Wed. Reminisce: God's Country

This was on a horseback ride with my family years ago. It was near where my mother was born and raised. Mountain View, AB, Canada. The most gorgeous country on earth. I just don't want to be there in the winter.
Left to right: Mom, me, Wyatt, Kayli, Lindsay, and Dad.
That's Old Chief Mountain we're riding towards. It's actually in the U.S. but you can only see this particular face of the mountain from Canada. So breathtaking. That's the mountain that you'd see when you looked out my grandparents living room window. God's country indeed.

Wed. Reminisce: High School Grad

When I graduated high school in 2000, my Dad tried to have the school let my little sister Kayli graduate too. They wouldn't let her, despite having completed all the necessary credits for graduation with a 4.0 and 33 ACT score and she had a 4 yr. full tuition scholarship to USU including a stipend for living expenses. Yeah, I was never jealous. :) Anyway, they wouldn't let her graduate early because the school was paid per number of students and as North Dakota has a decreasing population, they try to hold on to students. So in protest, I didn't attend my graduation. No, not really. I just really find graduations the most boring things in the world. To escape, I went to Fort Mandan with my dad.
But Dad thought we should have the gown and pictures anyway, so he let us put on HIS gradutaion robes that he had to wear to the university graduations. Only it wasn't even his, it's not in the color of the education department, he borrowed it from a friend in the computer science department. Not that it matters. Dad is just funny.

Wed. Reminisce: Stuck

This is Lindsay stuck to a popcicle way back when on a trip home from Canada. We wouldn't help until we could take a picture. Hee. Hee.
By the way, Elena says that all the time now, "I stuck, Mommy, I stuck!!!" Usually, when she's in her carseat. She doesn't really understand the purpose of a carseat obviously.

Wed. Reminisce: Kayli and Brett

This is Kayli back in high school when we used to work at Dairy Queen. Yes, I worked there too. Kayli and I were like twins. Conjoined twins. And besides, who wouldn't want to work at Dairy Queen?This is Brett. A.K.A. Flying Squirrel Man

Wed. Reminisce: Rub-a-dub-dub

I thought I'd do my Wed. Reminisces in pictures this month.
Amy, Wyatt, Lindsay, Kayli, Ethan, and Andrea in a hotel tub. They tried to get me in, but I was being uncooperative.

Wed. Reminisce: Dad and boyfriends

Sometimes former boyfriends of my sisters have been scared of my Dad. He's really not that scary, see?

There was one time when Kayli and a guy named Thomas were "studying" at the library and incidentally met up with each other and coincidentally Dad and Thomas's dad happened to show up too. Hmm... It doesn't help to pull those things off if your parents work together. Anyway, other than that I can't recall many other instances of Dad being even somewhat scary.

But then I heard this.

Recently, my little sister Lindsay started dating a guy named Christopher who goes to school at WSU. He's getting a degree in education. My dad is the Dean of the Education department at WSU. He went over to poor, poor Christopher's academic advisor and basically pulled all his records, even looked at his picture. ALL of Christopher's professors know he's dating Lindsay and drop hints about it all the time. Now that is a little scary. Lindsay thinks it's funny. I wonder what Christopher thinks.

Wed. Reminisce: Strange Transient Lives

One summer when I was in high school, our church stake (several congregations) went to Canada for a youth temple trip. It was pretty sweet. My Dad was in the Stake Young Men's at the time and helped plan it, and since he's from Cardston where our temple was, he was able to arrange economical sleeping arrangements for us (all the boys at my Aunt Melodie's and Uncle Montey's farm, and all the girls at my Aunt Jeanette's and President Walker's), and so they had extra money in the budget and we were able to go to Waterton International Park, and a few other fun things. Above is a picture of a bunch of my friends from North Dakota at Cameron Falls in Waterton. Good times. Almost everybody in that picture is married now and has kids. CRAZY! Anyway this wasn't really my story. Kayli and I were going to EFY at BYU the week after the temple trip, but my parents were staying up in Canada so we rode down to Utah with my sister Amy, her daughter Olivia, and Kayli's friend Kirsta. Kirsta's parents had just moved to Colorado, and she had stayed with us till the temple trip and the plan was that she'd meet up with her mother in Utah, who was visiting family. Her dad was in Colorado already. Kirsta's in the picture up top too. This all does come into the story, by the way.

We left relatively early and came to the border about an hour later. At the time Kayli, Amy, and I were all still Canadian and only had greencards. The guy at the border started asking the usual questions: "Any drugs, alcohol, weapons, knifes, fireworks, blah, blah, blah." All good there. Then he asked who all was in the car and Amy told him, "my two sisters, my daughter, and a friend." Then he asked if Kirsta was over 18. She wasn't. So then he asked for proof of her parents' permission to take her across the border. Well, my parents had planned for that and had given Amy a notarized, signed consent from Kirsta's parents. Amy couldn't find it. She looked everywhere.

