The Deranged Chicken Dance

At BYU, I took about ten fun classes, including dance, sports, and art.

One of these was Jazz Dance.

This class intimidated the heck out of me. It was in a dance studio with a wood floor and impressive sound system. One wall was covered entirely in mirrors.

On top of that, the teacher was a member of the university dance team, called the Cougarettes.

Want to see why that was super cool and super terrifying? Check this out.

And here’s one of my favorite Cougarette hip hop routines.

It turned out to be a really fun class, though. The teacher took things slowly and I enjoyed the new challenges.  

First we learned hip hop, then jazz, and then ended the semester with lyrical.

Everyone knows what hip hop is. You move with quick jerks and act way more confident than you actually are.

Lyrical is smooth, pretty movements that match soul-searching music. It’s like ballet, if ballet were to nix the hair bun and loosen up a little.

Then there’s jazz dance. From what I’ve seen, anything that doesn’t count as hip hop or lyrical you just throw in the jazz category.

Basically, anything goes.

The instructor taught us each routine in small increments. After a few weeks, we would know the entire dance which was usually about three minutes (but that’s kind of long if you’ve never officially danced before).

On test day, two students took the floor at a time and performed the dance for everyone else while the instructor determined a grade.

In the weeks leading up to each test, I would plop down after class and pull out my notebook to scribble down the routine, using arrows and notes to record the right steps.

Then in the evening, I went to the basement of our dorm and practiced. I acted all nonchalant if anyone trudged through to do laundry, then started dancing again once they left.  

Let’s fast forward to the jazz routine.

The teacher told us to do whatever we wanted for the first eight beats, then each student would begin the outlined choreography.

While practicing, I never once thought about those first eight beats. I just figured, "Hey, I’ll do something. No big deal."

It was like any other professor telling you that there would be a freebie question at the beginning of the test, you know:

“Because I like you, I’m giving you this one for free. The answer is C.

A. Not this one.
B. Not this one.
C. Bingo!
D. You went too far.

Test day came.

All the students lined up against the mirrors. Everyone acted nervous, but I was actually excited. I’d practiced, I knew the steps, and the test would be a breeze.

The first two students stood and performed. I noticed that they each had an actual dance figured out for those eight miscellaneous beats.  

I still didn’t worry about it, but then it was my turn.

I bounced up and took the right half of the room, while the other student testing stepped into the left half.

I looked at the faces of my classmates.

I saw myself in the mirror.

I heard the instructor ask, “Ready?”

And then I realized,

I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO FOR THE FIRST EIGHT BEATS!!!

She started the music and it was too late to plan.

So I did the first thing that came into my head.

I blew up my cheeks with air.

I widened my eyes.

And I ran around my half of the room, flapping my arms like a deranged chicken.

(Yeah. I really did.)

As I flapped, I noticed two things.

The other student had come up with some cute little robot dance.

And absolutely everyone else was laughing until they cried, watching me.

The eight beats ended as I ran back to the center of the room and began the outlined steps, right on cue.

Afterwards, people congratulated me on such an original and funny start to my dance, and I just smiled.

It was jazz dance, so you know, anything goes.

-Jenna

Gluten Free Unicorn Cake

Gluten free Unicorn Cake!

This one is for Mary, a sweet and kind sister in our branch who has been a good friend to me and to our family. She's gluten-free, which made this into a fun challenge! 

(For example, I now had to consider whether a gluten-free cake  would hold together in a spherical pan (it did), and if it would still taste like cake after twelve hours. This was a lot of fun to experiment with).

I tried a couple different gluten-free cake mixes and was actually really impressed with the quality. 

The one we used was a King Arthur-brand chocolate cake mix, and it was REALLY GOOD. I found myself snacking on the extra cake bits without even adding frosting-- it was that tasty. 

Gluten-free friends, do not go out and buy a fancy, super-expensive gluten-free birthday cake! Just go to Target and buy this cake mix instead. It's utterly fantastic.  

(We also tried a Pillsbury Funfetti mix which was quite good, but the King Arthur cake was definitely my favorite.) 

Here's more pictures and a video of the final product!

Happy Birthday, Mary!

-Jenna

The Medical School Journey: Part 1

At church one Sunday, I passed my husband in the hallway as he chatted with another member, a middle-aged man named Felix (name and other details changed).

“I just have these awful headaches,” Felix said, grimacing. “Sometimes they’re so bad, I can’t get out of bed.”

