Happy Birthday Mom!

Yesterday, September 28th, was my mom’s birthday! I’ll spare her from citing her age, but not from posting some fun pictures from the past (mom, don’t hate me!)

Here are just some of the reasons I think this woman rocks:

1) Though she values cleanliness, she has a pretty high tolerance for kids’ messes. What would my childhood have been like without playdough creations, liquid spray chalk, rose petal clay, watercolor painting, and accidental quadruple batches of no-bake cookies? She has a quiet motto: “A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.”

(and here’s evidence that making messes has always been my forte. Just ask my husband. I’m pretty sure that he and my mom should sympathize together…for the past years that she endured and the future years that he will have to.)




2) She helped me develop habits that define me today. For example, she taught me to read, to dress modestly, to eat healthy, to exercise, to pray.





3) When I think of beautiful flowers and plants, I think about my mom. She loves gardening and she can grow anything. Family members often give her their dying plants (which she grows into the size of small trees…that grow too big for one pot…that then turn into several pots…that then take over the living room. But that’s another story). Roses, peas, zucchini, peppers, you name it, she’s grown it. When I was younger, each child got to have a rectangular plot in the backyard and I have such good memories of picking out “smelly” plants (mint, lemon, and green apple) and watching them grow.

4) She is a devoted mother. I’m so happy that my mom was home when I got home from school, that she came to almost all my choir concerts, sport events, spelling bees, etc. That she stayed up late at night to help me study. I’m grateful that she guided me in the right direction and told me when I was doing something wrong, but also to a certain extent, allowed me to make choices and learn from my mistakes.

(P.S. is anyone else disturbed by the fact that my parents look 15 years old in this picture?):

To sum it all up, and this may sound weird…I’ve decided that she has similar properties of Elmer’s glue. I’m sure she sometimes feels invisible, but really she is the key substance that holds our family together.

Happy Birthday Mom!

May you have more relaxing days like this :)

Confessions.

*I left a pen in my scrubs top pocket and consequently, our white clothing came out of the dryer splotched with blue. Again.

*I recently realized that I left my lunch box at school last week. If it’s not lost, I really hope its contents--the remnants of my chili and sour cream baked potato--are.

*I bought The Hunger Games on Friday night and finished the third book today.



*The other night, I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to hear the baby’s heartbeat with my stethoscope. After I’ve been making fun of Pete all these weeks. Turns out I was right…it doesn’t work.

*I haven’t done the prep reading for tomorrow’s class yet.

*Today I felt an extreme moral need to consume veggies and actually had to pep talk myself through two raw carrots.

*I had to drive to every corner of Provo today looking for black gel food coloring. And then I may have gotten a hopefully-not-permanent stain on my countertop.

*Last week I ate potatoes for four days in a row. And I loved it. And I want more.

*I got a speeding ticket about a month ago and completely forgot about how I was supposed to go to Traffic School last Saturday (for which I paid $40 extra on top of the ticket).

*This morning after brushing my hair, I realized that my hair felt kind of gritty. Then I noticed the toothpaste on my hairbrush. (HOW did that happen?!)

Really, I sometimes wonder how I make it through the day.

On the bright side…Pete seemed to merely laugh at the blue splotched under clothing (is that not incredible?). I might be able to retrieve the lunchbox in the lost and found; now that I finished the third book in the Hunger Games series, normal life can resume; I get to buy a new hairbrush; my black and white spider-web frosted cookies look AWESOME; my sleep schedule will be adequately thrown off to ease me into my night shift on Friday, and as follow-up to the carrots…I actually ate a (potato-free) green salad for dinner tonight and loved it. What do ya know? After a brief first trimester retreat, the veggies may be making a comeback.

As evidenced by this picture (not).





And just for fun...here's me freezing in my apartment (because my husband prefers an arctic climate) doing hundreds of practice ATI questions.



I promise...my next post will be a more positive one :)


(Good thing I have an extra scrub top!)

This week...

A glorious bout of allergies decided to grace my life, just in time for classes to start. After a night filled with sneezing and nose blowing, I was prepared to give my new teachers a wonderful first impression of me…sitting in the back row, roll of toilet paper on my desk, blowing my nose every 10 minutes. Let me tell you, it was great. I loved explaining to all my classmates “No, I’m not crying, I have allergies."

