Coming soon to a blog near you...

I haven't had much to write about these past couple of weeks, just the same old work, sick kids, etc...but Melanie (aka my twin...seriously, we have more in common than you want to know about) and I are going to see Michael Buble in concert tomorrow night (hereafter referred to as "our Mikey")! We are oh so excited to hear our Mikey woo us with his soothing sexy voice, and are more than ready to swoon. Be prepared to see many, many pics posted later this week :-)

Time to celebrate!

I got into IHC's SLCC nursing program!!! As some of you know, I've been attending Provo College's nursing program since January of this year. I've been doing all the work at Provo College while waiting to hear back from slcc/ihc, and I was just about ready to give up hope of ever hearing from them. I got ready for and took my midterm exam this week, and did pretty well, so I was ok with whatever did or did not happened with slcc. So, of course I got the call from IHC saying I got into the program the day AFTER midterms! I really do like Provo College's program, but it's just sooooooo expensive. I really didn't want to have to deal with 40k in student loans by the time I graduated, that's just too much stress. Since I work for IHC, I can basically go to school at SLCC for free with their tuition reimbursement program, and I have to contract to work for IHC for 2 years after graduation, so I am basically guaranteed a job. We decided to take the kids to Pirate Island to celebrate (yeah, I wanted to go to Pirate Island, so what?), so here are some pics from last night....

Me and the kiddos at Pirate Island



Nick and Bella love to play together, but they are both SO competitive. They both want to win, and neither handles it very well when they don't. If you look closely, that puck is about to go into Bella's goal, and that was the winning shot. This was the last pic of them playing together, because shortly after taking this shot, Bella stomped away and pouted because she lost....


Here is Bella playing on her own, still not quite over the recent air hockey loss to her big brother...

Nick and Mario playing with guns, of course.


Me and my favorite little guy, Nick.

You know you had a good time when at least one of the kids looks like this as you're pulling out of the parking lot.

One moment to turn the day around...

So today, I had to face one of my weaknesses. I always feel horrible admitting it, but I have a hard time working with the geriatric population. I don't know if I just don't like facing the reality of end of life issues, or what, but it's not my comfort zone. It's pretty much the last place I want to work. I love the babies. Even when they are screaming, or dirty, or sick, to me that's their appropriate developmental stage, so it's ok. When it's someone's grandparent, it just makes me sad and I have a hard time dealing with that. So when I saw that we were going to a care center for clinicals today, I got nervous. I do so much better with wounds, incisions, stitches, staples, blood, stuff like that. But care centers, adult diapers, grown up bibs and wheelchairs....like I said, I hate to admit how uncomfortable it makes me.

It was a rough day. I helped the CNAs get the residents up to the bathroom, showered, toileted, dressed, and fed. We spent the day doing that process over and over again. Some were fantastic and funny. Others were sad and angry. A few may or may not have taken some swings at us. Rightfully so, I'd say. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be in their heads, confused and wondering why some strange girls are taking them to the bathroom and changing their clothes.

Now, to understand my next little bit of the story, you have to remember my Psych background. I'm drawn to strange and unusual behaviors. So my favorite resident of the day was one of the ladies who fought us while we got her changed and dressed, who babbled more than spoke words, and basically had to be dealt with like a one year old. It made me sad, but there was something about her that drew me in, so I paid special attention to her throughout the day. She had pretty eyes and a cute smile when she thought something was funny. Once in a while a few words would slip through her gated mind, and there would be the slightest moment of clarity. Mostly I would talk to her, and she would smile and babble and motion with her hands. She was telling me a story, which made perfect sense to her, and it was obvious that I was the one with the communication problem.

The day dragged on and on, and just as I was counting down the last 30 minutes of my shift, I decided to help my new friend up from the lunch table. She was telling some story again, and I smiled and added my two cents in, even though I doubt my part had anything to do with her story. As we sat down on the couch, I reached over and put a blanket over her lap. Her eyes twinkled, she smiled and babbled something sweet, and then leaned over and gave me a little hug and kiss on the cheek.
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I hope that sometime in the future, whenever it may be and in whatever life, I'll be able to tell her that at that moment, she made my day.

The difference between a third grader and a kindergartner...

I had to laugh when I realized another huge difference between my kids, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with what grade they are in school. We all remember how exciting it is to start something new, to have new friends and not be so burned out all the time. After awhile, though, that tends to go away, and we get lost in the monotony of it all.

