Salt Lake fun

The last couple of days of Spring Break Wade took off of work and we went to Salt Lake and played a little. We went to the Clark Planetarium and saw the 3D "Under the Sea" movie, and bought season passes. Now we can head down and see any IMAX movie or Laser Show in the Dome for free (Laser Pink Floyd and U2! I'm so there!)! How awesome is that? We walked around Gateway, rode Trax and played at the Church Museum (my kids seriously love it there!). We went on a tour to Mrs. Cavanaugh's chocolates and got free samples, :) and had lunch one day at the Harmon's in Brickyard Plaza (not really a highlight). We visited with some friends that Wade knew on his mission in the Philippines, the kids made new friends, and we toured just about every bathroom on the Wasatch Front! All in all, it was a fun weekend. Here's a couple of pics to share. :)



Waiting for the trax train. I'm not really sure what Ethan is doing. Lol



Wearing 3D glasses and getting ready for the "Under the Sea" adventure!

My kids on the moon and on Mars (they felt right at home! :P). I didn't know balloons would float on Mars, but I've never actually been there.

Visiting with Roque (pronounced Rocky) and Amalia Lumacad. They lived in the Philippines when Wade was there on his mission and Roque was the branch president. Wade baptized Roque's brother. Roque and Amalia have 13 children, one of which lives Utah, all the rest live in the Philippines. She has three children and is waiting for her husband to obtain his visa so he can move here too! The kids were so cute together- they were total strangers and yet within minutes were running around laughing and playing. What a great family!

Bicycle!

Sacrament meeting in church with Isabelle is a kicker every week. Today was no different. She and I were quietly looking at a book (I was being quiet. The people sitting in front of us may beg to differ whether or not she was quiet) and it was an abc/first picture dictionary book. I pointed to a picture of a bicycle and said "Bicycle starts with B". Isabelle decided that repeating what I had said was not enough for her and started SINGING in her not quiet enough for sacrament meeting voice, "I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.... I want to ride my Bi-CYcle, I want to ride it; BI-cycle, BI-cyle!!" (a song by Queen, yes.) To Tara and Preston who were sitting in front of us, I sincerely apologize. :)

Wild and crazy!

Oh my lands what a crazy couple of weeks it's been! I thought I'd just update a little all the stuff that's been going on!

Ethan was inducted into Scouts! I became a true mom when I gallantly sewed his patches on his Scout Uniform. Please don't look too closely- the sewing machine got away from me a little. :) Just admire from a far.

On Sunday (the 29th) Ethan turned the big 8!! (where does the time go??) It snowed all day on his birthday and so we blamed it on him cuz it snowed all day the day he was born. Hehe :) His favorite present by far was the Darth Vadar's ship Lego set. Mainly cuz he picked it out at the store. Yes, I had to force myself not to help him put the whole thing together.

Monday morning San Francisco 49er's football player Alex Smith came to the kid's school for an assembly. Lots of excitement and I'm sure nothing got done in any of the classrooms for the whole day. Some of the kids got to ask questions during the assembly and Abby was one of them! She asked him "What's your favorite book?" Haha- of course, only MY kid would ask a question like that! He gave her a t-shirt and she got him to sign it! The great part about it is, I think it'll even fit me! HAHA

Monday night all the kids were in bed (supposedly), I was running on the treadmill, and Wade was upstairs working on something or another. Suddenly I hear kids yelling "MOM! MOM!" over Rascal Flatts blasting in my ears. Apparently instead of being in bed, Abby and Ethan were both in the bathroom pulling out VERY loose teeth!! The kicker was that they were the same exact tooth- just on opposite sides!

Sometime during the week Wade caught this on camera. Yes, that's my three-year-old Isabelle in a doll-bed.

