NOVA!!!

Last night Brian and I got home from our Thanksgiving trip and we found a certified letter from Nova (in Florida). It was an acceptance letter! Yes, Brian got accepted at the earliest possible moment from one of his top two choice schools. We were very excited. And if we end up going there, you could all come visit us and go to a beach that looks like this! The school is very near Miami, Florida. HOORAY FOR BRIAN!

Long Time No Post

SO life has been pretty crazy around our little apartment lately. We've been playing catch-up from all the things we missed due to dental school interviews. Also, I just took my big national exam for Speech-Language Pathology. I won't get my scores back for another month, so I don't know if I passed yet, but at least I don't have to study for now! It's nice. Hurray for Thanksgiving and some time away from class...I can't wait. Also, my good friend Addie gets home from her mission on Wednesday! I can't believe it's already been a year and a half. And I can't believe that I'll get to talk to her in 3 days! Life sure comes at you fast. You just have to hold on and try not to get pulled off the boat.

Halloween Cupcake Pops

So I got a little crazy last week when Brian was gone for an interview and I decided to make these cute Halloween cupcake pops. They were so much fun to do! I found them on the wonderful Bakerella blog (listed on my page here). Here they are.

Spooky black cats

Wrapped-up mummies


Werewolves

Creepy crawly spiders

and Witches.

These were so much fun to make, and the best part is that they actually taste good too! They're not too complicated once you do a few and get the hang of it. My mom is also making some this week for her Halloween book club party because she saw the pops I made and loved them. You should look them up on Bakerella's blog and try some on your own!

Las Vegas Weekend

Brian and I went down to Las Vegas last Thursday for his UNLV Dental School interview. It went really well. He really liked the school because it was very new and they have all the latest technology. The whole school is digital- they don't have any paper records anywhere! And the classrooms have huge plasma screens all around the room for viewing PowerPoints and such. It's pretty high tech over there. We also got to spend some time with my family which was a blast. We hung out with these little munchkins.




We got to see our niece Carissa's primary program on Sunday as well, which was very fun. Carissa's class had the assignment of telling how they could be missionaries. Carissa walked up to the microphone, and with no hesitation and no shyness at all she said, "I can be a missionary by singing primary songs at the grocery store." It was very funny and the audience got a kick out of it. It was a great weekend and it was hard to come back home to school, but we had to get back because Brian leaves for his next interview tomorrow morning! This has been one crazy month.

Cabins, Shakespeare, and Scarlett O'Hara

This weekend Brian and I went down to Cedar City where we met my parents and my sister Karli. On Friday night we went to see Julius Caesar at the Shakespearean festival. It was a very good production. The actors spoke the lines from the play as they were, but they were dressed in modern clothing (ie. wearing business suites while at the capitol and wearing fatigues while on the battlefield). I thought this would really bother me, but it was actually a very good production. I didn't even notice the costumes after the first 20 mintues.
Then Friday night we went up to Duck Creek to stay in a cabin that my parents had rented. It was a very cute, cabin-y place and we had a blast there once we found it! Heading up the mountain in the dark, we had trouble finding the cabin because the cabins are not numbered in order! On the road Heavenly Dr., it goes #575, then #596, and then #566, which was the cabin we were staying in. Now that's good Utah sense right there. So after almost breaking in to the wrong cabin we finally decided to head back up the road and we found the right one. Thank goodness we figured this out before someone saw us trying to break into their neighbor's cabin!
Saturday afternoon we headed back down to Cedar City and saw another play called Moonlight and Magnolias. It was a farcical look at the week during which the screen play for the movie Gone With the Wind was written. It was very funny. These three characters are locked up in a room together for five days trying to get the screen play done. They start to get a little crazy towards the end and I couldn't help but think, "Hey, this is like me writing my thesis!" I could really empathize with the characters.
We had a great weekend, but it's back to real life now. Hopefully my attempts to finish my prospectus will turn out better than things turned out in the play!

This Sums It Up

For the past two weeks, Brian has been receiving more and more interviews for dental school. We are so grateful for all these opportunities. BUT this also means that we've been trying to schedule all the interviews and buy all the plane tickets to get there. We're trying to find flights that will work with my schedule (so I can take him to the airport), with our friends' and family's schedules (for those people who live in the cities where he'll be interviewing), and Brian's schedule (so that he doesn't miss too many school days in a row and flunk this semester, making all these interviews somewhat pointless). It's a little hectic.
Meanwhile I'm trying to work on my thesis at break-neck speed. I'm about halfway through my Review of Literature section and I'm trying to finish the other half by the end of the week. It's getting a little hairy, but at least it'll be over soon! Things are a little crazy right now, but life is still wonderful. Brian and I have so much fun together. It's so nice to be able to come home from a stressful day and just crack each other up while we cook dinner and do the dishes together. Thank goodness for having fun with the small things in life. It's like President Hinckley's quote about how you can't wait around for life to be perfect or you'll spend a lot of time feeling ripped off. You have to find joy in the small moments. Just a little philosophy that I'll slip in between all the craziness.

