Curiosity

Most people seem curious what is actually going on with Tyson being gone.

So, I'll explain.

Tyson's in his fourth year of medical school. He plans on being a radiologist. Right now he's in the process of sending out applications for residency programs. He needs to send in his application, get an interview, and then he ranks where he wants 1 to however many. Then the residency program people rank HIM on their scales depending on how much they want him there. Then a computer puts everything into a system where it magically pops up with a "match" for the best placements.

All others who don't "match" have to "scramble". The student is then responsible for finding openings to programs by themselves whereever openings are available.

Right now Tyson is travelling around to a bunch of places he feels are good possibilities for residencies. He pretty much wants to show his face to the residency people to make a good impression and show that he really does want to go to their program. He's doing this from now until interviews are being held so he can be fresh in their mind when they are looking through applications.

Therefore, he's out and about trying to make a good impression and seeing if he likes their programs while I'm living in my parent's house (they are on a mission but my sister also lives here in the upstairs and I occupy the downstairs).

*phew*

Hope I got all that right....and it made sense.

He first went to Kansas City....now he's in Tuscan, AZ....followed by Mesa, AZ...then to Peoria, IL.

Answers to questions I often get asked...

Q: Do I get to see Tyson during all this time he's away?
A: No...not really, unless you count Skype. There is one week in October he'll be able to come home and I may be able to travel out there for a week in October as well.

Q: Am I dying without a husband around?
A: I'm OK for one reason....family. I have family around me that keep me busy and help me out. Without them, I would be one sad and lonely wife. But I do still miss him.

Q: When does he come back? Will he go out travelling later?
A: He is done with away rotations November 30. After that he's pretty much doing rotations in either Provo or Salt Lake with the exception of two months in St. George...where me and the kids will be packing up and going with him.

Q: Wait...when is the baby due?
A: December 2 (two days after Tyson comes home). I'm probably the only pregnant person who HOPES to make it clear to my due date. I'd prefer no sooner or else Tyson won't be there. But at the same time, I've already got it in my head that he may not be there for the birth of baby #3...and I'm OK with that.

Q: Is it hard living with family?
A: There are a few negatives of course but the positives BY FAR outweigh the negatives. I'm so glad that my family is around and that I can always take a short car ride to see Tyson's family as well. I love both families and they are a blessing and miracle in my life.

And now for something less serious....some videos of the kiddos.  I had a few more videos that I thought were funny but for some reason they didn't come through on the email I sent them to.  So...as I tell my kids, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.  :)

Eden learning to ride a bike.  She needs to work on speed.  Then again, she's my girl who always tells me "slow and steady wins the race".

Leila strolling her cousin Ramona around.

Temple Trip and Ballet

Life's been good.

I think I sometimes don't show that in my posts as much as I should.

Tyson's away....but we're surviving and getting into a better routine around here.

Plus, Eden started ballet...and a girl couldn't be happier.

Well, I guess she wishes we did ballet EVERY DAY...but other than that she couldn't be happier.

She became only a little worried about the day before ballet and right before we went to her first class, "What if my teacher is mean?", "I don't have that hair thing in my hair and I need to have it.", "What if nobody else looks like me?"....

Seems that none of those worries needed to be worried about.  She exclaimed after that her teacher was very nice and not mean.  I think there was only one other girl with that little bun holder in her hair (and the only reason Eden didn't wear hers was because it wouldn't stay in her hair with such little hair in it).  And the funniest thing was that she DEFINITELY fit in with her class (besides the fact that they all needed to wear matching uniforms to class).  Who would have thought, 2/3 of the other students were either Asian or half Asian.  Who would have thought, huh?  I mean, of course not that I'm playing the side of "all Asians look the same"...but there was even one girl there who Eden said, "Mom...she looks like me." and I admit that it was hard to tell them apart sometimes during the practice....

The other happy event was being able to see the Brigham City Temple open house.  Some Grand Junction friends of mine were passing through and wanted to stop there.  So, we were invited to go and see the temple as well as spend some time with them and their kids.  We went out for lunch and played at the park.  It really was amazing.  I love that my children LOVE the temple.  And for their bedtime song they wanted "I Love to See the Temple".  Very fitting.

