Finals are over. I passed all my classes. Jason passed his. Alisabeth survived and we are one semester closer to normality.
Our garden is going crazy. We have squash and zuccini coming from every direction. We were able to harvest a few tomatos this week, and we got quite a bit of lettuce from the Raybon's side of the world.
This week was also a blast because we were able to (finally) make the special pork that Rose had taught us almost a month ago. It turned out okay the first night, but since I had started marinading way too much pork we also had it the next day for dinner and it was REALLY nice the second day.
So what I have learned, leave it marinading overnight, cook it for the full 4 hours. It takes an entire day to make everything, but it's beyond worth it at the end, and finally, the black beans are okay, but they aren't amazing, so that one can be skipped, just not anything else. :)
Jason also have a great opportunity to be part of a church meeting at the local retirement home. It was a great experience he said. The faith of those people, even some who weren't completely there anymore was amazing. They bore their testimonies and read scripture and partook of the sacrament and it was very neat.
Alisabeth has been learning a lot this week too. She's very clear when she sings "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder. . . ." but then it's all a garbled mess. She can also do "TUV" and "Hello, hello, HELLO, HELLO" from the primary songs. She can say her ABC's up to the letter g pretty clearly and she is about 75% understandable when she's talking to you. (general meaning that is). We're excited for her to meet the family.
We also had the opportunity to learn a new way of working with her this week. She had an amazingly bad rash which had spread beyond control. I took her in and we were prescribed an antibiotic because the doctor thought it might be bacterial. I finally got the perscription filled almost a week later due to Medicaid's restrictions, (but that's another story) and we were able to use it on her.
Diaper changes had become a screaming battle by this point, but as she cried and I tried to sooth her I began to put the cream on and said "Bye Bye ouchie, bye bye." she picked up on this after another minute or two and began to repeat it slowing her tears.
By the next diaper change it was definitely improving. This time I took out the cream and she started saying "Bye bye ouchie, bye bye" and preparing herself for the pain. She didn't cry again.
The same idea works for a lot of other things we've found. Coming inside after playing was a huge battle, but now we say "Bye Bye Grass, bye bye stroller, bye bye ball" and she repeats it and it okay with going inside. It was very interesting and very cool to watch.
We leave on Wednesday!!!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
It begins
I was having such difficulty focussing this last week. I managed to keep it together for our final group project in my capstone class. I also managed to study enough to feel confident about my BIO lab final, but seriously, other than that, it's been pretty embarrassing.
I got 80% on my last quiz and can only hope that I'll do better than that on the final.
But, despite all of the stress with school I was able to relax this week. We had our anniversary two weeks ago and I don't think I mentioned that. It was enjoyable. We went out to a closing social for the automotive department and got a free dinner. Then we rented a couple of books and started reading together. We also went shopping (window shopping that is).
This week's main events included defeating a necromancer and stalking our friends.
(We invited ourselves over to friend's houses several times this week, which was fun.)
The necromancer thing was a blast. We've been working on this adventure for about 6 weeks. Ever week we find a few more clues about who he is and why he's trying to destroy the world.
This time we stumbled upon his location and went to investigate. After expending most of his energy to raise some titan skeletons he was sleeping through the night. He had only a few skeletons guarding his chambers and the rest of his minions out on the surrounding small islands. We came up the canal and Jason used his spell of "spider walk" so that our smallest member could climb the walls and get a good look inside at the hostages (who happened to be the necromancer's family).
She was able to go in and help them unbarricade the door so that they could escape while we cast another spell on the skeletons that were guarding his room and ordered them downstairs.
Meanwhile a large group of Arabian Samarias began a frontal assault on the surrounding islands for a diversion. Once we had safely released the hostages we had our theif pick the lock and our ranger stole inside the room and quickly stabbed the necromancer through the heart. Unfortunately for us this merely ticked him off. The two things that ended up saving our pitiful lives were 1) When he threw a fireball at us Jason cast an amazing spell which changed the fire into smoke. Thus we were all blinded for a minute, but we were not charred, so this was positive. The second thing was that the necromancr had begun the process of turning himself into an undead creature, so when another member of our party with a special weapon stabbed at him it sapped his evil energy as well as his undead lifeforce and in his weakened condition he died. If we had merely killed him he would have simply become undead and we would have been facing a more powerful foe, so this was a really good thing.