The border patrol guy made us come inside. He took each of our greencards and birth certificates. He had Amy explain in depth why her car had Utah license plates, but yet we lived in North Dakota, only she was moving to Arizona, etc. He had a hard time grasping why and where Kirsta's parents were where they were. He called Kirsta's mom. He called Kirsta's dad. We waited two hours. And finally he told us that we lived "strange, transient lives" and let us go through.

Amy and Olivia

Pretty much the trip went downhill from there. We stopped in Great Falls (or someplace like that, I don't remember) and Amy bought us milkshakes. I spilled mine on Olivia's really nice baby blanket. Then Amy wouldn't stop for me to got to the bathroom pretty much the whole way through Idaho. It was torturous. Kayli and Kirsta memorized "Elmo's Play Day" reading it to Olivia so many times. That was torturous as well. Olivia for her part, was pretty good. Every time she started to cry, we spilled half a bottle of juice all over her or fed her another piece of beef jerky. She was a disaster by the time we hit Utah. Then in the dark, driving through Salt Lake, we saw the temple go by as we headed south, and then two hours later we saw the temple go by as we headed north. Only we hadn't realized until that time that we were headed north. The I-15 was under road construction (pre-Olympics prep) and we had taken a detour. Apparently we didn't follow it that well. Then some time around 3 AM, we were finally close to my cousin's house and Amy hit a cat.

The next morning Amy found the consent folded up in her back pocket. Umm. Yeah.

It was definitely a trip I would not want to repeat. Maybe next week I'll tell you about the worst road trip of my life.

Wed. Reminisce:Collectors

When I was eight and Kayli was six, we lived at BYU. In Heritage Halls to be exact. My dad was teaching there over the summer, so our large family lived in two of the dorm apartments. I have to say it was a pretty fun summer. But not for my mom. She was sick, very sick. And to put it nicely, things went smoother if we didn't hang around the apartment too long. So, basically Kayli and I took free range of BYU and did whatever we wanted most days. (We were in a BYU summer program too--it's not as if we were left to ourselves entirely.) Really, we didn't get into trouble except for being kicked out of the canal a couple times.

Oh, and once, Jerusha Nordquist and I filled doll clothes full of berries and squashed them, and then "borrowed" everyone's laundry soap (at least thoses who left their soap in their storage units unlocked) to see which one worked best. I do remember getting in trouble for that, and then feeling bad because I was off doing something else when our mess was discovered and Jerusha had to clean most of it up. Sorry Jerusha.

Actually, we spent most of our time at the bookstore reading books to be honest. Bad habits formed young. In college, I read a whole Robert Jordan book at Borders once. Hee. Hee. We also watched quite a few dollar movies, spent some time in the art museum, ran through the sprinklers a lot, and played in the sand in the volleyball courts. Good times.

Anyway, to get back to the main point of the story and to tie in the photo that I know you all are wondering about, one time Kayli and I caught a praying mantis. We thought it was so cool. No, I mean so cool. So utterly cool, that we decided to sell it to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. Yep. We were smart like that. You see, we spent quite a bit of time there, although it was quite a hike for us, it was worth it because we could see an elephant, a bear and a lion, among other things. We loved it. And on one of our previous visits we had noticed that they had a tank with live praying manti. So during our long walk to the museum we discussed in depth what we would buy at their gift shop with the money they would pay us. The anticipation was immense.

Upon arriving at the museum, we confidently walked to the section with the manti, and then detoured to browse around the gift shop just to be sure of our choices, and then left our praying manti on the counter in it's ziplocked bag.

Yeah. We chickened out. We didn't have the guts to ask about selling it. However, after a while of walking around a bit more of the museum we went back just to see how our poor mantis faired.

The nice lady at the desk told us they had added him to the tank upon his discovery because he didn't seem to be doing so well zipped up, but she made no mention of monetary reward.

Perhaps another time Kayli and I will have to venture out for more exotic creatures. At least we can say we contributed to BYU's Natural History Museum's exhibit. Not everyone can say that.

Wed. Reminisce: Wishing in Pictures

A few years ago, I lived here.
Yep, right in that apartment building. I liked it for the most part, because across the street from the buildings was this:
I think I wouldn't mind moving back somedays. Especially cold days like today. When it's snowing and gray and the sun hasn't shone for eight days straight. I used to walk down the lake front on this sidewalk to go check my email at the local library almost every day.Past the people fishing on the banks. (There was always people fishing!!!)Past the hurricane ravaged piers.Sometimes, I would watch the sailboats on the water and sometimes I would walk close to the water and look for turtles, or pelicans, or manatees.Quite often I saw these. One morning, I counted ten. From a safe distance. Past the docks, and well, a construction crew that was building another apartment complex. I never failed to get a whistle. Hee. Hee. I didn't have kids then. Crazy. Past the stinking huge yachts.And then I hung a right at the flagpole and made my way a couple blocks more through the beautifully restored historic downtown main street to the library. All in January with a pleasant breeze blowing and my sandals, skirt and t-shirt on.

