New York!

I got to spend this past weekend with Chad up in New York! He was completing his practical part of the Dental School final and needed cavities to fill. Remember my post about all my cavities? Well, I went to get them filled my a family friend (also a dentist) and she suggested that I be a patient for Chad during his final. That way, I wouldn't have to pay to have my cavities filled and Chad would have a cooperative patient that was personally invested in him and his grade. It sounded like a win-win, so we went for it!

I arrived in New York City by train Thursday night. Chad took me out for manicures and pedicures and even a massage for my Birthday! It was so nice and so much fun to be there with my brother.

 Yes, he got a pedicure, too. Actually, while I was there more men than women came in to get pedicures. 

After our spa treatment, Chad then treated me to a dinner of sushi!

After dinner, we went back to his apartment to crash for the night. We were up again by 5:45 a.m. to catch a cab to New York University where the test was being held. There were dozens of other dental students doing the same test and tons of patients. It was a pretty intimidating atmosphere and I felt myself getting nervous for Chad.

The whole test process was interesting. First, we had to get all Chad's supplies together and ready. Here I am sitting in his assigned "booth" waiting for the procedure to begin. We were in a room that had probably 24-30 similar booths, all occupied by nervous dental students and their patients.

I got to listen to a lot of music during the almost 10 hours we were at the clinic.

 Chad setting up the supplies and equipment. 

See those blue boxes? Look inside. Yes, those would be drill bits and burrs. I had never had a cavity filled before and I have to admit, I was a little nervous.

After the station was set up, Chad had to take x-rays of my teeth to submit for approval.

Checking out the x-rays.

After Chad had selected two cavities, I had to be approved. We took the x-rays along with a very specific assortment of gauze and utensils to the elevator and upstairs where there was another clinic almost identical to the one we came from. This was the approval/grading area. The school had flown professional dentists in from all over the country to evaluate each student's ability to perform 5 tasks. Today Chad was doing two--drilling and filling cavities. Chad had to leave me outside the clinic and I was ushered to a dental chair to await evaluation. I was so nervous because Chad wasn't sure if one of the cavities he selected was deep enough into the dentin to pass the requirement. If they didn't approve me, Chad would essentially fail that portion of the exam and have to pay a large amount of money to retake it later. It was a weird feeling sitting there being evaluated. I felt super vulnerable, like my self-worth was riding on what this person I didn't know was going to say about me. Strange, I know. I felt like I was being judged for something that was outside my control but that would have a very important impact on the outcome of the day. After a very nerve-wracking 15 minutes, I was officially approved and I joined an excited Chad to get started.

Ready?

Prepped and waiting. Can you tell which side of my mouth he numbed?

Before he started, he had to put in this rubber dam (a test requirement) that isolated the quadrant of my mouth that he was working on. Luckily both cavities were in the same quadrant so I only had one dam. He said most patients hated it, but I kinda liked it. At least my mouth was protected from tooth dust even if it wasn't exactly a flattering look.

Yeah, not flattering at all.

Drilling...

Checking...

After he felt he had cleaned out the cavities as well as they could be, it was on to the evaluation checkpoint again. The checkpoint was on a different floor, so I had to ride the elevator with the rubber dam in my mouth. It wouldn't have been so bad, except when the elevator came it was completely packed with random people from the building. I got some funny looks and a snicker or two. Once off the elevator, I had to stand in line to be admitted to the waiting room. I didn't feel too out of place here--most of the other people in line had strange rubber dams sticking out of their mouth, too. After sitting in the waiting room for about 45 minutes, I was admitted to the back and placed in a dental chair to await grading. I was praying the whole time that Chad would pass. It was so nerve-wracking to sit there and have three dentists come and look, poke, and scrape at the holes in my teeth and then sit down at a computer and fill in the grades they felt the job deserved. It was a long hour for Chad by the time we were finally reunited outside the checkpoint and were given the go-ahead to finish the job.

Starting the filling process.

Chad is assessing the integrity of the filling and trying to figure out where he needs to smooth and shape. While this was going on, my iPod suddenly started playing the Beatles' "I've Got a Feeling". Honestly, when it first started playing I almost thought I heard "I've got a filling, a filling deep inside, oh yeah! I've got a filling, a filling I can't hide, oh no." I stifled a giggle while Chad finished.

Almost done!

After the fillings were complete and smoothed over, it was again on to the checkpoint. The wait was a little bit shorter this time and I was in and out in about 30 minutes. Three dentists again had to check my fillings and make sure they were quality before filling in the grades on the computer.

After I came out of the waiting room, Chad and I went back to his station and cleaned up all the instruments. It was about 5:30 by the time we were done. We were starving! We hadn't had any lunch, only a couple snacks to tide us over during the day, so we immediately headed to the Shake Shack that was only a few blocks from the testing site. Unfortunately, it was a beautiful day and the Shake Shack is an outside restaurant, so the line was forever long. We decided we couldn't wait that long and got some Jamba Juice instead on our way back to Chad's apartment.

Can you tell how tired we both were?

We were going to go to the Shake Shack close to Chad's apartment, but once we got home, we didn't have the energy to move, so we ordered out and watched a movie before going to bed. It was so nice to spend time with Chad and get to see his apartment and meet his roommates. I wish I could have stayed a little longer, but he had to do more testing on Saturday and I had a husband and a couple boys at home that I was missing like crazy. So, Saturday morning I hugged Chad goodbye and caught a 7:00 a.m. train from Penn Station.

Everything was going well until... about 1 hour from DC, our train stopped. We were informed that the power from New York to DC on the tracks was out and none of the trains could move. We waited for more than 2 1/2 hours before the power finally came back on and we started our journey again.

