Monday's Top Ten

• 1-Even though I feel like a lamesauce wife for admitting it, my husband got up and walked to school this morning so that I didn't have to wake up an hour earlier to take him. Thank you dear!


• 2-I am ALSO in love with the fact that he comes and kisses me as many times as I want him to before he leaves and I fall back into a blissful sleep.


• 3-Trying to make up for being a lamesauce wifey, I hurried home to make a delicious dinner tonight...and Sterling LOVED it, even if the cheese-sauce turned out rather thick. Okay, really, REALLY thick.


• 4-Every time I look at my piano and see the beautiful lamp on it that I bought with a gift card to Target that my work gave me for my birthday, I am so happy. I LOVE having a lamp on my piano so I can see my music in our dark living room!


• 5-This was not today, but yesterday my sister's baby was blessed, so all the family members that lived close went to her ward. Said sister introduced us in her relief society class, and got somewhat flustered when her grandma-in-law kept interupting her to remind her that she wasn't Sister Barney anymore, because she has recently remarried, so she's Davies now...and then when my sister got things straightened out by introducing my mom, she proceeded to introduce me...as Lindsay Rasmussen. I couldn't help but pipe in that that wasn't my last name either. HAHAHAAA!!! Poor sister of mine. Everyone was laughing.


• 6-My mom and dad dancing to Viva Las Vegas on the Wii dance game yesterday. So grateful for such HILARIOUS parents! Need I say more? (hopefully Andrea posts these soon so I can relive the moment!)


• 7-Work today. Thankful for the wonderful office that I'm at. I LOVE it!


• 8-FHE with my hubby tonight. We've made an increased effort to actually sit down, start with a prayer, and have an actual FHE together. Tonight we read my FAVORITE talk on Atonement by Elder Bruce R. McConkie because it was awesome enough to be put in the April Ensign. Yay! (and it gave me a little extra time to be with my hubby before he hurried back to the library to study)


• 9-Feeling my baby kick. I really love it. Except if I'm hungry...then it kinda makes me nauseous. But today, it was so much fun to be cleaning patients teeth, and feeling her kick...like she's my special secret or something.


• 10-Thankful for the roses my husband gave me this weekend. The petals are just barely starting to turn out a little bit, and they are SO gorgeous!

Frying Pans

This is a picture of what I am going to put up in our baby girl's room. Along with all of our food storage and book shelves and any other kind of storage people keep...in that same room. My wonderful sister Amy was getting on my case at not doing ANY decorating, so I told her I was going to put up some James C. Christensen pictures from a calendar I bought. Only, when I looked at it, I realized that all the pictures were more boy-ish, and not quite as dainty as I might wish for a beautiful little Ruthie. So I looked about a bit, and fell in love with the following pictures on etsy. I bought them, and emailed the picture to said sister. Now she told me she will take the decorating from here. Like I said, I don't really see how you can decorate a basically 5x5 room that is already chock-full, but I'll let her do as she pleases! In other news, I went to my best friends baby shower today...and she got some super cute outfits! Things I learned: Don't buy 3-6 mo. clothes because thats what everyone else will be buying, get something older. Also, even though its less fun to go pick out diapers, or fingernail clippers, or an ear thermometer....thats probably what everyone else thinks too, so you should do it anyway. Haahaa. I must say though, baby Liam will have some adorable outfits to wear!

Now, to the part that generated the title for this post. Frying Pans. I have decided that they are an ingenius invention. There has been one sitting on our stove all day. It is yellow. I got a red one from my sister Andrea several years before I got married...and I use it frequently. But one day when we had just barely gotten married, Sterling fell in love with a yellow one at a store for $3, and I let him buy it, although I did wonder why we needed two frying pans...I figured it was worth the $3 if it made him THAT happy! Well, it did. And it still does. He uses it pretty much daily. And the thing I love about it, is that every day it continues to stay together and be useful, I am amazed, because really...it was $3. The other thing I love about it, is you can make multiple meals out of it in one day without washing it. Yeah. Or at least, we do. Sterling made some sort of egg thing in it for lunch while I was gone. Then I made hashbrowns in it this afternoon for a snack, and it still looks clean...so I'll probably make dinner in it before I even think about cleaning it. What a lovely, lovely frying pan.