My fun, crazy Nick is always trying to find a way to get out of school. He enjoys it once he's there, don't get me wrong, but this third grader has done everything from sticking his finger down his throat to make himself throw up....to hiding my phone before I wake up so I won't hear my alarm and take him to school. When he is genuinely sick, he milks it for as long as he can, and he's called me multiple times from school for silly things like "I accidentally jumped...I mean fell into a big puddle and now I'm all wet. Can you come get me so I can go home and change my clothes" and I know he thinks of this kind of stuff just to get out of school for a few minutes. He cracks me up, but sometimes it's a bit much to fight such a big kid every morning just to get him to school. I'm afraid to see what junior high and high school will bring.

And then there's Bella, the zealous kindergartner. She loves to go to school, misses her teacher and friends on the weekends, and can't even fathom the thought of summer vacation without a tear rolling down her cheek. She has a BFF (and when I asked her what BFF meant, thinking my 5 year old just heard the expression and didn't really know the meaning, she said "Best Friend Forever, duh!), and she considers this BFF her sister. It's so cute. This week, she started getting sick. It started out with a little cough that I blamed on an ill-advised February (outdoor) swimming day with daddy.....a story for another day, I'm sure. It continued through the week though, and by Thursday afternoon, it was obvious that she was really sick and needed to stay home from school on Friday so we could go see her doctor. Friday morning, after a long night of coughing and throwing up, her temperature read 103.4 and I had to tell her that she really wasn't going to school. This little girl cried her eyes out.

"I wanna go to schoooooool, mooooooom! Jenica is going to wear her 'I love my BFF' shirt today, and I have to be there!" This continued on and on, until I convinced her that I would talk to Jenica's mom and ask her to wear her BFF shirt next week sometime, so Bella could see it. She was still mad that she had to miss school because of a little thing like strep, but as long as Jenica would wear her BFF shirt next week, she would find a way to emotionally manage this interruption in her life.

This is the difference between 3rd graders and kindergartners.....one finds a way to get out of going to school by any means possible, the other has an emotional breakdown if you interrupt their school schedule in the slightest. Kids crack me up.

Funny stuff from this week....

So here's a little of what's been going on with us this past week:

Nick was very excited to earn his Wolf patch, and made it to the Blue and Gold night- even though he was just beginning to get over the flu. I'm so proud of him!!!
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If you agree to do something with Miss Bella, you'd better plan on following through, because this kid has a memory like none other. She'll keep bringing it up until you break. Here are the purple "Cat in the Hat" cupcakes we made this week, because she watched the movie and had to make the cupcakes they made.
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This is our funny dog Conner. He sleeps on this tiny little bed because he thinks it's his. Or maybe it's just because the weiner dog has to be locked up because she likes to chew her way through any leash we put on her, and he's just trying to tease her by taking her bed.
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Bella was apparently very tired tonight, because awhile after I told her to go to bed, I looked up from my computer to see two small feet sticking out of the hallway. There she was, asleep on the hallway floor, just about 8 feet from her bed. Funny girl.
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And finally, after a nice long week off from work, I went back into the trenches for 3 VERY long twelve hour grave yard shifts on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I barely sat down the whole shift, let alone thought of cracking open a textbook. Of course this meant that the homework I had planned to get through this weekend got pushed off until Sunday (because of course it's due on Monday)......so this is how I'm going to make it through homework time once the kids get to bed....

Ahhh, the joys of life :-)
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My boy is 9 years old!!!

My firstborn turned 9 years old on February 9th. I can hardly believe it! Looking at him, you'd think he's a lot older, he's just so tall and everything....
....but I still see that chunky 9 pound baby I met one snowy morning in Kansas. The one who was too big for all the cute newborn clothes I bought and forced me to go get 3 to 6 month sized clothes the day we got home. The one who outgrew newborn sized diapers his first week home. The one who screamed and cried that same first day home until I realized that he was going to need more than what the mama milk supply was giving him. He happily chugged formula like a pro.

I see the cute little guy who sat through really loud football games with me, no matter how hot or cold it was out there. He'd sit in nothing but a diaper through the sweltering heat of Phoenix, and got lost in layers during snow storms in Charlotte and Denver. He always fell asleep in my arms by half time, and amazed everyone around us as he snored while 70,000 fans screamed and cheered. I don't think he even knew why we were there until he was 3 or 4, or why it was such a big deal when they'd say daddy's name and he'd come running out of the tunnel. Of course, by the last year in Denver he was helping daddy sign autographs after the game. He thought that was pretty fun.

