Happy New Year!

Well, it's that time of year to start making some New Years Resolutions so here are a few of my own personal resolutions:

-healthy meals
-continue to work out
-keep up with E's "learning time"
-take E to story time, more library time
-keep a balance between YW and family
-my home projects

A lot of resolutions or New Year projects are all about diets and getting organized. I guess this has been my year to do that. We bought our house this year and it's amazing how organized you can get with a new house. It's taken little by little, small project by small project, but our house is pretty organized. I've got our house cleanings down to a science so it's usually pretty clean. Don't get me wrong, it takes a ton of work, but our house is clean and organized. I also took this year to lose all my baby weight. It's nice to start this new year with my goal accomplished and now I'm just trying to maintain it. This year will probably just be a juggle of keeping everything going. Balance staying healthy, being a mom, a traveling husband, YW, keeping house, cooking, and chasing and teaching a very active little boy. Easier said than done. Good luck with 2008!!!

The Nursing School Years

I was just thinking back on those good ole' days of nursing school today. I have no idea why, but I was and all the fabulous things that went on then. I remember it being so stinking hard and studying all the time. You have to know that at BYU (and most schools) the major is predominately female, not only that, but over-achieving females. That in itself led to some pretty funny situations during nursing school. So for all my nursing school friends here are some of my classic BYU Nursing School memories.
-Barbie and I making up our "nursing school song"
-the day I passed out, hit my head on the wall, and had a doctor catch me (so embarrassing!!)
-working in the Neuro ICU with Kim
-all our nursing labs where we learned all our sweet skills on each other like shots, IVs, drawing blood, NG tubes, physical exams, blood pressures, etc.
-studying my brains out!
-writing a ton of papers, journals, patient summaries, course summaries, research reports, blah blah
-the day my Nursing preceptor made me cry in L&D, that was awful (I've gotten a thick skin since then)
-my patient that had triplets
-the Burn Unit at the U of U
-all the funny (and scary) stories from the State Mental Hospital and the day we did the Schizophrenia exercise, that was so scary!
-my Capstone clinical at Shriner's Hospital, those kids were so stinkin' cute!
-driving the many hours to and from clinical, so early in the morning and late at night!
-my favorite clinical instructor, Ron!
-Graduation Day, when the Dean of the Nursing school read my
Essay for her graduation address
-taking care of all those cute (and sometimes mean) old people at the nursing home
-working with Barbie at Crestview
-hating that you were totally waking up your poor post op patient at 7 am because your clinical instructor always wanted you to be "doing something" for your patient. I remember trying to hide from my instructor or trying to act busy because my patient told me to leave him alone and let him sleep
-eating really good lunches with the drug reps
-wearing the "Sympathy Belly" in our L&D lab, that was funny!
-staying at my Aunt's house on the nights before clinical so I could get an extra 1/2 hour of sleep
-the first baby that I watched be born
-the first person I watched die
-Nursing conferences
-giving flu shots
-communication lab-all the crazy scenarios we had to talk ourselves out of
-the day my nurse had to catch a baby by herself
-learning A LOT!!!
So that's just a few of the crazy memories from nursing school. There is so much more to tell, but a lot of it is just too long, too boring for you, or too gross to post. Sorry, if you really want to know, just ask me. I'm full of great stories. So to all my blogging/nursing buddies, I hope you enjoyed this blast from the past. This picture is of me with a few of my friends working on SAM our automated patient. It was always fun to work on him. He had pulses, a heart beat, breathed, blinked, and he could be programmed to do all sorts of scenarios. Unfortunately at the point that this picture was taken, we were losing him and Kim was doing CPR. I think that Barbie can attest to this one, that people don't look this happy and laid back in a real code. But we were just naive little nursing students back then. Those little smirks were wiped right off the minute we had RN stamped next to our names. Those days were filled with so much stress, hard work, and so much fun all at the same time. I am so grateful for all the preparation it gave me to be a great nurse and now a great mom.

