..Pancake Breakfast Anyone?..

Welcome to sunday morning at the Hendricks home. We like to make pancakes for breakfast any sunday that we can. This week was no exception.
Max is very helpful. He's a quick and thorough mixer, and some of the stuff actually stays in the bowl these days.
He was really happy he got to help--last week the first thing he did was grab a huge handful of flour and stuff and chuck it on the floor. He was quickly banned from helping. He was very careful this week. Well, careful is relative......
I don't have any pictures of the finished product--just the process. So you'll have to just imagine how delicious they looked. And they were delicious.

Instead I'll leave you with a couple of pair of buns.
Cute huh?

New York Interviews

As many of you already know, I went to New York this past week for a couple program interviews. I started in Buffalo, at Buffalo Women and Children's hospital. I liked the program pretty well and they "wine and dined" us to the extreme. We went out to an expensive restaurant and had an all you can eat and drink party. It was fun, but uncomfortable because you have to talk to each resident and try to convince them that you're cool enough to be picked for the program. Meanwhile, there were ten other people trying to do the same thing.
The next day, I had my personal interviews, a tour and we went out for another wine and dine session. The program sees a lot of patients and is very busy. It was cool to go there.

Crazy enough I ended up staying 1 night with one of Ginna's high school friends Kirk Chambers. He and his family live there because he is playing football for the bills. It was really cool of them to let me stay, especially since I didn't even know them. Just a month ago or so, I went to L.A. and I couldn't get a friend or relative to let me stay despite calling just about everyone we knew. Instead I spent a small fortune on a hotel, where I stayed alone for a week. The Chambers were really nice to me and it made me feel more comfortable in Buffalo. Plus everyone at the program thought I was cool since I was staying with one of the Bills.

I was able to take a little trip to Niagra Falls, albeit at night. I took a picture, got a little wet and cold and went back to the car.

After Buffalo, I flew to NYC for an interview in Brooklyn. It was a big interview because it was for 3 programs, Brooklyn, Rhode Island and Alaska. It turned out that one of the girls who had interviewed in Buffalo with me was interviewing at NYU and we were on the same flight. We ended up sharing a cab into the city and she showed me a few places since I couldn't check into my hotel until later.

NYC was a lot busier than I ever imagined. I knew it was fast and furious, but really, I was amazed. I stayed in Brooklyn on a military base that had a deal with the hospital. I took the subway and did a lot of walking while I was there. I really like that and wish I could take the subway every day.
I spent my first full day at the hospital observing in their clinic. It was tiring, but really fun. The program was so different from the other programs I have been in. Day two was my interview day, which was also long. I spent about 6 hours at the hospital trying to do everything I could to get myself a position at one of the programs.
But, the most important thing I did was go to a concert to celebrate after a hard day of interviewing. I saw the Mingus Big Band play at the Iridium Jazz club. When I was in college, I loved this band. I listened to the albums hundreds of times. I got a seat in the first row with a student discount. The show was amazing. I never imagined that I would get to see this band play live so closely.

I spent the last day of my trip walking around Brooklyn and Manhattan replaying my interview in my head a million times. NYC is really dirty and busy and rude. I was a little scared that we might end up there, but if it happens I'm sure we'll do great. My goal was to get us into a program and that may have worked out.
I bought some souvenirs and did some other shopping. Below, I put up a picture of ground zero. I stretched my hand through a tear in the covered fence to get the picture. It was intense to see the actual WTC site.
I finished the trip with a social gathering at a bar in Brooklyn where a bunch of goons--applicants competing for my spot--kept interrupting my conversations, pushing me and everyone else away from the program's residents so they could monopolize the face-time. I made it back to the base around midnight, showered and set my alarm for 3:30am. The cab came at 4am and I was back in KC by 10:15, in time to walk home from school with Max.

It was a really great trip and I liked all the programs a lot. I really hope something can work out for me at one of the Lutheran sites, but we won't start counting chickens until January 28th. (that's the official results day)

-} Oh the Things Kids Say {-

If you take a moment to watch this Sesame Street segment with Elmo and Whoopie, you might start to understand why Max decided to point at the African-American man sitting in our pew at church on sunday, and rather loudly say "Hey, he's black! Black is beautiful!!"
This was only shortly after he asked me whether that same man was Jesus.
I'm not sure whether any of that was overheard or not......

