What? Bryce cooks?

Yes, I do. It may come as a surprise to many of you, in particular my sisters, but I enjoy cooking. I'm not very good at it, but I have fun. The main problem is that I often don't have the patience. I've lucked out in that Cathi can cook really well, whereas I can only help her with basic stuff. That being said, I like to challenge myself every once in a while.

About a month ago some friends from school and I went out to eat after one of our tests. The appetizer we had was called Asparagus Phyllo. We all thought it was really good so I decided to make it myself. I finally got around to it on Friday. I tracked down the phyllo dough at the store, had my sister email me the recipe I had looked at a few weeks ago and started to get everything ready only to realize that the dough had to be thawed for 2 hours first. Lame. I didn't want Cathi to know until they were done, so I had to be creative in hiding the dough and finding the time to finish them. I had already hid the asparagus in the fridge, but since I had already cut some of the stalks, I decided to go ahead and eat it before Cathi got home. Just as it finished boiling, she walks in. I had to stand in front of the stove and wait till she left the room to drain the water and put them in a tupperware container. Before she walks back in, I hid them up in one of our cabinets. Once in the kitchen, she actually asked why it was so warm by the stove. I played dumb and got away with it. While we were making dinner, she opened the same cabinet, the one with the asparagus, to pull out some noodles, but fortunately didn't notice the asparagus just sitting there. Then, while she was stirring the noodles, I had to stealthily pull out the phyllo dough I had hidden under some other food in the freezer and place it on top of the fridge. I was pretty surprised she didn't ask what I was doing because she's normally very suspicious of me. After having dinner, she left for a church activity, allowing me time to finally make it.

As for actually making this stuff, working with the phyllo dough wasn't easy but it turned out ok. The rest was easy. All you have to do is cut the asparagus, brush the dough with melted butter and add Parmesan cheese. The dough definitely wasn't cut the straightest it could have been, and I'm sure anyone familiar with working with phyllo would have been laughing at my efforts. I think that was one reason for waiting till Cathi was gone, so I could make it up as I went.

I think I've managed to make this sound cooler than it was, so here's a picture to prove I actually did it. Kim, Kristen, Erin and Ashley, you can now pick your jaws up off the floor. And by the way, Cathi said they were good.

Haberston?

About a week and a half ago Bryce's med school class had their White Coat Ceremony. Pretty much it's a day for family to come and hear/see what medical school is like in the morning, and then go to a ceremony in the afternoon where all the first year students get their white coats. The coats are short, as to help doctors, nurses, and others distinguish the students from qualified help, but still nice.

Thankfully the presentation of the coats went fairly quickly. They signed the student oath, and then three at a time came on stage to have their white coat put on them by one of the faculty. Nothing crazy there. Thanks to Sarah who made my pathetically dark picture viewable. It was dark in the auditorium and I should have stood up as to avoid the light off the guy's head in front of me.

After it was over, all of the students went to get a class picture taken and the family members went to a reception area. Only I, Cathi, went for Bryce. Each student got two tickets, no exceptions, which of course, is lame for anyone that is married and has parents. So, we donated a ticket to Andrew and Tara so that Tara as well as Andrew's parents could go. The only mishap was on Tara's name tag. Apparently they put the medical student's picture on the name tag of the family member so Tara had a picture of Bryce on hers (since she had our other ticket). Oh the stories we could have come up with.

Anyway, so Bryce comes out all smiley from the reception and shows me his coat. First off, he doesn't like these types of things so I was confused as to why he was so chipper. Apparently he was just happy it was over and, to add to his and my amusement, his coat was the ONLY one out of about 160 that was misspelled (and mind you, there are some pretty difficult names in his class). They knew it when they gave it to him, so it's getting redone.

So, to be a good sport, here's one final picture of Bryce and I after the ceremony. I think I look tired. Which, to be honest, is most likely true since I'm always tired.

Things are going well for us. The baby's growing fine and loves to see what types of weird internal sensations he can make for his mother. 25 weeks down; 15 to go! I'm still at my same job at Johns Hopkins and will be the administrative assistant to the Director now since the person I was filling in for came back, and they still want to keep me around. It's only temporary so that he can have some help while we look for a full-time person that he likes. It's a perfect situation for them to have me there while they are hunting for someone since I don't want a full-time job after the baby's born. And I got a nice raise so that's always appreciated and helpful. After we get someone hired, I'll most likely still have a job doing something else in the department at least until the baby, and possibly something small afterwards. We'll see.

Bryce's second class started this past Tuesday. He's doing Cell and Molecular Biology this round. He's been playing flag football with some of the dental students in our ward as a release. Other than that, he's helping me get things organized around here and in the garage so we can start in on the nursery in the next few months.

Two Pictures

Picture #1: Bryce is often lazy about making a lunch for himself. So, this morning, I noticed a Walmart bag (i.e. lunch bag) on the counter and decided to take a peek. Look at the picture below. The contents were the following:

1) 1 string cheese
2) 3 Skittles packs
3) 3 Snickers bars
4) 3 Starbursts packs
5) 1 M&M pack


Anyone else concerned??? I was. Laughing, I asked him if that was really his lunch. To his defense, it wasn't. He was taking some of the gobs of candy we have left over from Halloween to share with some people in his class. I now vaguely remember him mentioning this over the weekend, but you can imagine how amusing I found this bag when I saw it. Before we left, he added a bagel and granola bar for his actual lunch (I was only allowed to post this picture if I clarified what he actually took for lunch).

Picture #2: My friend, Sarah Boman, tagged me with the challenge to post the 4th picture in the 4th folder of my Pictures. Here it is.

This picture was taken in 2004 right before we went home for Christmas break. Erin and Ashley (Bryce's sisters) came over to Bryce's apartment with their boyfriends, Nate (we actually had to call Erin to remember his name) and Greg (Ashley's future husband--don't worry Greg, we didn't have to call Ashley to get confirmation). We watched The Italian Job in honor (partly) of me leaving for Italy on my mission in two months.