Sterling bought me a dozen roses last night! They are so incredibly beautiful! I might or might not have been a little anxious about how little I have seen him lately. I really do realize that he is a gem of a husband and that he has seven tests in the next three weeks...three of which are comprehensive finals...and that I need to be a good, supportive little wifey. But sometimes emotions get the better of me. And so he brings me roses. He said he even looked for the deepest, darkest red ones that were still in bud shape...cause he knows thats what I love. Ahhhh.

Dirtiest Room In the House

As I was finishing the dishes just now, and contemplating deep, soul-searching thoughts, I wondered what everyone dislikes most to be the dirtiest room in their house. Not many people read my blog, and of those, few and far between will respond, but...

What is your least favorite room in the house to be dirty?

I was thinking, I like to make our bed, but if it doesn't get made, I just close the door and don't see the bedroom all day. No big deal. I like to have a washed off counter and sink in the bathroom, but if that happens every few days, then I can go probably TOO long in getting around to cleaning my bathroom. The living room of a two-person household never really needs cleaned, just occasionally de-junked. Cause really, what do we do in the living room besides read and study? It doesn't amount to much dirt. And the second bedroom...imgine a futon, tv, two bookshelves, a baby bassinet, two baby car seats, a corner full of food storage, and laundry baskets of maternity clothes and primary poster activites all stuffed into one room. Mostly I just close the door. So...definitely for me the kitchen is the one that bothers me the most when its dirty. I hate doing dishes, but I probably hate them sitting there even more. I don't especially love sweeping the floor, but I hate looking at stuff on it even more. I think it requires far too much effort to wash down the stove top after making a meal. But i hate looking at a dirty stove top even more. So I'd have to say that if my entire house was dirty, and I was only going to clean one room...it would definitely be the kitchen. And then I would feel much happier about life.

On a completely different note:
I had a CRAZY patient this morning! He came in with a blood pressure of 215 over 117!!!!!! I thought I'd send him to the hospital immediately. But he is Swiss German, has a crazy accent (not really applicable, but just to add to the description), and believes that all American doctors have no idea what they are talking about and like to prescribe him medications. OKAY! He told me all American doctors and dentists take the blood pressure wrong. Okay, how would you like me to take it sir? He said "We come out of our car, walking about, hurrying in, rushing to sit in our chair, and PRONTO you stick a blood pressure cuff on us. Then you tell us it is too high and put us on medication. I do not like ze medication. I go off of it. It makes my heart irregular, and makes my liver not happy." (You're liver NOT HAPPY? Are you serious? Your LIVER?) He seemed to have a fascination with the liver. It came up with ALL of his medical complaints. So I told him that usually when a blood pressure was particularly high, we let them sit and rest for 5-10 minutes and then took it again. We'd do it three times before we'd decide not to treat him that day. He was still non-compliant. He went off about how old people like him have higher blood pressures, (140 maybe, even 160 maybe, but 200???? I don't think so!!!!) and we should be taught in school to expect that. After I took the blood pressure the second time and it hadn't come down below 200, one of our front desk girls came in to reassure him that we just had his best interest in mind, and I got to listen to all his complaints about American doctors all over again. Only this time he added that, we should reschedule him for THREE weeks because in THREE weeks he will have lost 14 pounds, which he gained while doing a difficult project at work, but now that the project was over, he would lose the weight in THREE weeks, and his blood pressure would significantly drop. Now, his logic isn't that far off, but really. Come on. My front desk friend later told me she came in because she thought he was being too rude to me, and she thought I wasn't standing up enough for myself. Haahaa. Well, his BP finally went down enough that my dr. thought we could proceed, although I felt like making him sign a waiver that stated if at any time during our procedure he had a stroke, we were completely unresponsible, and had told him the risks. Haahaa. But to continue the bad experience, he had to swallow every FIFTH of a SECOND! Most people, on average, I clean about three teeth, or heavily scale 1-2 teeth, and then let them suck/spit/whatever they want. Usually people feel like that is adequate, and I can get their mouth clean in a reasonable amount of time. Not him. Every half of a tooth he was gasping for breath and air and sucking all at once. I knew it would be slow going. Then, after telling him I wouldn't give him anesthetic because of his high BP (and yes, there are anesthetics without epinephrine, but we wanted to ensure he understood that his BP was significant) he asked me when I started to touch each and every tooth "Do you really have to clean that one? It especially hurts" Well, yes, sir, you have 7-8 mm pockets on almost all of your molars, and 9-11 mm pockets on a few. It is going to hurt. And yes, it has to be cleaned, or you will lose all of your teeth, which you stated at your evaluation appointment that you did not want to happen. Needless to say, I did not clean all of his teeth, and he has to come back. Lovely.