--Huh huh and a Walk Home From School--

Max learned about huh (the letter H) last week. Or wait, I guess it was the week before last. His teacher somehow made a deal with the calendar and got Halloween scheduled during Huh week. They had a great time on Halloween and carved pumpkins and made finger puppet ghosts and even got sent home with a couple of treats.
Besides that during huh week they got to talk about hamsters, hippos and horses. One of the teachers brought in her pet hamster for the kids to observe. That was really exciting for the kids, probably not so much for the hamster.
They ate hummus (really??) honeydew melon and havarta (sp?) cheese. I've never heard of havarta cheese, and in fact it could be something entirely different, like humbolt cheese or something. All I know is that it started with H!
And would you join us for a walk home from school?
Here's Max at the end of our street, ready to sprint. He's been into running or skipping or galloping home lately. This is a run.
There's a house halfway down the street where the yard is lined with big rocks. Max has to walk along the rocks every time we go to or from school. I usually hold his hand so there are no crashes.
After the rocks we visit the dog that lives two houses down from us. Her name is Galaxy and she's very very cute. I scratch her ears and she gives Max a kiss on the hand.
Then we head home. The biggest challenge for me is keeping Max on the sidewalk and off of people's lawns and front porches. He's making good progress though and we usually really enjoy our strolls to and from school.
We made it!! Here's Max on our front porch steps holding a "glass art" project from Guh week.
Thanks for walking home with us!

~~Hair Can Be Scary Sometimes~~

I was getting a little tired of my hair. It was pretty long (by my hair's standards) and I was just getting the itch to do something with it. I just didn't know if I felt good about cutting it shortish, after growing it out for so long. I like my hair to be long. But anyway, I was really feeling the itch. So, I came up with a compromise. Bangs. Yikes, right? But I've seen a good amount of bangs around lately, especially once I started paying attention to see if there was a look that I liked. You can do a lot of different stuff with bangs, if you know how.
So I just went for it. It made me a little nervous, but I went for it anyway.
I think most of youguys know what my hair looked like before, but I know I don't put a ton of pictures of myself up here, so just in case you're unsure, here are a few before pictures:

























































Some of these pictures show my hair better than others of course. Since I'm the family photographer, pictures of my are a little tough to find (which is pretty ok with me usually).
So anyway, I figured hair grows back and I went for it.
It was a little scary to see my hairdresser girl chop off the front of my hair. I mean I'm pretty brave, but I haven't had real bangs since I was about 12. I was scared that once it was all done I'd look 12!
So anyway, she finished up, and I thought it looked ok, but weird and different for sure.
Kris came home from school that day and gave me the weirdest look! I don't think he liked it at all. He says he likes it now, but....
So here are some after pictures. I'd love some opinions from youguys. After having the bangs for about a week and doing them several different ways, I think I like them. Not necessarily so much that I'd keep them for the rest of my life, but I don't hate the way I look. Which I guess was a risk, so I'm lucky! But hair grows back even though it might take a long time.






























Sorry, I know that was a lot of pictures, but I want fair educated opinions.
But really, where's Nick Arrojo when I need him? Probably in New York hanging out with Kris!

::TV and Other Random Thoughts::

How cool is it that I'm watching a BYU game right now? Let me tell you, it's cool. It's cool because the BYU game was last night, when we were too busy to watch. All I had to do was pick up my remote and hit a few buttons and then I didn't have to worry about it again.
I guess the DVR/Tivo thing isn't all that new, we've had it for a while, but it is just really cool.
We end up watching a good amount of TV at our house at night because of Max--I'm sure those of you out there with little kids understand. Bedtime is bedtime. It's rather sacred, and once the kid's in bed it's not like you can head out to have fun. So we like to watch TV because it's something we can do together, instead of like reading or something (which we do also of course) that's a more singular experience. Because of the DVR we probably watch more TV than we would otherwise, but I like to think it's more quality TV, because we can actually watch the shows we want. We have a whole bunch of shows from the Discovery Health channel recorded, just waiting for when we're collapsed on the couch, ready to stone out. I just hate channel surfing. There are just too many lame, bad or nasty things on. It's also really nice to have about 40 different episodes of Sesame Street recorded for Max. If I need something to entertain him for a while I know we've got something fun educational ready to go.
So anyway, I love being able to watch the shows I like without having to plan my life around it. It's definitely a small thing in the scope of real life, but for me, with how busy our lives have been it is really nice.

How about dishwashers and clothes washers and driers? I was just thinking this morning as I brought a load of laundry up from the basement. If we didn't have washers and driers, it would take so much stinking time to do laundry. It would be ridiculous! I feel like I can barely find time to run downstairs and switch a load. We are lucky to have technologies that helps us to have time to concentrate on the more important things in life. Like blogging? Hmmm.

Max and I just dropped Kris off at the airport this morning at 5AM. He's on his way to Buffalo NY to interview for a residency position in the pediatric dentistry dept at the hospital there.
On sunday flies to New York City where he has another interview. He's going to be gone a little less than a week. Max and I are getting pretty good at taking care of ourselves, although we still don't like it. Nights seem darker and days seem longer when Kris is gone.
I'm hoping he's going to post some trip updates here on the blog, but he may need a little encouragement. Will anybody that wants to hear from Kris please leave a comment telling him so?

