Last year...well, sort of!

Dinner is on the stove, but I thought I'd just take a moment to say...

LAST YEAR OF RESIDENCY HAS BEGUN!!!!!! YIPEEEE!!!!

Can you tell that this makes me VERY HAPPY??!! Because it does. And while Adam has decided to do a fellowship (booo!) I know that it won't be ANYTHING as stressful or time comsuming as residency and for that I'm truly grateful.

I was thinking the other day how naieve I was when we started this whole thing, 22 years old with a little 2 1/2 month old to take care of. I had the mindset of "once we get through med school it'll all be EASIER from there." Boy was I stupid. Wrong. And naieve. But I'm SO glad that Adam chose the specialty that he did, can't beat the hours and the way call is set up. And the money will pay off student loans (until Obama-care changes things in a few years anyway), that's good. And even residency could've been much more torturous. I think I've blocked out his first year, internal medicine year, of residency because that was so terrible, he was gone all the time. A bout of PTSD for me, truly. This truly has been a journey. We've been getting sentimental over here, thinking of selling our house, moving onto a new life in a different city and all the change that will bring. We've come to love this place and our home, it's going to be tough. Would I do this again? No. I can honestly and adamantly say that. Being a doctor's wife (through the actual schooling years) is not for the faint of heart and I'm glad that we can almost check this off our list of things we've survived. But we've learned a lot. A. LOT. I'm grateful for that. And I love my husband more as I've watched him change and grow. Only one more year to go babe, then it'll be "all roses" from there...haha. Right? :)

Portraits

I'm going to interrupt our travel log to post some of the pictures from the kids' portrait session the other day. I've never been a good mom in getting kids pictures taken professionally at certain intervals, but I feel like they need a couple when they're babies, a couple all together as siblings growing up, etc. So here are some (Carson's first ones, I'm ashamed to say!) from last Thursday 7/22/10. We went to Portrait Innovations, and I thought the amount of pictures they give you for the price was quite a bit better (actually quite good) than my experiences at Sears through the years....

First Stop, Laguna Beach

And the travel log begins.... (Beware, there will be a million pictures over the next few posts. My blog book will be happy but my readers will likely be bored. Sorry!:)

This was Carson's first plane ride, from Omaha to Denver, then Denver to Orange County/Santa Ana. He did quite well. Thank goodness for spit up rags and fists to chew on!

Then we spent the next couple days at Laguna Beach with the Malan side of the family. It was great fun!

On the rooftop, dinner at Ruby's the first night. Yum!

Spencer with Aunt Alyson:

The next two mornings, we ate our breakfast on the roof of the hotel.

Our morning walks on the beach (no shells to be found!)

Did I mention that it was COLD?

Tide Pools:

Beach fun:

"Minute to Win It" evening games:

Swimming:

The Malan grandchildren, with a couple great-grandkids. There are 39 grandkids (I'm the oldest grandchild), 9 great grandkids, and 7 spouses of grandkids. So this wasn't everyone by a long shot! Plus 2 grandkids were on missions (but just got home within the past couple weeks). I have cousins who are younger than my own children...so it can be a bit confusing to non-family members!:)

Grandpa and Grandma Malan with their 8 children:

The Big Malan Clan (minus a few that were there but couldn't be found at picture time, and a few that weren't there):

The only family picture I could get with J & S somewhat smiling, Carson asleep, and me with goofy hair and drool all over my shoulder. *SIGH*

Family Highlights on the last day (this is when we got a sunburn!):

And of course, the sun came out just in time for us to leave! But that's ok, we had a great time!

Next up...Disneyland....

California Trip 2010

SO much I could post about this 13 day trip...I think I'll just try to bullet point things or I could probably drone on about how much fun we had for a few hours... Pictures to come later!

