Itteh Bitteh Kittehs

We were in Eugene this past weekend, visiting family and generally being bums. We finally got to see my sister Helen's house and her baby kittens. As a way of explanation, my sister volunteers for a no-kill animal shelter and finds homes for displaced/unwanted kitties. She ended up with the kittens (and their mother) because they were found on someone's farm land while she was picking up cats to be spayed.

We call this a "cat stack"

Helen tried to see how many cats she could stick in her mouth. The answer is one.

I think this one was Moonbeam.

They have the cutest blue eyes

My mom was either wearing this cat as a hat or this cat was wearing my mom as a belt.

This cat was so snuggly!

Josh played a video of cats meowing and the kittens freaked out. Uh-Door-uh-Bull!

While in Eugene, Helen and Josh also jammed on the banjo, guitar, and ukelele:

The end of an experience

As part of my training, I was a therapist at a private liberal arts college, but this week was my last week. It was sad saying goodbye, but they gave me a present:

(It's a blanket, not a sweatshirt).

Next week I'll be doing psychological assessments (for custody hearings, mostly, it seems) and family therapy (in McMinnville of all places), but this week I got to luxuriate in my tiny, windowless office (that I shared with two people and lots of files), finish a mound of paperwork and listen to hours of audiotaped sessions. The life of a (student) psychologist is totes glamorous, let me tell you.

Piecakes or CupPies

For my last full week at Lewis and Clark, I wanted to make some cupcakes from my cupcake decorating book (remember these and these?)

This is what they were supposed to look like:

Cute, right? The frosting was just vanilla buttercream with cocoa powder and yellow food coloring mixed in. The design is pretty simple, here is what they look like in progress:

After baking the cupcakes, I frosted them, leaving a little unfrosted edge. That was supposed to be so I could make a crimped part of the crust out of frosting. I covered the frosted part with M&Ms. Believe me, it was a total chore eating all the non-red or blue ones! ;)

After covering all the cupcakes with M&Ms, I then piped lines on them to simulated the basketweave crust top. Unfortunately, BOTH of my pastry bags sprung leaks, so I didn't get to finish the edges, but everything else turned out okay:

I have an issue right now with determining the right consistency of frosting; the last cupcakes I make were practically dripping and this frosting was a bit thick. I'm not sure which to try next, but I love the cupcakes that look like regular food (like corn on the cob).

I'm Seeing Spots!

I put on some new bedsheets today. They really make me smile. I don't know what it is, but polka dots make me happy.

We have some different versions, including darker brown polka dots and reverse polka dot pillows. I don't know what made us decide on brown, but it's soothing. I would hate the idea of trying to fall asleep on red sheets. 

(BTW the green pillows in the background are from a previous set of sheets that my mom bought for us when we got married, but they fit our old queen bed rather than our size-of-Texas king. I haven't yet been able to find good pillowcases that fit, and we love them a lot, so we keep them on the bed even though they don't match. We clearly don't care. Up until recently we were still using a queen quilt and mismatched pillowcases).

In Other News:
Josh is reading The Hunger Games and I think he's enjoying it. I've taken a hiatus from my 30 Books Before I'm 30 list because I have, sadly, become too busy to read for pleasure. I did finish The Book Thief today, which took me something like a month because it was mostly a bathtime book.

Also, in a neverending quest to decrease stress and try new things, I tried Moving Cupping courtesy of my acupuncturist. It felt... interesting... For a few days afterward it looked like I had been severely beaten, and I even freaked myself out in the mirror a couple times because I had forgotten about it. I'm not sure if I can recommend it, though I think it was helpful.

Easter with the ShepAlders

My family already celebrated Easter without us (for various reasons that I will, hopefully, be able to explain later... unless you've seen me in person, in which case I've probably already blah blah blahed about it). So I missed out on the egg hunt and the infamous lamb cake (a cake that looks like a lamb, not a cake made from lamb). Instead, when Josh and I went down to Eugene for the weekend, my mom and I made duck cupcakes.

They were supposed to look like this:

Hold on to your suspense!

We started off with cupcakes:

After we frosted the naked cupcakes for a base, we then added marshmallows cut in half crosswise for the tails and doughnut holes for the heads:

We were supposed to dip each cupcake in frosting, but the heads kept falling off. Instead, we did this:

It kind of worked, except the frosting at that point was so runny (for the dipping), it kept dripping off. I also used starburst for the beaks and feet:

 This required me to spent an hour squishing and molding. There was much debate about how best to do the feet. I think they turned out okay.

 We did finally get it all together, get the beaks on, and tried to keep the heads on. The turned out like this:

I think these duck bums are the cutest:

They are kind of deformed, but they just look so hopeful:

The unfortunate thing is that it took so much frosting to make everything stick together. It was a little too much sugar for me:

But people still ate and enjoyed them, so it was a success! 

 In Other News:
Remember how my dad requested we visit the Lego store in Chicago to buy odds and ends for his Lego projects? One of those projects is a Lego version of their house:

Isn't this ridiculous? 