Wed. Reminisce: Repulsive

Over the years I've seen people eat a lot of disgusting things. Really, really repulsive. For instance, when we were helping my cousins butcher chickens one time, they were cooking some of the intestines over a fire and daring each other to eat them. And some of them did. I did not. That was disgusting after watching them empty the intestines first. Personally, I had to concentrate hard on not being sick to eat the chicken that night for dinner. Another time, those same cousins offered me Rocky Mountain Oysters. I declined politely. And when they sat on me to try to force me to eat them, I fought with all my strenght to get away. My sister Amy once ate a tarantula's leg that was another cousin's pet. I have no idea how to get this not blue and underlined. Hmmm....

Okay, this is much better. Another time my sister Amy swallowed a goldfish whole at another cousin's wedding (live goldfish for the centerpieces of the table) for twenty bucks. They then paid my cousin's daughter who was maybe 6 or 7 (not sure anyway) one dollar to swallow another goldfish, which she promptly threw up.

Still another time, my sister Amy organized a game of Fear Factor at our family reunion and one of my cousin's kid ate a goldfish, threw it up, ate it again, then threw it up again, picked it up to eat it again, but luckily her mom wouldn't let her. The other things they had to eat were dog food and a huge pepper. My little brother Ethan won. Everyone else had trouble eating the pepper. He calmly ate it bite by bite like he was eating an apple.

Kayli and my cousin Brianboth ate a raw egg on a dare with each other. And they both threw up. Devonee (another cousin) and I almost threw up watching them vomit.

A Young Women's leader of mine who had happened to know one of my cousins when they were in high school, and had had a crush on him, said she helped him capture, kill, clean, and roast a small bird over a fire, and then ate it. Just to try to impress him. Moral of this story, and most of the other ones, don't hang out with my cousins.

My husband Leo has eaten ants before. In Colombia they sell the roasted backend of these huge ants in paper bags like popcorn. He doesn't particularly like them though.

On that note, my little brother Ethan, when he was one or so, ate handfuls of a pile of potato bugs that Kayli, Wyatt and I were gathering. My mom noticed and tried to fish them out of his mouth, but the pile was significantly diminished.

Personally, the most disgusting thing I've eaten voluntarily was on a dare from my brother Derek. He dared me to swallow a minnow whole that we had caught in a creek. I did of course, because it was my brother Derek. Okay, and I did it again to gross out these really annoying girls at girls camp. That was great. Hee. Hee. It's not bad actually, as long as you don't chew. Like Wyatt did.

However, last night topped all of that. I was eating ice cream. Tin Roof ice cream. And all of sudden something was felt odd shaped in my mouth and when I bit on it, it certainly wasn't a peanut. I couldn't bring myself to wash it off to see what it was, although I already had a pretty good idea, so I asked Leo to. He came back and told me what I had suspected was right. It was a bone. This bone in fact.
I seriously had nightmares last night about it. Aggghhhhhhh.........
I may never eat ice cream again. Okay, well, that's not true, but it may take a while. A day or so at least, I mean there's another gallon of mint chocolate chip already in the freezer.

Wed. Reminisce: The Infamous Dove Bars

When I was seventeen I was taken privately aside by my father and asked a very serious question. "Did you eat my Dove Bars?" The answer was no of course. I mean I was almost offended. I was working two jobs. If I wanted Dove Bars, I could have bought my own. And I certainly would not have left the box and all the wrappers in the freezer as a mocking reminder of what was missing. Also, the question had been flying around the house for days. I thought I would have been mature enough to have spoken out sooner and admitted guilt, had it been me. But it wasn't me.

My Dad would not let the question die. He proceeded to interrogate every one of his children privately who lived in the house at the time. All of us swore we didn't eat them. My Dad was mad. He had bought those Dove Bars as a treat for him and my mom. And all of them had been eaten. Every last one.

Days went by. Every night at dinner and at random times during the day, Dad would continually question us about the Dove Bars.

Months went by. Dad swore that when he arrived in heaven he was going to ask God who ate his Dove Bars. Also, random comments concerning stolen ice cream and Dove Bars peppered his conversations with us. Apparently he was hoping the guilt would overwhelm us and one of us would confess, or slip up and say the wrong thing. None of us did.

Years went by. Although not mentioned as frequently, it was still alarming how often Dad brought up those lost Dove Bars.

