treading water!

No, I haven't disappeared, but as I'm sure you all understand, school is dominating my time. :)

Last week's SIM experiences were awesome--you may or may not remember that last semester's SIM week was my worst of the entire semester, so I was a bit anxious about going through it again. Nothing to fear, it went fantastically and was even kinda fun.

We start clinicals this week down at GoodSam hospital (6:30am to 6:30pm with an hour drive to and fro...yikes!), which means I'll be doing a careplan a week again (bleh!), have our next big test next Monday, and have a 3-5 page paper to write in October. In the meantime, chapters and chapters of reading are due each week along with online assignments and so on and so forth. Not to mention studying the past material for upcoming tests.

No surprise that when I allow myself a break I immediately *guiltily* grab a book or turn on the tube to catch up on my favorite sit-coms. But even that comes last place!

I do have some fun pictures and videos to share from last weekend, but it may be another couple of days before I have the time to edit and upload them. Youtube is very slow.

Enjoy the week everybody!

fuh-reezing at slide rock

Dan shared with me some pictures he took on his camera phone this weekend, so you get one more post about Slide Rock.

We love Sedona, but being that it's a couple hours north of us, it can get pretty cold, especially the water, straight from the winter's snowfall.  Yes, even in the middle of the summer, example, it's 110 down here, but was 64 degrees when my men got to Sedona with the Boy Scouts. It took a bit of convincing, but Dan, Sean, and all the kids that went in our carpool eventually got in.  Here are some pics of the freezing participants.

 

tossin' around the ol' pigskin

Saturday was a whirlwind of a day, beginning bright at early at 5:30 for Sean and Dan.  They went up to Sedona with the Boy Scouts and played at Slide Rock.  The water was something like 50 degrees!  They had fun, but they said it was soooo cold!

Cameron's football game was first up for us back home.  Their team actually lost, but the pictures I'm about to post are from the week previous, in which they won.

Cam usually ends up being a lineman, and hasn't pulled any flags yet this year.  Last year, he was so good at it, so I don't know if he just hasn't had the opportunity, hasn't been in the right position, or isn't putting himself out there as much.  I know *this much* about football, so I'm really not sure.  He just doesn't seem to be having as much fun.  Hopefully it'll get better for him.

 

Dan and the boys were back by 1-ish, so they quick showered and changed clothes and then we were off for our next adventure of the day--which I'll save for another blog because I have something like 250 pictures to edit!  Needless to say it was a great and unexpected time.  :)  Til then!

little bits of life

Just a couple of things I've been thinking of lately that I thought to add to the blog.

Had a really good week school-wise. We had an awesome wound & ostomy lecture from the Wound Team at Banner Thunderbird. Saw all sorts of gruesome pictures. Cracked me up how very 'into' her job the gal was...she was very amusing. It was gross, but also cool. Next week are our of-the-devil SIM clinical simulations (which is what gave me my nervous breakdown last semester, so I'm not looking forward to them!) and then the week following we start our clinicals at Good Sam downtown. At that point, the semester will feel half-over, although it's not, really.

I mentioned previously I'd been walking/biking/running in the mornings. Well I've stepped things up. After we came back from Labor Day camping I started running every morning. Crazy, right? Me? The Loather-of-all-things-running-related! I run 6 days a week for 30 minutes straight and have done as much as 2.3 miles. Ok so that's super slow, right? Something like a 13 or 14 minute mile. But I'm running it, which is more than I've ever done in my life. Ever. I still don't love it, and no, Christy, I'm still waiting for those endorphins to show up, but every morning, I'm out there at 5:30ish, huffing and puffing and burning calories. Never thought I'd see the day.

Last night just for fun I started speaking in a *really bad* English accent. The kids thought it was hilarious. Ethan can barely control himself once I start. It's pretty funny. I'm really not great at accents, but you'd think I was doing stand-up comedy he laughs so hard. Easily amused.

Our dryer's still broken. So I'm drying things in the back yard. It stinks. We don't have the budget to buy new and I'm afraid to go Craigslist, so I'm waiting for the magical dryer fairy to visit me. Or at least for someone to know someone who knows someone who's selling. :) In the meantime, our clothes are crunchy and wrinkled looking and I hate ironing!

I started back up with the ward choir last Sunday. Our numbers are super few, so we need new voices! You altos in the ward, I know who you are and I'm not afraid to come after you personally. It would be awesome to have 4 or 5 of us next week. That would just about double our choir. Ha.

I've been in the middle of three books for weeks. *sad sigh* I miss my fiction.

Going to the temple today with Dan (that means Chipotle for lunch, yay!) and then our ward's Progressive Dinner for couples at night. How cool will that be?! Like an entire day of date time with my hubby. It'll be nice since he just came off a 48-hour shift. Poor guy...don't know how he does it.

Tomorrow Sean and Dan are going up to Slide Rock with the Boy Scouts all day. Cameron has a flag football game back here at home, and at night the city is showing "Rio" at the stadium. Should be fun. Should have pictures to share. Should hopefully not take a week to post them. *grin*

Happy weekend everybody!

twenty-sixteen??