My dad was planning to make it so you can take off the roof, but the design didn't work so well. So you miss that inside the house is all relatively (as close as you can get with Legos) architecturally accurate. There are even minifigs for most of the members of my family. For some reason, we're all in the den eating turkey.

Here's the back side:

Meet Me in St. Louis

For the final leg of our trip, Josh and I made the trek from Nauvoo to St. Louis (with a slight detour into Iowa due to faulty navigation on my part. Thankfully, it only meant crossing the Mississippi too soon and only burned up 10-15 minutes).

The entire trip, Josh kept trying to cheer me up by telling me how warm it was in St. Louis. "It's 73 degrees in St. Louis right now!" he said as we froze in the Chicago wind. Then we got to St. Louis, after hours of driving (by Josh), went to the temple (#43!), came out, and it had SNOWED!

It was still beautiful:

But even the springtime flowers were frozen:

And our car was covered:

We had a quasi-treacherous drive to our hotel, which was close enough to walk to the Gateway Arch (we didn't of course):

The view from our room the next day

I was feeling a little sick (and sick of the traveling pace) so we spent the evening in the hotel. Josh tried to go out and get food but most places were closed (either due to weather or poor business planning). Downtown St. Louis isn't really known for its food, so there were slim pickings (we may or may not have eaten gross wings from Hooters).

We spent the last day of our trip at the Arch. It was ridiculously busy. In fact there was a long line at one leg of the Arch (because you have to go through a metal detector). We were worried because we were going to miss the outdated documentary about how they did the construction! So I told Josh to scope out the other side in case it was a shorter line. He texted me a few minutes later and said, "Line is shorter! Get over here now!" I ran, but it was more of a shuffle because I was wearing boots and holding my phone. For whatever reason, a girl took one look at me and thought I'd be a great candidate to take her tourist picture. "No! I can't! I'm sorry!" I yelled over my shoulder as I ranshuffled to Josh. Quick tip: Buy your Arch tickets ahead of time because they sell out. When we were there, they sold out at 12:30 and began turning people away. You could still see an outdated documentary about how they built the Arch, but really, why would you visit the Arch and not go to the top?

I guess you could see the museum, but. . .

Okay, it wasn't so bad. It was clean and only mostly racist. But we were there to go to the top of the Arch!

First, you line up according to the time on your ticket. Then they give you plastic cards with numbers on them:

Then you wait around for half an hour, only to line up outside of numbered doors:

When the doors open, you see that the tram to get to the top is shaped more like individual eggs:

Then you get in and are all squished together, 5 people to a pod:

When you get to the top, it pretty much looks like this:

The rectangle behind us is a window. This is what they look like from the outside:

There isn't a ton to see, but it's pretty cool to be so high. When you get bored with looking out of the tiny windows, you line up in a tiny hallway and wait for people to come up in their egg pods. As you can imagine, things get pretty cramped:

After the Arch we went on a riverboat tour on the Tom Sawyer:

It was a little cold:

We got to see some fun things, like:

The backside of "The Captains' Return," a statue of Lewis & Clark (with their trusty dog, Seaman) near the same spot where L&C returned from their trek west. Who knew they could walk on water?
(Actually, the statue was specifically designed to handle being immersed in water when the Mississippi River floods, which happens every spring in St. Louis).

A Hobotown

An electricity plant built in 1904

And some bridges

It was a nice ending to our 2,000 mile (seriously), church history, temple-going road trip! It's also going to be the last trip we take for awhile. I don't get a break in August like I normally do because I start working at private practice doing assessments in July. In the future, some time, we will go to the Vancouver temple (maybe for a long weekend), but we have no plans for that now.

One last look at the arch

So You Think You Wear Pants*

In honor of one of my favorite shows, So You Think You Can Dance, returning on May 26, I thought I'd share some of my favorite dance pieces from the show so that you can love them too.

I think it was because I was working at an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab when I saw this piece about addiction that made it so powerful to me. (Honestly, I cry every time I watch it). It's just beautifully danced and full of commitment. It is by far my favorite dance from the show.

I am in love with this next dance, and not just because it has a psychology theme. It also stars one of my favorite dancers, Alex, who should be coming back this season following an injury. I am really annoyed, though, because all of the good clips had their embedding option disabled, so you will have to click on this link and watch it on your own.

This next dance is also incapable of being embedded (BLARH!), so you will also have to link to it here. It's fun, there is some flipping, and I sang this song on our road trip when we passed the actual Hannibal, MO.

Finally, I wanted to share Josh's favorite piece, which he has only seen online because he hates this show and complains about it when I watch it. He likes this particular dance because it's creepy and he likes to say, "Rama Lama Bang Bang."

You should watch SYTYCD with me this summer!

On a side note: I never understood the appeal of American Idol. I had never even watched it before Josh and I got married and I don't watch it now. I didn't understand why people would waste their time voting, etc. But when I began watching SYTYCD I totally got it. And I may or may not have spent two hours one night phoning in my vote for a contestant or two. Especially these guys.

* This is what Josh calls the show. It stuck. He thinks it's hilarious.