Then one day, Kayli was talking to me while we lounged in my apartment at USU and mentioned how WYATT had eaten the Dove Bars. I was shocked! Not that it was Wyatt--really, I and everyone else had figured him suspect #1 all along (he had fervently denied eating them), but that the truth was known!

Again months later, while home for the Christmas holidays, I casually mentioned to Dad that it had been Wyatt that ate them. I didn't mean to rat him out. I thought Dad knew. Amy had known. Kayli had known. I usually don't know things, so I figured Dad must have known by now. Anyway, Dad visually startled, but being Dad, he let it go. Occasionally, he still brings them up at opportune moments when he wants something from Wyatt however.

Which brings me to an incident that happened yesterday. Leo and I drove to downtown Chicago to go to the Colombian Consul to see if there was any way we could badger them about Ana's adoption. We dropped off a package we were sending to Wyatt at the FedEx at the O'Hare Airport first though (Leo gets a discount there). Anyway the Consul had closed about ten minutes before we arrived (yeah, yeah, dumb us for not calling--but who stays open only till 1 PM???). As we were leaving, Leo commented, "Just like always, it's all Wyatt's fault." I laughed so hard!!! Hee. Hee.

I Love Lucy

Have you ever had an I Love Lucy day? I just had one. My worst I Love Lucy day ever. Basically it sucked. (Good thing my mom doesn't read this to see my dirty language.) Tomorrow, or I guess today, is going to be worse--when Ricky finds out. So here's the back story. Five years and two months ago, I heard the unhappy news that someone had bought us a table and chairs at a garage sale. I won't name the person, but she played a big role in bringing Leo to life. I was still unwed at this point and happily picking up used and free items for my apartment. The key point in that last sentence was "I". Anyway, I went to go see them and I literally started crying (night shift, part-time college, and planning a wedding can do that to you). They were abhorrent. First of all, it was a glass table top. I hate those. And then it was this ugly, chunky, metal, tubular frame with matching ugly, tubular, metal chairs. I cried hysterically. It was not a pretty crying, it was Kami, emotionally unbalanced crying. I begged, *BEGGED* Leo to let us get rid of them. He wouldn't budge. Apparently, that's a cultural thing--you don't return gifts in Colombia, and it would have horribly offended the giver and since we did need a table and chairs, he saw no practical reason to get rid of them. Chalk that one up as a learning experience of if your wife isn't happy she'll never let it die. Ever. Actually, I thought I've been pretty graceful about it. Besides threatening to let the glass get broken every time we move and almost tossing it out of the house one time when I was the most mad at Leo that I had ever been (not one of my better moments, I assure you), I didn't mention it...much.

But lately, it's been bugging the heck out of me. I think in part because the seats of the chairs are shredding so it looks even more hideous. Also, with Elena being a busy two year old, it is never free of finger prints. Not even fingerprints, large smear marks are constantly covering it, no matter how many times I wash it--on the bottom as well as the top. Plus, I'm just tired of being on hold. I'm tired of waiting for the adoption to go through. I'm tired of waiting for Leo to find a new job. I'm tired of waiting to move. I'm tired of listening to Reggaeton blast down from the neighbors upstairs. I tired of having the bass of our neighbor's R&B and Hip Hop music thumping so loudly that the nails are coming out through the paint in the wall adjoining our apartments. I am tired of having empty planters in my apartment because spending money on plants is impractical. I tired of feeling guilty every time I do buy something impractical. Maybe if I had a timeline, for instance, if I knew in six months from now we would be living someplace else, with a new job, then I could plan for that and have more patience. But six months ago I thought that we would already have been moved by now and I have no guarantee of anything changing. I'm was tired of waiting to buy a new table.

So I bought one. At Ikea. It was a floor model and on sale half off. It's beautiful. I love it. It makes me happy just to look at it. Now picture Lucy trying to explain to Ricky why she did what she just did when she knows they have no money for it, even at half off. (Really, there's no justifiable argument there.) Now picture Lucy trying to unload a fully assembled beautiful floor model table from her minivan by herself and gouging the heck out of it, pretty much completely ruining it. Now picture Lucy trying to explain that to Ricky.

Wed. Reminisce: A Little Late

I don't really want to write much as Kayli finally made it here today!!!! Hip Hip HOORAY!!! It actually turned out for the better that the weather delayed her coming. Remember how I said Isabel was sick? Well, she had RSV. Still does in fact; the pediatrician at her follow-up visit this morning said Kayli shouldn't come with Talmage when I asked if it would be alright. But Doc Rasmussen said that we should make a rule against Talmage French kissing Isabel and all should be fine. Umm, I think we'll make that a permanent rule. No kissing cousins in this family, thank you very much. Anyhow, we are keeping them apart and I set out a nice big bottle of hand sanitizer.