I celebrated my birthday yesterday. :)

It was low key...I was at school for half the day, but feeling pretty good about it because I'd done decently on our first test the day before. Last week, well, last week was a different story. Last week I'd rather just forget, but this week went OK. Plus, I came out of school to find my van decorated thusly:

It was funny to drive around and have the balloons falling off one by one! The inside was full of balloons too, nice surprise from my sweetie!

I got a pretty little ID badge holder to attach to my uniform--it matches perfectly!

Cute huh? It's the only thing I asked for. :) But I also scored with Abba's Hits for SingStar. (thanks Babe!!) How fun is that?! Karaoke at my house!!!

So I came home from school and Dan and I had to hit up Denny's for my free Grand Slam Breakfast. Yummm. Did some studying in the afternoon, got the kids home and homework done, and then we went out to Buca di Beppo for a big ol' gettogether with 22 people. It was craziness, but the chicken carbonara was so good! Love my friends and the chance to get together. It's been way too long, seriously...I can't even remember when we got together last. How sad!

*I had to stop at gas stations twice on the way home* LOL Way too much eating for me yesterday!

But what a fun day!

4 days in the wilderness -- our most recent camping adventure

I guess technically it was 2 full days, one night, and one morning.  Any way you slice it, I was making pishy in the woods from Friday to Monday, so, go me!

Our favorite spot was taken *note to selves, leave a little bit earlier on holiday weekends*, so it took us until about 8 or 8:30pm to find a camping site.  We even looked in the campground (FULL) and eventually found a perfect piece of land off some dirt roads in the woods. 

I have something like 200 pictures, but I decided to just post my Top 10 favorite moments:

Moment #1:   Cam & Ethan find the biggest stump of wood and roll/push/prod it over to our firewood pile.  We didn't burn it actually, we used it to hold our water cooler.  :)

 

Moment #2:  some pretty decent pics with the kids actually looking at the camera.  I tried more, this time around, to get the kids to stop what they were doing and look at me, as opposed to my just taking random photos.  Notice how Cameron buttons his shirt collars all the way up. . . even while camping.

 

Moment #3:  It is a pain and a half getting the boat and trailer down the boat launch backwards, and even more of a pain finding parking on a holiday weekend. But once we got the boat in the water and all of our occupants safely on board, it was Bliss.      

 

Moment #4:  mud bank!!  The kids were a little tentative at first.  But it didn't take long for them to dive right in!   This was their favorite part of the whole weekend, by the way.  

   

 

Moment #5 I didn't get a picture of.  If we're up there camping for more than 2-3 days, we like to buy one meal at the little Cafe they have up near the Reservoir.  It's just a little mom n' pop place, but the eating is good!  I had a tuna melt, Dan had a bacon cheese burger, Cameron had a hotdog, Ethan had fish sticks, and Sean had a cheese burger.  It gave us a chance to use a real bathroom and wash our hands really well too.  :)

 

Moment #6:  Game nights.  Didn't get too many great pictures--I was too busy losing--but it was fun!

 

Moment #7:  Dan learned how to make a hammock out of an old blanket.  So Sunday morning when we were chilling and relaxing, he built this little hammock and we all took turns destroying it sitting in it.  It was actually pretty cool.

 

 

Moment #8:  blowpop break.  'Nuff said.

 

Moment #9:  Sunday afternoon's weather.  Just in time for the heat of the day, a storm came through and lightly drip-dropped on us, lowering the temp about 15 degrees, providing some much needed shade, and a perfect opportunity for me to read/take a nap in the tent.  For 3 hours.  Niiiiice.

 

Moment #10:  the boys build a fort.  They did this while I was napping.  They put every single rock there--with Dad's help of course.  Kept them occupied for hours.

 

We were off by 9:30 the next morning, came home, showered, and did 3 loads of laundry, frying our dryer.  {PS anyone trying to sell a used one?  We're in the market!!}  You should have seen the state of the bathtubs afterwards!  That's the mark of  a good time, right?  *grin*

it's coming . . .

OK so pictures from the weekend are coming, I promise. I just haven't had time to do any editing and school is kicking my tail this week. I hope to have things updated by the weekend.

I'll tease you with this. :)

book butterfly -- august

Things definitely slowed down in the reading department for me this month, not only because of the start of school, but because I started it out reading a bear of a book.  That took up some time!  In the end, I'm just happy to get in the reading I did.  Next month will look quite different I am sure!

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexander Dumas

In the words of Ramona Quimby, age 8: "I can't believe I read the whole thing!" This is one bohemoth of a book at just under 1500 pages. Perhaps 10% of the book was made into the movie many years ago (one of my favorites, Jim Caviezel...yum) and even that 10% was radically different from the book version.

The book has so much more to do with Edmond Dantes' life after escaping prison (about 1200 pages worth!) and his setting up the deaths and failures of those four men who took his life, love, and family away by deceit just hours before his wedding at age 20.