Roller Coaster

Last week I heard about two friends from the dental hygiene program. One of the girls completed the first year of hygiene with us (and spent the first nine weeks being partners with me in clinic, until we realized we were supposed to trade partners every three weeks and we hadn't been! Lets just say, I really knew the inside of her mouth) and then was diagnosed with cancer over the summer. Because she was going through chemo treatments she did not complete the senior year with us, but came back the following year to complete her senior year. She was scheduled to graduate this April, having completed all of the dental hygiene courses and classwork. Its somewhat unbelievable to me that she worked so hard at dental hygiene, while struggling with cancer, treatments, and hospitalizations. She passed away this weekend, reminding me all too strongly of how precious and fragile life really is.
The other friend from dental hygiene had a baby several months early not too long after graduation. He lived for five months in the NICU. After some recent problems, they decided to let him go back to our Heavenly Father and took him off the ventilator that has been keeping him alive. I can't imagine how this couple must feel after receiving so much hope that improvement was coming!
Sterling bought me a new paring knife on Saturday. Our original was a gift from our wedding, and the metal part dug into my palm when I used it to cut. I was more than ecstatic about getting a really nice paring knife. And every time I use it I get so excited, and I just love Sterling so much!
I had a baby check-up today, and our baby is growing and kicking, and her heart is beating and everything looks good. I even gained five pounds since my last visit! Haahaa. I get so excited to be a mom and hold her and dress her and watch her with her daddy.
There are such BIG things in life, and there are so many LITTLE things in life(like paring knifes), and I feel like Sterling and I are being blessed with EVERYTHING right now. But I am also very grateful that I can feel sorrow as well as peace about the struggles in the lives around me because of my knowledge of the plan of salvation and eternal families. I am incredibly thankful that Sterling and I are sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. And that baby Ruthie will be able to be sealed to us when she is born.

19 weeks

Not much is new here. I still take my anti-nausea medicine every once in a while when I know its going to be rough without it. Although, sometimes I bring the whole being sick thing on myself. Like Saturday night. Sterling worked and so I never really made a meal for myself in the evening. I had made ham and beans (I'd been craving the kind my mom makes on Saturday afternoons when you can smell it all day long..but I didn't have a ham bone, so it didn't taste quite as delectable) and eaten that around four thirty-ish. Then I just kinda snacked for the rest of the evening. Bad idea. You know when your body is telling you that you are more hungry than a snack will fulfill, but you ignore it because you don't want to think about getting out a meal-sized amount of food???? It's one of my biggest problems with being pregnant. It's not that I deprive myself of food, especially because I want my baby to be healthy, and its not that I don't WANT to eat. Its just that I feel like I am ALWAYS eating and ALWAYS hungry and ALWAYS trying to make some kind of meal, that I get tired of it. And so, as a product, last night I got very sick. Sad sauce. I had an apple at around nine, right as I was getting into bed, and then Sterling got home from work, and we were both reading in bed (that happens very rarely, and it was a rather nice treat) when I started feeling sick. So I cuddled up to Sterling and tried to fall asleep to make it go away. Instead, a few minutes later I quickly got up and threw up for what seemed like an eternity. Then, because I was still feeling sick and I could tell it was from being hungry, I ate two peices of toast and tried to fall asleep again. Sterling was an absolute angel the entire time and stayed awake and gave me hugs.

I know, I know, it was all my own fault. But it wasn't like I was starving myself! I'd eaten a big meal at four thirty, eaten a peice of toast later on, some green beans, and then an apple. I just get so tired of being HUNGRY!

Thats pretty much all I have to complain about at 19 weeks. Except I am starting to be an annoying size. My normal clothes aren't really fitting...although luckily I'm still doing fine at work because my scrubs still fit. Another lucky thing, I got a bag of clothes from Amy and it had a pair of pants that was one size bigger than my own, and a really STRETCHY material(I have them on in the pictures). I wear them every day. They are SO comfortable. They're Express jeans, which means they are cute too. And I don't really know what to do about tops lately. I'm big enough that my tops are too short, and so mostly I wear scrub tops, t-shirts, and to look fancy, some button-up shirts that I can not button-up, with an undershirt. To church I wore a skirt, also from Amy, that was a size bigger than my skirts. The MOST annoying thing about my changing body....I had to buy another bra yesterday. I've known I needed to for the last week, and finally it was bothersome enough that I did. I have now gone up FOUR bra sizes. It's ridiculous, I know. Plus, its getting expensive!