This does all lead into my reminisce by the way, because several years ago my oldest sister Megan's son came down with RSV. Only he was only a month old or so and ended up like this at the Primary Children's hospital in SLC for several weeks. This isn't Anders, I just lifted the picture off of somebody else's blog. Anyway, the amazing part of the story is that when Anders was first in the hospital it was at the community hospital Megan works at and she would always go check up on him. One of those times she was listening to his lungs with a stethescope and couldn't hear any breath sounds on the left side. So she called in his nurse who listened and agreed with Megan. So they called the pediatrician, who took forever to arrive. Well, I'm a little hazy on the details since I wasn't actually there, but long and short of it was that Ander's left lung had collapsed and he went into major respiration difficulties and had to be intubated. It looks like this below.Basically it opens up the airway so that they can pump oxygen into a person. Two people tried to intubate Anders and failed. Megan was understandably getting a little bit tense, so she pushed them aside and intubated Anders herself. Then they life flighted him to Primary Children's. Crazy, eh? Megan is pretty much astonishing. I could never had done that on my own child. It gives me the willies to think about. In fact it gives me the willies to think about intubating any infant and I actually was trained to do that! Thank heavens I never had to. Yeah. Megan's a hero. She's actually saved a bunch of my siblings lives as well. Kayli from drowning. Andrea from drowning. Um, Kayli from drowning again. I think there are other times too, but I can't remember right now, plus I wasn't going to write long. Anyway, this is Anders this past summer. What a cutie!

Wed. Rem.

We watched this every year on Christmas Eve!!!

Wed. Rem. "Hunting With Wyatt"

This happened just recently--in October actually, when I was visiting my parents in Hyrum, Utah. My younger brother Wyatt took all our 7-10 yr. old nieces and nephews (including Ana) out to go hunting late at night, about 9 PM. They had to get well prepared putting on gloves, because their prey was known to bite viciously. No, it wasn't ferocious bobcats or wolverines or even the elusive snipe, but the rare and oft sought after prey, the WILD IRISH PIG. I have no idea why Jim Bridger never mentioned them. Perhaps they were introduced later by some careless Irish lad who didn't close the pen behind him after doing his chores. Anyhow, they must have thrived in the wilds of Cache Valley. Lots of wilderness here, as you can see. So armed with a few sticks and a flashlight welded by the every-ready-for-adventure Wyatt they went out on their long and arduous hunt for these.At least, that's what I'm assuming they look like. Never having hunted them myself, I couldn't say for sure. Twice on their long hunt they caught sight of the beast (although it might have been a cat, who's to say--Wyatt was pretty shaky with the flashlight as I heard it), but unfortunately they never managed to catch one. Much to the sorry of Grandpa who had promised to barbeque it for the hungry hunters. Wyatt was even more sorriful later when none of the kids wanted to sleep in the trailer outside because they were scared of the Wild Irish Pigs. Some mothers were not so pleased with that. However the best part was, that when certain mothers were trying to explain that Wild Irish Pigs were really in the category with unicorns, manicours, and pegasuses, the kids insisted, "But Grandpa said it was true!!! He wouldn't lie!!!" Apparently they know next to nothing about their grandfather.

Wed. Reminisce

One time, I swung a bat as hard as I could and hit Kayli in the head.

Wed. Reminisce Willard Part Dos

This was the first house my parents built in Willard. I loved that house. We had so much fun there. One time, my friend Casey was visiting from Layton and Kayli, Wyatt, Casey and I decided to go on a hike. So up the mountain we went (there was a trail that started where our driveway ended, hunters and horseback riders used it all the time) to the canal road. We followed that past the gravel pit to the canyon (you'll see in the pictures below.) Of course we took our dog, Dolly. Dolly was the awesomest dog ever, but that's for another day. On this particular instance, Dolly was actually the root of all our problems.

My goal, (I don't know about anyone else's) was to make it to these waterfalls that are at the far end of the canyon.

Okay, here's the picture to explain it all. Our house was up on the side of the mountain to the left of the gravel pit. We went down into the canyon between the Willard Thrust. (Handy that I found a picture with so much already explained.) There's a ravine there with a stream that runs from the waterfalls down to well, I don't know where, probably Willard Bay or the canal system or something.

We followed the stream a while and then decided to cross it. Kayli, Wyatt, and I had no problems. Casey fell in. It was cold water and the stream was going fairly fast since it was spring and had all the snow runoff. So we sat a while to let Casey dry a bit and ate the sandwiches my mom had packed us. Yummy. Then, we decided we didn't want to keep going up the ravine but instead try to find a trail higher up. When we tried to get out of the ravine, we tried the way we had come down first, only Dolly wasn't making it. It wasn't a cliff face by any means, but it was fairly sheer. So we came back down and being the absolutely brilliant children we were, we tried going up a slope of shale. Umm, yeah. Wyatt made it first, sending a rock the size of a soccer ball down that missed Casey's head by about a foot. Then when the rest of us were almost up, Casey slipped and slid down the whole way. His legs were all scratched up and bleeding. (I don't know why but we rarely were the ones to get hurt, usually our friends fell victim instead.) So then Kayli and I went back down to help him. Dolly, by the way, hadn't been able to get out that way either.

