An Orientation Week

This week Michael has had his orientation. He is excited to get started on Tuesday. He will start off with a surgery month. One thing that he mentioned from the orientation was that they were instructed on what to do when someone stops breathing or their heart stops, as the interns will often be the first responders when that happens. They got a refresher course in CPR, and learned how to use the defibrillator to shock someone if needed. That kind of responsibility sounds a little overwhelming, but I’m sure Michael will do great!

On Monday evening Grandma Faun watched the boys for us while Michael and I went up Millcreek Canyon to a place called Log Haven. They had nice food, and it was a beautiful setting, with flowers and little waterfalls surrounding the area where we ate. The new interns were invited to the awards dinner that night for the outgoing interns, and it turned out that that was their graduation ceremony too – but it was a nice, personal graduation with recognitions for each of the interns and not a lot of long speeches or anything like so many other graduations we’ve attended in the past. The dinner was nice, and we were able to meet a few of the new interns in Michael’s class and their spouses, and a couple of the outgoing interns. One of the couples we met that is leaving is actually good friends with Jandee and Dustin Anderson, our friends from Milwaukee, and they are moving out to our old ward in Milwaukee. They even bought the Lundgren’s house. Fun.

On Tuesday morning I went down to Pilgrim Point and met Mel and her boys for their playgroup. There is a fun little area with a big statue of Noah’s Ark and all the animals and it has water for the children to wade in and little fountains that splash up. There was also a cave with a bear statue and some fun gardens – we’ll have to go back some time, since it sounded like there was a lot more there that we didn’t get to see yet. And Michael got off in the afternoon on Tuesday, so that evening I went with Grandma and my cousin, Dorthy, to a meeting for their walking group. I guess some of the people in the group are pretty serious walkers – they do “race walking” and sign up for marathons and half-marathons all the time. I would just be up for normal walking, plus pushing the kids in the strollers, but I think I’ll try it out. Dorthy, Grandma, and I are getting up early tomorrow morning to go walking, so I’ll see how that goes.

On Thursday the boys and I helped Grandma plant flowers in the front yard. Actually, I weeded the planting areas while the boys helped Grandma plant. They are very good helpers. We got two different visitors while we were out doing that. The Kearls stopped by to drop off a sippy cup Camden had left at Tyce’s parent’s house. They saw our place and stayed to talk for a little while before heading off to the airport that afternoon. I’m glad we have plans to get together in the future, even if they’re not very soon. Also, after they left the relief society president from church came by and welcomed me into the ward. She asked if I wanted to be a visiting teacher and let me know that someone will come to visit with me too. That was nice of her to stop by. After cleaning the boys off and letting them get a little rest, we headed out to an activity at Snowbird resort for the new interns and their families. It was nice to have an activity just for our group, so I could get a better idea of who was in Michael’s class. We have met several nice couples, and I am hoping to be able to get together with them. There is no official spouse association, but a couple of the wives were talking about organizing something, so I’m looking forward to that. I was also thinking of e-mailing all the new interns and seeing if they would each send me some info about themselves and their families and I could try to put together some kind of directory. There are only 13 interns, I think, so that should be do-able. The activity at snowbird was nice. There was a nice dinner and some fun games, including some of those inflated bounce-house things, a zip line, some trampolines with harnesses so you could bounce really high and do flips, and gondola rides up the mountain. I’ll have to post videos later of the boys bouncing on the trampolines – they all loved it, especially Camden!

On Friday Michael didn’t have orientation, so we got some errands done and we went to the West Valley recreation center to check it out. We decided to sign up the boys for swim lessons, so Michael is going to go in tomorrow at 5am to sign them up, since they told us the classes fill up quickly. While the three younger boys went with us to check out the rec center, Kolby stayed with Grandma and helped plant flowers in the back yard. He is such a good little helper, and loves spending time with his grandma. That evening we went to Grandpa and Grandma McIntosh’s house for dinner, and then afterwards Michael’s uncle Rich and his kids stopped by. We had fun catching up with them and the boys had fun playing with the cousins.

Yesterday we went down to Spanish Fork to visit Alan and Jenn at their place. We played games for a little while, then played in the back yard before coming in for some cake and ice cream. It was nice to go down and visit them – even though it was quite the drive to get down there. After that we stopped at the grocery store and then headed straight back to West Valley for a ward BBQ. It was so hot out that I could barely stand to eat a hot hamburger, but after dinner there were some water games for the kids and the boys and Michael joined in a game of baseball while I talked to a couple of the other moms there. It ended up being a nice evening.