After we took care of the necromancer we cleaned out the rest of the house by slaughtering 17 zombies, and washed down the courtyard with holy water. We were specifically instructed not to destroy the house, and so we didn't, however, the owner had quite a mess to clean up anyway. . . at least she still had her life.
All in all it was a good adventure. . . we never should have won against the necromancer which means that we all gained enough experience from that battle to become level five (after just barely leveling up last week).
We also did games at the Walker's house. We played battle of the sexes which turned out to be "stump everyone in the room" and quickly disolved into Sorry. I haven't played that game in forever. We started out by being the first out and the first to return home. Then we were kicked back into start again by another good friend. After that we merely flipped cards while the other two couples moved around the board. We wanted them to feel confident. When they were completely at ease we sprang rushing our way around the board with only a few more setbacks to win the game. It was quite fun. They also had some amazing guacamole dip and salsa.
This week's schedule: 3 finals for me, 1 for Jason. All of this should be compelted by Tuesday. . . Thursday at the latest. We're throwing a going away party for several of our friends who are graduating or transfering after this semester on Wednesday and then that night we're going on our last adventure as a team. After this Franklin will be leaving and we'll be going on vacation . .. :(
that gives us from Thursday to Wednesday to get our house cleaned and in order before we leave for Tucson. (I'm a little excited, I'm not gunna lie.)
I got 80% on my last quiz and can only hope that I'll do better than that on the final.
But, despite all of the stress with school I was able to relax this week. We had our anniversary two weeks ago and I don't think I mentioned that. It was enjoyable. We went out to a closing social for the automotive department and got a free dinner. Then we rented a couple of books and started reading together. We also went shopping (window shopping that is).
This week's main events included defeating a necromancer and stalking our friends.
(We invited ourselves over to friend's houses several times this week, which was fun.)
The necromancer thing was a blast. We've been working on this adventure for about 6 weeks. Ever week we find a few more clues about who he is and why he's trying to destroy the world.
This time we stumbled upon his location and went to investigate. After expending most of his energy to raise some titan skeletons he was sleeping through the night. He had only a few skeletons guarding his chambers and the rest of his minions out on the surrounding small islands. We came up the canal and Jason used his spell of "spider walk" so that our smallest member could climb the walls and get a good look inside at the hostages (who happened to be the necromancer's family).
She was able to go in and help them unbarricade the door so that they could escape while we cast another spell on the skeletons that were guarding his room and ordered them downstairs.
Meanwhile a large group of Arabian Samarias began a frontal assault on the surrounding islands for a diversion. Once we had safely released the hostages we had our theif pick the lock and our ranger stole inside the room and quickly stabbed the necromancer through the heart. Unfortunately for us this merely ticked him off. The two things that ended up saving our pitiful lives were 1) When he threw a fireball at us Jason cast an amazing spell which changed the fire into smoke. Thus we were all blinded for a minute, but we were not charred, so this was positive. The second thing was that the necromancr had begun the process of turning himself into an undead creature, so when another member of our party with a special weapon stabbed at him it sapped his evil energy as well as his undead lifeforce and in his weakened condition he died. If we had merely killed him he would have simply become undead and we would have been facing a more powerful foe, so this was a really good thing.
After we took care of the necromancer we cleaned out the rest of the house by slaughtering 17 zombies, and washed down the courtyard with holy water. We were specifically instructed not to destroy the house, and so we didn't, however, the owner had quite a mess to clean up anyway. . . at least she still had her life.
All in all it was a good adventure. . . we never should have won against the necromancer which means that we all gained enough experience from that battle to become level five (after just barely leveling up last week).
We also did games at the Walker's house. We played battle of the sexes which turned out to be "stump everyone in the room" and quickly disolved into Sorry. I haven't played that game in forever. We started out by being the first out and the first to return home. Then we were kicked back into start again by another good friend. After that we merely flipped cards while the other two couples moved around the board. We wanted them to feel confident. When they were completely at ease we sprang rushing our way around the board with only a few more setbacks to win the game. It was quite fun. They also had some amazing guacamole dip and salsa.
This week's schedule: 3 finals for me, 1 for Jason. All of this should be compelted by Tuesday. . . Thursday at the latest. We're throwing a going away party for several of our friends who are graduating or transfering after this semester on Wednesday and then that night we're going on our last adventure as a team. After this Franklin will be leaving and we'll be going on vacation . .. :(
that gives us from Thursday to Wednesday to get our house cleaned and in order before we leave for Tucson. (I'm a little excited, I'm not gunna lie.)