Another view of the mountains from Willard Bay.

Kayli, Casey, and I decided to go up where we originally had come down and go ask for a rope for Dolly (or something like that) from the men working at the gravel pit. This is where it all went downhill. Really downhill. I stayed with Dolly, while Kayli, Casey and Wyatt went to the gravel pit. Being the genius I am, I used my belt to pull Dolly up the parts that she couldn't clammer up and then went to find the other kids. When I arrived at the gravel pits, there was NO ONE there. It was completely empty. I scanned around a bit but couldn't see anyone. So I decided they must have gone home for rope instead. So I started to walk home, waving blissfully hi to my brother Derek who was working for the Anderson's in their orchard that day as I passed by. I arrived home, and Andrea met me at the door and said the oddest thing, "You've fallen and you can't get up!!" Actually, she more or less shouted it and then laughed hysterically. I gave her a "You're an idiot" look and asked what she was talking about. She explained that the police had called mom saying that I was stuck in a hole in the mountains. I immediately burst into tears thinking I was in HUGE trouble. Andrea was nice and told me to go take a shower (I was rather filthy) and she called the police to tell them that I had definitely not fallen in a hole and I was home safe and sound.

A view of the same canyon from a different direction.

So this is rest of the story. Kayli, Wyatt, and Casey DID go to the gravel pit. Casey apparently started saying, "SHE'S stuck..." and then the man working there, seeing Casey, wet and bleeding, assumed it was another kid. He radioed someone else to call the police and after a few more hasty questions to some very confused kids started running back up the mountainside to where supposedly I was stuck in a hole. Kayli was a little taken aback by all this but not at all worried until the firetrucks arrived. Then she started bawling (thinking she was in deep trouble no doubt). Multiple police cars arrived. A professional mountain climber was called in. They called our mom. She laughed. Literally. I'm not joking. She laughed outright on the phone. She was a little embarrassed after thinking about what the police thought of her, but I guess it was her sixth sense that she knew nothing was wrong. So she drove over to the gravel pit and luckily had not been there long when Andrea called the police. In the end, we had to write notes of apologies to the police department, but that was it. My mom wasn't even mad at us. But as we found out at church the next Sunday, we sure caused a stir .

Wed. Reminisce--Utah's Famous Fruit Way

I don't know how many people know this, but Utah has a FAMOUS Fruit Way. (See above photo as proof.) This consists of Willard and Perry, UT. When I was in 5th grade we moved to Willard. Also "famous" for Willard Bay. Willard Bay has some gorgeous sunsets as you can see. I used to love watching the sunset from our rope swing high up on the mountainside.
We had a boat when we lived there. One Christmas, all of the kids received puzzle pieces in our stockings that when we put them together it said "Go look in the garage," and when we did, there was the boat. (Derek, of course, had already discovered it in his late night exploration of Santa's visit--but that's another story.) My Dad took us out in March to try it out. In fact, he took us out of school to go boating. It was cold. But none of us kids complained.
Ah, I see this picture and I want to go boating so bad!!!! Anyway, this is all besides the point. The story I wanted to tell was about the police. You see, our family had a rather close relationship with the police in Willard. I believe the first time they came to our house, Andrea was babysitting. Mostly, this consisted of Andrea following Wyatt like a bloodhound to try to prevent him from lighting things on fire, drowning, jumping off roofs, etc. Lindsay on the other hand, played nicely with her dolls and never was in trouble, except the time she decided to go visit Mom and Dad who were working on the house we were building on the other side of Willard. So she started to walk there. She was only three years old. The police found her at a fruit stand a mile down the very busy highway on which we lived. Luckily the lady running the fruit stand knew who we were because Andrea hadn't even realized she was missing. Then the police showed up one night when Derek was lighting off bottle rockets and the neighbor had thought someone was shooting. It wasn't July 4th, it was more like the middle of October, by the way. Then there was the time that Wyatt took off after school to "go watch the rain fall on Willard Bay" with another little 2nd grader. The other kid's parents were freaking out. My parents were more like, "Oh, I'm sure Wyatt will wander home eventually..." The police found them finally. And yet another time, I was in math in 6th grade and a kid came in and told me Wyatt was in the principle's office with the police. He had lit a fire in the playground. But the best story about the police and Willard and me, I'm saving for next week. Ta ta for now.