Ten minutes later, I came back to find Joe sitting by himself on the foyer couch and reading something on his phone. He looked up at at me and explained, “I think Felix is experiencing tension headaches from some sort of stress.”

After church ended, Joe took this brother aside and had a heart-to-heart where Felix admitted that he was overdue on many bills and out of food. Joe was right-- these headaches were from some pretty serious stresses. With Felix’s permission, the leaders of our local congregation were able to give short-term relief and long-term guidance and care.

I was overwhelmed. This was the first time that I had seen my husband correctly diagnose and fix a problem. After years of studying, years of tests, and years of sacrifice, it first became real that my husband would be a doctor someday and would have the incredible ability to diagnose, help, and heal.

For our entire family, it is a dream come true.  

--

It’s been a long road.

Joe first applied to medical school in 2012 when we were newlyweds. He spent an entire summer crafting his application and submitting it through AMCAS, the website that deals with all medical school applications.

Well, we were denied. There was one interview but Joe wasn’t sold on their program. They also didn’t offer us a spot.

“What should we do?” we asked each other. After an entire year of effort, we were back to square one.

“Is it worth it to try again?” I asked him.

It was. Becoming a physician was Joe’s dream, but his efforts thus far simply hadn’t been enough.

We decided to take off an entire year to improve Joe’s resume and credentials, then we would reapply.

For a year, I worked for little more than minimum wage as an underling at a law office while Joe studied to retake the MCAT, volunteered as a Spanish-speaking translator at the free health clinic, and trained as an EMT. He also shadowed at many clinics and volunteered at the hospital.

He walked to all of these appointments since we only had the one car and I needed it to get to work.

I became pregnant with our first little girl about this time, and now it was both of us sacrificing for our little family.

After a solid six months of studying, Joe retook the MCAT. His score went from ‘Meh’ average to ‘Holy Cow’ above average.

He also got a job working as a gastroenterology tech in the local hospital because we now understood that job experience trumped shadowing in a medical school application.

(When they welcomed him to the job, by the way, they jokingly gave him a toilet-shaped candy. Joe and I were pretty amused. We may still have it somewhere).

By now, it was summer and time again to put together the AMCAS application. This time, there was a lot more meat to put in there and we were hopeful.

Medical schools do rolling admissions, meaning that they evaluate applications as they come in. It’s to an applicant's extreme advantage to get everything submitted as soon as possible.

Many schools will look over the initial application and then send out secondaries to promising students. These secondaries are a second set of essays specific to the school. Secondaries also need to be sent back as soon as possible and often are capped by a hard deadline.

Some of the essays overlapped between schools, but all of them needed to be carefully crafted. It took many, many hours of work and grit to get through each layer of essays.

(In fact, our daughter Chantelle was born on the day that applications were due for OHSU in Portland, Oregon. I had my daughter, was taken to the Mother-Baby wing, and then Joe and I each pulled out our computers to take a final look at his essays).

By now, we had submitted the primary application, then received and submitted the secondaries. The next step was medical school interviews.

The first time we applied, we received one interview. After a year of hard study and work, Joe’s application earned 12 interviews all over the country.

He would take the train to the airport and fly off to the new city. Car rental, hotel, and a little city exploration followed. Usually, he would also drive the route between the hotel and the school to be absolutely sure that the next morning would go smoothly. Neither of us owned smart phones, so the ability to navigate without getting lost was essential.

The school would ask the applicants to meet on the morning of the interview, usually at 8:00AM (and you DO NOT want to be late!!). It was typical for the school to provide a continental breakfast or an informal lunch.

The format then differs. At Pittsburgh there is an initial orientation, after which the interviewees are taken on a long tour with one of the current students. They go through the school (including the cadaver lab), the city, the simulation facility, and the main hospital.

Usually, there will be two long interviews, maybe around forty-five minutes per interview. Sometimes one interview is led by a current student, and sometimes both interviews are faculty members. These interviews can be grueling, depending on how intense the interviewer chooses to be.

I’m pretty sure that the applicants sign a form promising confidentiality, because Joe has never given details when telling me about his interviews.

He has said that it’s important to know your own application and essays well. It’s also important to have a good understanding of the school and to take each interview very seriously.

After the interviews are over, the applicants go home and prepare for the next interview, all the while waiting with fingernails in teeth to hear back.

The competition is fierce. Even with Joe’s improved and impressive application, we were mostly waitlisted. We did receive upfront acceptances from a few schools, but none of them were quite where Joe wanted to go.

