Christmas Time

:)

A good time in Utah.

It's so nice to be back in Utah. I wish we could stay longer.

Santa's Coming to Town

Yes, yes. We all know it by now. I'm officially a terrible blogger and if not for my fabulous husband Josh you all would never have a single blog update. Well, I am here to change that! I mostly just wanted to share that through all the craziness of med school, being YM's president, and spending time with me, Josh still manages to make people happy by taking on yet another responsibility the branch has thrown at him. This time is just happened to be Santa's helper.

Beware: this may not be young eyes, as they could become horribly confused and potentially have Christmas ruined for them.

He was AWESOME and spent at least 2 minutes with every little one in the branch to make them feel like Santa was really listening to what they said. They all loved him and one really little girl even cried when he went to leave and she didn't get to give him a goodbye hug. :) What can I say? He is pretty great.

Sorry it's not a long post, but it's 10pm and that's what time we go to bed now. Can't wait 'til next weekend. We're coming Utah!!!

My awesome wife is so crafty.

I'm home alone during my day off. Why? Because my wonderful wife is working hard organizing and orchestrating a Christmas treat fundraiser for the Young Women in our branch so that they can raise enough money for girl's camp. Below is a photo of some of the delicious treats they are preparing. Aren't you all jealous you're not in Richmond to help support them?

Their focus was to try and make things that would be easy for the girls to do, but not easy for them to screw up. Hopefully they have succeeded!

Last year when I was in charge of finding a way to help the Young Men earn money for camp, I thought of (what I thought was) a great idea. We would teach the YM how to change the oil on a car, and then we could have a Saturday where we change oil for members of the branch for our fundraiser. In theory this was a great idea. (our profit per oil change was almost $25 after costs. Each boy only needed to find 3-4 people who would let them change their oil) In practice, it was terrible. Not many people signed up. Some signed up and didn't come. It was DIFFICULT! So, I learned a lesson. When people are offered the option to help donate to a good cause, they don't want something practical. They don't want a useful service. They don't want to get something that they actually might be spending money on anyways. They want caramel apples or Christmas candy, and they are willing to pay ridiculous prices for it. They want frivolous items with little value. It must make them feel like they gave more. Lesson learned.

This is the entryway that I came home to last night. Looks pretty good huh? My wife is so festive. I have not been involved in Christmas yet...well...I take that back. I was "volunteered" to be a part of Christmas at our branch Christmas party last night. My wife has decorated our house all awesome. The christmas balls spell "Merry Christmas." At least I helped make the blue snowflake ones.

Last Sunday, our downstairs neighbors, Jian and Andrea Pierotti, decided to bake pizzas and bread for dinner in a ceramic kiln that Jian made. It was pretty much the best pizza I've ever eaten in my life, seriously. I am no photographer, so I apologize for the photo quality, but I had to document the coolness that is baking your own pizzas in your backyard homemade wood-burning kiln.

Sydney and Fiz had fun.

And then we come to the obligate Fizgig pictures. Yes....we have 1 million of them.

Also of note, my wife's newest obsession....Owls.

Today I'm down one moped. I sold the orange checkered one that was previously featured on this blog. It was just taking too much time to finish, and when my surgery rotation started, my free time greatly diminished. Oh well. I still have 2 more mopeds and a motorcycle project to finish. :( I told the guy who came and bought the moped that I'm "addicted to projects." It's a disease. The first step is acknowledging it.

I have 1 more week of plastic surgery, and then it's home for 2 weeks for Christmas break. I'm so excited to come back to Utah. It's been 1 whole year. Amazing to think that I've only been back to Utah 2 times in the past 2 years. We're hoping to spend some more time there next year.

What a world....

This will be my first attempt at updating on my phone. We'll see how this goes. I'm actually in the OR as I type (well, outside the room waiting for the cleaning people to prep the room for the next case). For those of you who don't talk to Sydney and I, pediatrics is finished and I'm now on surgery. I did 2 weeks of orthopedic surgery, which was awesome, and now I'm on for 2 weeks of plastic surgery. I have some incredible stories so far for any interested in hearing them.

A few weeks ago, Syd and I went to Med Ball which is basically a dance in medical school. It was actually a lot of fun.

Also, Sydney and I were victorious in our bowling league and tool home 1st place and the $50 cash prize! Yehaw! It helped a lot that I bowled my brains out the last week. We could not be stopped.

The couple that we were playing against were new to the league. The guy was a little concerned that we were destroying them. :)

Also, we're really excited to be coming home for Christmas. We are hitching a ride in a friend's moving truck to save some money and are leaving on the 16th. We're really excited to see family, since I only get to about once a year. My little brother Adam is getting back from his mission to Finland. It will be awesome to see him as spend 2 solid weeks not doing anything school related. (ok, maybe I'll read some on our 36 hour drive and on the flight home, but that's it!)

And then, obligatory cute dog pictures. An integral part of every post.

Frustration....

So, I'm doing my Community Outpatient Pediatric Rotation right now, and I've been working in an office that is in a sketchier part of town with an interesting patient population. Without going into too much detail, I think most reading this will know what I'm talking about. Most patients are black. Most are insured by Medicaid. Most are single mothers with no father figures for their children. (As a disclaimer, when we moved to Richmond, and my wife starting to look for a job, she qualified for food stamps. We used the money then and it was great. I am not against food stamps.)

Well...I was there waiting for patients to show up. I had arrived about 30 minutes earlier, and we still hadn't had a single patient come in. I checked the schedule and saw that by then, we should have had 12 patients come in. I was talking with the nurses about it, and one of them smacked her leg and said, "Oh! I know why no one is coming in today. It's the 1st of the month." I looked at her and at the other nurses, not understanding exactly how this explained things. She said, "They're all out shopping at the grocery store, because their food stamp cards got their money." Really? Yeah...really. We had about 3 out of 25 scheduled patients for the morning show up that day.

