Updatorino

So I was reminded that we set up a blogger account a little while back and maybe a good place to continue writing about our adventures. Brittany brings up a good point that she does lots of pictures and Snippets on her Instagram, so if you haven't been seeing those already that is a great place to check up on some of the dailies. Otherwise, what is there to talk about...

Things have been shifting into place more and more. We are down to the last few boxes, which has been fantastic having most of our floor space available for walking and doing other things with. It has been quite a challenge to get everything organized in different ways and figure out where everything should go, but also feels like a rather large accomplishment having put almost all of it away now.

We moved out of our three bedroom house, and into a two-bedroom RV. Although it is substantially less space we know that we really didn't use a lot of our space previously, and although it may feel a little cramped at times we have been enjoying the space and find it suits us well. Just like at home, we have to get out of the house every day or two stay sane, but otherwise we just enjoy all hanging together in the same couple rooms anyway.

About a month and a half ago our little family moved into an RV. It feels like a long time ago because so much has happened since then, but it has been a fun experience. There have been a lot of things to learn along the way, and we expected it to be like that.

We now know where every Walmart is in about a 10 mile radius around us. We have also been working on taking advantage of buying expensive items from our tax-free neighbor, Oregon. And it's hard to believe that there's an Ikea 10 minutes from our house once again. Needless to say, we have found a variety of pieces to help with our organization at the large, awesome furniture store.

The area itself is beautiful. It's amazing seeing some place so green after living in high desert's for the better part of a decade. I have missed the greenery of the West Coast, and once the weather gets better we will start going on lots of hikes. Apparently that is one of the big things to do here in Vancouver Washington, and the surrounding areas.

Brittany and I are getting close to being able to work again. She has been offered a PRN position and that she will begin in February, and my license for nursing went active within the last week. Now it's just a matter of applying and  visiting potential work sites. 

Hopefully we can get more posts like this in the future. Those of you who see this, just shoot Brittany or myself a text to let us know you saw it. Just want to make sure that everything is still running smoothly through blogger since the last time we used it. On a side note, we might be transitioning to another blog-type service, so also shoot us the email you would like to receive notifications through.

For the most part things have been falling into place. Our home is very close to being fully organized, we are starting to figure out job stuff once again, and we might be moving on to a more permanent property to park our RV by the end of this month. We are excited to continue our journey in our little home. The boys seem to be enjoying it, and usually when they are happy we are happy. Because then they are not driving us batty.

My new year's resolution is to write in our blog.
Haha I didn't specify how many times- let's get this over with so I can enjoy the rest of my year!
Last time I talked about how nice and non-hectic life was. This needs an addendum. Life is now chaotic, with more than enough to keep both of us busy.
To start off, I am in the nursing program at Westminster in Salt Lake City, UT. This is a rather intensive program, with quite a bit of reading and homework to do on a weekly basis. Don't get me wrong, so far it has been fairly enjoyable, but at the same time it is very stressful. The worst part of the year thus far was actually the very first week- Brittany and I both came down with a debilitating flu on the first day, and ended up in the Taylorsville insta-care that night. It was an awful experience, and I straight-up missed my first class of the nursing program. It bummed me out, which only added to the pain of dramatically losing all my fluids... Thankfully our neighbors were able to watch baby while we fled to the insta-care for a few hours till we could be seen. It was incredibly nice of them to assist us so last second.
In retrospect that was probably the worst point so far. Despite the fact that it's been stressful nothing has been as horrific as that first day. Since then I've learned a lot of interesting things about the nursing process, met a variety of neat people, and started to kind of get a pattern.
Of course it's always hard to get a pattern with a baby. Especially when he keeps changing his own pattern up. For instance, last night he randomly, for the first time, slept a little over 9 hours. 9 hours!!! Just a few months ago we were having to wake up every 2 hours to feed and change him. It's crazy how quickly he is changing.
We were also fortuitous to have Britt's mom come out for a few weeks. She preemptively came out after our bout with the flu in anticipation that baby would catch it too. Oddly enough he never caught the flu, but she sure did. Ty did end up getting a regular cold during her stay, so it was super that she came out anyways. It was fantastic having someone else around to help as we adjusted to my going back to school.
On a random side note he also tried rice cereal for the first time. When the food was put in his mouth he didn't have any reaction. Then all the sudden his eyes got BIG and he was like What was that???? Guess he wasn't expecting to try his first semi-solid food. From there on he was happy to help mom guide the spoon into his mouth... and hold it there as he sloppily slurped the spoon dry.
Britt has been busy with work and projects at home. She is almost at one and a half years of working at Intermountain Medical Center, and acts like she still likes it quite a bit. It may not be what she wants to do for the rest of her life, but she gets satisfaction out of her work and enjoys the company of her coworkers (frequently able to sit for chunks of time talking... even when hubby is waiting outside..........). In fact, it sounds like her work is rather appreciated because of how thorough a job she always does.
As to her projects, maybe she'll talk about them herself (hint hint if you read this Britt). Just in the last little bit she made a pillow, finished an intense mobile for Ty's room (with the help of her mom), they started resurfacing one of the chairs, and probably more that I'm not even aware of. So many projects to keep track of lol.
Altogether things are going pretty well. It's sometimes hard to get myself to study every day (which I kind of need to do to keep up), but it also makes me excited about working as a nurse. Ty is now mobile and keeping us busy, but he smiles so much that it's impossible to stay mad at him. I do spank him, but through multiple layers of diapers he doesn't mind. He just thinks I'm love-patting him and it's kind of therapeutic for me...