And this morning I ended up staying home with Isaac because he had a little cold. I helped Michael get the other boys ready for church, then I actually went back to sleep while Isaac slept, which was nice. Michael said that I missed a really good meeting, though, by a young man who was leaving on his mission. After church I ground wheat and made bread. I have been putting off making bread, just because it takes so long to grind the wheat (because I would rather grind the wheat enough for several week’s worth of bread batches all at once, rather than grind it each week, so that takes quite a while). But after doing it for a while, I ended up with 6 loaves of bread – perfect bread that rose just right (I knew it was my oven in Milwaukee, and not just that I couldn’t make bread that rises correctly), and I made 8 bags of wheat flour and the other dry ingredients to put in the freezer, so for the next two months I just have to pull out a bag, add the liquid ingredients, and cook the bread. Now that the grinding is done, it will be easy to make bread each week.

And after the boys took naps we went over to Sugarhouse Park for Grandma Bradshaw’s family birthday dinner. Her birthday is tomorrow, and lots of the Utah cousins got together tonight, which was fun to see lots of them again. We were right next to the lake, and as we expected, Camden fell in. He was chasing some birds right when we got there, and then he turned and stepped into the water before I could get to him. The bottom of the pond was so slippery that he slid right in up to his neck. I dried him off and let him run around in his diaper. Later Kolby was throwing pieces of bread in to feed the birds, and he accidentally fell in too. And then after that Michael was video taping Camden feeding the birds and Camden went in a second time and hit his head on the side, but luckily he wasn’t really hurt. I think Eli only stuck his foot in. And now all 4 boys are asleep and I have a chance to write this and try to get things updated a little more. It has been really nice that Isaac is sleeping in the playpen now. About a week ago I decided it was time for him to switch from being swaddled and sleeping in the swing to going down in the playpen, and so we prepared ourselves for a few rough nights of him being up and crying a lot, but he surprised us by going down just fine at night and for naps in the daytime, and not even crying for more than a few minutes each time before he falls asleep. I guess he was ready too.

Grey Hairs and Starving Children

So, the other day I found a grey hair on my head – and it was mine! I couldn’t quite believe it. I’m only 26. I told my mom, and she jokingly said that where there’s one grey hair, there are more. I told her I probably have four – one for each of my boys.

On another note, yesterday we were at church and I was in the third hour Relief Society class with Camden. Camden just turned 17 months old, and we are looking forward to the day one month from now when he will be old enough to start attending the children’s nursery class at church because he is ready to be with the other kids (and it’s rather difficult to keep him entertained in our classes anymore, so we’ve end up spending a lot of time out in the hallways at church lately). So, yesterday I was in my Relief Society class and I had already had to take Camden out in the hall a couple of times, so I was trying to make him happy so I could stay for at least part of the lesson. He found Ava Lundgren, and little girl who is two or three months younger than Camden, and he was very happy when Cassidy, Ava’s mommy, offered him some of Ava’s marshmallows. The problem is that Camden is just like each of his older brothers – once you give him food he will insist on consuming more and more of it, rapidly, until there is none left (and will likely be very put out once he has finished that you didn’t think to bring more for him). Now, this is not because we starve our children, although I’m sure it appears that way to the innocent onlooker.

I admit that I had forgotten to grab the snack container out of the diaper bag before that church class started, but any normal child would have been content by that time. In the earlier church meetings Camden had already consumed a couple of slices of homemade whole wheat bread, vanilla wafers, some of his brother’s animal crackers, puffed fruit baby snacks, yogurt-covered cranberries, and two cups of water. So, when we went into Relief Society, of course Camden quickly ate all of Ava’s marshmallows, then he motioned to Cassidy that he wanted more. Tiffany Egbert came to his rescue and offered him a packet of fruit snacks, which made him happy for the 2.3 minutes that it took him to finish off the bag. And soon after that we were out in the hallway again. You would think that if a child ate this much all the time he would be overweight (or at least content), but neither is the case. In fact, my three older boys eat as much as (or more than) Michael and I do at almost every meal. I guess they got their Daddy’s metabolism. I keep thinking, though: What are we going to do when we have four or five hungry teenage boys all at once who eat like this?

Starting the Sub-I

In August Michael had an outpatient medicine rotation that had a very nice schedule. He got off early several afternoons a week and didn’t have to go in too early in the mornings. This means that it has been a really nice week for me – most mornings I get to ‘sleep in’ until around 7:30am and when I get up, Michael has already changed and fed the boys. Michael’s medicine sub-I started yesterday, and he is going to have a much tougher schedule for the month of September. This is one of Michael’s two sub-internship months this school year, which means that he takes on the responsibility of a 1st-year resident, which is a lot more than the normal responsibilities of a 4th-year medical student. Anyways, this month Michael will be working on weekends and be at the hospital overnight every 4th night. I think we may both be pretty tired by the time this month is over – at least the rotations he has scheduled for October and November are both supposed to have a much lighter schedule.