My happiest pregnancy symptom: I feel baby Ruthie kick ALL THE TIME! Especially at work, when I lean over in a funny position to clean a back wisdom tooth or something, I can tell she doesn't like it at all. She kicks and kicks until I sit up straighter. Haahaa. Last night she was kicking quite a bit and Sterling could feel it too!!! He was pretty excited, cause I think he's felt a bit left out that I have been feeling it for the past little while, and he can't. It's definitely exciting and fun.

We also got car seats from Sterling's brother Brandon and Jessica!!!! They have twins, and they told us they'd give us both bases if we wanted. We only have one vehicle, but who knows if that might change, or what might be convenient later on with baby sitters, so we said we'd take it. Then, because we're taking both bases anyways, they just gave us both car seats! I don't know what we'll do with the other one, but for free, I suppose we'll let it kick around for a bit while we find a good use for it. They had boys, but the colors are a pretty neutral grey and red. I pulled everything apart on Saturday and sent everything throught the washing machine, and now I feel really excited about them! Unfortunately, its another thing to put in our tiny second bedroom that is already overflowing with baby items (the bassinet) and food storage. We'll probably have to take the futon and tv out sometime soon, because you can hardly get in there to watch a movie anyway, and then we can start setting it up for baby! But I was hoping we'd have more room for a little while longer so we could continue watching movies in there. Oh well. It's exciting!

Thats about all I can think of. I'm almost half-way!!!! Yay for five months!!!

Random

My friend at work, her name is Zully---she's the one who has named my baby Izzy---brought some delicious looking rice to heat up for lunch the other day. I thought it looked so delicious that I had her explain how to make it, and here's my attempt! Now, I love rice. I used to be the biggest fan of just plain, white rice. I've found myself branching out. Actually, I branched out a little in college with what I thought was tasty, and since being pregnant I have branched out a ton more. I like a lot more flavor than I used to. Especially things like condiments and sauces. Sterling and Adam were looking at me and Aleesha and decided it was the extra sugar and/or salt that made it appealing. Whatever. Fact of the matter is: Plain, white rice is somewhat boring now. So I was excited to try this recipe. Now, she told me to use a clove of garlic, and two buillion cubes...I didn't have either (I bought the buillion that is not cubed, because then I can measure it out easier for other recipes) but garlic powder and plain chicken buillion seemed to work fine...although I think I would have gotten a little more flavor from what she said to use. So here's how it goes:
Heat a little bit of oil and garlic clove in a frying pan.
Add rice. Stir for a few minutes on high heat so that rice starts to turn up on corners and look crusty.
Add water (the normal amount you use with the amount of rice you used...so with one cup of rice, two cups of water) and it starts boiling and bubbling like crazy. Add two chicken buillion cubes and don't mix in, just let sit. You can stir about a bit, but basically you just wait the 10-15 minutes that it normally takes rice to cook, letting it bubble like crazy the whole time. Wahla...your rice is complete.
What I loved about this recipe: it makes the rice crispy, which I really enjoy.
What I did not love: Maybe it was because I was using imitation garlic and guessing on how much buillion, but I didn't think it wowed the flavor category. I'd add more of both.

The other part of that picture was tomatoes and green beans, and that has an awesome story to go with it as well! Last week at married's committe, myself and a couple other people were complaining about how much we spend on produce every week...when someone told us about this amazing program called the Bountiful Basket!!! You're supposed to volunteer every so often with the program, and for doing so, you get a huge laundry basket full of fruits and veggies for only $16!!!! The girl said you get so much fruit and veggies that one couple cannot possibly eat it in a week without everything going bad...so she goes in with some in-laws, and they only pay $8 per week and get more than enough goodness to go around! So me and my friend Kelsey (my old roommate who got married in November) decided to give it a try. On Saturday morning we picked up our laundry basket full and received: one container of strawberries, one container of blueberries, one cantaloupe, one lettuce, one pineapple, one HUGE bag of delicious green beans, six bananas, two apples, and eight tomatoes. Thats all I can remember. So by halfing it, Sterling and I came home with: one container of strawberries(Kelsey took the blueberries), one cantaloupe(Kelsey took the pineapple), half of a lettuce (the good green fluffy kind, not the circle kind), half a bag of delicious green beans, four bananas, one apple, and four tomatoes. The only disappointment: the apples. So that afternoon during our grocery shopping we got about fifteen more(I eat at least two a day, because its easy to take to work with me and I usually eat one while deciding what to make for dinner). But that was all for EIGHT DOLLARS!!!! Everything was in great condition, has tasted fabulous, and everything is perfectly ripe, although we're waiting a bit longer for the cantaloupe, and the bananas were quite green(better than black!). I have been very excited about this discovery, and am excited to continue getting their stuff---and eventually volunteering now and then to help out---along with Kelsey. They also sell bread at a great price, but I make mine, so Kelsey thought that maybe every couple of weeks they'd add bread onto our cart for themselves. So, that was my dinner.