Wellll time to write in the blog like I do every month. I took a break you might say? NAW-AW. I have no idea what you are talking about.
Just fed the baby and now he's wiggling on the floor behind me, trying to decide if he's going to enjoy being a baby or freak out on me for putting him down. Thankfully it looks like he got onto his tummy and is entertaining himself... for the moment.
Things can change so quickly.
Life has been full of changes lately, but thankfully not too hectic. That will probably all change soon but for at least the next week or so I will be chilling at home with Ty waiting for school to start. So what have been some of the big changes lately?
Well to start we have a wee babe of 4 months names Tiberius. He is a fun little guy but a lot of work. Getting onto his tummy is no big deal now, rolling either way. He's full of cooing and loves to be snuggled, especially in a playful way. Every once in a while he practices his baby talk and is getting good at laughing. His pediatrician appropriately named him a "happy spitter," meaning he pukes up little puddles of formula (both non-digested and thoroughly curdled :D). He also loves being held, supported standing, and can be very inquisitive when not in one of his tired, cranky moods. Brittany and I have been keeping a log of funny and adorable things he does since birth and she says she might type it up sometime when it's done.
Not only did we get a brand new baby boy, but we also bought a town home in Taylorsville, Utah, moving from our apartment in the Avenues. We liked a lot of things about the Avenues, but as soon as we realized that a 1-bedroom apartment might be too small for our soon-to-be family of three we started looking for another place. Not only that but we thought it would be nice to have more room when family came to stay with us, and it has helped a lot!
It's a cozy place with more than enough room for just the three of us (although the extra room definitely does help with all of his baby stuff) (everyone was right- babies come with a ton of stuff!). But the extra space has been extremely useful, ranging from having our families stay with us to Britt's brothers staying with us for a while. I'm hoping sometime we might even have our grandparents come stay with us at some point- that would be a lot of fun!
Gonna go make some grilled squash for Britt but I'll try to come back and keep updating on our latest happenings.

New Phlebot Blog

So I moved my phlebotomy stories to a new location as not to clutter britt and i's journal.
It can be found at
http://phlebotspot.blogspot.com/
Enjoy :)

