birthday excitement!

See how good I'm getting at updating this somewhat regularly? Y'all should be proud!

In news this week, I am constantly reminded how much I don't miss the cold, snowy weather in Illinois. It hasn't been super warm (only mid-60s) and we've had some cloudy days. But even then, Arizona can be quite beautiful. The other day, we had a brief, unexpected rain shower right at sunset. The sky turned this amazing yellow color and produced this huge double rainbow right outside my apartment. Here are a few pictures I took right off my balcony.

It's also been a busy week in school too. I spent most of this week preparing for the presentation and practical that I had yesterday. Grades have not come in yet, but I am feeling pretty good about both of them. My group decided to wear our white coats over our scrubs for the presentation (since we needed to wear our scrubs for the lab practical later in the afternoon), so I debuted my new and improved white coat that has my name now embroidered on it. (A student group on campus recently did it as a fundraiser.) My mom really liked this picture, so I suppose I'll share it here.

Our practical involved doing a wax-up of tooth #20. I spent 2 nights in the lab practicing and got some good help from one of the professors. I was so proud of it, I took some pictures. I think it looks pretty darn good. Hopefully the one I made for the practical looked this good!

And finally, for my birthday yesterday, a bunch of friends and I went out for dinner. I really enjoyed myself and was really happy that 23 people showed up to celebrate with me! Here are a few pictures that we took. It was good times! Now it is back to the real world and playing catch up studying for the test on Tuesday. I sure can't wait for spring break.