Highlight of Wade's day.

I have always said I would love to be a fly on the wall and see what Wade does every day. At home he is hubby and daddy. Occasionally someone will call or ask him medical questions and I will get a glance at Dr. Christiansen. Today he shared with me an experience I would have loved to see for myself!

~~

So after a really long stressful day Wade finally made it home late tonight. He was pretty overloaded in clinic today, not to mention the fact he is on-call and the (usually quiet) pager went off all day long. He just kept telling me about his day and it was sounding worse and worse.

But then he did say he had one highlight. One good moment amidst the chaos.

He has a special needs patient, a mid 30s year old man, who is a very large (6'6 or taller?) and autistic. Wade was doing a foot exam and moved this patients chair up in the air. The guy looked up and looked a little concerned that his head was going to hit the ceiling. Wade assured him he was okay. Then on the way down in the chair the patient asked Wade if the chair went up higher.

Wade informed him he wasn't sure how high the chair would really go, but then asked if the patient wanted to take a minute to see.

After a minute of contemplation, the man agreed.

Wade said the best part of his whole entire day was sitting there, with this special needs patient, giving him a ride in the chair. Apparently his head didn't hit the ceiling, although it did come closer than either of them expected.

He said that he was totally buried at that moment. I'm sure he had other patients probably waiting on him, he always has a million things to do and going on in his head. He is always worried about too many things. I'm sure he was stressed and feeling rushed, but he said that as he was sitting there he just decided to forget it and sit there with this man and watch him ride up closer and closer to the ceiling. They sat there together and laughed and laughed. Wade told me that was the best 5 minutes of his entire day, probably will be the best five minutes of his week.

~~

This has got to be one of my favorite stories I have ever heard him tell. I have to smile every time I think about it!

24th of July Annual Backyard Camp-out

July 24th, or Pioneer Day, is a holiday celebrated by my church. It commemorates the day the first pioneer saints finally entered the Salt Lake Valley. I love it because it reminds me every year of what my ancestors have done for me, I actually have ancestors who have left their homes and belongings and walked across those plains. I really can't even imagine this, so it makes me so thankful for all the modern conveniences that we have now.

Pioneer Day is a state holiday in Utah. So when we lived there we always were able to have it off work and celebrate with camping trips and all kinds of fun. Since we don't live in Utah, obviously Wade doesn't get it off. Surprise... being a resident, it doesn't matter what holiday it is, he pretty much has to work.

But I have made it a tradition that real camp out or not, dad or no dad, we can set up the tent and have backyard camp out every year on July 24th.

The tent went up Friday night, and didn't come down until this morning. The boys LOVED their new fort and couldn't get enough of it. Wade's on-call and sadly enough didn't get to spend much time with us at all this weekend, but we made the most of it and had a blast without him. Maybe by the time the kids are 16 he might be able to hang out with us.

On a more positive note, I am getting to be a pro at putting up and taking down tents. I've got pretty impressive moves with my huge 34 week pregnant belly.

Avery pretty much spent the afternoon running around touching the sides of the tent with her head so we would laugh that her hair stood up on end. Then she spent the rest of the weekend trying to get away with shoveling sand from her sandbox into the tent. Silly girl.

After gallivanting around, eating a dinner of cold fried chicken (it's too hot to turn on the oven) and root beer we put Avery to bed inside the house, changed into pj's and headed out for our night of fun.

Every time I ran inside to use the "little girls room" Noah would start to worry that "bad cats" or animals were going to get him?! Then he decided he could be a T-Rex and scare them all away. Pretty scary T-Rex!

We played a lot of board games, built with lego's and goofed off. During one game of Thomas the Train dominos, Noah decided to throw all the animal crackers in the center and the game quickly turned into a Thomas the Train/Domino's/Poker Game. If you made a good move you got to eat a snack. That's about the time I broke out Candy Land and Shoots and Ladders and made a suggestion to switch games!

We finished the night by staying up very late (like 9:30!) and reading a Batman chapter book from the library. The boys were beat and fell asleep so fast! Everyone had a great time in tent the whole weekend and we can't wait for our next backyard camp out!

The tale of a blueberry

Once upon a time there was a little blueberry named Blue. Blue the blueberry loved the thrill of a good adventure. He loved his home in the blueberry patch but one sad day he was picked and taken to the store. He met a lot of new friends in his carton, but they weren't like the ones he had in the patch. Some came from really cool parts of the valley. A very nice lady came to the store and bought him. She was in love with all the beautiful color, shapes and smells coming from Blue's container. Blue liked the lady, but honestly the 3 loud children in her house scared him just a little.

