The life of a toddler.......

So today I watched an incredibly cute toddler and realized that she and I had many things in common.
#1. she likes to read books
#2. she trips in her crocs (a lot!)
#3. she enjoys crunching through leaves and watching them fall off the trees
#4. her lunch consists of things like easy mac, green beans, and mandarin oranges (of which she only ate the later two)
#5. she snacked on gold fish, fruit snacks, and pretzels throughout the day
#6. she needs a nap every day

After sharing a few of her gold fish and fruit snacks and eating most of her rejected mac and cheese I realized that I indeed enjoy the diet of a toddler and that whole nap thing isn't so bad either!

Irony at its best.....

So you might ask yourself, what is that large stack of papers? Well, it just so happens to be receipts from the past four years. Yes, I didn't know at the time, but I married a receipt hoarder. (I am talking he had receipts from pre-mission people!). It didn't matter the purchase, you save the receipt. I was fine with this because all it required of me was to keep the receipt and put it on the computer desk for Chris to deal with. Well, he finally came around and decided that this was a bit excessive and a few weeks ago he purged. He threw away all of them except for big purchases. It was a big day and I was proud of him.

Then I discovered this when I went to put this jacket on:

The picture doesn't really show it well, but that is a security ink tag still attached. No, I didn't steal it, but apparently I didn't realize that they had not removed it. I got it when we went to Brason months ago. When I started thinking about it, I remember setting off the store alarm, but I thought it was a fluke because they had removed the tags.

Now do you see the problem. I have a jacket with a security tag still in place and no proof of purchase because Chris decided it was time to clean house after so many years. I guess I will have to hope that the Nike store here will have pity on me and take it off.

My mom actually asked me on the phone, "Well, is it in a place where you can't see it? Maybe you can still wear it." Yeah, because that doesn't scream white trash now does it.

The vow of motherhood.....

Alright, it is time to fess up all you previously pregnant woman out there. They make you take a vow don't they. A vow that you will never tell a newly expectant woman what is truly in store for her until she experiences it for herself. It must be part of the delivery process. Perhaps while you await the birth of the placenta or something. They make you raise your right hand and swear on your newborns life that you will never divulge the true meanings of pregnancy. Am I right??? Because until now, these are the "meanings" I was aware of:

#1 Morning sickness. What a joke. Morning my eye. I used to think that you could solve this one by keeping a stack of crackers in your nightstand. Now I know it has nothing to do with morning, noon, or night. You can be sick all the time anytime. It will make you want to wish food were dead and sometimes even you were dead. It will give you anxiety to set food in a grocery store or even your own kitchen. Sure, I can stuff crackers in until the cows come home but in the end, it always wins. (the other day I was even feeling like Eogo in Aladdin and thinking, "If I eat one more cracker I might hurt someone"). It should be called constant nauseousness with intermittent vomiting... and if you are lucky enough an occasional visit to the EU for some fluids because you are like a two year old and can't even do the simple act of sipping water every hour.

#2 Fatigue. So yeah, I've felt fatigue. I've run long runs and had long days and been tired. But this, oh this is like sleeping 18 hours a day and still being ready for bed. This is waking up at 10:00 am and crawling back into bed for a nap at noon. This is going from working out for 1 1/2 hours everyday to missing the gym for 2 months. This is going from loving being busy to hoping your day consists of one thing: sleep. How about we call it hermit hibernation mode or something like that.

#3 Heartburn. I am lucky. I didn't even know what heartburn felt like. My esophageal sphincter is a peach....until now. Really, do I need to taste bile all day long? Do I need the tiny amount of food I finally got shoved down to sit in my throat all day just waiting to come up? Is it necessary to burp like a beer bellied sailor? Do I really need to sleep with three pillows behind my head and wake up with a kinked neck. I think it should be called burping bile burn with a twist of epigastric pain.

I just want to know the truth. Will I have to take this vow? If so, I am getting this down on paper now so I don't forget next time.

Wardrobe Shift

So I've been thinking about Linzi's wardrobe recently, and have decided that she really needs to get some new clothes. She has been gradually upgrading my wardrobe during the last five years, so I thought I'd return the favor. I've done some shopping online, and have come up with the following...I plan on buying them all, but thought I'd gauge public opinion before laying down some serious cash. What do you think...do I have good taste?