Ok, so after sharing some of the things I've heard in my phlebotomy class, Britt thinks I should blog about my experiences in this class. She laughed pretty good so hopefully you enjoy it too.
For starters, there is the man who oversees the program. He's an interesting guy and has a funny story about his own induction into phlebotomy.
At first Brian was phobic about needles and blood. He would try his hardest to avoid them and would literally pass out at the sight of a needle. Then after a friend asked him if he wanted to come train to be a phlebotomist he decided it was time to conquer that fear. So his friend put him through a little exposure therapy.
Every day this friend would tie him down to a chair using motorcycle straps and come into the room carrying a needle. Each day they'd see how close they could get to Brian before he'd pass out. Finally after about 10 days the friend was able to wave the needle around in his face, and just a few days after that he was able to poke other people with a needle of his own and start drawing blood.
But things didn't go so smoothly at first. Once at the hospital Friend waves Brian over saying he's got one over here for him. Brian enters the room and Friend... leaves. The 97 year old woman that he is left alone with then strips down giving him an image he never will forget and he proceeds to awkwardly draw her blood.
While doing this he kept noting that the blood wasn't coming out very quickly, and only after filling a few viles with blood realizes that on the underside of her arm the blood has been pooling underneath the skin due to a bad stick, leaving her a "baseball-sized hematoma" (fluid-filled sac). Frantically he waves Friend over and they disperse it as best they can.
Later the next day the woman comes back and has a bruise starting at her wrist going up her arm, around the back of her shoulder and coming down her chest from all the blood that seeped out underneath the skin. He recalls her complaining "You s.o.b.'s almost killed me!"
Apparently training and drawing standards were quite a bit lower 20-30 years ago.

BDay Wishlist!

Ok so this may not be a formal update, but it carries importance as well. After much deliberation, may I present to you may bday wishlist :D

Shoes (size 7.5) (i like shoes- not sandals or their kin. usually i get running shoes. loafers or skateboard shoes would be acceptable :p)
PC Games
Pillow (a thicker one, like what brittany has) (i also just realized another thin one would work because then i could stack) (genius!)
Pandora 1 subscription
LoL Giftcard
Furniture? Not sure how that'd work unless you can get a DI giftcard lol
Microwave
Electric Can Opener
Walmart Giftcard (because everything is at Walmart.)
And I will update as anything else comes to mind.
Britt also thinks I should post about my phlebotomy class, so I'll start that in a separate post.

2010 Summer so Far

Yesterday we went to church with Britt’s family. Frequently I “rest my eyes” but I really do pay attention if the speakers are good, and the speakers today were truly decent. The Sunday School guy brought up some interesting points about wisdom and making decisions based on foresight. Actually, wisdom and foresight seem like redundant ideas, because wisdom is just the ability of having good foresight, but figuring this out was kind of neat. Until today I had always thought wisdom was somewhat of an ambiguous word.

There have been a lot of happenings lately despite the fact that we have been with Britt’s parents. –And the reason I say that is because things at their house is usually fairly laid back.

Just a few days ago we went to Sarah Hinkson’s mission farewell, which I’m sure Britt appreciated going to even though it took hours to get to (Eureka to Redding to Susanville). It was an interesting event and I had to laugh a little that Sarah’s family didn’t go at all because they were too busy fishing. Of all things.

Sarah’s farewell took us to my parents house for a few days. Erin and mom were gone, so we just played various games during downtime and took Eli to garage sales with us.

This summer has been fairly fun and relaxed, although I’ve probably played way too many computer games (and become very proficient at Footman or “Footsie” Frenzy on Warcraft). I’ve done other things too. I’ve gone through a few different books including Jurassic Park and the first two books of the Alera series by Jim Butcher, who is now one of my favorite authors (wrote this Alera series and the Dresden series). Another acitivity has included attempting to paint, but after hours more than I thought possible on my first miniature portrait of a WWII girl eating what Britt thinks is a sugar beet I have given up for the time being. It would probably be easier to paint another now that I have some experience, but the length of the first has made me wary.

Something that I should do more is help Britt and her mother with their eBay stuff. It’s a great way of making extra cash and is a good thing to do with them.

Britt’s brothers are on a rugby team, and last week we almost went out of town for a game. The coach had a problem last minute so we postponed going to Lakeport till this next weekend for another game.

At the beginning of summer we went to visit the family in LA. Spend a lot of time with the Kirks, which was fun. Dave had to work a lot of the time but we still had a good time. The Kirk kids got a little older and more mature, Grandpa lost a little more hearing, and Julie made some really good dinners (awesome shortcake!). The only downside to the trip was our car being totaled during our 1^st attempt at Disneyland. We lost our 1988 Ford Bronco II to a runaway tire on the freeway and had to take the bus/train back to McKinleyville.