So, quick rant, and some quick facts. "The number of food stamp recipients has climbed by about 10 million over the past two years, resulting in a program that now feeds 1 in 8 Americans and nearly 1 in 4 children." Is everyone seeing this? (I used the program HERE to get this info) I can hardly believe that there are this many people in America who don't make enough money to pay for their own food. Seriously? This must be how everyone is able to afford their expensive cell phones and service plans. Oh, but you can get that free from the government too...right?

This leads to my next experience. The next day at the Doctor's office, I was again waiting for patients to arrive. One of the office ladies came in to where the nurses work, and she was holding a large receipt in her hands. She held it up from the top and revealed a receipt that was well over 10 feet long. She bragged that she had gone shopping yesterday and bought a lot of food. She then explained how she has a neighbor who receives so much food stamp money, that she has thousands built up on her card. This neighbor then "sells" the extra money to people at half price. The lady working in our office had purchased $600 of food stamps for $300.

I seriously was having the hardest time sitting there and not saying anything. But what could I have said that would change anything? "That's illegal, you know." Of course they know it's illegal. "You know that you're pretty much stealing that money from yourself as a taxpayer." Oh wait, she mentioned how she only gets $500 on her food stamp card herself, before she bought the $600 from her neighbor.....meaning she probably doesn't pay any taxes either.

So, I sat their and cried inside about how CRAPPY this nation is becoming. This isn't the first time I've heard about stuff like this. (Heck! There's a homeless guy who lives with our friends next door (I guess he's not homeless anymore since they offered to give him a free place to stay) and he makes extra money on top of his disability and food stamps by "arranging" these food stamp swaps and charging a fee.

So, what I'm really ranting and complaining about is the amount that this type of discussion makes me want to vomit all over my computer. How all my young men know how much money you get in food stamps for each kid that you have. How a guy wins $2 million in a lottery, and still is collecting food stamps 11 months later. How we are moving to a country where EVERYONE feels like they DESERVE EVERYTHING. It is a sad state of affairs.

I'm going to spend this next week seeing if there is any data to support the idea that Food Stamps helps anyone to learn to be self-sufficient. I hope I find something. Poor America. Why do we allow this abuse of the system. Why did I just stand by?

Yip Yip....Uh huh!

We've been wanting to do these costumes for awhile now. Finally did it! This was at our branch Trunk or Treat yesterday. I can hardly believe we didn't even win an award for our costumes of amazingness.

Rare photo opportunity.

If you're confused about who we are....please CLICK HERE. If you know who we are...you're awesome....like us.

The music choice is thanks to my good friend Troels Jørgensen. Tack o hej!

Old Rag, part 2

This past weekend we celebrated the end of my inpatient portion of my pediatrics rotation by hiking Old Rag again. Well....kind of. It turned out that at least 1 million other people thought they would do the same thing. Ever waited in line when hiking? That when we decided to turn back. Overall, it was still a pretty awesome day. Sure beats the heck out of working. And we made it about 3/4 of the way up.

The head of the trail.

Sydney snapped this photo when I least suspected it. :) I promise I'm just climbing over.

Just Spencer hanging out on a mountain...

Yep

"My name is Spencer and I disapprove of this line."

There's no telling what dangers lie ahead.

The line that broke the camel's back. We turned back at this point.

All in all, Sydney had a great time!

It was a lot of fun and we really like this hike. Too bad there were so many people there. We finished the evening off with a double feature at The Byrd of Captain America and Cowboys and Aliens. I was just happy not to work. The movies were okay. Sydney and I realized that it was the first time we had been to a movie theater since we were home for Christmas last year, and my parents took us to a movie. :)

Otherwise, things have been the usual. We're tired of figuring out how to travel home to Utah for Christmas without selling body parts. If anyone has an old teleporter...we could definitely use it.

I be QWOPING!

Working nights at the hospital and not having many patients leads to boredom.


I dare you to beat my 11 meter record!

HERE!

We Update Infrequently

I figured I could at least throw some pictures up on the old blog. Here ya go!

Watching General Conference. Scott's face says a lot about why I wasn't here during this. (I was actually next door at our neighbors with the YM----which turned out to be 1, but much quieter.) I literally don't know how Sydney has kept her sanity around these ladies.

Obligatory cute Fizgig photo.

Isn't my Sydney awesome? This is delicious banana pudding thing that my mom taught us how to make last summer. Delicious...but for the YW. Sydney...why U no make for me?

Aside from the usually youth madness, and school madness, and dog walking madness, things have been going well. I'm on Pediatrics right now for 8 weeks. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I'm endlessly frustrated with parents and their inability to care, but so happy to see the ones that do. I just finished my 2 weeks of inpatient teams, and next week will be Emergency and the last week of inpatient I'm on night float (7pm-7am). I'm glad to be on ED now, since I've been having to get at the hospital around 6am (meaning getting up when the clock still says 5:something, which I'm really not a fan of).

In other news....Sydney and I have been rocking the bowling league. I bowled my brains out a few weeks ago, and bowled a 266 to beat a guy who bowled a 244. I've also made it to the "top 10 bowlers in the center whiteboard list." It feels pretty good to have accomplished so much in my short life.

The proof.

It's an elite group. :)

That's all for now. Next post will be about my motorcycle restoration project that I do when Syd is walking dogs, and I'm sick of reading or hospitaling. Hejdå!