And Another One

Last night Brian got an invitation to interview with UNLV! We're very excited. That makes 6 interviews, and that means that he got invitations to interview with our top four choices. Life is sweet right now. Paying for all the flights and missing all that school, on the other hand....not as sweet....

And Another Interview

Brian was recently invited to interview with Loma Linda, a school in California. That makes 5! Isn't this guy amazing?

Timp Hike

This weekend we hiked up to the top of Mount Timpanogos. It was a long, steep, and challenging hike, but it was a lot of fun. Brian and I went with Brian's two little brothers, Todd and David. We had fun spending the day together and having so much time to talk. It was 7 miles up and 7 miles back, so after 14 miles of hiking, our legs were shot. My favorite parts of the hike were sliding down the glacier at the top, eating lunch at Emerald Lake, and climbing down a little 10 foot rock face when we went on the wrong trail and had to get down to a lower area. This is a picture of the waterfall that is along the trail about 2 miles up.


We are very sore today and we have nice little sunburns on our faces and necks. But what a beautiful hike!

Dental School Interviews

Congratulations to Brian! He has now received 4 interviews for school! There's still a possibility that he may receive more, but we're so excited that he already has 4. So far he's been invited to interview at Nova in Florida, at Case Western in Ohio, at USC in southern California, and at Midwestern in Phoenix, Arizona. We could be anywhere in the country next year, so we're excited to see how the interviews go and to see what schools he's accepted to. We are starting to feel more confident that we will get accepted to at least one school. Hurray for Brian!

Cute Nephews

Brian and I were able to escape to Las Vegas last weekend to visit family and take one last vacation before school starts. It was a blast. We had fun making decorations for my dad's birthday party and hanging out with the twins. They sure are cute when they are asleep! And when they are awake, though they make a lot more noise :)


Here is Michael sleeping in Karli's arms. He's the oldest and the most demanding- he wants to be held all the time and will wake up the second he is put down.


Here is Jared sleeping in his dad's arms- he likes to be held sideways; sometimes this is the only position that will calm him down (go figure).

Brian and I are excited to start school again, though I can't say that I'm excited to work on my thesis or to do tests again! But at least Brian is done studying for the DAT, so we don't have to deal with that stress anymore. But I'm not sure all this waiting is desirable either. So far Brian has two interviews with dental schools, but we're still waiting to here from about 7 more. Dah! We just want to know who's going to interview him and who's not, but these schools are being very slow about letting people know. So everybody, send all your good karma our way please!

Beautiful Flowers

My sweet husband Brian got me these lovely summer flowers the other day for no reason at all. He loves me! When I first got these, only one of the blooms was open. Then, slowly over the last week, more and more of the beautiful buds have opened. Wow, huh?


These are some fun pictures from our camping trip with my parents and our two nieces. We went to a place we call "The Peak." It's a piece of land that my grandparents own up on Cedar Mountain near Cedar City- our own private camping place. It's so beautiful. My dad and Brian built a swing set while we were there out of fallen Aspen logs. Our nieces had a blast with it, and we spent most of the vacation being conned into pushing the two of them.


And here's the hat that Carissa made for Leo out of his plastic water bowl :)

The Travelers Have Returned

Well, Brian and I are finally home from our adventures. After spending a week in Las Vegas helping my sister out with her new twins, I flew home. Then the very next day Brian and I took off for a Wilde family vacation to Grand Tetons National Park. We spent five days there, camping, hiking, cooking, and making s'mores. It was a blast. We saw some amazing waterfalls, several lakes and rivers, geysers, hot springs, and a bear! I got bit by a spider and half of my arm swelled up, making it very difficult to move my wrist or fingers for a few days. And Brian and I came home with over 30 mosquito bites between the two of us! But other than that, it was a great trip. I think my favorite site was the Yellowstone Waterfall. It was huge and amazing, and the trail to get there was pretty trippy- straight down on metal stairs that you could see through, so it gave you the illusion that you were falling down the mountain! Grand Teton and Yellowstone sure are beautiful places.

New Nephews!

