings and for the friendships we are making now after almost a year and a half of being in the ward!

Our Next Vacation

Yes, it's true. We have put planning into full swing for our next trip. For my 21st birthday, Danny wants to take me to see The Phantom of the Opera in Las Vegas. (I've never seen it, anywhere) Because my birthday is the Monday before thanksgiving, we're planning to go over Veteran's Day weekend.

We would leave Friday night and drive to Mesa to stay the night. Then Saturday morning we would get up and drive to Las Vegas. We will meet our favorite Wesley and Tiffany Webster in Las Vegas and see the Phantom of the Opera. We're still checking into a room at the Stratosphere for that night. Sunday we'd get up and drive to St. George, where we'd stay with the Websters in their new apartment until Tuesday morning. Then we'd get up early Tuesday morning (in an effort to avoid hitting another "Billy" and getting stranded in the middle of no-where at 3 am) and drive back home, all the way to Tucson.

We are very excited and are pushing through all of our school work and everything we have to do so that we can go and enjoy ourselves. We love the Websters so much, and it is definitely our turn to go see them. They have come to AZ to see us twice now since we were last in Utah. We take turns going to visit each other until they move to AZ when they're done with school. Then we'll all rendezvous back in the wonderful Mesa or thereabout after we all finish school.

A lot of the details still need to be worked out, but that is the rough plan as of now. I am very excited and I know Dan is too. He and Wes have so much fun together, and Tiff and I love watching them laugh and joke like only they can.

More to come as we get things lined out a little more...

Anyone due for a teeth cleaning?

So starting in the spring, I am responsible for bringing in my own patients to work on for my grade. It can get pretty stressful, especially since I'm in Tucson, and most of the people I know who could possibly help me...aren't. But, I am starting to make a list of people I might be able to call and use when the time comes if I need to. Obviously I'll be using my sweet husband first (hehe, he gets to be my guinea pig) and my parents will come down as well as my brothers most likely. But other than that, my lists are open.

I have 4 semesters that I'll need patients, so if one time of the year is better than another let me know. I'll have this coming spring, next summer, next fall, and spring of 2010. If anyone is interested in helping me out let me know and I'll get you some more information!

Some of the basic info.
Cost: $35

Time: 3 hrs./appointment
(only because we have to wait for check-offs periodically, don't worry your mouth won't be open for 3 hours)

Number of Appointments: At the most 2
(unless your teeth have some issues/haven't been cleaned in a while [2 years +])

Times Available:
Spring 2009
Tuesday nights (6-9:30 pm)
Wednesday afternoon (1-4:30 pm)
Thursday afternoon (1-4:30 pm)
Friday morning (8-11:30 am)

Thanks so much for all your help and support!

Life Update

I realized about a week or so ago that I haven't posted anything here in almost a month! Geez, I didn't realize it had been that long. Time has been flying by SO fast and we have so many things going on; this may take a couple posts to cover it all, we'll see.

Since the last post, pretty much all I have been doing is school work. I have so much homework, it's coming out my ears. I could do homework all day everyday, and still not be caught up. Such is the life though, and it really isn't as bad as it sounds. I love hygiene so much, I don't really mind doing my homework for it most of the time. My UA classes are pretty laid back, so I don't have much homework in them, which is good. Just so we're on the same page, I am taking 4 credits online through Rio Salado (Spanish 202), 9 credits at U of A (Psych of Death & Loss, Industrial & Organizational Psych, and Perceptual Learning), and then 15 credits for Hygiene. (Morphology, Histology/Embryology, Nutrition/Prevention, Radiology, and then Pre-Clinic.) Yes that is a total of 27 credits, and I have heard many times about how crazy I am for doing so. But it will all be worth it in December when I'm done at U of A and have a BA in Psychology with a minor in General Business.

Dan is in school full-time this semester as well at U of A. He is taking all Gen-Eds for right now so he can get them all out of the way and then finally focus on his Journalism classes in a couple semesters. He is taking an Economics class, an African-American Literature class, a spanish grammar class for his minor, as well as a "Money, Consumers and Family" class. He is very busy as he is also working full-time. It can be overwhelming at times, but he is doing very well with it and tries to think about other things to keep his mind off all of his stresses.