Wednesday's Reminisce

I really like that my cousin Cory's wife Kristi (follow that--get used to it) does Thursday's Thirteen--which is just a list of thirteen random things. It's fun. Also Kayli sometimes does Wordless Wednesdays where she posts cute photos. I've been thinking of what I could do. Wordless Wednesdays wouldn't work for me because I never cannot write something. So, I've decided to do Wednesday's Reminisces.

My high school's mascot--The Minot High Magicians

For a little back info--excuse me, reminisce--in high school I always told a ton of stories and well, I still do. Sometimes I consciently try to remind myself to stop talking. Some of my friends, the guys anyway, would always mock me and say "one time at band camp..." I've never seen that movie (American Pie), but I've heard that quote a zillion times, applied to me unfortunately. I thought it was random when this picture came up when I googled Minot High School. This was my 12th grade calculus teacher, Mr. Gessner. He was a good teacher. Too bad his class was just after lunch, leading to many an afternoon nap right while he was explaining the quadratic formula and other such things. The only reason I made it through AP Calc was Ted, a friend of mine who was so ahead of the class that Mr. Gessner gave him another book to start studying from. After the AP test (which I fell asleep in--what can I say, it was habit by then), I asked Ted what he thought his grade was. It's a five point scale, five being the highest grade. Ted was a little too modest to answer right away, but with prodding he finally said five. To which I asked if he was sure of that. He answered with amazing self-assuredness, "Yeah, I know I got a five." He, by the way, took the harder of the two AP Calc tests. I took the easier one. I got a three. I was happy with that considering my slumbering through a large portion of it. Also, I didn't have to take any math in college because of it. Woohoo!!! Anyway, Ted and I had the same off hour and he'd help me through any problems I couldn't figure out the night before on our homework. I had to write down every single little step. He could do them in his head. Mr. Gessner would always call on him to come show the rest of the class how to do a problem when the rest of us were stumped. He's a M.D. resident student right now, by the way. But hey, just to defend myself, I wasn't a completely lost or asleep all the time, just most of the time. Once when I was on the Math Track Meet team, I managed to figure out one problem--it was a logic one, I love those--the rest I had no clue on. Back to Mr. Gessner. At the end of the year, our class gave him a book I had picked up that my chemistry teacher was getting rid of, entitled, "My Friend, The Atom." We crossed out atom where ever it appeared on the cover and wrote in "Derivative" and then signed our names all over the cover. We were such a loving class, no? Fun times. Aren't you excited for next Wednesday's reminisce?

My Letterman Countdown

I meant to write this sooner and publish it on May 31st, but this will have to do. On May 31st, my nursing license officially expired!!!! I am soooo happy!! It's not that I hate nursing, it's more that I loathe nursing. Hee. Hee. My parents were concerned that I decided to let my license expire but if it became necessary for me to go back to work I could retrain and go back fairly quickly; I know lots of nurses who stopped working while they were raising their kids and then went back. Also, if I really had to go back to work permanently, I'd go back to college and do something I want to do, like be a librarian or archaeologist or a professional genealogist or floral designer for weddings or well, you get the picture that there's a lot I'd rather do. Anyway, on to my countdown of 13 reasons why I'm so happy to be out of nursing. (Yes, it's more than Letterman's Top 10, but 13 was an appropriate number I felt.)

13. Being called racist because I asked a nurses assistant (who happened to be African American) to change an elderly man who was lying in a pool of diarrhea and being told a nurse can do that too, this is while she was eating breakfast on a break that she's only supposed to take if things on the unit weren't busy (I only took a breakfast break 3 times in the entire 9 months I worked there), meanwhile I had two calls out to doctors, 5 charts with new orders, and had only done 2 of my assessments on the 8 patients I had that day (usually I would have had them all done by that time of the day), and I was sweating I was going so fast and things were so busy and of course, none of my charting was done. (This is another reason why I refuse to ever live in the South again--our unit in Phoenix was like the UN, I never had problems with anyone ever. Even in NM where half the staff was Navajo and there were always rumors of racial tensions, I always got along with everyone. It's so pathetic of an excuse for her to use.)

12. Two weeks after starting work as an LPN, standing in a pool of blood, literally at least 3-4 ft in diameter, holding a towel to an elderly woman's head and looking at the other LPN who was pretty much like me and had no idea what to do. We called 911 and let them take her to the hospital where her head wound was stapled. All I could think to do at the time to feel the least bit useful besides applying pressure was to keep asking level of consciousness questions that we had gone over in one of my nursing classes the week before.

11. Having to clean up a bathroom that was literally sprayed with the contents of a colostomy bag. The poor, poor CNA was showering off and the janitors refused to go in till it was cleaned up somewhat. Add to that the smell of any colostomy, the smell of gangrene, and the smell of C. diff.