You might have noticed there was no meat. Sterling worked tonight. I know I am pretty far along in my pregnancy, but I'm still not loving the meat. And because Sterling wasn't around to look sad, I didn't bother making any to go with my meal.

Pictures of us ice skating at our marrieds activity on Wednesday:

Eric and Britney pretending to fall over as they almost crashed into us.

A very white picture, so we decided to try again....

Uh....not so great. I started falling over. So the smiling-while-trying-to-hold-onto-Sterling-for-dear-life was not working out so great.

Finally, a decent picture. Yay for ice skating! And my excuse for not blogging this week (not that I feel accountable, just so that people know about my life) I worked mon-wed and then had a dental convention on thursday and friday in SLC. It was actually pretty fun. Namely because my employer paid for us to go, which meant I was getting continuing education credits for free, and he paid for us to go to another lecture over lunch at the Marriot, and it was pretty good (they had a stuffed tomato that I have GOT to figure our a recipe for!) and as an added bonus I saw almost my entire class from dental hygiene, at one point or another! It was fun to bump into the girls separately and hear how their lives and careers were working out. One of my good friends Candace is due two days after me! Anyway, good times, especially because I sat by Zully the entire time and we laughed at the speakers. More good times.

Haws Hilarity

Quite frequently, Sterling makes me laugh. Really hard. This morning he made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt and I started gagging (morning sickness does weird things, I tell ya what). He got in the car and started whistling the same three notes, over and over and OVER again, and when I asked if maybe we could turn the radio on? he said "I just had a brilliant epiphany! I could record singles! It's not that hard to think up catchy tunes!" I just turned on the radio. And laughed really hard. Once the radio was on...it was actually an awesome cd given to me for my birthday from Adam and Aleesha with some really catchy and UPBEAT songs on it....Sterling started bouncing. Literally. Up and down. Like a crazy lunatic. Thats when I started laughing really hard. And then I told him he was weird. And then I started gagging cause I was laughing so hard. And then he asked "You think I'm weird, and you just laughed so hard you gagged?" Yeah, whatever.

Last night, Sterling promised to come home from the library, if I would go over some note cards with him when he got home (I have recently converted him to notecards...and I feel quite proud of myself. I don't think anyone would appreciate this quite as much as my old YW leaders, who used to have to tell me to put away my medical terminology notecards before activities). Once home, we started studying, and then I got a little antsy. Being confined into clothes all day is sometimes a little too much for me. I brought up the genius idea that we should play 'strip-study' and whenever he got a notecard definition right, we took off clothes. Now...listen up, I only tell this story because INSTEAD OF ACCEPTING this all-time amazing offer from his adorable little wifey, Sterling launched into a TWENTY MINUTE microbiology/chemistry lecture on how that idea reminded him of DNA!!!?!?!?!?!?!! Something about primers, I think? Maybe to chemistry people that would make sense. But I really wonder about that man.

Also this morning, I went to pull out of Sterling's work (where we had dropped something off) and head to WSU to drop Sterling off before I headed to work, when I saw a big garbage truck, and stopped half-way through pulling out. Sterling merely commented "I always thought death by garbage truck was definitely the way to go. My death wish would be: death by garbage truck!" I was laughing so hard I missed the spaces in traffic several times. Oh man.

He also got a 94% on his microbiology test today, so our studying last night must've paid off a little! YAY! Now we can party like its 1999!

PS I just remembered another funny story. Sterling and I had just finished watching the Chicken Run(he had never seen it...poor little man) and he was sitting on me, and every time I tried to move him he tickled me like crazy, and I screamed (poor people who live below us)...so I tried head butting him, and he went to lick my nose...all in fun, to make me scream more...and because I simultaneously head butted him, he ended up licking my EYE!!!!!!!!! I was kinda surprised. Never had THAT happen before! It was hilarious. We both just laughed for a long time, before we even tried getting up again.