I see the cute little guy who would bring me his toys and pat me on the back when I was pregnant with Bella and always so sick. He'd entertain himself when I was too tired to play, or snuggle with me when I needed a hug. He was my little buddy who always kept me company while Mario was away at training camps, practices or games. It was just the two of us a lot of the time. His handsome smile was all I needed to get me through a lonely day. He's always had an older soul to me, a depth in his eyes that told he from the moment I met him that I had known him before this life, and that I would learn a lot from being his mom.

I loved watching him with his baby sister for the first time, how he'd just sit and stare at her with wonder. And even though they can really get into it, at the end of the day, they are best friends.

I'm so proud of him as he's overcome his shyness and begun to really grow during these school years. It was pretty hard for him to get use to being gone from mom all day, when that's all he had ever known. But he's become such a good student. And as he realizes his natural talent for football and music, I smile at the idea that he really is a continuation of both parents. He is the embodiment of the best attributes we could pass on, and I'm so thankful for that. I love my little guy.

When the police knock on your door at 0500.......

I had the unexpected opportunity to speak with a nice American Fork police officer at 5 o'clock this morning. Do you know what that does to a person's mental status when you first spot the uniformed officer standing at your door??? I don't even know exactly how many thoughts went screaming though my head in the 2.47 seconds that existed from the time I saw him through the peephole to the moment he started speaking.

"Were the dogs barking too loud and a neighbor complained?"
"Are the kids still in their beds, safe and asleep?"
"Did something happen to Mario at work tonight?"
"Did Julie leave for work already and get in an accident?"
"Are mom and dad ok?"
"Are they looking for someone in this area?"

On and on those thoughts blasted through my cloudy mind until he started to speak. "We had a 911 call from somewhere in this area...." Oh thank goodness! I knew I hadn't called, I really doubt the kids had...

"I don't think we made any calls, did it come from a cell phone or house phone?" I asked. "Yes, from a cell phone, it actually came through Provo..." Hmmmmmm, I don't like that at all. He told me the number that had made the call, and it was Mario's cell number. Suddenly my heart dropped. He was at work tonight, and shouldn't have been heading home yet. "That's my husband's cell phone, he's at work at the Utah State Hospital tonight...." I started to shake as the new scenarios started to play out. Had some crazy bastard really snapped and hurt someone? Did he need help and had used his phone to call 911....did he get off early this morning and been in a car accident? The officer must have noticed my look of panic and started to speak again. "Sorry to have woken you up, I'll let Provo know and they'll check it out, ok?" Still stuck in the "what happened to Mario scenarios", I think I mumbled something like "Yeah....ok...no problem....thank you...."

I ran back to my room and grabbed by phone and hit the speed dial button to call Mario. As it was ringing, I ran and checked on both the kids, just in case. Since it had been Mario's phone, I knew Julie was ok, so I went back to my room and sat on my bed while I waited for him to answer. Four rings.....five rings....I started to wonder what would be worse, if he answered and something was wrong, or if he didn't answer at all. Finally, a sleepy voice on the other end picked up and said "Hello?"

"ARE YOU OK?!?!?!?!?" I might have yelled that a little bit...I was relieved at the idea that he was alive enough to answer his phone, but still afraid his answer would be "no". "Yeah, why?" he replied. I went on to explain what had happened just moments ago at my doorstep. "I didn't make any calls, my phone keeps doing weird things like turning itself off and stuff, but I haven't made any calls this morning" he explained. I have yet to experience true panic from this man in the way that I sometimes do when something is too far from the ordinary for my comfort. He was neither concerned nor interested in the situation, really. I asked him to figure out what had happened, and to expect the police to either call him or come by and check on him, since they have to do that in the case of an unexplained 911 call. A little while later, I texted him and he said they had come by to check on him, and he still doesn't know what happened. A preset speed dial must have been bumped or something. I told him that now that I knew he was ok, he needed to turn that POS phone off, and I would get him a new one later today.

Thank goodness everyone is ok. I'm thankful for the officers who checked up on us, in the case that it had been a real emergency. I hope it didn't take away from anyone else who truly was in need of help. I find humor in the fact that my first thought was the best case scenario, that it wasn't anything life-threatening, just some noisy dogs. Maybe I'm more of an optimist than I thought I was. I'm saddened for everyone who has had a real middle-of-the-night wake up call from any uniformed person, and I'm so glad mine was just a mistake. Our lives will go on unchanged. And, on the upside, I now have so much adrenaline running through me, I think I'll just stay up and finish studying for my test today....