It Once Was Lost, But Now It's Found

E's "blankey" that is. Last Tuesday night I went to put Ethan to bed and I couldn't find his special "blankey" anywhere. I thought it was so weird that it wasn't on his bed and I looked around for a little bit, but he was so tired that I put him to bed without it and began to search. It was no where to be found so I went to bed and hoped it would surface the next day. I looked and looked everywhere and still no "blankey." We had been running and chasing the past few days so we began to retrace our steps. The funny thing is that I don't let him take it anywhere so I knew it had to be at our house. But just in case, I called the car wash, the eye doctor, all the stores we went to, and Aunt Amy's. No "blankey." Well, on Thursday we went down to my mom's to spend the day with her and then E was going to spend the night so I could go to a Christmas party and go to my last boot camp the next morning since Ry was taking the GMAT. I knew I had to have his "blankey" for him so it would be a little easier on my mom to get him to bed. I decided to try and trick him and buy a similar one at Target and then have my mom give it to him as if he had forgotten it at her house. The minute he grabbed the blanket he sniffed it and handed it back to her and said, "Baby blankey." The kid recognized the fake through smell?! Are you kidding me? It wasn't his "blankey" but he did like it as a replacement. So days went by and still no blankey. I have to say that I was even getting a little sad over it too. I just started thinking about the fact that he's had this blanket for 2 years now and how much he's loved it. His Aunt Suzy made it especially for him and it has been on all our trips, it has been next to him at every bedtime and nap time, and this little symbol of his babyhood is gone. How sad. Finally on Sunday as I was making Sunday dinner, E was messing around in the kitchen and all of sudden his blue "blankey" was in his hand! I have this very thin cupboard next to my dishwasher that holds my big serving trays and breakfast trays (so I rarely get in there). Well, he had slipped his "blankey" in there and pushed it to the back so when I looked for his it, I couldn't see it. Tricky tricky. So E is reunited with "blankey" again and the replacement has been put away for safe keeping in case we ever have this happen again.

Christmas Festivties

It's been a very busy time in our little household lately so it's been good to have the holidays to take some time off and be together. So here is what went on for our Christmas celebrations.

Christmas Eve:

Ever since I was little my mom would always have us help clean the house to get it "ready for Santa" (smart thinking Mom). So Ryan and Ethan helped me get the house ready for Santa even though we weren't actually doing Christmas at our house. It just makes everything nice to put all our new things away when the house is clean. That night we went to Ry's Aunt and Uncle's house for the big family Christmas Eve party. They had all the kids dress up and act out the nativity. Ethan and his buddies/cousins Matthew and Jack were the Wise Men. (Ethan is the one in the gray shirt)
I don't think it was the best idea to put the youngest boys at the very end of the program. By the time it got to their part, Ethan almost ripped his crown, he was wandering around wondering where all the kids went, and wasn't able to follow any directions. Maybe next year he could be a "lost sheep" or something.
Later that night we said good bye to everyone and drove down to my parent's house to spend the night with them. By then it was almost 10 and he was running on all cylindars! He was excited about being at Nanny's and that he got to play with his cousins, and there was excitment in the air and he just didn't know why and don't let those blue eyes fool you!

He didn't get to sleep until 11 that night and Ry ended up falling asleep with him. So Mom was the one to be sure that Santa knew where to put everything.

Christmas Day:

Christmas Day started at 6:30. Can you believe that the kid went to see at 11 and he still woke up at 6:30?! I don't think Ethan has ever slept past 7:30 since he's been born, that's not even a joke. Anyway...Ethan came down to find that Santa had left him quite a batch of presents!

He must have been a good boy this year. Santa brought him a new tool bench along with a big set of tools. He also got some new movies, pjs, and sweatshirts. Ethan was so excited to play with his new stuff! He got an easel with a chalkboard and paper roll from his Grandma Cheryl and he would go back and forth from his tool bench to the chalkboard all morning. He would even scribble on there and tell us what it was. He would draw a "hairplane" (airplane), "kitty", and "pack pack" (backpack). He even thought the paint holders were sippy cup holders.


So we spent the morning playing with toys and then opened presents. My parents got us our Christmas tree and decorations and we also got some gift cards so we can go on a date! Yeah! Ethan got a sweet bean bag chair from Nanny so we can sit and read books together and he can have his own seat in the family room now. Nanny also got him a new BYU sweatshirt and a new cash register equipped with a scanner and credit card swiper (his favorite).

Grandma Cheryl got him a collection of childhood books on DVD. It's like an entire library on DVD and he loves to sit in his bean bag chair with a cup of juice and watch. So cute! Mommy picked up Hi Ho Cherry-o for his new game. He couldn't wait to play! He has to still learn when it's his turn and what exactly to do with the cherries, but he loves to count them. So it was a great Christmas for everyone. Our Christmas came a little early since we ordered a new home computer and it came a couple days ago. Our old computer was on its last leg and was basically useless. It was my old one from college so needless to say it is slightly old and out of date and was put to good use. So I am very excited to be off the lap top and now have a fun new toy to play with. At 11 my brother called! He's on his mission in Tempe, AZ and he only has 5 months left! It was so good to talk to him and he's doing really well. I can't wait until he comes home! Randall's call was the best Christmas gift for everyone! After his call we made our classic Christmas Day dinner, steak and shrimp! Yum! It was perfect! After dinner, we put Ethan down for a nice little nap so we could play games and watch movies. When he woke up we let him play a little longer and then we had to pack up to go. That was a nightmare for Ethan. The poor kid thought we were taking all his toys away. He had no concept that we were putting them in the car to take them hom and no matter what I told him, he just wanted his toys back. I felt awful! But once he was in the car, surrounded by his toys, he was fine. We drove back up to Ry's Aunt and Uncle's house to see Aaron who just got in from Australia. Ethan even got to hitch a ride on his cousin's new motorcycle. It was quite the site!

Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I can't wait to hear all about it!

Ethans Favorite Christmas CD

Ryan's work had a white elephant gift exchange the other day and Ryan came home with a CD from Trans Siberian Orchestra. So the next day I stuck it in for Ethan and me to listen to while we ran errands. For those of you who are not familiar with Trans Siberian Orchestra, the CD is full of Christmas music set to electric guitar, synthesizers, and an orchestra. It's like a Heavy Metal Christmas or something. Well, Ethan LOVES it! I'm telling you! He even knows which number he likes so he'll tell me, "Momma, more song 4, more song 4." And then he'll say, "Momma, I want song 8." He always wants more and I think I listened to the Wizard in Winter song for 30 minutes straight. Who thought that it would be a kids favorite? Only Ethan!

Who Would Have Thought?

I just received a wonderful little parcel in the mail from a giveaway that I won a little while ago. I won a Pocket Snails Potty Training DVD from A Mom's Review. I stuck it into the DVD player the other day to see if E would watch it and went about the kitchen making a little dinner. I look up over the sink to see Ethan totally enthralled at the TV! He seriously didn't move for at least 20 minutes, and you all know how big that is! Sometimes I almost have to beg him to sit and watch a little TV so I can have a moment to get stuff done. For whatever reason, the singing snails and dancing potty chairs just sparked his interest. He's been doing a little bit of potty training here and there, but we're not really going all the way with it right now. I don't quite think he's ready yet, but he's doing really good. We'll see if the DVD helps in other arenas besides entertainment.

Work Christmas Party

Last night was Ry's work Christmas party so we were able to have his mom watch the E man for us so we could go. They had a charicature artist there so we ended up having ours done. I think it looks a lot like Ry, but I'm no so sure about the whole mall thing. I'm Mrs. Frugal, not Mrs. Charge it! Anyway...it was funny. The party was fun since a lot of the wives there are my friends so we had some great girl chat. It was a good night out!

Just An Update

It's seems like I've been blogging in spurts these days. I'll go like a week without blogging and then I'll end up doing 2 posts in a day. Life is just a little crazy right now. Well, I think everyone's life is crazy right now. Anyway...here is just an update with what happened to our furnace. Our heat is finally fixed (for now). I hope I don't jinx myself there. We ended up going 2 weeks without heat! Ah! It broke on Thanksgiving day, we called to get it fixed and they couldn't see us till Tuesday so we froze until Tuesday. On Tuesday the guy came to look at it and couldn't find anything wrong with it. He just reset the systme and it worked fine...for about 5 hours. It was out before I even went to bed! I called the furance people back and they couldn't see us until Friday (the day of my ornament party). Well, when he came out he took a look at it and said that it needed a new computer board and he would order the parts. So I said, "what am I supposed to do until then?" He told me he changed the fuse and we'll just have to wait 3-4 days until the parts came in. By the time my party came around, the furnace was down again. So I didn't ahve heat or A/C and with 25 people in my house, it got awfully toasty! So we went without heat until that Tuesday and finally the owner of the furnace company came out. He thought it was a problem with the sensors so he did a few things to help it work for awhile and told me he'd be back to replace the sensors the next day. The heater went out again that night and luckily he was coming back to replace the sensors. The sensors were replaced and we had heat that whole day, but of course in the night it went out!!! So you have to understand this is now Wednesday of the next week and our house was getting down to 65-67 degrees at night. Thank goodness it was somewhat on the warmer side that week. Wednesday night I was at my wits end with this whole thing! I was tired of waking up with a sore throat, I was tired of having Ethan sleep in my bed to keep warm, and I was tired of having to stay home to let in the furnace man! So 2 weeks from the day it went out, my favorite furnace man came and found out what the problem was. I guess the outside panel would defrost the coils and the water was getting on the wires and causing it to short. Finally, some answers! So now we have heat and life is better! Yeah! Man that was frustrating! I'm just glad everything was under warranty and that it wasn't a bigger problem. Sorry for the long, boring post.