This is pretty much what I looked like all day long:

All sarcasm and joking aside, it really wasn’t that bad—and after class one of my teachers told me “I figured either you had allergies or you were just showing emotion about how happy you are to be in this class.”

Since that lovely Wednesday, I’ve improved immensely (although I’ll admit I’m on my second roll of TP now) and only blow my nose a few times a day. It’s probably a good thing I went through my first day of classes in a sleep-deprived haze of snot and watery eyes. I was not even capable of becoming stressed out and overwhelmed as I learned about the workload of the semester. It will be a lot of work, but I definitely feel like it’s do-able. I came to class having read my syllabi and already had a good idea of what was expected of me this semester. There weren’t too many surprises and I’m feeling all ready to get through this last semester!

Yesterday, feeling as though the allergy meds were finally kicking in, I decided to go to the BYU vs. University of Washington football game with Pete, Eric Hoyt, his girlfriend Lauren, and Nichole Jensen—a friend from Washington.

I must pause in the story to interject something.
And this is kind of embarrassing.
I hadn’t been to a BYU football game since my freshman year of college 4 years ago!

Even more embarrassing, at that game 4 years ago, I left the stadium early on in the game because amidst the screaming fans, canons blasting, and obnoxious music, my roommate and I were falling asleep on our hard bleacher seats. Yep.
(In our defense, we had just worked the night shift--frosting donuts for BYU Dining Services).

Anyway, there’s a glimpse into how I’ve been neglecting some essential BYU experiences over the years. So, keeping in line with my “finding joy in the journey” theme, I went to the game on Saturday.

Now, for Pete and his brother Eric, this was not just any old BYU game. They grew up in Washington, in the same small town as Jake Locker, U of W’s quarterback. Eric went to school with Jake, and while the Hoyts would cheer for BYU any other day, U of W is just a bit dearer to their hearts. I thought long and hard about which team I was going to support (okay, not really that long or that hard) and cautiously broke the news to Pete that I would be wearing a BYU shirt to the game. I couldn’t root for U of W simply because they happen to be Pete’s favorite. Luckily, Pete took it pretty well and we're still friends :)

Pete and I ended up getting some odd looks and even the comment “interesting combination,” as we walked hand in hand to the football game.

Then before I knew it, I was a lonely blue sitting in the midst of a sea of purple in the visitors section of the BYU stadium. Luckily, I had made sure that Lauren was wearing a BYU shirt to the game and we made sure to sit by each other. Whew. The fans were pretty nice, and the old guy sitting in front of me wasn’t too bad. After U of W scored their first touchdown he stood up and turned to give me a high five, then disgustedly noticed my BYU shirt. Pete gracefully intercepted the high five and smoothed things over by telling him something about the seats being cheaper (which was definitely NOT true). The older guys sitting behind us were nice and jokey. When the fans stood up to cheer for Washington, the guy sitting behind me and Lauren gently nudged us up to our feet and said “C’mon girls! You didn’t think this would be easy, didya?!” All in all, it turned out fine. Me and Lauren stayed true to the blue and got to our feet to cheer when BYU scored. It just so happens that BYU won!

Also, to completely change the subject, here’s some ooey gooey cinnamon rolls Pete and I made recently! They were very tasty and it was so fun making them together. I think we did alright for our first time.

Normally I don’t have enough butter on hand to make Pete’s mom's legendary recipe, but surprisingly we did today. Although reading the nutrition facts might cause a heart attack quicker than eating them will, they are seriously the best cinnamon rolls ever! Melt in your mouth. And they remind me of Christmas, because that’s the last time I had them, at Pete’s house. Thanks Golda for giving us the yummy recipe!

To change the subject again...I just went to my 12-week appointment at the Midwife clinic this past week. It was so fun to hear the baby's heartbeat! I took Pete with me so that he could hear it too. I was hoping it would kick this new phase he's in of trying to hear the baby's heartbeat.
Like every night.
With my stethoscope.
Even though I tell him that will not work.
Not for quite a while.

Until then, Pete has resorted to tapping out morse code on my stomach.

Life is good :)