Tyson's been feeling better about his rotations, interviews, etc.  He finished a test, has had good experiences, and is feeling more confident about interviews and getting into a radiology program.

Things are good.  We are happy.

Except...still no baby name....

Good Times, Good Times

We've had lots of good times.

I haven't blogged as much as I planned because I've been having internet troubles and an unsolved mystery involving my camera and pictures that I swear were taken but are yet to be found....

Things are settling down (at least a little).  Tyson did a rotation in Kansas City but has now made his way to Tuscan, Arizona for another four-week rotation.  I was planning on driving out to visit him when he ends up going to Mesa, Arizona in October but I'm starting to wonder if my preg-o body can handle such a trip....

Unfortunately I think we need to cancel that trip.  But Tyson does get one week off in October where he plans to fly out and see us.  Then of course go back Mesa, followed by Peoria, Illinois.  Then HOME SWEET HOME.  *sigh*

Eden and Leila are quite the bundles of joy (and frustration at times, I'll admit).  Eden's developed a love for Barbies and practically anything that is extremely girly.  Leila's my little drama where everything is exaggerated from, "I love you much mommy dear!" to "Eden share...NEVER NEVER NEVER!"  And whenever she talks to Tyson on Skype she says, "Daddy...pick up me!"  And Tyson always wishes he could just pick her up and hold her.

Eden is starting ballet class this week.  She's so excited!  There is nothing she wants more than to be graceful like a ballerina while wearing those pretty skirts and leotards.  I'm interested to see how much she likes it and how well she does.

I'm pregnant-er and pregnant-er as the days go by.  I thought about taking a preg-o picture of me to share, but I never got around to it.  I'm just glad to see the weather cool down a bit.  *ahhh*  But I do still feel sick, mostly in the morning after breakfast.  And depending on what I eat for dinner I often get some form of heartburn at night.  I haven't had too many cravings as of lately (although I had plenty of cravings earlier on). And we still don't have a name picked out....although as my labor day activity I ended up taking a poll of our list-o-names and asking family their tops.  But in the end, we aren't THRILLED about any of the names, so we may end up throwing the list out altogether.  We'll see.

Well, that's the scoop.  Hopefully the internet is kind enough to let me blog more and I can figure out the case of the missing camera pictures.

My Bad...

I wrote that I was 34 weeks pregnant....

Its not true...

I'm 24 weeks pregnant....

My bad.

Its All Craziness

My DEEPEST apologizes for my lack of posting.

I'm always bad about posting when I go to Utah to visit

...but now I LIVE here...so I can't make that excuse.

But I have been extremely busy.  Family fun makes for a busy summer!

I haven't been very good at taking pictures but I've tried to repent...and to PROVE that its been a busy summer, here are pictures of what we've been up to the past two weeks.

Backyard camp outs.

 Swimming lessons and playing at the pool.

 Thanksgiving Point Gardens

 Shopping.

 The Farm

...and ice cream parties

But that's not including general fun with cousins, Parade of Homes, dinosaur museum, bounce house parties, and garage sales.

(Pssst....if it looks like I'm rich being able to do all these activities...think again.  The only thing that cost money were the swim lessons.  We had free two-day Thanksgiving Point passes for the gardens, farm, and museum.  I only go window shopping while my sister is ACTUALLY shopping.  We were asked to help with some advertising from a lady in our ward who owns Sub Zero ice cream and in return gave us free arcade games and ice cream.  I was given the Parade of Homes ticket.  And my sister was hosting the bounce house party at her house which equipment was from her in-laws.)

Its been busy.

Perhaps TOO busy.

I'm working on getting life back together...back to normal.  You know...where my kids go to bed before 10:00, I eat my own food instead of stealing food from either my sister upstairs or my in-laws, and we actually have time to sit at home and relaxing.

At least that's MY dream, the kids probably think this lifestyle is a blast.

But I'm not the only busy one around here.

Poor Tyson.