It gets a little stressful around our house sometimes. We are both tired a lot and therefore, get a little irritable sometimes, which is hard. But there are a lot of factors that play into that other than school that we are working on little by little.

Dan is just not happy at his job anymore. It has been that way for close to 3 months now. I'm talking like can't sleep because he dreads getting up to go to work every morning, etc. He feels a lot of pressure now that I'm not working anymore and it's only him who is bringing in the money. It's harder than I think we thought it was going to be for me to quit working. It is really hard because I know there is nothing I can do to help him other than just support him. But right now, with the way the economy is and with me not working, it would be very hard for him to change jobs. Finding another job is one thing, but then finding another one that pays him what he's making now or more, so we can continue to pay the bills is the difficult part. He's gotten to where he is now by working his way up the chain, and it isn't easy to just jump into somewhere where he is now. The other thing about where he is now is that they will not work with him going to school at all. They told him his schedule is 8-5 M-F, no questions asked. So because of that he's having to take half online courses and the other half at night, which is very hard for him to really focus on them that way.
We're working on it, and have thrown a bunch of ideas around. We thought about him getting 2 part time jobs instead of 1 full-time job. We thought maybe that way he'd be able to work in school a little easier and possibly even make more than he is now between the 2 jobs.
We also thought about the fact that maybe this just isn't the right time for him to be going to school. Maybe it would be best for him to just work full-time right now and not worry about anything else until I finish hygiene and then I'll take over and work full time. The only thing with that is by then he'll be 25 and have hardly any school done. I don't know how much motivation he's going to have the longer he puts it off...
Definitely one of the hard things in life is making these kinds of decisions and trying to figure out what is best for us and our family.

That brings me to the other thing that's been somewhat troubling me. I am aching to have a baby big time. It's gotten to be more than just a want; now it's to the point where by heart almost aches when I see almost all my friends from high school who are married getting pregnant and having babies. We have been married for almost a year and a half, and while I know I am still young (I'm not even 21 yet), I just can't help it. We are in no position right now though, which is the hard part. I have the most basic health insurance that covers next to nothing, only because I have to have it while I'm going to hygiene school. Not to mention all of the things I just talked about with school and Dan's job situation, etc. I really just wish I could fast forward 2 years when I'll be done with hygiene and I'll be able to support us and a baby on my own. Time is going by very quick, but with this it just seems like it could never be quick enough.

Ok wow, I just read through all of that and it sounds really depressing. I promise we're not just moping around all the time. I just needed to vent and get all that out. So thanks for reading it all and I'm going to finish this post and get on to another one with all of the positive HAPPY things that have been happening lately!

Cha Cha Cha Changes...

Yesterday at church, I was released from being a Relief Society teacher, which was good. I just wasn't going to have time anymore to prepare lessons, etc. So, it was good, plus I don't really enjoy Relief Society in our ward. As bad as that sounds, it's true. I've been meaning to post about our ward and the troubles we seem to have with it, which will explain a little more about why I don't like it very much.

Anyway! So, they released me, and then in turn called Danny and I to be nursery leaders! I am SO excited. I know most people don't enjoy the nursery with all the screaming kids, etc. But we're in the older nursery class first of all. So we have all the kids who are about to go into sunbeams. Plus, there aren't like a TON of kids in our ward either. Not to mention how much I have been wanting a baby lately, and I'm hoping this might tide me over for a little longer. Probably not, it'll probably just make me want one even more, but we'll see.
So there you go. We thought we escaped it at first because when we were first married and moved into the ward, they called me into the Relief Society and Danny was called as the Choir Director. He still is btw. But nope, here we are, back with the kids, and I am SO excited. I'm sure I'll have many fun stories to tell as we begin our duties there.

Just a quick side note, we had Danny's family down this weekend from Friday night until yesterday afternoon, and it was a lot of fun to spend time with them. Alan, my brother and his friend Colten came down Saturday and we went to the U of A vs. Idaho game...Final Score: Wildcats - 70, Vandals - 0...It was an excellent game, once it stopped pouring rain and lightning, which delayed the game for over an hour. It was a lot of fun though.
My mom, step dad and brother and sister came down also last night and stayed with us last night because my sister was sick and they didn't want to drive from Sahaurita all the way home with her possibly throwing up. It was nice to have them here too and to spend some time with them.

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day and enjoys being off of school and work. We sure are!