Medford Trip

So I have a lot of catch up to do with this! 

Yesterday Jared and I went to the 'Arts Bloom in Old Town Medford'.  It was pretty fun.  On the way out of Klamath Falls we saw there was something going on at the park and decided to stop for a few minutes.  It turned out to be the 'International Migratory Bird Day' celebration.  There were a few booths set up and some birds out on display and a running competition.  We only stayed for around 10 minutes, but I got a few interesting pictures!

There were a bunch of birds out that were rescued animals.  The owl was probably my favorite.  He tried to get away from the crowd of people looking at him but ended up flipping upside-down because he was strapped to the woman holding him.  She had to wait for him to calm down before she could help him flip back over because he was flapping around so much.

When we got to Medford, we got lost.  But we eventually found the city center and made it to the festival.  There were about nine city blocks being used for the event.  It was really interesting seeing all the different art booths.  There was plenty of food booths too.  One of the most interesting booths we saw was the metal works booth.  There's a picture below of some roses that had solar powered LED lights in the middle.  The girl who was watching the booth for her parents while they ran to get something was talking about how they made them and how they worked.  It was very interesting.  

The picture below is of a fountain put together by a landscaping company.  It was awesome because it was 1)  in the middle of the street 2) there were no pipes or tubing or hoses poking out anywhere and 3) the water when it got to the bottom of the fountain looked like it just ended at the bottom and pooled, but it was actually dripping through the crevices in between the rocks.

There was also some kids doing a karate display for their local dojo/school I believe.  It was fun watching them do their little routines.

After we looked at everything in the Art in Bloom festival we got some lunch at Taco Bell, got lost looking for Good Will, went to the wrong Good Will, found the Good Will we wanted to go to, went to the mall, and then headed home.  It was a good trip and definitely worth it so we could be in the sunshine and the warm 70 degree weather compared to the 40-60 degree weather with rain we were supposed to experience all day in Klamath Falls.

TO SEE MORE PICTURES FROM OUR TRIP CLICK HERE!

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Caving Trip!

Today, Jared, Amy, Ian and Katie and I went to the lava beds in Northern California! We left around 10 and stayed until 3. We would have stayed longer except that it had started snowing :(
One of the caves we went into was called Golden Dome. It was called that because of the yellow moss that grows on the ceiling of the cave. When the water drops hang on the moss it looks just like fools gold.
It was quite damp in all the caves and we got a little wet!
We all had a lot of fun though and it was a good way to end the 3 day weekend.

Here's some of the pictures I took. Katie and Amy have more pictures that we're going to exchange soon.

Erin's Egyptian Winter Performance

On Tuesday we went to Erin's (Jared's youngest sister) Egyptian winter performance. It was really sweet. The different class groups played various Egyptian styled music traditional and non-traditional.

Erin's grade performed two songs in the middle of the show, 'Walk like an Egyptian' and 'In My Tomb'.

Some of the other non-traditional music that was played by the other grades included a piece from Star Wars (Cantina Band) and the Inspector Gadget theme song.

Anyway, here's some pictures. No videos though. I did take some, but they were lost in the tragic camera formatting incident...

 

 

 

 

VASO Conference

SO I was going thru some photos on my camera and found some pictures and a rather funny video from the vascular conference I attended back in November. This time I rode up with Amy (in blue), Amanda (in pink), and Katie (at end of table).

It was a rather interesting conference. There were past OIT students who presented past case studies about vascular problems. Most of them were carotid clots and benign tumors.

There was a funny presentation given about learning spanish as a second language to assist in the medical work force. The speaker was very informative and that's where the ending video came from. It was just a clip of everyone doing the chicken dance.

Edit - There isn't actually a video. Apparently I accidentally deleted all my video clips from the last few months :( I didn't realize the latest picasa doesn't upload the mov files anymore by default, so I formatted my camera card without realizing that the videos weren't on my computer yet.

 

 

 

 

Week (almost) 3

Things are pretty quiet here. There really isn't much going on... Brittany and I both apply to various places nearly every day, both online and through walk-ins as we travel around town.