In case you didn't catch on from the above, Linzi's 12 weeks along, doing better (I'll let her share whatever details she wants to about how things have gone so far) over the last few days. We just had our first ultrasound on Monday; it is a wonderful experience to see that little alien creature for the first time, moving its arms and legs and seeming to be the most perfect little creature ever. Until yesterday I had the opinion that babies looked weird in ultrasounds and didn't understand the big deal...but my outlook has totally changed...all I can say is that it's just different when it's your own. Anyhoo, we've taken to calling the little thing Squishy, yet somehow I don't think that name will last long once it's outside the womb come April 5, 2011 (or thereabouts).

Calling all Sleuths

So I've got a puzzle that needs to be solved, and anybody's invited to take a stab at it, including amateurs and trained professionals like Encyclopedia Brown, Super Sleuth or Robert Langdon.

I recently had someone proofread my personal statement for my residency application. He wrote some comments on the paper, but there's one word that Linzi and I have been unable to decipher. It's standalone, so there's no cues that point to its meaning. Let me know what you think.

(and yes, I know it says CLEAR STORY on the left...it's the other word I'm looking for)

Mt. Rushmore

So, after about a month of living 1300 miles apart, Linzi was able to come out to Utah for the last week that I was working out there. It was definitely nice to be together again...we're both big fans of actually being able to live with your spouse. We decided that for the drive home we'd split up the trip, add a few hundred miles to the route and stop by Mt. Rushmore (Linzi for some reason didn't want to do an 18 hour drive like I'd done going out to Utah).

I'll have to admit, our initial glimpse of this monument was rather unimpressive. We were winding up the road to the parking lot and came around a corner and it popped into view. It seemed so small. We both kind of glanced at the other and thought "It better be better up close." And it was...it really was. For those of you who haven't been there, you park, they have a big visitor's center/museum, and an amphitheater in front of the monument where they do a little program each night when they light up the monument. There's also a little walking trail that goes up to the base of the monument that has information on each of the presidents and good spots for pictures. As you might guess, I didn't get to read as much as I would have liked on the path and at the museum, but I think Linzi and I reached a happy medium. Up close you could really appreciate the size of these sculptures (they're scaled at ~450 ft tall), and the difficulty with which they were carved. I'm still perplexed at how something like this could be done (and I wish that they would have been able to finish it according to the original design).

All in all, I'm really glad that we stopped and got to see the monument, something we've both wanted to do for many years. We'd like to go back someday on Linzi's birthday and see all the festivities that go on then.

The only thing that dampened the trip (besides 23 hours driving), was some chipped-tooth police officer in South Dakota with a "state of the art, precise Laser gun" with which he caught me speeding. It was just a few miles from the border too. I guess it was lucky that it was one of my slower moments on the road, so the fine was less than it could have been if I'd been caught elsewhere. I know I was speeding, and did so for the vast majority of the trip...I'm just upset that I got caught...he ruined all the time I'd made up by going so fast. And then after being pulled over, he explained about how his amazing gun had caught me speeding, then made me go back to his car with him while he wrote me my ticket. He didn't catch my hints about being poor students...maybe I should have cried. Linzi tried to take pictures of the event, but none of them turned out. Sorry.

Despite their police force, I would highly recommend driving through South Dakota if you have the chance...very beautiful rolling hills, sunflower fields, quaint farmland...a MUCH better option than Wyoming and Nebraska...SO much better.

Dear Journal.......

So as I stated previously, Chris is out of town. I had mentioned to him on the phone that I needed something to do and he said why don't you write in your journal or read your journal or read my journal......well, I am not exactly a good journal keeper. (understatement of the year, I am not a journal keeper, that is why I blog).

Well, when I emptied out the nightstands in order to paint them, I came across this:

So I opened it up (note the previous permission given by the author) and once I started reading I couldn't stop. It was so fun to get to know high school Chris. I didn't know him at the time so it was fun to see what was important to him then, the relationships he had, the person he was.

One of my favorite posts went something like this:

February 1, 2000

I was utterly expecting to get a 4.0 again, because I knew what I was getting in most of my hard classes (an A). But to my horror, when I got my report card I was shocked to see an A-!.....IN CHOIR! I was flabbergasted! Luckily it was only a mistake. She had looked at another kid named "Brown" and thought that it was me (he had some tardies).

Then there was this one:

March 5, 2000

On Thursday I called her- THE FIRST GIRL I'VE EVER CALLED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE- and we talked for about 50 minutes. It wasn't as bad or as scary as I thought it would be.

It really was fun to get to know some of the parts of him that I wasn't there for and to see how he has changed and how he is still who he was back then. All in all, he is still the smart, charming, big word using, tiny handwriting U of U fan he has always been. I am glad he kept a journal and even more glad he said I could read it (I guess I will have to see how he feels about me posting bits of it). I highly suggest this to others- it provides insight, entertainment, and at many points comic relief!