Friday, July 17, 2009
Special Mid-week Post
This post is a shout out to an amazing friend who willingly shares a wonderful talent with the world.
Hopefully it will make up to the late post this week and probably several missing posts while we're gone in August.
THANKS MEGAN!!!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
You would not believe!
So, last week they told us they were going to be doing a two hour system update on Friday night which would require them to close the testing center early and would turn off the internet around campus until 8 am Saturday morning.
Saturday morning we were told the update was delayed until 2 pm. At 3:15 pm they let us know that the update was delayed until 9pm. After that they didn't bother sending us any more messaged and ignored our phone calls. FINALLY, today, 4 days later we have our internet again.
Thanks guys.
Meanwhile I was unable to even get the email about the chapter outlines that were due today, or any of the other 27 emails in my byu mail account. I was also not able to get the case study for my capstone class and I especially wasn't able to do any of the preparations with my group for the project we have on Thursday. . . thanks guys.
But despite all that I've remained happy and satisfied. Probably because I know there is no longer any way for me to get an F in any of my classes so I have to pass now :)
Sry for the short post I had a little more but the videos are refusing to load and have been for two days. I'll try again next week.
Love ya all.
Saturday morning we were told the update was delayed until 2 pm. At 3:15 pm they let us know that the update was delayed until 9pm. After that they didn't bother sending us any more messaged and ignored our phone calls. FINALLY, today, 4 days later we have our internet again.
Thanks guys.
Meanwhile I was unable to even get the email about the chapter outlines that were due today, or any of the other 27 emails in my byu mail account. I was also not able to get the case study for my capstone class and I especially wasn't able to do any of the preparations with my group for the project we have on Thursday. . . thanks guys.
But despite all that I've remained happy and satisfied. Probably because I know there is no longer any way for me to get an F in any of my classes so I have to pass now :)
Sry for the short post I had a little more but the videos are refusing to load and have been for two days. I'll try again next week.
Love ya all.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
4th of July week.
This was a fun week and with four days off from school we were able to relax a lot without the stress of doing any homework :) I'm sure it will catch up with us on Monday :(
Alisabeth has found that she really enjoys wrestling and rocking in her rocking chair. In both things she gets a little overzealous at times. We manage to have fun too.
We had the Raybons over for food and games on Friday evening and Paige found that she enjoys stuffing herself into small spaces and taking twirls on our computer chair. Watch her eyes closely at the end of the video. It was hilarious.
Saturday morning we went to the Rexburg parade and enjoyed our time immensely. Alisabeth got candy and chocolate milk from some of he entrants. It was nice. Right after that we headed up to the dam again to enjoy time with the neighbors and their family.
This is a before and after of the trip to the dam. Isn't she beautiful when she's sleeping?
Between hotdogs, fruit, the juciest watermelon I've ever had, and finishing naptime we really enjoyed the warm summer day. We ended up staying there until about 4 oclock.
After that we returned home and got invited almost immediately to a barbeque by the Raybons.
When we finished eating we decided to leave the boys at home to clean up the mess and we ran to the "Red Box" and got a movie and some fireworks to celebrate the fourth. By the time we got home they were just arriving from cleanup duty.
We decided to set everything off right away because the babies were getting ready for bed and we thought they might enjoy it. We were right. They enjoyed it so much that Jason and Brian went back and spent our life savings on another couple of sets.
We were soon joined by several neighbors and spent about 2 hours setting of sparklers and other assorted goodies.
After that Alisabeth begged to be put to sleep and we were able to start the movie and enjoy life. . .until we realized that it was almost 11 oclock already.
The only other thing of excitement for me was that I got to teach the lesson in church this sunday. I always enjoy teaching and it was a really neat lesson on keeping our lives focussed on the Truth that God teaches us without allowing ourselves to be distracted by satan or the influences of the world.
Also we played D&D again. . . finally . . . It was a good round. We took out two gelatinous cubes and a bunch of ghouls who had been created by a ghast. I finally reached level 4 too which means I can add a few new spells to my repertoire. Jason did really well this round too. He decided to play his character and tried spells rather than combat (because sorcerers just aren't meant to do hand-to-hand fighting) unfortunately for him he was touched by a ghoul and ended up frozen in place anyway. I stepped in and protected his inert body until we could defeat the remaining villians and then we were able to unparalyze him.