Some of his new friends from the carton got to do really fun things. The nice lady used some of his new friends and turned them into muffins. They were very prized muffins and Blue was jealous of how much the lady and her family talked about about how good the blueberries were.

Some of his friends got picked out of the carton and placed in fruit salads. The three (scary) loud children really loved these salads. Once again Blue was jealous of how much everyone loved the blueberries. The baby in the family would sequel with delight anytime she found a blueberry in her salad and yell "Ball!" Blue thought this was silly, but the little girls smile made him happy and he hoped that someday he could have his fun!

There were some berries in the carton that Blue the berry wasn't jealous of. These were the ones that got put on cereal every morning. It didn't look like much of an adventure. Plain cereal, nothing special, and to make matters worse, it wasn't even a good kind of sugar cereal.

Blue worried and fretted about what his fate would be. Would the nice lady make more muffins? Would he become part of a salad, or be left to the morning cereal bowls.

One day Blue decided to take his fate into his own hands. The nice lady placed blue in a good fruit salad one night but while she wasn't looking Blue jumped to the safe pocket of the baby girls bib. Blue was an observant little blueberry and he knew what the nice lady would do with the bib the next day.

Early the next morning when the (white) load of laundry was started Blue had a great time. A blueberry had NEVER experienced a water park as nice as this washing machine. And to be surrounded by all white! What an awesome experience! It took every fiber of Blue's being not to BURST at the seams! Blue felt like he had been picked and gone to blue berry heaven. The spin cycle was his absolute favorite!

Then it was time for the dryer. Blue couldn't wait, things were getting more and more interesting! As the nice lady picked up each piece of laundry and switched them to the dryer Blue tried to hang on so his adventure could continue. The clothes were all too slippery and at the last moment his steam broke and he slipped. The nice lady saw him laying in the bottom of an empty, cold, washing machine. She gasp! He was all alone and had not burst open! In a whole washer full of whites! She picked him up gently, examined him, couldn't believe what she was seeing and then...

quickly turned and threw him in the trash.

And with that, that was the end of Blue the blue berry.

The Moral of the Story:

Be happy with what you are given in life. Some of us get to be blue berry muffins. Some of us in fruit salads. And some might feel cheated when all they get is to be put on plain (non sugar) cereal. All of us have an important adventure and all of us add a little bit of something that wasn't there before. Don't go looking for an adventure like Blue, or you might end up in the trash.

OR:

Check baby bibs a little bit more close before washing them with a load full of whites.

Tomatoes

My garden is not so hot this year. We planted too early, it rained WAY too much,I've been really neglectful, and then the week we were gone it got WAY too hot. Basically, it is not going to produce like last year. Even if it did, I will have a newborn by then, so this year I decided if I was going to bottle anything I better just buy it.

I found a one day only 10 pound sale this week at a local store. You had to buy 10 pounds but if you did the tomatoes were 59 cents a pound. I went, I bought. Saturday I canned. It was only one batch, but hopefully the store will run the sale again and I can do another batch. I also bought 10 pounds of peaches for less than $6! I can't wait to do those this week!

Classic

Wade and I didn't know each other in high school. We are four years apart, and we lived in different states. But he informs me, and I've heard from some of his friends he was pretty quiet and shy in high school. He tells me that he never really enjoyed high school. (I on the other hand, LOVED high school!)

However, he did have a great group of friends that we are still get together with when we can. But I'm pretty sure 15 years ago they never imagined their wildest dreams that they would be doing this with shy, quiet Wade:

Classic! I think this needs to make some slide show at a class reunion!

(that is if anyone could ever get Wade to go to one!)

(Thanks Robin for the picture! I absolutely LOVE it!)

belt please

Wade's hospital decided to change their paging system recently. So now instead of carrying around his phone and pager, he gets to carry around this:


For some reason this is better? It has me baffled!

He came home yesterday, emptied his pockets, and told me he now needs to wear a belt to keep his scrubs up.

Life with technology, isn't it grand?

July 4th...I mean the 5th

We celebrated the week of the 4th of July in Utah this year. It was the perfect time for a vacation...for one reason it was just as hot here in Washington as it was there in Utah, but in Utah we have air conditioning and here we don't.

While we were there we spent a lot of time sitting and relaxing. It was so great! We were able to check off all the items on our list that we wanted to do while home in Utah. Attend the temple, ride 4 wheelers, visit the dinosaur museum and go on a hike. I had so many pictures, I split the blog up into different posts below.