There are many subplots and many many MANY characters--so many so that I felt I should be keeping notes as I was reading. Most of the characters end up related or interconnected in some way, so that gets a bit confusing at times too. It was pretty quick-moving for such a large book, not wordy at all, just full of lots of dialogue and story.

One thing that made me laugh: the ability of women to faint when and wherever they felt apt to. One of my favorite lines from the book went something like "...she tried valiantly to faint, but finding this impossible, she gave up and..." Were women's constitutions just weaker back in the 1800s?
One thing that kind of bothered me: the Count's omniscience. He seemed to know everything about everyone, including their past and histories, their financial and geneological records... all after spending 14 years in prison. It wasn't really explained how he knew these things (other than he had access to LARGE sums of money?), or for example, how he knew a set of horses were going to spook and take off, endangering the lives of the carriage-riders, so he'd be in a position to save them. I know the book was translated from its initial french, so perhaps some things were lost in translation.

In the end, I am highly impressed with Dumas' book (don't even ask how my husband finds amusement in the last name), at the complicated and amazing tale he wrote, and recommend it to anyone with 2 weeks of free time on their hands. :)

So there you go, a mammoth review for a mammoth book.

 

"Ten Big Ones" (Stephanie Plum series) by Janet Evanovich

Again, we read this out loud. The fun part about this book is that Stephanie, in evading the gang member contract killer, finds one of Ranger's haunts and lives in it secretly while he is out of town. That was both funny and exciting, because you knew at any moment he could come home and find her squatting in his pent house suite.

 

"The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom

Not only is it absolutely amazing and inspiring what the Ten Booms did for Jews during the 30s and 40s (and beyond), but they were so completely faithful while doing it, never losing sight of a loving Heavenly Father who only wanted the best for his children--all of them, even the German soldiers. It's hard to read biographical works such as this; sometimes its just so hard to believe one group of people could actually treat another in such a revolting way. Thank heavens there were people like Corrie Ten Boom to make things a little easier for those in need, all the while willing to suffer right along with them.

 

"Phantom" by Susan Kay

Well I had really high hopes for this one, since I love the story of Phantom, the music, the play, the movie, etc. I was really interested to read about Phantom's back story on how he became such an amazing musican, magician, architect, and engineer. However, the story took a long time to get anywhere and I found myself skimming a lot.

 

"Hush Hush #1" by Becca Fitpatrick

Another great YA fantasy; nearly read this all in one night, which means I really liked it. I heard from so many people that this was a Twilight rip-off, but you know what? I don't see it. Pretty much the only similarity I see is that teenage girl falls for paranormal boy who protects her over and over--oh and that they meet in Biology class and she looks him up on the internet. Other than that, it's very much its own plot and story. I look forward to the next one.

 

"Bumped #1" by Megan McCafferty

This was a tough one...I was appalled from the start about the premise (dystopian society, teenagers are the only ones who can get pregnant, so they are basically pimped out as surrogates to the highest bidder), but I was also curious about it and really hoped there'd be a good message in the end.

The fact that the story was intriguing enough to cause me to read it all in one day should earn it more stars. However, not only was the subject matter rather coarse, what happens to most of the characters is pretty awful, and, like "Pretties" and "Uglies", this dystopian society has it's own language that just grates. on. my. nerves. so. much.

I also didn't like that from the start, the 'crazy' one was the morally upright churchy girl who wanted to wait for marriage, whereas her twin was the 'normal' pimped out ready-to-breed for money character. You can just guess how those two's stories played out.

This one 90% wrapped up, but I can kind of see how there could be another. I really doubt I'll pick it up.

 

"Eleven on Top" (Stephanie Plum series) by Janet Evanovich

The thing that made this installment different (and fun) is that Stephanie quits work at the Bounty Hunter office and starts and quits/is fired from job after job, and eventually ends up working with Ranger which I LOVE and hope (but doubt) the author will continue on in the next book.

 

"Crescendo (Hush Hush #2)" by Becca Fitzpatrick

This kept me pretty engaged and flummoxed 'til the end regarding who the bad guy truly was. It did get a wee bit confusing at the end. You know me, I'm ok with one or two fantastical elements but when every single character ends up being something other worldly, well, I lose interest. Also, the first one wrapped up neatly...this one ends on a cliff hanger. Urg!!

Now I've heard a lot of comparisons to Twilight with this series...there were a couple of similarities in the first book, but I was willing to overlook them. But when within the first 50 pages of the second book, Nora and Patch had broken up and she was doing Dangerous things in order to keep him in her life, well, I have to concede that those basic plot-lines definitely follow the Twilight/New Moon story arc! However, having said that, the rest of the story is very original and well done, and I still recommend it. :)

OH, and PS: can anyone explain to why these are named Hush,Hush and Crescendo? Is it just me or these really lame titles?

 

"The Iron King #1" by Julie Kagawa

Gave up, it just wasn't grabbing me. And then at the first mention of Faeries, I was outta there. I just don't care for books with faeries, I can't explain it. Yawn-fest.

 

 

So, that one doesn't really count. . . read 8, gave up on the 9th.  What have you been reading?  Recommend anything good?