The first major accident

So here's a play by play of the trip. We are having a great time. My fear of being ready to go home early has not materialized. I think we've been able to visit and balance with everyone. It's been great so far.

These were from the stop in between Idaho and our first stop. It's someplace in Utah.

Jason saw his future car so we had to snap a few pictures. I tried to get a closer one, but it's kind of hard to do going 80 on a three lane highway. :)

We finally got to Jason's grandparents house and she walked right in and took the place over. It helped a lot that they had a piano and stuffed animals/dolls everywhere.
We didn't stay long, but we enjoyed our time immensely.

When we got to Tucson Jason took Alisabeth and let me crash. Neither of us slept the entire night. We listened to a book on tape for the entire 18 hour trip. (including stops).

She has loved each set of grandparents. And they have enjoyed her a lot.

We went to the zoo with Crystal and her husband Mike and their little girl. Alisabeth had a blast chasing all of the animals she could get to.

We spent a few days at our old landlord's new house. They are amazing people and we enjoyed that too. Of course, that was the site of Alisabeth's second major accident. (The first was the headfirst down the stairs at 9ish months.)
This time we wouldn't get up at 6:30 in the morning with her, so instead of playing with toys and entertaining herself like she normally does she decided to play with the paper slicer. It was just a little one, but it was large enough for her little finger. She got it right through the nail on her pointer finger and then it sliced out from there:

No other strange events. We've spent a few days at Jason's house playing with all the foster babies there and enjoying her cousins. We spent two Sundays with the Liddeke side of the family, but I kept forgetting the camera, so we'll have to get pictures on Thursday when we go out to dinner.

This week is full. We have to spend my mom's money tonight at the LDS bookstore, then tomorrow Jason's fixing the car and we're babysitting for his sister so they can go on a date (she took Alisabeth for us while we watched Harry Potter). Wednesday is a lunch with my old boss who hasn't ever met Alisabeth before. Thursday is dinner with my Dad and Sonja at an "amazing" Mexican place they just found. Friday is paintball with a decent sized crew. Saturday we drive out to San Diego and the rest is history. It's hard being on vacation! So many demands!!

Ah, Arizona

We arrived safely, thanks for all those who were praying for us. We actually listened to Anne McCaffrey on tape the whole way and it kept us going. There was only one spot where we almost died. I started driving at about 3 in the morning and Jason decided to doze off. Alisabeth had woken up so he had turned on some nice soothing music to put her back to sleep. . . and then left it on . . . I felt like Mac in cars with the 4 hotrods.
Anyway, Jason was only out for 1/2 hour so when he came around I told him he had to talk to me and that woke me back up. Then he turned on the book and I was fine again. It kept my mind awake.
We drove through the night and ended up pulling up to my mom's house at about 8:30 am. We wanted to crash, but Jason didn't. Instead he took Alisabeth to see her cousins at his mom's house while I crashed. When they came home I was barely aware of the world.
It's been fun so far. We've visited family back and forth and let the cousin's play. We went and saw the Harry Potter movie. I have to give it cudos for trying to stay true to the main plot line, even if it failed miserably to make it very clear. My mom's husband came too and was thoroughly confused about the whole thing. He's seen all the movies but never read the books.
We're going to go see the new Star Trek sometime soon too.
I've really enjoyed life so far, but it's been amusing to watch our gas guage. We're back in the big city alright :)
I am so proud of Alsabeth. I expected her to be reticent and hesitant with all the new faces and people. She hasn't balked at all. It almost seems as if she remembers everything. She went stragith to the toy room at my dad's place. At my mom's she walked confidently into the spare room. At Jason's mom's house she moves with purpose too.
Even when we visited Jason's grandparents, who she hasn't met before, she was all willing and smiling. She played the piano and played with the dolls. It's been really cool.
The temperature hasn't been below 105 yet, so it's a bit hotter than Rexburg, but I hesitate to write that because sometimes the heat feels very much the same as what we're used to. Although Jason has noticed one significant change. His alergies are gone. He can breathe and despite a slight cold which he contracted our first day here, he has felt really good.

The week before travel

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!!!

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.)

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!!!

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.

4th of July week cont.

Oops, I forgot this one. It was worth the extra post.