And there is nothing.

This economy sucks. Like, it's really not doing that bad overall; most people still have their jobs, prices stay fairly consistent even though the country isn't doing too hot economically, but it sucks because all of the jobs that I would want to do for just a few months in between school terms are gone.

They are gone because those are the first things to go when employers are having financial difficulties. All of those part-timers are let-go and the full-timers are expected to take up the slack. It also sucks because it does force some major institutions to slightly down-size also, like the school systems, sales companies, and any other company that is hurt by the times.

The result: as I was applying for a job at a hamburger joint in the mall I was talking to one of the employees that worked there, and he said that there are upwards of 40 applications for the one open slot that they had! Not only that, but he told me that some of those were professionals who had lost their job, a long-time teacher among the group. I'm sorry, but being a teacher sucks. Not that it isn't a super rewarding job and interesting because a person always has to be learning to teach others, but geeeez.

There is no way that I would be able to deal with that lack of economic stability. Teachers already don't get paid as much as other professionals of their educational level (6+ years of college), but then because school systems are so pressed for money all the time, there's no promise that a job will be yours forever anyway! Who needs that?!? I already think not having a job sucks and I'm not even a qualified professional.

Things are going good though. I just get caught up thinking about how others are effected by the times and I also like to imagine what it would be like in other people's shoes... a lot. I wonder how often I actually simulate what they are actually thinking correctly.

Now to shift gears some:

Sioux Falls is a nice place to live. It's a clean place. There are things to do. The weather is not horribly hot or rainy or stuffy, though it sure has moments of each. The thunderstorms are amazing here. Standing at the window, there will be at least a dozen flashes of light every minute during a t-storm, and the constant rumbling of thunder sounds like the earth is talking. Or gurgling. Or something. Or better yet it's fun to pretend like the sky is fighting with the earth, and I just hear and see the energy from when they clash.

Then after every downpour and major storm, it'll clear out, and become incredibly muggy. It's sooo different then the other places I've lived. Usually rain happens and then it's cold and dank for days to weeks afterwards. Here, it heats up vert quickly, and all of that water must come back out of the earth and just hang in the air around us. Gotta love the humidity factor.

Town is nice. It reminds me too much of Redding lol. A lot of town is fairly sprawled out, with lots of little business groupings throughout the city. It mainly reminds me of the area in Redding around the Mt. Shasta Mall, just because it has a lot of businesses around that are all clean-looking and friendly feeling.

The only major difference from Redding is that Sioux Falls has tall buildings in its downtown area. And a lot of them. Sometime when I get the camera working I'll definitely put some pictures up from our journeys into different parts. There are several very tall buildings, a trolley that drives people around the two main streets of downtown, and there is a parking garage built above a river. Sick! I don't know if we've taken any good pictures of it, but there is a fairly large, company garage sitting on the river being held up by a few large columns in the river (and of course supported on the banks). It's probably not as cool or amazing as I think it is, but it seemed like a sweet place to park to me.

Two days ago we went to the zoo here, and it was really good also. They had tigers, bear, flamingos, walubees, giant tortises, cheetas, and a bunch of other cool animals. Again, pictures would be good here and I'll put them all up together at some point, maybe the end of summer. They were working on a lot of improvements at the zoo, and are working to get a large african safari exhibit up. Hopefully before we leave they will have more animals.

And then we've just been hanging out here at the house the last couple days. Our bus passes expired so we've been putting off going down to the main station and buying this month's pass. Hopefully we'll find work or figure something out soon, otherwise we might be retreating away from here a little bit earlier than the end of summer.

Downtown Sioux Falls

Jared and I went out and explored down town Sioux Falls today. It was crazy trying to figure out the bus system. Not only are none of the street bus signs labeled, but most of the bus routes also criss-cross each other so you really have no idea which way any bus is going without asking the driver.