And to top it all off- yesterday in class I learned how to take radial pulses and blood pressures, along with a myriad of other vitals. They even gave me my first stethoscope! I'm sure that means that I can save someone's life now. Or at least look like I can. :)

School

One of the reasons we started this blog was to journal my experience of going back to school while being a mom, wife, and actress-extraordinaire (ok, mediocre... sheesh. tough crowd. haha). I'm doing a great job of that since I started TWO WEEKS AGO and forgot to mention it! LOL I started school at the DATC and am taking my CNA course so I can eventually slap on Hello Kitty bandaids and actually get paid for it. :P So far, I'm loving it! Wade is being super supportive and taking off work early on my school days so that I can go without having to worry about the kids. At first I was feeling really overwhelmed, especially when they started telling us how quickly the course will go- three months of bookwork, a month of clinicals working in a nursing home, and BAM! You're a CNA! But so far I'm handling it. I'm actually a little ahead of schedule! I was feeling a little down after I took my first test, like 'what in the world did I get myself into' when I needed to score 80% and only got 76%. It really made me wonder if I could handle all this- school, family, church callings, etc. But then I retook the test and got 95% and then scored 100% on my next two tests and 96% on the one after that! I felt much better and excited again. I had to memorize like 300 medical terms and abbreivations in five days- it was easy with kids to quiz me! :)

It's so interesting to see the different people in my class. We range from juniors in highschool (a couple of them even go to school with my nephew) all the way to a couple of ladies that are 10 or so years older than me and all their kids are grown and out of the house. When we were learning some skills the other day (we were learning how to wash our hands correctly. I should make my kids take this class) we went around the group and introduced ourselves and told why we were taking the class. A few of the kids said "I want to do something in the medical field when I grow up". I leaned over to the lady next to me and said "you realize they mean our age, right?" LOL All in all it's a lot of fun. I look forward to doing my homework (my dad is saying 'who are you and what have you done with my daughter?) and can't wait to start my clinicals. I think I eventually want to be an LPN and work at a hospital, but we'll see how things go after I'm done with this stint. I still gotta do my shows, ya know! :P

Dreams...

Ok for those of you that know me really well know that I have incredibly off-the-wall dreams. For those of you that don't know, I have incredibly off-the-wall intense psychotic what-in-the-world? dreams. Haha :) Last night was no different. I dreamt that my mom and I went to see "Music Man" at the playhouse. (They're doing it for real at the Terrace Plaza Playhouse right now- it's great! Go see it if you can!) Well for some reason my mom brought her refrigerator with her so she could clean it out. Yeah, the great big one that goes in the kitchen. Now i understand wanting to do something while watching something else, I'm totally that way- I can't just sit and watch t.v., I'm always doing something at the same time. But really, cleaning the fridge in the theater? And to make matters worse we were like on the third row. And the fridge is sitting next to me. And it's running cuz everytime my mom opened it I could feel cool air on my arm. So I'm watching the show with this open refrigerator next to me and the absolute worst happens. Jacci (owner of the playhouse, director of "Christmas Carol", good friend- kinda like a mom/grandma that you don't want to ever disappoint) walks up and says so sweetly- "could you please close your fridge cuz the people behind you can't see around it. Thanks so much!" I wanted to die I was so embarrassed. Well the show is still going on and as my friends are coming out on stage they're waving to me and saying "HI!" (a really bad theater no-no) and I'm trying to wave discreetly so I don't get them in trouble. Then the kicker- they start having technical difficulties- either lights or music, I can't remember. So the cast starts milling around on stage and talking to each other and the audience. Next thing I know my mom is out on stage wandering around and checking things out. And I'm like "mom! get off the stage! you can't be out there!" Thank goodness I woke up before I was any more mortified. LOL

Magic words

Today Isabelle wanted me to open a Ziploc bag of goldfish for her and was asking in a very grumpy do-it-now tone of voice. So I said "Could you ask nicely please?" She changed her tone of voice to sickly-sweet, totally sarcastic (this is my three-year old, mind) and said "can you open my bag of goldfish?" It was nice, but still not what I was looking for, clearly. So I leaned over and said, "what's the magic word?" (looking for please, obviously) to which she replied, "Meeska, Mooska, Mickey Mouse!" :)

Smokin'

Today we went to a health fair in Layton and our kids had drawn some posters to take to the fair depicting why it's bad to smoke. So this is the conversation I had with Olivia this morning:

O- "I'm so excited for today!"
M- "Why?"
O- "Cuz we get to go to that smoking party!"
M- "Um...what?"
O- "You know, that smoking party. That we drew the 'don't smoke' pictures for..." (as she's rolling her eyes and thinking 'sheesh, mom, get with it already')
M- "OH!! You mean the Health Fair!" Hahaha :)

It cracked me up even more when we got to the actual health fair and they were serving ginormous doughnuts from The Hole and Sunny Delight. My kind of healthy!! :)