This last week was nice. On Monday I met Amy Schneider de Cortez (a friend from Michael’s school) and her kids at the Children’s Museum downtown. We had a lot of fun playing there, and it was good to see Amy again since we haven’t gotten together in a while. Then on Tuesday morning we got to go over to Jandee Anderson’s house and let the boys play with her son, Isaac. We found out that Isaac is going to be in Kolby’s swim class at the YMCA starting in a couple weeks, so that will be really nice. Later on that afternoon, Marcela Maas got out their baby pool and the boys went and swam with Sofia and with Mikey and Landon Kam. Then I went to the annual get-to-know-you RS BBQ, which was a lot of fun, even though it was very warm and humid out that night. I got to talk to some old friends and met several new sisters in the ward too.

On Wednesday I took the boys to the playgroup at Hoyt Park. The boys had a lot of fun and Camden enjoyed crawling all around the playground – trying to eat as much sand as he could before I stopped him, and climbing up on the playground equipment and playing on the slide. He is getting so old, playing with the big kids. On Wednesday night Kolby had his last swimming lesson of the summer session. On the last lesson of each session they always learn about water safety and bring a canoe into the pool and let the kids paddle it around, which is really fun for the kids. Kolby has improved so much with his swimming over the last few months. Michael took him to his lesson, and then afterwards he surprised him and took him to McDonalds. They each ordered something from the dollar menu, and Michael said that Kolby came and sat in the front seat of the car while they shared their food and talked about how things were going lately. Michael said that it was a really fun experience to have some one-on-one time with Kolby and to just talk to him about stuff. And Kolby talked about it for the entire day afterwards. That was pretty cute. So, the next night after Michael took Eli to his last swimming lesson, he took Eli and did the same activity. Michael said that he didn’t think Eli really caught on that it was a special thing that they got to do an activity just by themselves, but he said that Eli enjoyed getting the food from McDonalds, at least.

We went on Thursday morning for the toddler art class, and it was my turn to teach the lesson. I took these pictures of dinosaur skeletons, and the kids glued different shapes of pasta noodles on to make their own dinosaur skeletons. The other kids in the group ended up with pictures that somewhat resembled dinosaurs, and Kolby and Eli each finished with a piece of paper covered in a 3-inch thick pile of glue and noodles. It was pretty cute, though. That afternoon I also had a doctor’s appointment. I now have two more appointments scheduled in September, and then an appointment scheduled every week in October until the baby is due. Luverda Martin, my midwife, said that everything looks like it’s right on track with the baby. On Friday Michael went to school in the morning to work on his research, and then in the afternoon we took the boys to Nash Park, where someone had told me that they had a playground that was good for smaller kids because the guardrails went all the way down on all the sides of the equipment. Camden loved it – it wasn’t a very large playground, but once he found out that he could climb up the steps and go down the slide all by himself, he did that over and over again. Then we came home and had a bunch of friends over for a game night. We invited several new families in the ward that we hadn’t met before, and several old friends, and had a really fun time getting to know everyone.

On Saturday Michael started his sub-I. He said that it was pretty difficult because they don’t have orientation until tomorrow, so he didn’t know a lot of things that he was supposed to be doing, but that will get better after the first little while. I went to a baby shower for Jill Austin while Michael was at the hospital, and it was kind of a battle to take all the boys with me – they gave me a rough time, but I survived. Then, after the boys got up from their naps, we went over and cleaned the church building as a family. Afterwards we took the kids to Dennys – we love their “kids eat free” deal on Saturdays! We rented a movie for a date after we put the boys down to bed. We got one that Michael’s mom recommended to us called The Ultimate Gift. I stayed up and watched the whole thing last night, and Michael fell asleep on the couch about half way through the movie, as has become his habit lately (he is now catching up on the end of the movie while I am writing this and the boys are all napping). Anyways, it was a good movie – nice to find ones that are rated PG and you don’t have to worry about them having bad language or content. Well, today has been a good day too. It was one of Michael’s four days that he gets off this month (his only Sunday off). Church went well. We had a lesson about finances and making sacrifices for the right causes for Sunday school and the lesson in Relief Society was about the law of chastity and how to teach our children about modesty and how to avoid things that are inappropriate. And tonight we were invited to the Lundgren’s house for an early dinner, so that should be a lot of fun too.

Oh, and I just wanted to thank all of you who helped give suggestions for Michael’s personal statement and resume for his residency applications. He was going to submit his final application yesterday, but is still waiting to hear back from his advisor who had some suggestions for him – but he has decided to submit his application on Tuesday whether he has heard back from the advisor or not. I think it is a really hard thing to write about yourself, but Michael did a really good job of it, and with all the suggestions and corrections that he got from family and friends, I think that he ended up with a really good personal statement. So, once everything is submitted, we will just be waiting to get invitations for interviews, which will mostly be in December and January, so keep us in your prayers (because the more interviews he gets, the better chance he has of getting matched with a residency program). Thanks!

Painting at the Toddler Art Class