• Started off in Laguna Beach, wonderfully fun Malan family reunion. Beach, overcast-non sunburn days, PERFECT for us ghostly white-skinned people! Sandcastles, seagull chasing, tidepool wandering, lots of listening to funny Malan relatives' stories. Enjoyable for all. Adam gets a kick out of this funny family for sure.
• Disneyland with Malans and Mark Porter. Tricky with hourly bathroom trips, diaper changes and a baby needing nursing, but we did almost all the 'important' rides somehow. Great time! Stayed until midnight and watched the fireworks. And got a churro. Yum.
• Swimming at (Great) Grandma Malan's house and BBQ in Fresno. Enjoyed seeing (cousin) Heather and kiddos and Malan aunts. Kids loved playing in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard. I'd forgotten how nice and soft Fresno grass is (or how icky the grass is in Omaha?).
• Cabin at Shaver Lake. Ahh. One of the highlights of the trip. Stayed there with Grandma and Grandpa Malan (Mom and Dad), Kara, Matthew, Jonathan, and Alyson. Got to just hang out a bit, the kids played walkie talkie hide-n-go-seek. Spencer was FACINATED by all the rocks and sticks. Indian Rock. Tri-tip from The Meat Market. Pontoon Boat on Shaver with yummy BBQ on the lake. Hike to Rancheria Falls (where Spencer thought it would be fun to try to hike while carrying around boulders), McKinley Grove, Wishon Reservoir (drove over the dam), Courtright with the Smiths. AND the AMAZING pine smell. We vowed to have a cabin there someday, there's really not much more beautiful a place in our opinion--ahh, the beautiful pine trees. Drove by and looked for cabins for sale. To dream...
• Visited Adam's side of the family. Got to see Doug, Parker, Jordan, Matt, and met friend Megan, and of course Grandma Pam and Grandpa Rick. We enjoyed going up to Courtright with them and the kids had fun watching Uncle Jordan skip rocks and attempted to skip some themselves. We enjoyed a lovely lunch there, thanks to Pam. We also had a nice Sunday meal with them at their house in Burrough Valley on 4th of July. One of the evenings, we were able to meet up with the rest of the Smith clan at The Old Spaghetti Factory (yummy mizithra...I even spotted a maserati with the license plate that said mzithra in the parking lot!! Funny!), meet Brie (as well as see Janina and Matt), meet Jeremy (and see Kendra), and see Uncle Mike and Aunt Marina. We enjoyed catching up with them. We just love this group so much.
• On our way out of town we stopped by Mark Porter's place to visit Mom and Dad Porter, who were down from Oregon, on their way to a family reunion at Pismo. SO glad we could see them for a few minutes, they're just wonderful people. It was also fun to see 'our' old apartments, El Cortez, where Mark lives and where we lived during our first couple years of marriage. Life BEFORE Omaha. Man, that seems like a million years ago now!
• Ending our trip, we drove up to visit (Great) Grandma and Grandpa Carling in Chico. Oh how we've missed them. They nearly brought me to tears multiple times. So much to learn from these faithful grandparents. I'm constantly in awe of their faith in the Savior, their love of others, their service, and their energy. We came up after Grandma had been in the hospital and we were a little worried about our visit causing too much stress on her (and we still hope it wasn't too taxing), but we just enjoyed them so much. Grandpa came with us to Bidwell Park where we enjoyed a picnic, with yummy apricot pineapple jam on our sandwiches that he'd made. Justin was facinated by his pantry at home of canned items that he canned. Yum. The kids played in Caper Acres, and then Adam took the big boys swimming in the creek there while I got to sit under a tree's shade and chat with Grandpa for hours while tending to Carson. I'm SO grateful for this time I got to spend with Grandpa. He's a remarkable man. I asked him about his 6 Western States 100 mile races that he's run over the years and learn of his training and what it all entailed. I'm facinated by it all. Truly one amazing man. And to learn of his service in the temple and ward, it was so great. A memory I'll cherish.
• The boys were amazed by the fruit trees in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard. Since nothing like that truly exists outside California's Central Valley (to that extent anyway), the kids enjoyed being able to pick out pluots to eat from the trees, look at the squash, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, grapes, limes, peaches, apricots, and many other yummy things growing in their orchard/backyard. That was another thing I vowed, that someday I'll have orchards. There's not much better than a fresh peach from the backyard.

And home again we are. It's really tough trying to get in the swing of things here, the house looks like a few tornados hit it...hopefully in the next week or so we'll get it put back together! What a great time we had. We wished we had been able to visit more friends, but there just wasn't time to do anything more in this packed trip! Maybe next time!

Goals

Summer brought on lots of goals for Justin. He has some special needs that require sometimes a lot of work of Adam and me. And so, he is a bit behind on some typical kid stuff. But we're tackling a little at a time over the summer and I'm actually quite shocked at how much we've gotten accomplished already.

