Thankful

To be back together again. To be sorting out the housing situation (more below). Perhaps most of all...that we don't make a bad vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner!

To start off, I spent the first half of Thanksgiving like I've spend 90% of all holidays in the past eight years--in scrubs. Changing my career focus back to nursing--nurse-midwifery, no less--probably means that that isn't going to change much anytime soon.

However, we had a sumptuous, Matt-and-Katie-style dinner when I got home. (Not that that's any different from usual.) We had mushroom bread pudding, mashed potatoes (with the skins on, and plenty of sour cream and garlic), and pumpkin pie, along with steamed vegetables. It was absolutely amazing! It made us realize how much we had to be thankful for, realizing that there were so many people out there who were just eating plain turkey. ;)

To rewind a little, Matt got home safely Tuesday night about 11. I met him at the airport and we had a big juicy happy reunion, followed by late-night heaping helpings of Mexican casserole, which I'd made earlier in the day. He opened his birthday presents and I delightedly opened the pillow chocolates he'd brought home for me from his hotel. For his birthday, I'd made this cake, which I was actually honestly a little disappointed with. It seemed to be lacking both in the flavor and the moisture departments, which are two essential departments to me when we're talking about cake. These brownies were so good that I wondered how this site could go wrong, but, well, it did. The only tweak I made was to use espresso instead of the water, and I can't imagine that had a negative bearing. (It also didn't seem to bear heavily on the flavor, to my disappointment.) The frosting (cocoa version) was another story--tangy, creamy, chocolatey goodness--but I'm not sure even it was able to save the cake. Matt claims he didn't find anything wrong with it, but, well, he kind of has to claim that, right?

Wednesday, we spent the day basking in each other's company, marveling at the fall colors, falling in love with Reston and the largest Indian food buffet in Northern Virginia...and...drum roll...picking out an apartment. About 2 miles from the hospital where I'd hopefully be working, and about a mile and a half from Matt's work. It's a spacious 1 bedroom that has a lot of the features that matter to us-- a gas stove, tons of counter and cupboard space, and very pretty views of the woods outside. We're getting almost twice the square footage for our money, and peace of mind to boot, which is worth a lot. As I got ready for work yesterday, I felt the old Midwesterner's cold-weather urge to go out and start the car while I got ready for work, and then I had a good hard laugh about how quickly someone would steal the car as soon as I turned my back. But...in Reston...it'll hopefully be a different story.

The other huge development of Wednesday was that we went to speak with the admissions department at the Georgetown School of Nursing about their midwifery program. It sounds better and better all the time. I feel like I really hit it off with the person there, and she made it sound like I might be able to slide into a class for spring semester if I were so inclined, even though the application deadline has passed. Since the job situation is up in the air, I'm going to go ahead and try to push it through. If the job in Reston doesn't work it, it might be worthwhile to try to get a couple of classes done with. If it does, my inclination is to save on transportation and essentially just hole up in Reston for 8 months, then start full steam ahead in the fall. (If I get in.) We'll see what happens.

But now, to the mad scramble that is law school finals, we've added packing and moving, applying to grad school, possibly starting grad school, and (hopefully!) changing jobs. Well, we certainly like a challenge around here.

*Special happy birthday shout-out to my mom!