Goings On

I feel like I've been meaning to blog for many days now and just haven't gotten around to it. No big surprise there... :) We've had some exciting things going on and some not so exciting things.

First of all, Joel went in for an interview for a job here at IMH (Ivinson Memorial Hospital) a few weeks ago. The interview went well. The person interviewing Joel already knew him and has worked with him, so she basically already knew that she wanted to hire him. That's nice! The following morning we got the "official" job offer over the phone, and of course Joel accepted! Earlier this week he went in to meet with Human Resources to fill out paperwork, get his ID, fun stuff like that. He will start working at the beginning of June. We are excited to be able to stay in Laramie for one more year. This summer/fall Joel will apply for PA programs across the country. If all goes according to plan, he will begin PA school in the fall of 2010.

Some news that is not as exciting is that Joel has to have some oral surgery in just a couple of days. He broke a tooth a few months ago, but fortunately it wasn't causing him any pain at all. So he was going to wait to get it fixed until he started working and has dental insurance. Well, a few weeks ago his tooth started to ache and cause him quite a bit of pain. After seeing a dentist he found out that he has an impacted wisdom tooth that is pushing on the molar. The wisdom tooth likely weakened the molar, causing it to break. On Friday we are going down to Fort Collins to have the wisdom tooth removed, and he will then have to go back to the dentist for a root canal and a crown. Ick! We aren't looking forward to the work that has to be done (and the bills to pay for it:), but mostly we just want to get that durn tooth fixed! The pain comes and goes, but when it comes it is bad! He is able to fight it off a bit with ibuprofen, tylenol, aspirin, and ambesol, but even those are not getting the job done. We will be happy to have the work done and hopefully have a pain-free Joel.

Those are the main things going on here. The other night we had friends over for dinner, and Adam ended up with a "Hitler" chocolate mustache. It was even cuter/funnier in person :)

I just had to include this pictures because I love Maggie's face!!!

Books to Read

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

The ones I have read are in green

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (i own it, does that count?)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
2 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (actually I've only read about 3/4 of it)

My total: only 8 and 3/4. Shamefull! Looks like I've got a good list to work from, now. I'm curious about everyone else's totals! A few in particular: Sarah, Tonya, Ranee? I'm sure your totals are waaaaay higher than mine!

I lost it! I lost it!

And I'm not referring to my mind; although it was looking pretty sketchy for a day or two there. :) No, I am quoting Jenna. Last night Jenna finally lost a tooth that has been loose for many, many months. In the last few weeks it's gotten much looser, and then last night she just worked it until it bled. She kept running out to me to have me see how much looser she was making it. It started to bleed a little, so I told her to just keep on going. She pulled it out all by herself, and ran out of my room (where she was looking in the mirror) saying, or rather yelling, "I lost it! I lost it!" This is her third visit from the tooth fairy...

Also, yesterday was mine and Joel's anniversary. What is the proper way to say that? Joel and I's, Joel and my, me and Joel's? Some English major out there tell me. Tanya, I'm sure you know what's proper, enlighten me! :) Anyway, it was our 7th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately Joel had to work, so he was gone all day. But I'm still so happy to be married to him. In some ways it seems like we just got married, and in other ways it's hard to believe that we haven't been married forever. I am very lucky to be married to my best friend in the whole world, and I'm even more lucky that Joel loves me back. I'm sure when we got married some people must have wondered if we would last. Well, we've not only lasted this long, we are happier than ever and looking forward to a lifetime of happy anniversaries to come. I love you, Joel!

Joel and I last July.

Spring Break

This could very well be our last Spring Break that we will have all together, since Joel graduates in May. We went to Casper on Saturday to meet Joel's Mom and his brother. We watched the Lovell boys play in the State tournament. They were playing for third place, but lost in OT.

Church on Sunday was interesting, due to Adam. Joel and I spent a lot of time out by the stage so Adam could run around. He at least made it through Sacrament Meeting. Only a few more months until he's old enough for nursery! :) We were also able to go to Kandace Asay's blessing (Michael and Emily's new baby).

On Tuesday the 17th Joel's youngest (and biggest) brother, Dane, went through the temple for the first time. Joel was lucky enough to be his escort in the temple. Dane will be leaving for a mission in Brazil at the end of April. We will miss him so much, but we are so excited for him!

Here is Dane and Joel together the morning before we went to the temple in Billings.