Jason has had some horrible gas this week, he has also had alergies, but despite all of that he has continued to enjoy his physics class. He was able to look at my chicken cordon bleu recipe and decided that it reminds him of the Gospel of Christ because there are a variety of ways that it can be prepared, just like we are each unique while still being good, yet there are some constants that we must do, like having the "heat" of Christ keep us at the right temperature so that we turn out all right, otherwise we're raw and gross and make people sick.
He was also able to go to the temple to do some work for his family and felt really good about that.
Alisabeth is also growing in leaps and bounds. She seems to completely understand everything we've been telling her. She says please and thank you (usually). She also comes when you call her, fetches books or toys and is getting prepared to be a great big sister. Jason spent the afternoon with her in the school gardens where they picked a few nice picture locations.
Oh, and our first tomato is ripening as we speak. It's nice and red and we're just waiting for it to become ripe!!!! We're very excited about that. The rest of the garden is doing amazingly. I never knew what potatoe plants looked like, they're huge!
We'll take pictures this next week so you can compare them to a few weeks ago. There's a huge difference.
No science fact this week since we didn't have class and I haven't been able to open my book all week.
Alisabeth has found that she really enjoys wrestling and rocking in her rocking chair. In both things she gets a little overzealous at times. We manage to have fun too.
We had the Raybons over for food and games on Friday evening and Paige found that she enjoys stuffing herself into small spaces and taking twirls on our computer chair. Watch her eyes closely at the end of the video. It was hilarious.
Saturday morning we went to the Rexburg parade and enjoyed our time immensely. Alisabeth got candy and chocolate milk from some of he entrants. It was nice. Right after that we headed up to the dam again to enjoy time with the neighbors and their family.
This is a before and after of the trip to the dam. Isn't she beautiful when she's sleeping?
Between hotdogs, fruit, the juciest watermelon I've ever had, and finishing naptime we really enjoyed the warm summer day. We ended up staying there until about 4 oclock.
After that we returned home and got invited almost immediately to a barbeque by the Raybons.
When we finished eating we decided to leave the boys at home to clean up the mess and we ran to the "Red Box" and got a movie and some fireworks to celebrate the fourth. By the time we got home they were just arriving from cleanup duty.
We decided to set everything off right away because the babies were getting ready for bed and we thought they might enjoy it. We were right. They enjoyed it so much that Jason and Brian went back and spent our life savings on another couple of sets.
We were soon joined by several neighbors and spent about 2 hours setting of sparklers and other assorted goodies.
After that Alisabeth begged to be put to sleep and we were able to start the movie and enjoy life. . .until we realized that it was almost 11 oclock already.
The only other thing of excitement for me was that I got to teach the lesson in church this sunday. I always enjoy teaching and it was a really neat lesson on keeping our lives focussed on the Truth that God teaches us without allowing ourselves to be distracted by satan or the influences of the world.
Also we played D&D again. . . finally . . . It was a good round. We took out two gelatinous cubes and a bunch of ghouls who had been created by a ghast. I finally reached level 4 too which means I can add a few new spells to my repertoire. Jason did really well this round too. He decided to play his character and tried spells rather than combat (because sorcerers just aren't meant to do hand-to-hand fighting) unfortunately for him he was touched by a ghoul and ended up frozen in place anyway. I stepped in and protected his inert body until we could defeat the remaining villians and then we were able to unparalyze him.
Jason has had some horrible gas this week, he has also had alergies, but despite all of that he has continued to enjoy his physics class. He was able to look at my chicken cordon bleu recipe and decided that it reminds him of the Gospel of Christ because there are a variety of ways that it can be prepared, just like we are each unique while still being good, yet there are some constants that we must do, like having the "heat" of Christ keep us at the right temperature so that we turn out all right, otherwise we're raw and gross and make people sick.
He was also able to go to the temple to do some work for his family and felt really good about that.
Alisabeth is also growing in leaps and bounds. She seems to completely understand everything we've been telling her. She says please and thank you (usually). She also comes when you call her, fetches books or toys and is getting prepared to be a great big sister. Jason spent the afternoon with her in the school gardens where they picked a few nice picture locations.
Oh, and our first tomato is ripening as we speak. It's nice and red and we're just waiting for it to become ripe!!!! We're very excited about that. The rest of the garden is doing amazingly. I never knew what potatoe plants looked like, they're huge!
We'll take pictures this next week so you can compare them to a few weeks ago. There's a huge difference.
No science fact this week since we didn't have class and I haven't been able to open my book all week.
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