I went down to Las Vegas this week to be with my sister Andrea because she had twins! They arrived last night at 10:34 and 10:37 pm. The first one to come was Michael Frank Dawson. He is very healthy and weighs 7 lbs. 5 oz. The second one to come was Jared Frank Dawson. He is also very healthy and weighs 7 lbs. 14 oz. That means Andrea was carrying over 15 lbs. of baby around with her! The doctor said it was a new record for him, and he's been doing this for 14 years. The twins came at 36 weeks and they were still both bigger than Andrea's daughter Brooke was when she was born! The delivery went very well and Andrea didn't have to have a C-section, which we were all very glad about. It was really fun to be in the waiting room at the hospital with my parents and my sister Karli, speculating about names and hair colors. This is a long video (more than 8 minutes), but it's fun to see the boys and get a feel for how it was last night in the hospital. Congratulations Andrea and Adam!

Cupcake lollipops

On the Bakerella blog there is an amazing looking recipe for some really cute cupcake lollipops, and I've been dying to make them, so I got brave and tried it out! My friend Maria was visiting from St. Louis, so she helped me start the project.


It was so much fun to have her here! We don't see each other very often since she lives about 20 hours away, so our short week together was wonderful. She left on Friday, and the cupcakes were only about halfway done, so I recruited my other wonderful friend Nancy to help me finish them. We had a blast dipping the little cupcakes in chocolate and decorating them with sprinkles. Here's the finished product.


If you want to see what the real professional cupcakes look like, check out the Bakerella page, but I think ours turned out pretty well. There are a lot of steps involved, but they actually aren't that hard to make. We added sticks to some of them and left some without sticks, just as little bite-sized cupcakes. It's fun to be out of school and to actually have time for things like baking again!

The DAT is Destroyed!

Brian took the DAT on Saturday and rocked it! He got the score he was hoping for, which means that he has a pretty good chance of getting into dental school somewhere. We're hoping to stay in the west (California, Nevada, or Arizona), but we'll have to see where he gets accepted. The good news for now is that Brian doesn't have to re-take the test in September, so he can quit studying and we can have a life again! We're very excited to start hiking and camping and doing all those fun summer things that we couldn't do while Brian was studying. Hurray and congratulations to Brian!

Destroyed by the DAT

Brian is taking the big Dental Admissions Test tomorrow. He's been studying pretty much round the clock for the last few weeks trying to prepare. We are very nervous, but it will be nice to have it done with! My good friend Maria has been in town for the past few days on a visit from St. Louis. It will be very sad to see her go, but I guess it's time to get back to real life sometime.

Good (Pipe) Clean Fun

Brian's best friend Brandon got married a few weeks ago. Brian was the best man, so we were up in Salt Lake all day long with the wedding, the luncheon, pictures, and the reception. It was really fun to be married to the best man because I got to help decorate their car at the end of the night. When we got up to Salt Lake, nobody had anything to decorate, so we snuck out during a half hour break that we had and went to the dollar store. They didn't have any shoe polish or window decals or anything (it wasn't a very stocked dollar store), so I had the idea of using pipe cleaners and tape. It turned out to be really fun. Here are some pictures of our handy work. We also filled the inside of the car with balloons. Going to this wedding was fun because it reminded us of all the fun we had at our wedding (and how glad we are that we're married now, not still planning for it!)

More Wedding

We just got these pictures from Daniel Barrick that he took at our wedding. It's fun to get some new pictures and be reminded of all the excitement all over again. This is a picture that he took of me and Kim's little girl Anna. I thought it was a sweet picture. If anyone has any other pictures of our wedding that you don't think we've seen yet, send them our way, we'd love to have a look!

Rainy Day Blues

Ok I like Provo and I love going to BYU, but the weather this year is giving me some serious blues. It's the middle of June and right now it's about 45 degrees outside and rainy! Quite a shock for us Vegas girls. This picture shows what it looks like in Provo right now, though we don't look quite so Parisian. If only I was in Paris wearing those clothes and walking down that street, then maybe the weather wouldn't seem so bad to me. Instead, I'm locked away in the Taylor Building working on my grammar analysis project...anyone interested in trading places?

New Blog

I decided to set up a new blog since our old blog was for our wedding. I guess this means we're officially entering the blog world. Yikes! Things are going pretty well for Brian and I these days. Brian's studying every day for the DAT exam. He'll be taking the test on June 28, so the countdown is on. We're nervous, but we're also excited for all this studying to be over! We've finished our applications, so we're all set to go once Brian finishes the DAT. Everyone, send your luck, your good kharma, and your faith our way so that Brian will do well on this exam and we'll be able to get into a good dental school (preferably on the west coast...).