He's now in Kansas City again doing work, work, work.  He's been just as busy as I have, so it seems.  Its been sad to not have him around, but I must say that both my family and Tyson's family make it a lot less lonely without him around.  But he's been doing good and seems to have already made a good impression on the people of KU.  So, that's positive.

Well, life has been crazy and fun.  I owe a lot of thanks to all my family that have been awesome about housing, feeding, and loving our little family.

And last thing...baby is doing well.  Baby #3 is also Girl #3.  We are excited but are far from picking out a name.  I'm 34 weeks along and the baby is about a foot long.  She loves to kick.  And I can tell that she's definitely grown in size by how how much harder she's kicking and the size of my belly.  Symptoms are low, cravings are high.  We are all doing great!

4th of July

We had a good old time here out in Grand Junction on the fourth of July (granted we didn't have any friends or family around, weren't able to have a BBQ, and fireworks weren't allowed due to fires...)

Hey, we still enjoyed ourselves.

I told Eden all about Independence Day and what the holiday was all about.  We even did a little craft where we made a little George Washington from a toilet paper roll.  I wish I took a picture of the actual one Eden made...but it was basically the same, just colored in lots of blue and red stripes and I believe his hair was orange.

For breakfast we had waffles with whipped cream and then I decorated them with blueberries and raspberries to look like a flag.

We went to Wally World and bought ourselves some red and blue ribbons to put in the girl's hair as well as little flags for them to carry around.

Eden went around telling EVERYONE "Happy Independence Day!"

And later on we went to the downtown parade.  I'm pretty amazed how many people showed up for such a small parade.  And by small, I mean REALLY small.  "Downtown" is such a small street that there were a few LITTLE floats to pass by but there weren't any marching bands or motorcycle cops.  Didn't quite seem like a parade without those.

The most excitement and cheering came when a mini trailer-looking float with rugged guys holding guns came riding down with a sign for the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms.

The quietest the parade got was when the democrats (all 3 of them) came marching down the road.

But the girls were cute as ever.  Eden was so excited to wear red, white and blue.

 And I tried to do something fun with Eden's hair.  I turned out good in the end.

And I had to give Leila a few little ribbons in her hair as well.

Overall, it was fun.  Nothing super exciting, but fun.

Camping at Oowah Lake

Friends invited us to go camping with them overnight outside of Moab.  Oh...a little camping trip was EXACTLY what we needed.

Although, we have a serious lack of pictures.

You know the camping trip was awesome when the kids are dead asleep on the trip home.

 Here's Leila playing under our picnic table.  She LOVED being in the dirt all day long. It never took long for her clothes to become completely covered with dirt.

And here's a little video showing the campground.  You have to look closely at Leila's belly, the main reason we took the video.  Her white shirt is completely BLACK in front because of the dirt.

Its not the best video...but I was so excited that a video actually worked on my blog that I can't help but post it.

We had lots of fun on our short little trip.  We went boating and swimming (as much as we could handle the cold), ate tin foil dinners and s'mores, went on a small hike around the "lake" that looked more like a large pond, and just had fun with friends.  Oh, not to mention that we stopped at a place after in Moab that has the most delicious snow cones known to man....Tropical Ice?  I think that was the name....maybe.

It was so good to get Eden out in the dirt.  Before she came on the trip she doubted my sanity when I told her that we would swim in the lake....she thought it was too dirty and probably disease ridden.  When we got there, she was MORTIFIED at the idea of the outhouse and decided peeing in the trees was a MUCH better option (which I probably would agree).  She also didn't like the idea of getting dirty or eating food with a little bit of fire burned edges.  It took a bit, but by the end she loved it and keeps telling us that we need to go back.


Leila caught on to life in the wild really quickly.  Minutes after getting there Tyson was so proud to see that Leila had already searched out two big rocks and was happily banging them together.  Although she did FALL quite a few times and got lots of little scratches all over her face...and she probably ate more dirt than food in the end.

Hillary and Shad were the friends who invited us on the camp out.  Their little 3 year old is good friends with Eden and Leila loves little baby Claire.  We'll miss them dearly when we leave Grand Junction.