So I'd better go do some work and finish watching the BYU vs TCU game. It's looking good so far, but I've been a BYU fan long enough to know never to take anything for granted......
Go Cougars!!!

<>Halloween!!<>

So finally here I am sitting down to recount Halloween. I got a little cold over the weekend that really slowed me down. I had to go to church anyway, of course, so by the time I got done with church I was too wasted to do anything. I feel better this morning, so time for blogging, homework, paper writing and work!
For Halloween Max was a giraffe:
Kris was a bike wreck:
(Anybody else think the costume is a little too realistic??)

I was a surgeon from the Dharma Initiative (anybody else out there watch Lost?):
Anybody who doesn't watch Lost just assumed I was a surgeon planning to put my bike wrecked hubby back together, and that worked too.

We had the ward trunk or treat at 5PM, so Kris rushed home from school and we got ready.
Those of you that know Max well probably know that he doesn't take stress and pressure too well. And by stress and pressure I mean Holiday Fun. He and I had been talking about Halloween and how it works and what happens for the last two months so he'd be ready to have fun. I think it did make a difference, but still wasn't as successful as I was hoping. I did succeed in finding out what he actually wanted to be (he decided he wanted to be a giraffe in early September) and so he actually wore the costume, which was amazing.
So anyway, he started the day off badly by waking up way way too early. Then he decided he didn't want to go to school, but wanted to "do halloween" first. So he threw a big fit on the way to school. I think school was really fun, they did a lot of halloweeny type things, and when I went to pick him up he was happy, which was good, albeit temporary.
After that we drove down to the Russell Stovers corporate offices (about 3 minutes away) where they give out bags of candy for free every year. These bags have 5 or 6 items in them, and all the items are the great big like marshmallow pumpkins and coconut cream buzzard eggs and stuff like that. Pretty great treats. So after we went home I let Max have one. (or two.) Whoops. He went totally nuts! It's funny because it's not like we keep him from eating sugar completely, but we certainly try to avoid pumping him full of sugar on a regular basis. You could really see the difference between the pre-treat Max and the post-treat Max. It was a little scary. He was running around like a cartoon fight while we were trying to get ready.
So finally we left, and of course he fell asleep in the car about two minutes before we got to the church.
Before the little nap he had been really excited about the idea of trick or treating, and couldn't wait. After we woke him up he didn't want to do anything of course. He turned really shy and didn't want to talk to anybody. He wouldn't say trick or treat, and he certainly wouldn't say thank you to anyone. Oh well.
The trunk or treat was fun. There were about ten cars or so with people giving out treats and only about 25 kids or so, so most of the kids got to make a lot of circuts and ended up with tons of loot. Bummer though, ours was the only decorated trunk. What's with that? Max barely made one trip around to everyone's cars and then he retired to the concrete thinking he was just going to get to chow down on all his candy.
That wasn't going to happen after the earlier sugar insanity. So we let him eat a sucker and we headed into the gym for some chili.
After dinner we drove out to my mom's cousins, Jeff and Cathie Biggs' house. We got to see and talk to them for a few minutes as well as their daughter Hilary and husband. They have a little girl that's about a year and half younger than Max, and Max thinks she's great.
After that we headed out to Kelly and Lechelle's house to trick or treat. Max was starting to deteriorate by that time, and so when we got into Kelly and Lechelle's he wouldn't talk to anybody or even stand still. So we left. But not before Kelly took a picture of all three of us. Yay!!
Here's Max at the end of a long exhausting day of excitement and candy:
And with the loot on the next day:
Thanks for being patient while I kept you is suspense and for sticking around for the whole long story. This Halloween was better than last as far as Max was concerned and we had lots of fun, so hopefully next year will be equally better.

>>Carving Pumpkins<<

We carved pumpkins early this year because having Halloween fall in the middle of the week is a tough one for us. Personally I think that Halloween should always be on friday or saturday night, but nobody listens to me about stuff like that, so oh well.
It pays off to have a dad that's a dentist. We use latex gloves for anything and everything!
Sultan helped out by licking us anytime we bent over to pick up stuff.

We carved all five of the pumpkins we got from the pumpkin patch and ended up with examples of several different emotions. The small ones were all commissioned by Max. He wanted one that was laughing, one that was sad and I influenced him to ask for one that was surprised. The green one is laughing, the smallish one is sad and the tiny one is supposed to be surprised, although Max thought it ended up more sad than anything. I carved the little ones.

Kris and I each carved one of the big ones.
Can anyone tell which is his and which is mine?
We had a lot of fun, and somehow none of our pumpkins ended up getting smashed!
Real halloween still to come......

**sorry**

So I made the mistake of promising I'd have pictures up and report on Halloween on thursday. Well I obviously didn't! I had some church stuff come up and some work stuff also, which has kept me from having much fun. So sorry but I'll just have to keep you in suspense a little longer.........