a waste of trader joe's white chocolate chips!

It turns out if you add an extra egg* to your oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, not only will they be super crispy and not good, but they will multiply and you will be left with > 30 flat crackly cookies. Mmmmmm. I would also now not recommend white chocolate chips in oatmeal cookies...

You can come and take some off our hands if you want.

*I don't really know how this happened except I got really enthusiastic about cracking eggs?

these pandas brought to you courtesy of jen

This is my first time getting a gif to show up in Blogger. Welcome to the year 2013, Katie!
I don't know how I did it, but I'm quite proud (my knowledge of html is limited to what I learned by playing Neopets as a 14 year old).

Also: PANDAS! I think I need one.

too many scan cycles

A conversation between me and Aaron, just after I'd woken up, having fallen asleep at 9 PM on the couch:

Me (very confused and somewhat angry): Ugh, my neck hurts from sleeping on it for 800 scan cycles.
Aaron: What the heck are you talking about?
Me: I don't understand why you don't understand! A scan cycle!
Aaron: Umm...?
Me: You know, like waiting for it to scan 1 nanometer at a time!
Aaron: You sound like a crazy person right now.
Me (now very angry): Whatever, I'm going to bed.

What can we learn from this?
A. I hate waking up at 11:30 at night. Or actually, I should say that I hate waking up from naps, regardless of when they occur.
B. Apparently I have been using the CD spectrometer too much, because I know that was what I was thinking about when I decided to start using scan cycles as a unit of time (much to Aaron's bewilderment).

(Does this make me a good grad student now? Maybe I can be less stressed about not being stressed enough because science has infiltrated my just-barely-consciousness!)

i am now wondering what laser tag in philly would be like

This year, we spent Christmas with my family, and then headed down to visit Aaron's family until New Year's Eve. As always, it was so wonderful to be home!

Here's a rundown of all the excitement: We saw two movies, "The Hobbit", as blogged about previously, and "Les Mis" (which I liked, but I also fell asleep during it). We shopped, ate too much chocolate, went bowling, made lasagna almost completely from scratch twice (no sheep slaughtering to make sausage), chased Brook around the house much to her delight, watched "Pitch Perfect" which was hilarious, and went to the temple for Zach. That was really neat. Aaron's sisters and I also went to the temple the day before to do some initiatory family names while my mother-in-law was working in the initiatory, and that was also really lovely. We probably don't try hard enough to find the time to go to the temple while we're on the East Coast (though with Aaron working nearly 70 hours a week in the hospital now there's not really time to be found), so it was great to go twice while in Utah. I love the peaceful feeling there. On a less serious and significant note, we played laser tag, and I won. I'm very proud of this because there were at least 6 teenage boys playing + Aaron, so you know. I am pretty hard core right now.

Some photo proof of our adventures:

Merry Christmas! Love, the Pulsiphers in 10 years

 Miracle Bowl- It's a miracle anyone bowls here.

(just kidding, we like Miracle Bowl)

Gingerbread houses and Abby's "museum of things covered in fondant"

See's = Christmas

Aaron's family is severely addicted to Diet Coke. Even Brielle loved playing with the bottle and kept getting mad at Aaron for taking it away.

The baby whisperer

Too cute. Can't say anything else. I'm out.

2012, found in a poem

"The Suitor" by Jane Kenyon

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish.
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.
For months this feeling
has been coming closer, stopping
for short visits, like a timid suitor.

2012 started out really rough. I remember sobbing in the library multiple times thinking about all the horrors of December 2011. I finally experienced the reality that terrible things happen to good people through Aaron's family and tragedies of close friends, and it shocked me how much it hurt. I think I'm still trying to reconcile myself to that truth. Slowly, though, things have gotten better. "For months this feeling has been coming closer," and 2012 ended up better than expected. Remarkably so, I'd say. We went on fun trips: DC, New York, the Grand Canyon, beach in North Carolina, my lovely Utah. We got busy with school: Aaron finished up the last of his sit-in-a-classroom-all-day-classes, and I started researching full time. We got a new niece: who is unbelievably adorable and beautiful and we love her. And we love Philly and we love each other and 2012 was all right by me.

"Suddenly I understand that I am happy."

I hope that 2013 brings us all happiness, too.

listening to my dad watch this movie was actually the best part

This was my favorite part in "The Hobbit":

Something about singing dwarfs just really speaks to my soul. Did you see it? Did you like it? I like Bilbo a lot more than I like Frodo. He's a cute hobbit. Also, isn't Galadriel great? I just love the elves. I wish they got more screen time.

Hurray for Christmas movie going!

two years ago today

We got married. And hey, guess what. We still like each other quite a lot.

Happy anniversary, Aaron dear!

all the non-sad things i haven't blogged about in the past couple weeks

Heaven help the girls who believe this. 

This is the most adorable nativity video I've ever seen. (that accent!) It held all but one of my primary kids' attention. I count that as victory.

I got my haircut a couple weeks ago (finally), and it took 2.5 hours. Haircut + blow dry + straighten. TWO AND A HALF HOURS. This is why I hate going to the salon. Also, one side of my hair was longer than the other when I got home, so after crying about the hours of my life I had just wasted, I ended up cutting it myself. I can totally keep cutting my own hair for the rest of my life without any training whatsoever, right? That's definitely a viable option?

Also, I've been moved from teaching primary to being the nursery leader at church. When we first moved into the branch, Aaron and I taught the adult class. Then I taught primary (usually 7-10 year olds). Now I'm in nursery (18 months-2 years). Hmmm. Hmm. Hm. 

Pants in church. For some reason I'm annoyed with both sides: everyone who's super gung-ho about it, and also those who are like, "This is so stupid!" I'm like, it's not about the pants, people who think it's so stupid! But I'm also like, I don't want the priesthood, I've never actually felt demeaned as a woman in church, and I like wearing dresses. So, there you go. 

I have nothing intelligent to say on the topic apparently.

My last paragraph for your reading pleasure is about reading! I've been going crazy with Penn's interlibrary loan-esque services these days and currently have 7 books checked out from the library, mostly in preparation for our flights to/from Utah for Christmas. Well, actually, three are cookbooks: Barefoot Contessa at Home, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, and The Science of Good Cooking. They're all excellent, but I'm especially in love with The Science of Good Cooking. I kind of want my own copy. It's from the Cook's Illustrated people, and they present 50 different cooking techniques along with recipes that use each technique. The idea is that mastering these techniques will allow you to cook almost anything really well. With each technique they explain why doing it a certain way leads to superior results, and they describe the specific proteins that are involved, and I LOVE IT. I love it so much. It's made me sort of wish I did nothing but investigate the chemistry of food all day. 

Other books on the menu: The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver (of magical predicting fame), Messenger by Lois Lowry, A Guide to Scientific Writing, and a collection of Robert Frost poems. Probably not going to take the writing guide or Robert Frost with me on the plane, but good reading nevertheless! As always, I'm open to book suggestions. (Messenger is less than 200 pages long, so...)

Adorable New Zealand children, haircuts, teaching progressively simpler lessons in church, Mormon feminists, books. I think that about covers it all. Thoughts?