Thanks to my sister, Cindy, for watching Adam for me while we were in Billings. And thanks to Deena W. for keeping Jenna and Will that day.

On Wednesday we had family pictures taken by Teri D. and her sister. I can't wait to see how they look! My family just took pictures at the end of December, so I'm trying to plan how to do a big family picture wall with both of our families.

On Thursday we were able to go to Deena and Waleryan's in Powell for dinner. It was great to see them again and hang out. We are thankful for good friends!

On Friday most of Joel's family left for Idaho to go to a wedding, and Joel and I left Friday afternoon to come back home. Saturday was filled with cleaning and restocking the fridge! We are happy to be home, as always!

Joel starts his new rotation tomorrow in a different area of the hospital with a different preceptor. The end is truly in sight (at least the end of UW).

A good place to play?

Adam has found his new favorite place to play. That's right, on the kitchen table. He climbs up on a chair or on the bench behind the table, and from there it's as easy as pie to be on the top of the world. At least it must seem like that to him.

He reminds me of another little one that used to love to climb up on the table. Here is a picture of Jenna at about the same age as Adam is now. She would always climb up on the table to see if she could find some fun things to play with that she wasn't supposed to, or to get some out-of-reach crackers.
Will never really did the whole climbing on the table thing. I have noticed a lot of similarities between Jenna and Adam. A little while ago I was watching old videos from when Jenna was little, (okay, littler) and the similarities were almost scary. They even have almost the same scream. You can definitely tell they are siblings! Adam looked just like Will as a baby shortly after he was born, but as Adam has gotten bigger he and Jenna look more alike. At least at the same ages; as in Adam looks like Jenna did when she was 15 months old, not like she looks now. I'm sure you get what I'm saying. :)

New Shoes

Yesterday at the store we finally bought Will some new shoes. His old shoes are in fine shape, but they were getting too small for him. They didn't have much variety in the boys shoes, but Joel picked some out that he thought were okay, and I spotted these super cool Lightning McQueen shoes. Joel kind of rolled his eyes and took Will to try on the shoes he picked out. I was looking at the prices, and noticed the shoes Joel picked were light up shoes. Ha! Joel would never buy light up shoes for our kids. When I pointed out this detail Joel took the shoes right back and we tried on the Cars shoes. When I showed them to Will his eyes lit right up. Cars is his favorite movie! Aren't they super cool!?

A close up of the shoes (Will was holding his pants up so you could see all of the shoe, his pants weren't actually all high-water like that) :)

His shoes make him happy. The eyes on the front even glow in the dark! Yesterday he told both Joel and I this story separately, "I was in the bathroom and the lights were off and I couldn't see. So I just told my shoes what to do and they did it!" I'm guessing that means they lit his way in the dark?

Then this morning when we were getting ready I asked him to go get his shoes on, and he said, "Lightning McQueen shoes, here I come!" (If you've seen cars, you'll get the reference). He's so funny.

Nice Weather

We have had some beautiful weather for the last couple of days. Yesterday we just had to get out in it. We took the boys to the play area at Washington Park, and it was Adam's first time actually playing there. Last summer he was too small. He loved it there, and he's always excited to be outside. His only problem was that he kept falling down. I supposed it was the un-even ground that he's not used to, but it was funny and cute to watch him stumble every few steps and just hop and and keep going.

You can see the dirt on his knees from falling. (Notice Will in the background)

He had a turn on the swing and really liked it. What he didn't like was when I got him out. There were other people waiting so we needed to let them have a turn, but Adam really hated that idea. He screamed and kicked and cried and threw quite a fit. We went home after that. :)

Then last night for FHE we went to Cheyenne with our good friends the Bade's to eat at Texas Roadhouse. On Monday nights, kids eat free! (Well, one free kids meal with every regular entree ordered. It worked out perfectly!) We had a great time with them, as always!

This morning Adam had his 15 month check up with the doctor. He was cranky before we even left, so I considered that a bad omen. And boy was it. He was happy when we got there and he could play with the fun stuff in the waiting room. However, once we went back to the exam room and he had to do things he didn't want to do, like lay down on the paper covered table, the screaming began. Luckily we got through it fairly unscathed, except for his poor thighs that were stuck with big needles. :) He's still really small, in fact his weight has dropped off the charts. He's only 19 lbs 8 oz. That drop in weight is normal for his age because he is so mobile. He eats just fine (usually) so he is in no danger. All in all we have a healthy little boy and couldn't love him any more than we already do!