We explored for a goodly distance all over the area and dropped off a bunch of resumes. Not long after circling the blocks and looking at buildings, we discovered there was a trolley system that ran to downtown in a loop that went all the way to the park and waterfalls. The best kicker is this though - it was free to ride :D

So of course we went to the falls and walked around in the glorious 80 degree, sunny, clear blue skies weather. We also stopped in the little shop down the hill from the falls and purchased a rainbow flavored ice cream cone to share! It was delicious, even after all the colors became muddied from mixing.

We didn't take many pictures, but we'll definitely go out again and take more later on.

Click here to see the pictures we took!

Sioux Falls: The Epic Journey Begins

We made it! After a freakish night of figuring out storage, driving to Medford, getting 3 hours of sleep, and then spending a whole day flying and waiting out in airports (albeit some very cool airports), we finally made it to our destination of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Yesterday was our first full day here. The bus systems were closed down but Brittany and I still really wanted to see the town (especially the mall), so we started walking at about 5pm in the cool evening. The weather was exceptionally nice, 70-80 degrees with scattered clouds, so we didn't take notice as to how far we were going, which accidentally led us 3.5 miles away from our residence. The walk back was painful (another 3.5 miles), but we saw a lot of town.
When we first arrived I was kind of freaked out about this place. The airport is somewhat out of town, and our house is somewhat out of town too. The route we took to get from there to here was a highway that went outside of town... but I didn't know that at the time. I completely started freaking out thinking that we were in another small-nonexistent town, out in the middle of a place that neither of us know anything about. But after walking around for a good while and seeing even just the small part of town that we did made me feel a lot better.
Some of the things we saw were the local zoo, which we are excited to go visit, a bunch of fast food places (yes that's comforting when I'm not sure this is even a town), a battleship replica representation (it's hard to explain), a couple parks, and even a few nice residential neighborhoods.
As a bonus, there are tons of small to medium-sized rabbits running around everywhere. Brittany gets a kick out of these. We are thinking about switching over from Love Bugs (a game we play to see who can count up the most Volkswagon Buggies) to Love Bunnies. We'll have to review this version a little more.
Our hosts are very nice. Lisa was the first we met because she picked us up from the airport. She is quieter, but a nice gal. Josh is more outgoing, and also very... nice. I'm not particularly good at coming up with alternate words for nice. Pretty much people who talk, are friendly (oh friendly is a good one), and generally try to be hospitable are what I think of as nice, and these two definitely fit that description.
This will be our second full day here. We are getting dropped off at the mall and starting to drop off our resumes. We were going to head into a denser business area to drop them off today, but the weather turned sour so we decided to go to the mall and hang out in that general area while dropping them off. Hopefully everything goes well!
Bye reader

The Airport

So we made it!  We're in Sioux Falls and goodness, was it a trip!  We had two long lay overs from OR to SD; Seattle and Minneapolis.  We loved the Seattle airport.  It was it's own mall that you could wait in until your next flight.  There were tons of places to eat, so we picked up some fish n' chips and then looked at all the interesting hanging decorations and stores.  

The Minneapolis airport was huge.  I don't think we took any pictures there (except for the Snoopy ones), but it was pretty awesome going around on all the mini-carts and taking the indoor subway/tram/thing to the other part of the airport.  When we were in Seattle we discovered a lifesaver!  Those little carts you pay like three bucks to use for as long as you want to carry all your luggage.  It made looking around a lot easier in the Minneapolis airport especially.

Anyway, I'll pop in later with more sometime but I'm exhausted and I just wanted to slap up a link to the pictures.

Click here to see the pictures we took!

This is what Awesome Looks Like!

Went to the black light party in the quad with Jared, Derek, and Sierra for just a short bit.  I'm really tired now.  Jared and I had gone to a movie earlier in the day and so we were both tired before the dance.  We only stayed like 30 minutes but it was fun nonetheless.

Click here to see the pictures we took!

Exploring for Venues

Jared and I went out to Moore Park to take pictures.  We're pretty sure we're going to get married there.  The whole area is beautiful and open... plus there's a playground!

Check out the photos I took!

Spring Break '09 Pics

If you want to see more pics from the Break, copy and paste (or click on?) the link below:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=xcaliber188&target=ALBUM&id=5318293776779716945&authkey=Gv1sRgCODhhZHcppyqmAE&feat=email