Utahans celebrated with fireworks on Saturday/Sunday and Monday. We saw almost very show the Salt Lake Valley had as we drove through Saturday night. It was a fun way to end our very long (15 hour) drive.

Monday we celebrated the 4th on the 5th with Wade's family. Ted and Chandra were able to head out very early and reserve a really great spot for us all at Payson Lakes. By the time we got there it was pretty crowded but we didn't mind at all!

The kids were having a great time in the water and the adults on the side lines until someone (uh...GRANDMA) broke out the water guns for all the kids. Next time she needs to buy them for the adults as well! (or at least Wade and Ted, because they should really just count as part of the kids when part of this group!)

I think some of our lake "neighbors" were a little surprised/annoyed that we did this, but oh well. It was fun! If you can't get wet at the lakes and have fun, then when can you?

Later that night - after showers and naps, we headed to Ted and Chandra's house for dinner and fireworks.

I only got a few pictures of the kids with smoke bombs because then Uncle Ted broke out his homemade cannon and I got to take my annual turn sitting inside with the little babies. Gage had a great time however and never wanted to leave.

It was a perfect, relaxing way to start our vacation. Food, family, water fights and fun.

Dino Museum

The number one requested thing to do while in Utah by our kids was the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. They had been talking about it for weeks before we left, we just HAD to let them visit the place!
We took my niece Charlotte with us for the day. It ended up being a 3:1, 1:1 ratio. Wade followed Avery running around and I took the other three with me.

It was the 10 year anniversary of the museum the week we visited so all the dinosaurs were wearing party hats and there were all kinds of extra activities.

Noah's favorite part about visiting was finding all the displays they could touch - he would run around yelling "HANDS!" when he saw a display with the "hands on" symbol. Then each boy got to visit the gift shop with the money they had earned at home. (This is now my favorite part of the trip, because Noah picked out a dinosaur grabbing claw for his toy, and I now use it to pick up things off the floor when I'm too lazy (and big bellied) to bend down!)

friends

Our typical trips to Utah are booked. We try and see everyone and do everything, but this time was different. With residency, Wade is constantly running and we thought a "relaxing" trip would be just the thing our family needed this time. It was wonderful - but we were able to see just a few friends.

The kids had a blast at our friends Greg and Stephanie's. It doesn't matter if we don't see them for years, then then only get to see them for an hour, things are always perfect when we get together. I can't believe that in just a few weeks we will have 8 kids between us! We've come a long way from those cinder-block wall apartments at the U of U. I hope someday to live next door to them again (just maybe not though the cinder block walls!)

One night we were able to get together with some of Wade's friends from high school. He is always so happy to talk to them and see how well they are all doing. We gathered all the kids together for a picture, minus one being sick and one at soccer practice, these 16 are all the kids from 3 families! Apparently Wade and I got a late start with the kids thing...and just when Wade and I think we might be catching up, they keep on giving us a run for our money! They are a great bunch!

Cascade Springs

On Thrusday we were able to take the truck for a ride over the Alpine Loop...and you can't ride over the loop without stopping for a little hike at Cascade Springs. Everyone had a goofy time running around and enjoying the outdoors.

Noah "Look I'm a reindeer!"

Avery wanted to walk almost the entire way!

Trying to spot fish in the springs.

Daddy duckling and 3 little ducklings:

Noah saw this burnt tree (from the fire a few years ago) and wouldn't let me walk by without taking his picture with the "freaky tree" (in his words?!)

At the end we finally made Avery give in and tried to carry her. She really wanted to run wild! I attempted to carry her on my shoulders that resulted in a goofy girl messing with her mom's hair and glasses the whole time so I couldn't see! She was giggling so much!

Lunch time was approaching and everyone was pretty tired after our little walk/hike. Avery decided it was time to go when she made this face and declared the place stinky!

Grandma & Grandpa's Backyard

Out of all the fun people we can visit, things we can do and places we can go, our kids are always happiest in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard. Each time we visit Utah they could spend hours out there. It must be a magical place!

Utah - Mountain Trip

One of Wade's favorite things about visiting Utah is getting out in the mountains with his family. Somehow this trip got saved for the next to last day we were there, but Gage and he both agreed it was worth waiting for!

Gage and Wade rode in the Rhino, apparently he asked Wade when he got in where the button was for the AC. Silly boy, he sure looked cute in the gear though!

I'm not sure what Keegan and Gage are doing, but they are running like they saw a bear or something! haha!

Check out the handsome boys and that view!