A real nurse

Finally, after 4 years of school and a busy summer I have begun my job as a "real nurse." I am now a perioperative nurse and, after completing my week in sterile processing, will begin in my OR classes next week. There is so much to learn and I am excited to take it all in! Also, I would just like to add that a job where I get to wear a hat all day was clearly made for me :)

Jason began his grad classes last week. He likes all of them so far and is thankful that his books finally arrived from Amazon. He has lots of reading to keep up with, but he seems to be enjoying the format and structure of his classes.

Today, our BluRay complete series of LOST arrived. Jason, clearly, is thrilled! It came in a really neat box with special features, a game and a mysterious blacklight (use still TBD). Also eventful this week was a plumbing situation. Last night, our toilet sprung a leak. The head of a bolt rusted through and came apart, leaving a hole in the toilet tank. Jason quickly jumped to action and turned off the water, so after saturating about 5 towels all was well. Today he made a trip to Lowes to repair our toilet, I am very proud of his handyman skills!

Foodies

After hearing Nancy Pelosi call herself a "foodie" on The Next Food Network Star last week, I have decided that Jason and I qualify also. Urbandictionary.com defines a "foodie" as a person that spends a keen amount of attention on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation. Seems to me that we are morphing in to foodies. In our married life so far, we have cooked almost every day and eaten out only on a couple of occasions. I am really enjoying cooking in our kitchen and especially using our excellent dishwasher! This is quite a change from our usual eating out trips. We have really made some very tasty things! For the past few days, I have been wanting a soft pretzel. So, yesterday Jason looked up a recipe for soft pretzels from Food Network's Alton Brown. Today we walked (yes walked!) to the grocery store to buy a couple of needed ingredients to begin our pretzel adventure. The dough was very easy to make, then it had to rise for an hour. When the dough had risen, we shaped it in to nine pretzels. Then, to make the authentic pretzel crust, we boiled each pretzel in a water and baking soda mix for 30 seconds. Jason was the boiler, I was the shaper.

Once all the pretzels were boiled, we brushed them with egg wash and put on the salt. Jason made a cheese sauce while the pretzels were baking. Clearly you must have a scrumptious cheese sauce to go with any pretzel. The pretzels baked to golden perfection! They were so pretty and delicious! I must say, we were quite impressed and already have ideas for things to try on our next pretzel adventure.

Before baking...

After baking...

A Sifrit Adventure

This past weekend, we went on a road trip to Iowa with Jason's family to celebrate his grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. The drive was long, humorous and filled with a wide array of music choices. Tyler's dance moves definately enhanced the drive for me. On Saturday, we went out on a big pontoon boat with the whole Sifrit clan. It was a very nice day. It was hot, but minimally humid. The state park we were in was beautiful! We floated around the lake for a couple of hours, stopped to grill for lunch and then hopped back on the boat. We rented some little boats that held two people and took turns riding and switching drivers in the middle of the lake...slightly trecherous. We had a great time! At the end of the day, nearly all of us jumped in to the lake for a little swim. There was a little "salad"(in Jason's words) in the lake, but a little algae never hurt anyone. I really enjoyed getting to spend some relaxed time with the whole gang. In the evening, we ordered a TON of pizza to feed our hungry stomachs. We did some serious damage to three jumbo taco pizzas...good work everyone. Jason also got to eat some cinnamon rolls and kuchen that his grandma made, definatley one of the highlights of his trip! The next day, we attended the Lebo family brunch. It was fun to share our wedding pictures and meet some more of the extended family. Jason and I both enjoyed the time with his family this weekend!

On another note, my family has been on a New Mexico vacation for the past couple of weeks. I missed them! My mom sent us a postcard from White Sands and I remembered how much I love visiting sand dunes. Sledding, writing your name in the sand, finding huge beetles crawling on the sand...so much fun! I can't believe Seth will be in high school this year. He is turning out to be quite cute and I am really enjoying him more and more as he gets older. Love ya little bro!

Seth, Jason and me when we first started dating almost 4 years ago.

Seth, cousins and me a couple of weeks ago.

Our Favorite Little Munchkins

This past weekend, my parents were out of town. Jason and I went to stay at their house to water their many plants. We decided to invite our favorite youngsters over for a sleepover! Together with the Henricks' kids we pulled out all my old dress-up clothes, my dolls, Seth's remote control cars and made quite the mess. Meredith and Maddie put on a fashion show for Marky and me. Jason and Michael played with cars and tractors. The girls played the Pretty Pretty Princess Game and Meredith won twice and was quite proud to wear all of her princess jewels.

We ended our evening with a baseball game with our friends Kelsi and Erik. Once the sun set, we made the biggest s'mores in the history of the world. We had these HUGE marshmallows. There was marshmallow everywhere! Sticky, but delicious! Everyone piled in to the basement to end the night in a movie and eventually sleep. Thanks for a great night kids, we love ya!