Justin's (Mom and Dad's) Goals (for him) for the summer:
1. Learn to swim. Justin hasn't "learned" technically, but we've gotten pretty far in the process, and he'll actually get in the water now. He still won't put his face in, but he'll put his chin in if prompted. He really enjoyed his time with his two week swim lessons, he was paired with the perfect guy teacher, yay for that. We'll put him in the fall session too. Baby steps.
2. Tie his own shoes. FINALLY!!! YIPEE! It's taken so many years to get him to do this, to have the patience (and finger control) to sit down and actually DO IT. We're very excited about this one, yay for for not having to buy ALL VELCRO. WHEW!
3. Get out of his comfort zone. I took Justin roller skating the other day. Totally fun and funny. Apparently rollerskating isn't quite the same as bike riding--if you don't do it for about 15 years, you DO FORGET how to rollerskate!! Justin has always refused to skate when we've taken him, we've even rented skates several times, have him put them on, only to have him meltdown and take them off. And refuse. So this was major progress. We put the skates on and spent a lot of time skating (walking) on the carpet, but I was glad we got him to do that. He let me take him out on the rink a few times and was ok with my holding one of his hands and him hanging onto the wall with the other. We'll get there. I think he needs his own pair of skates so he can practice! And I do too apparently! Now we gotta work on this goal with Adam. Adam told me a couple weeks ago that he's never ice skated in his life?? EVER? REALLY? So I told him that he has to go on a date with me ice skating. But I guess I gotta be able to rollerskate or it'll never work!! :)
As a sidelight that I don't want to forget, there was this hmm, 40ish y.o. man at the rink, decked out in his best 80s sweat clothes gear (no, he wasn't trying to dress up either) holding a sweat towel over his shoulder and skating like he was a famous skater or something. It made me laugh, and Adam laugh too as I retold the story of this man. He was a sweaty mess. Oh yeah, I guess I forget to mention that part. Nasty. Like REALLY sweaty. Like REALLY. SO funny. I guess I've never thought of skating as being real exercise before, but it is apparently!!
4. Training wheels off his bike. Now that we have our trusty minivan, we decided to take the boys bikes over to a church meetinghouse parking lot not far from us. It was perfect--and flat surfaced. Adam took his training wheels off and it was amazing how much better Justin did with his bike. Stupid training wheels were more of a crutch than a help I think. So he learned how to coast and could get a few turns of the pedals in before getting scared and putting his feet down. But MAJOR progress in this arena. We've just got to keep him at it, and living at the top of a giant hill really makes it tough for him to work on bike riding at home.
5. Bed. Night. Dry. Still working on this. Probably will for a very long time. I will jump for joy when this finally happens. I think he will too.
6. Summer Reading program through the library. This is hardly a goal since Justin reads ALL THE TIME. Crazy big books. I'm glad that he reads so much though, it makes up for my lack thereof. Adam unfortunately signed Justin up for logging his hours instead of just logging books read this summer for the the library program, so that's been kinda tricky to figure out, but that's ok. And I sent Adam to the library with Justin this last trip...which meant Justin came home with odd books like "Interpol" "The CIA" "How to be a Spy" and the like. And Justin is really into that stuff right now, but well, some of the books were a bit old for him I think. Oh well. Sometimes this is what happens when moms delegate things!!:) It's why I'm a terrible delegator I think!

All in all, a productive summer so far. I don't feel nearly as productive, but if my children are fed, bathed, clothed--and wearing clean underwear--then I feel like I can say "check" for my day. It's hard work nursing a baby every 2 hours during the day, it really does limit my time of doing seemingly worthy projects. Hence my sewing machine, sitting on my kitchen table for the past week. ARRGH. I WILL get that darn nursing wrap/blanket thing sewn, I just WILL. There are only 3 sides left and the little strappy things. I want it for our CA trip so people don't think I'm trying to give them a show or something. Maybe tomorrow? We'll see.

Ok, peace out, it's bedtime.

3 Months

It's hard to believe my little baby is 3 months. Hardly a baby already!! Time just goes by way too quickly!

Bedroom Successes and Failures

I shouldn't say failures because I still have high hopes....but...Ugh. So we rearranged the kids bedrooms yesterday. With MUCH debate, we decided Carson needed his own room, so we turned his room into a play room and then put Justin and Spencer in the same room, bought them a new dresser and chest of drawers and we bought a trundle for under the daybed Justin sleeps on. The trundle is now Spencer's bed. And after lots of giggling and talking, they "big boys" finally fell asleep at 10:30 pm. Spencer woke back up at 3 am and came charging into our room yelling, with Justin right behind him, but I was able to get Spencer back to sleep and Justin's sleep followed again soon after. I was worried that they'd wake up Carson, whose room is right next door, but somehow they didn't (whew).

To add to the insanity (so we thought) we moved Carson into his crib last night, from his bassinet that he'd been sleeping in in our bedroom. I figured we'd just have all the sleep torture at once. Carson fell asleep at little before 9 and didn't wake up until 7:30am!! I hooked up our baby monitor because I was ultraparanoid (hadn't gotten that out til yesterday) that Carson would wake up and I wouldn't hear him across the hall (very illogical), and so when I hadn't heard a peep from him at 7:30, I went in to check on him. There he was, in his crib, staring at the stars on his new crib bumper (bought new bedding for him too, I figured boy #3 needs a few new things!) and sucking his thumb. When he saw me looking at him, he got this giant smile on his face like he does every morning when he wakes up. Ahh, I just love that kid so much! I suppose it's fitting that I have one kid who wakes up ultragrumpy and one that wakes up ultrahappy. Hmm, maybe they're supposed to offset each other, kind of call it even?