The view from the back of the train during our trip "intermission".

It wasn't that bad. I had Harry Potter to keep me company. Amy was so nice to come get me fror Union Station in DC and then it was on to my mom's house where Jude was.

Mom treated me and Amy to a great lunch/dinner for my Birthday (I took my camera, but forgot to get a picture) at Sweetwater which was super good! Lance's dad dropped Lance off later that day and the boys and I headed back to Charlottesville that evening. George had a Glee club function that weekend and had a friend spending the night, so we had a big family sleepover in our bedroom. Fun fun! 

It was good to be home and together as a family again. I'm so glad I got to see Chad and help a bit with his final. I guess I won't see him again until he graduates in May. Good luck, Chad!

Dinner with the Family

Every year for Christmas my Allred Grandparents give our family a check. When we were all young, my parents would divide up the money equally and we'd all get a portion. Now that we're all adults, we take that money and go out to eat as a family.

Last weekend we finally were able to round up everyone that was in town and go to one of our favorite restaurants: Nagoya. We had a great time together, although we did miss Chad and Stephen who are both attending college out of state.

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa! Wish you were here to celebrate with us.

Laser Tag!

Last weekend, we drove up to Ashburn to celebrate Callie's 7th Birthday! 

We have probably done the two hour drive between our house and Ashburn at least 100 times since we moved to Charlotteville and the boys have become accustomed to the boring car drive:

They are excellent sports and usually very patient. Besides, this time we were coming up for a great reason!

LASER TAG and CAKE!

Callie celebrated her birthday at a laser tag place close by. She had tons of friends and family there and made off like a bandit. The perfect birthday!

I love that it looks like her cake is on fire.

Blowing out the candles.

Anxiously awaiting cake...

Pop-pop and Jude

In the "briefing room" before our second game of laser tag! He's excited, can you tell?

Ready for action!

George sniping at the kids running past.

Callie in the heat of battle!

We all had a great time! It was fun to see Callie and celebrate with her and to see the rest of our family as well. We are lucky to live close enough to our family that we can be a part of the special events when they take place.

Babies

Lance: "I don't want to eat lamb."

Me: "Why not, Lance?"

Lance: "Because a lamb is a baby sheep. And I don't eat babies."

Boys and Bread

As a mom, it's fun and gratifying to watch my children actually enjoy being together.  The older Jude gets, the more the boys find they have in common. Lance often takes some coaxing (it doesn't help that Jude drools buckets and Lance finds that gross), but Jude can't get enough of Lance and is constantly trying to love on him... or tackle him. Being boys, it's all the same, right?

To break up the dull days, Lance and I made bread on Friday. It was fun! It brought back so many memories of baking bread with my own mom when I was Lance's age. She always made 6 loaves at a time and would pinch off little mounds of dough for the kids to make mini loaves. Probably the thing I remember most clearly about baking bread was the part where we shaped the dough. Mom had a neat way of getting rid of air bubbles after she had carefully rolled the dough flat and rolled it up again to form a loaf. She would take mound of dough and throw it down on the counter with a huge bang that all the kids thought was awesome! I still can't make bread as well as Mom can, but I'm getting better and Lance thought it was neat he got to make his own bread, too.

"I have this all under control!"

On the drive back from Walmart where Lance purchased some toys with his Chinese New Year money, I heard this coming from the back seat:

"Oh man... this doesn't make any sense!"

I knew Lance was trying to put together these little foam airplanes he bought and I was worried he might break them in his zeal to quickly construct them.

"Lance, do you want me to help you in a minute? Don't do anything that will break it until we look at the instructions."

"I don't need to look at the instructions, Mom. I have this all under control!"

Yes, yes he did. The airplane looked great.

Dancing and Climbing Trees

Not much has happened this past week. We spent some time here in Charlottesville and some time up in Ashburn with family, but life has been fairly normal lately.

George finally finished his Trauma Surgery rotation and was sad to see it go. He's on Psych now and let's just say he's not too "psyched" about it. Four weeks and he'll be on Neurology and then it's on to 4th year! I can't believe we only have one year left of Med School! The time seems to have flown in retrospect, although living the day to day sometimes seems to take forever. Why is that?

While we were up in Northern VA with George's family, Jen and Bryce introduced us to a new Wii game called "Just Dance". I was horrible at it, but it was very addicting and tons of fun! Basically you have to do the same dance moves as the character on the game and you get points based on how well you did. Needless to say, it's hilarious watching people play this game. Lance had a good time playing it, too and I'm considering adding it to our collection of games. Maybe I'll tell the Easter Bunny. :)

These are a couple pictures of George helping his dad uproot a dead tree in the backyard when we were up there this past weekend. It was fun to watch them push and pull and jump on the tree until it finally gave up and came out of the ground.

Speaking of trees, yesterday Lance wanted to show me how high he could climb in the tree in front of our apartment complex. It's this huge tree perfect for climbing. The kids love playing in and on it because the branches start right next to the ground, so you climb in and it's like a little room made out of leaves and branches. The kids call it their "tree house".

Climbing...

Still climbing...

He got really high!

 Jude wanted to climb, too, but this is as far as he got. :) Soon enough, Jude. Soon enough.

Life continues to plug along. The weather is being bipolar which is both nice and not. Some days we get to play outside in short sleeves and the next we're bundled inside. Hopefully Spring will decided to come and stay one of these days.

This weekend should be fun. Callie is turning 7 so we're heading up to Ashburn again to celebrate with her on Saturday. Laser Tag! WooHoo! I'll be going up to New York at least once this month as well to help Chad in his Dental School final. I'm his patient, so he'll be filling a couple of my cavities which works out great for both of us. I'm excited to visit New York again and to see Chad. Can't wait!