August is Here

This week Michael started his ambulatory medicine rotation (which doesn’t mean that he gets to go on ambulance rides, like it sounds – it’s just another outpatient internal medicine month). He was pretty sad to have to stop his dermatology rotation, but this month looks like it is going to be a good one. Michael is lucky and will often have the afternoons off on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this month, so that will be really nice. He will have lots of time to work on his application process and to spend time with the family. It was fun, on Friday he got home around 11 am and we had a great day. We took the boys swimming to the splash pool at Enderis Park. Camden has no fear of the water and loves to crawl right in towards the middle of the wading pool which is only a couple feet deep, but still too deep for him. And Kolby and Eli had a great time – I have never seen them actually swim under the water so much before at the splash pools. Eli kept jumping up in the air, landing on his bottom, and then laying back down with his face under the water. We all had a lot of fun there. Then we went to dinner because Michael got a free meal coupon for his birthday from Noodles and Company. And then we parked over by the Ronald McDonald House across from the medical school and went on a relaxing walk through the woods. Friday was a very fun play day for our family.

This week we also got several other things done. I finally had my wedding ring repaired at a jewelry store, since one of the prongs had bent a while ago. It’s nice to be able to wear that again. And I got my report made for my visiting teaching district. I have to say, I am glad to have this new church calling after being in the nursery for almost a year. On Wednesday we went for the family history enrichment group, which I messed up because I was thinking that it started later than it really did. So, we missed the rest of the group, but I did get some more family names prepared for temple work. We also went to the splash pool that day for playgroup, and the boys had fun playing with the other kids there. And Kolby and Eli both had their swimming lessons. They continue to do great – both boys are now good at doing “bobs” (dunking their whole heads under the water). It is also fun to think that Kolby will get to start a sport at the YMCA in a few months (they have to be 4 years old), and after we get back from our December-January Christmas trips Eli will be 3, so he will be old enough to join Kolby for his preschool classes at the YMCA too. That will be fun for them to go together. Well, on Thursday the boys also had their toddler art class, and I think this art activity was the most fun yet. They got to put their hands and feet in paint and paint on a big piece of paper along the fence. We stripped the kids down to their underwear so their clothes wouldn’t get painted, and most of them ended up painting their bodies too before we were done. For some reason, Kolby seems to like eating the paint – I couldn’t convince him to stop putting his paint-covered fingers in his mouth. Oh well, at least it was the non-toxic kind. (I posted pictures from the playgroup at the splash pool and the painting at art class down below).

And I can’t forget the big announcement: Michael’s research paper was officially published in the periodical, Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, on August 3rd. His article is titled, Language Barriers to Prescriptions for Patients With Limited English Proficiency: A Survey of Pharmacies, and I think it ended up being 11 pages long, including several charts that Michael made. If you would like to take a look at the article, you can see the journal online at: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/
Michael’s article is the fourth one listed on this main page for this current issue of the journal.

This week I also spent a while making a family budget in an Excel spreadsheet. I have a budget that will show the whole year, and it is linked to a separate worksheet for each month. We have made some predictions for how much money we think we will spend for things in the upcoming months, and then we can enter in information from our receipts and then compare the projected and actual expenses. At the end, I had fun setting up graphs that will show our spending for each month, and one for the rest of the year. (That made me think back to middle school when I would do a school papers and then my dad would teach me how to make a graph in Excel to go along with my paper, and I was always so proud because I thought my papers looked so cool).

Yesterday we got things done around the house and then we babysat for the Rahms in the evening. After they picked up their boys, we went shopping because Michael got some birthday money from his family. We went to Kohls and he ended up getting two nice dress shirts, two new ties, and a t-shirt. The boys were patient with us, because we ended up being there until 10 pm (which is way later than we usually ever have them out at night). On the way out, there were these cute stuffed dinosaurs on sale for $5 each and the profit from their sales went to education, so we splurged and got one for Kolby and one for Eli. They love them – Eli’s is a brachiosaurus that he named "Long Neck," and Kolby’s is a triceratops that he named "Sara" (like in his The Land Before Time movie). They slept with them last night, and haven’t stopped playing with them since (the dinosaurs even waited in the car for us while we were at church). It’s pretty cute. Well, church went well today. Camden actually fell asleep during the sacrament meeting, so it was the first time in a while that we didn’t have to leave during the entire first hour. Michael said the opening prayer, and several kids got up to share their testimonies today. Kolby liked watching the other kids, and he said that he could do that when he gets bigger. When we got home, the boys went down for naps, and Michael and I made a few changes to the page that I designed for his yearbook – so now it’s ready to submit to the school once we get back his professional portrait from the studio this week. And now Michael has fallen asleep on the couch while I’ve been writing this, so all of my boys are napping. Tonight should be fun too – we are going to the Hedgecock’s house for dinner, and they always have breakfast food for dinner on fast Sunday. Well, we hope that you have all had a good week too!