My Christmas Decor

Yeah! I actually have Christmas Decor!!!! Can you tell how happy I am? Apartment living doesn't really lend to very fun Christmas decor so we never bought a tree 1. because we didn't have anywhere to put it 2. we didn't have anywhere to store it and 3. because we always went out of town for 2 weeks for the holidays. Now we're in a house and live around family so we plenty of room to have a little Christmas in our home. So this is what it looks like. My parents bought us our artificial Christmas tree as our big gift this year. I am so excited about it. Ry and I decorated it with all our little childhood ornaments along with some red, gold, and silver ball ornaments. I think it turned out pretty good. I also found some cute berry picks on sale at Michael's on "Black Friday" so I picked up a bunch of those. I found a lot of good deals while I was out on "Black Friday." My stockings and tree skirt all match and they were all an extra 25% off at Garden Ridge (great place for Christmas stuff). I picked up a couple garlands and my ball ornaments and called it good. Not too much. I figured I'll just add a little bit every year. Oh, and I also filled my hurricane vase with some really cute red and green ornaments. So this is the finished product.

Oh, and I have to tell you about the free CD that I got in the mail, I mentioned it a few posts earlier. I got the Michael W. Smith CD in the mail and I listened to it while I put up my Christmas decor and also on my way down to watch the Mavs game on Monday. This CD was great! I especially love the orchestral parts. This CD is more of a worship type Christmas CD than the "Pop" type Christmas stuff that you hear on the radio all the time these days. I like that it's more Christ centered. Believe it or not, he's actually going to be doing a performance in Dallas tomorrow, Dec 4 and Wednesday Dec 5 so if you're in the area grab some tickets! You won't be disappointed!

Weight Loss Results-Bootcamp Week 11

Well, it's official, I have lost enough weight to reach my "goal weight"!!! I've actually done it! Now with 3 weeks of boot camp left I can get to my "ultimate weight" during the holidays and be ready to start the New Year off with a bang. It's so nice to not feel like I have a big hurdle to jump over this New Year. So during the entire year of 2007 I have lost 20 pounds! I can't believe I actually had that much to lose (I'm actually embarrassed to say it), but that's what a baby does to you and it was obvious when you saw me. So here's to 3 more weeks of busting my butt and then on to keeping up with my healthy lifestyle and exercise.

Latest Wins

I won two giveaways this past month that I'm really excited about. I won E a Time Out Spot from Classy Mommy's Baby Shower. It came in the mail last week and I'm so excited to try it out on the E-meister. I also won a book of stamps from Phobia Mom's Blog.

This will be perfect for sending out all those wonderful Christmas cards that I have piled up on my desk. With all the stuff going on, I haven't had a chance to sit down and address them yet so that is what I'll be doing this week. Thank you Classy Mommy, Time Out Spots, and Phobia Mom!!!

My New Decor

I've done a few things with my house the past few days. Back when I was in Utah, I bought a really cute rod from Rod Works and shipped it home to myself. I just had to wait to get our family pictures done and ordered before I could hang everything up. Well, all the pictures are in and framed so I was able to hang them up with a little help from my family. I've been looking for something to put in our family room for a long time and this just adds great color and some much needed family pictures on our wall. I also got a storyboard to go above my piano that says "Live, Laugh, Love" and I think Toni captured that perfectly in the pictures that we chose.

We Have Peas!

As most of you know, I was the Personal Progress Advisor for YW since August (now I'm 1st Counselor). Well, for the month of September our focus was on Faith. I taught a little Personal Progress Spotlight about how our Faith is like a seed just like it talks about in Alma. So I packaged up some seeds for each girl and helped kick start one of their faith projects that they could work on. I'm also trying to get my medallion with the girls since I got my medallion with the old program. So I did my 10 hour project of planting a seed and taking care of it in a garden, then liken it to my faith. So my seeds have been growing and now we actually have little pea pods in my garden! They look great and I've noticed that my actual faith seeds have been growing as well. I just have to say how much I love my little garden and all the little lessons it teaches us.

Girls Night Out Ornament Exchange 2007

Well, last night was the big ornament exchange that I hosted. I really wanted to get a mixed group from church, family, friends, bootcamp, etc. So I ended up sending out a big Evite out and we ended up having a pretty good turnout. I had about 25 girls come for the event and it was so much fun! Lots of good food, games, lots of socializing, and of course ornaments! I think the girls were a little too nice to each other because we didn't have a whole lot of stealing going on. We've got to spice things up a little more next year. Well, it was just nice to be able to hang out with lots of different people and enjoy a night out without the kiddos. The party started at 7 and we ended at 11:30 when Ryan came home with Ethan and crashed the party. Well, here is the ornament that I wrapped up for the exchange. I liked it so much, I had to go back to Hobby Lobby and get one for myself. Is that bad?