It makes sense that there are so many waitlists involved with medical school. The more impressive candidates may receive multiple acceptances, but they ultimately will only take one. As they choose their final school and reject the others, those other schools will open up those slots to other applicants, and the trickle-down effect continues.

This is precisely what happened to us. Joe was removed from the waitlist and offered a concrete acceptance from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and we were ecstatic. There was still a possibility of an acceptance from Duke or Vanderbilt up until the end, but we were delighted with the chance to come to Pittsburgh. The interview here had gone well and Joe just fell in love with the city.

Pittsburgh it was.

So, in the summer of 2015, we packed all of our belongings into six feet of space in a semi truck and our family of three started a cross-country trip, from Utah to Pennsylvania.

(It was amazing, by the way. Every American ought to do a cross-country drive at least once in their lifetimes.)

So began the journey for my husband to become a doctor, the dream he had been chasing for over ten years.

--Jenna

Jesus Christ's Restored Church

Recently our church emphasized a name shift. There was, of course, a mixed reaction from the public as some quickly complied and others paused, unsure of how to keep their funny blog names or websites current if they weren’t supposed to use the word ‘Mormon.’

I am nothing short of delighted with the new name emphasis. Let me explain why.

Example #1: The Old Way

“Hi! Would you like to come to church with me? It’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some people know us as the Mormon church.”

Instantly, this introduction of my church derails away from the source of our happiness and authority, Jesus Christ, and focuses instead on the name Mormon.

The Book of Mormon is special because it teaches the clear and beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ. It was written by an inspired prophet of God who wanted to bring readers to their Savior. In my current read-through of the Book of Mormon, I’m marking in blue every reference to Jesus Christ. So far I have blue in almost every verse.

The Book of Mormon is an incredible book, but we don’t worship it. The author-historian Mormon was a great prophet and leader, but we aren’t his disciples.

Referring to ourselves as Mormons isn’t accurate, is it? It emphasizes the wrong part of our religion. We are not Mormon’s people-- we are the church of Jesus Christ. We worship our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as well as God the Eternal Father. We don’t worship Mormon and though we love and honor the Book of Mormon, we sure don’t worship it. Why do we let that name be part of our identity?

We worship Jesus Christ.

Let’s try our example again:

Example #2: The New Way

“Hi! Would you like to come to church with me? I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is Jesus Christ’s restored church on Earth again.”

This name emphasis is powerful and empowering. It explains who we are, what we offer, and where this great power comes from, in just a few words. There is no misunderstanding or miscommunication, because these words point us back to Jesus Christ instead of getting lost in nicknames.

We live in a broken world. For every damaged home, every shattered life, and every guilty or shameful heart, Jesus Christ offers hope and healing. For every possible problem, true peace is only found in Christ. 

We are Jesus Christ’s restored church and the name shift away from Mormon and to Jesus Christ feels so right and so good.


--Jenna

Pug Birthday Cake!

My girls loved watching the puppy cake come together. 

I'm still working on my fondant skills, but now I can easily make my own fondant out of melted marshmallows (MUCH more economical than buying premade). With every cake I'm also getting a little better. 

Happy 10th Birthday, John!!

Dinosaur Bones Cake

One of my Beehives at church turned 13 this week! Emma is very outdoorsy and adventurous-- thus, a paleontologist cake.

These girls in Young Women's are incredible, I love getting to work with them. I can't wait to see where they go and what they do in life.

Happy birthday, Emma!

Penguin Cake!

We just got a new addition to Young Women's!! We're excited to have Madi officially with us, she's a sweet girl with a hilarious sense of humor. We're all going to have a lot of fun together :)

Here's her belated birthday cake-- a cute little penguin on an ice floe.

Here's a video showing you the cake all the way around:

...and a work-in-progress picture:

Happy birthday, Madi! :)

Chantelle's Little Mermaid Cake

Chantelle and I decided on an Ariel cake for her birthday, mostly because she has a new Ariel doll that she adores, and partly because I wanted to try a new technique involving homemade candy and ice cubes. 

It turned out to be an incredible cake. Really, you should have seen it in person, because you just can't capture the depth of the coral from pictures. 

But here's the next best thing to an in-person look-- a video of the cake all the way around. 

In case you're wondering, the fondant turtle was by far the favorite cake accessory this time around.

I know there are a lot of pictures of this one, but I just can't help it; this cake turned out so beautifully. I hope I can make this style of cake again sometime!