10. Tunneling bedsores.

9. Families of patients that bicker constantly, interrupt your work constantly to ask the same questions that another sibling has just asked, and can't understand why their 98 yr. old father best option is not intensive physical therapy rehab. (Just as a side note, if your ever in that situation, write down all your questions, set a time with the nurse where you can talk and then let her do her work the rest of the time. It's not so bad when it's just one patient's family, but I've had where it was two or three families and it just makes it impossible to accomplish anything for those patients or any other patients.)

8. Wiping the bottom of a 30-something morbidly obese diabetic patient because they can't reach and listening to them complain about you not giving them the 4 icecreams they requested and trying to think of polite way to tell them that they had already eaten all the icecreams on the entire unit along with all the jello, chocolate milk, and graham crackers, and hadn't the whole pizza they just ordered to the floor and eaten in one sitting filled them up?

7. Permanently wrecking my right shoulder (I still can't sleep on that side) by lifting quadriplegics etc. that were double my weight.

6. Being yelled at because I wasn't pushing in the dilaudid fast enough by a patient that was receiving a 7 mg dose every three hours (that would probably kill me, to give you some perspective). Having that patient come back month after month for undiagnosable pain (we concluded it was whenever the price of street drugs went up.)

5. Having my chest groped at while putting on a condom cath for the fifth time that night which had "somehow" come off. I have to admit that although technically it would not be considered good practice, I finally had the man put in restraints because the CNA and I were so sick of it. You can add to this one being offered money for well, something I won't go into details about.

4. Seeing a baby born at 24 weeks with the teenage mother so high that she had no clue what was going on and the baby's father who was at least 60 and hadn't taken a bath in what smelled and looked like months yelling at us to give the baby whiskey to fix it. We finally asked him to leave the nursery.

3. Applying pressure to the groin area of a man for 10 minutes after the removal of a line (all of his other veins were too scarred from drug use to be any good) while his wife and girlfriend argued in the room and he still had the gall to make passes at me. He had by the way tried to commit suicide by drinking several packs of beer and antifreeze. Any psych patient.

2. Having a patient's leg amputated after infection in the bone set in on an ankle fracture that had required pinning. This was right after I started working at this nursing home and I was doing dressing changes on the wound on her ankle and although the skin was healing nicely, it just didn't feel right. Anyway, I asked the charge nurse (who had 20+ yrs experience--this was the start of my second year as an RN) and she didn't seem that concerned at all. I did call the patient's orthopedic surgeon twice, but they said she had an appointment in a couple weeks and they'd see her then. By then, it was much to late. A year later, I had barely stopped doing dressing changes on the stump and she was starting to walk a few steps with a prosthetic limp. This is one reason why nursing made me much more forceful to get attention when I think it's needed.

1. Going to take an elderly man his meds in the late afternoon--his family had taken him out to lunch that day--and not finding him in the room, assuming he must still be out. Later I had some CNAs look to see if he was back and he still wasn't, so we checked the log book to see if his family had signed in and out, which they hadn't. I checked the room again at dinnertime, and still no sign of anything disturbed or out of place (usually whenever he was in his room he had a baseball game on). Finally after dinner, I was just getting more and more worried and just had this niggling panic in the back of my mind that we were missing something, so I went back down to his room again, opened the bathroom door and found him there in a pool of urine and deliriously rambling. It literally made me physically ill. I had him taken to the hospital to be checked out. I had no idea how long he'd been there and it was just so sad, I can't believe I didn't look there earlier.

Basically, I just really hated feeling incompetent when I didn't know something (like meds, I'm horrible about meds) and feeling so rushed that a) I can't do as good a job as I would have liked, and b) I can't show as much compassion as I would have liked (for instance this lady whose husband had a stroke and she was telling me she had filled the car with gas for the first time in her life that day, I just really felt strongly that she needed support, but I didn't have time).

Just so you don't think I'm horrid, I do have to admit that I enjoyed giving shots. Okay you still may think I'm horrid, but I just mean I did enjoy some things in the nursing field. I enjoyed changing the dressing on this one lady with necrotizing faciitis (I'd post pictures of what that looks like, but I think I'd lose readers), anyway it's this disease that eats away the skin tissue, it was across her entire abdomen and thighs. The patient was able to go to a nursing home eventually after spending months on our unit and the ICU, but she died there. I also enjoyed working on the orthopedic unit where patients three days after having a knee or hip replacement were already so happy about how much better they could move. And I did cry a bit when I said goodbye to my two favorite residents, Mrs. G. and Father H. (this Catholic priest who I imagine is a lot like what President Hinkley was like) at a nursing home I quit working at. Oh, and the sideline of working as a bartender at the same place. At one point I was giving out shots of whiskey, rum, scotch, and vodka every night to different patients.

Well, onward with full-time motherhood!!