Thursday, October 24, 2013

What a week!

     Okay, okay.  So maybe I failed at the posting every day thing.  At least I posted more than I have for the last year, right?
     This week has been kind of crazy.  We had Louise's birthday party on Saturday (actual birthday on Sunday) at a park here in Evanston and it was freezing!  We figured we'd be safe to have it outside because we had been to that park days before and it was beautiful.  How wrong we were.  It was still fun for Louise to play with some of her friends from the ward, though.  Then we had cupcakes, opened gifts, went home and, after much deliberation, decided to open the rest of her presents.  She was kind of thrown off and grumpy all day, not used to having so much attention on her, so we decided we didn't really want to stretch it out into two days like we originally planned.  She's had a blast with her toys.  As I think I may have mentioned before, we got her a play kitchen for her main gift, her Nana (Justin's mom) got her a bunch of food, and my parents gave her some pots and pans and utensils to go with it.  My sister gave her Finding Nemo, possibly her favorite movie (and possibly the only one she's seen...).  She was so excited when she opened it, she just giggled. :)  And we got her a Tinkerbell doll and a wooden/magnetic paper doll.  We put her kitchen on the other side of the breakfast bar, so it's been so fun to see her play with the kitchen while we're in our kitchen.
     On Monday Justin had a phone call with the head of admissions at the University of Utah medical school.  We had been tossing around the idea of moving home for Justin to complete his premed classes, but we thought that for him to have the best chance of getting in to the UofU, the Northwestern name would be a big deal.  Bigger than Dixie, anyway.  Turns out it doesn't really matter all that much where you complete the courses, just that you do.  The man Justin talked to said the experiences and what you learn from them matter a lot more than big names and things, and that there's an independent program in southern Utah affiliated with SUU and DSU to help potential med students get needed and beneficial experiences that has a really great reputation and acceptance rate into medical school.  We wondered if it was all a little too good to be true, so we called our parents and talked it over, hoping that if there was a flaw in the plan, somebody would see it.  They couldn't come up with anything, either.  Needless to say, we're pretty stoked.  Chicago's great and all, but Dixie, here we come (now that we've decided to make more of an effort to be happy here...)!  In May...
     Then Monday night/Tuesday morning at 2 I was awakened by the sound of the fire alarm.  I waited for a minute, waiting for Justin to do something, then realized he was still asleep.  I woke him up and we got up.  In my house growing up, the alarms all went off when the batteries died, so my first instinct was to turn the dang things off before they woke up the neighbors and we got fined or something.  When that didn't work we decided we had better throw on some clothes and go get Louise, who miraculously hadn't woken up.  While I was getting her Justin poked his head out the door to see if he could see anything or anyone.  One of our neighbors saw him and ran into our apartment panicking about how he was trying to get out.  Poor guy.  I think he has anxiety problems as it is.  Anyway, we grabbed a disoriented Louise and all of us booked it down 7 flights of stairs in our pajamas and bare feet to join the rest of our complex in the courtyard.  Thanks to adrenaline I had no trouble at all with SPD pain running down the stairs (later that day I could barely walk, though).  We ended up going into the lobby of one of the other buildings to wait since it was so cold.  Most of the others at least had the sense to grab coats and shoes.  I guess we figured that since we were on the top floor and had already taken more time than we should have, we'd better just get a move on.  Nobody really had any idea what was going on.  Somebody said they had seen smoke on the 5th floor.  We only ended up being out there for about 45 minutes before they firemen told us we could go back in.  No fire.  On our way into the elevator, we passed some policemen interrogating a man from the 5th floor with no shoes on, and when we got up to our floor we saw his flip flops in the hall and a broken alcohol glass with blood on the wall.  A policewoman assured us all was well, so we went in to our apartment and locked the door, feeling our tightly wrapped security blanket fall off a little bit.  We got Louise back to sleep with surprisingly little trouble, then went to bed.  It took us a little (okay, a lot) longer to get back to sleep.  Justin kept playing different home invasion scenarios in his mind and I kept thinking about the fact that I'd FINALLY met some of our neighbors (side note: out of everyone that lives in this building, 7 floors with 8-10 apartments on each, there are only 3 other children.  4 total).  After we finally drifted off we were awakened again by the fire alarm at 6.  We were a little quicker this time, and actually got shoes, but as we were going to get Louise they turned off.  Again, miraculously, she didn't wake up.  Later that morning we found out that the man had been drunk and vandalized the building with the fire extinguishers on a few floors and had been arrested.  I'm still not sure what he was doing on our floor, though.  Crazy night.
     As I said, I could barely walk when we finally got up that morning, the pain was so excruciating, so Justin stayed home from his internship to help.  We were still super excited about the idea of moving home, so we were talking about it a lot that day and at some point it occurred to me that maybe I could go to cosmetology school while we were there.  I've always wanted to be a beautician.  I looked into it a little and made some calls.  After talking to all 4 cosmetology schools in St. George I pretty much settled on one.   It has a part time program that lasts two years, but the schedule would be such that I could be home with my girls all day, then go to class in the evening when Justin is home studying anyway, only missing about an hour of Louise and Cora's waking time 4 days a week.  After hearing that, I kind of decided I couldn't do it, but Justin said that he would support me 100%.  He said that it would be a really good example to our kids for a number of reasons.  So I started thinking more and more about it.  I cried at the thought of missing bedtime a few days a week.  I've only missed 2 bedtimes in Louise's entire life.  But, although it will be hard - extremely hard some days - and I'm sure sometimes I won't want to go, I really think this is the time to do it.  I think it will be very worth it.  It's always been my dream, and I won't really have another chance for 13 years.  This way, I can work out of my home to help us through medical school and I'll be one step closer to becoming an image consultant, if that's what I choose.  After making the tentative decision, I got super excited.  Elated, even.  It's almost all I can think about now.  Well, that and getting to meet little Cora Dixie in 2 months. :)  It feels so right and so perfect.  I think it may be one of the reasons we're being able to move home.  Too bad I have to wait 7 months to start.
     Then Wednesday we had Louise's 2 year check up.  It went well.  Louise is doing wonderfully developmentally and physically.  As far as percentages go, she's in the 92% for weight and off the charts for height. :)  Like father, like daughter.
     Like I said, it's been a crazy week.    

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a crazy week indeed!!! So excited you are moving back to Utah!! Can't wait til you move up north!! 😄

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  2. that is so exciting you get to move back to s.utah! also, kudos for knowing what you want to do and going after it! i know what you mean about missing bedtime though, i have only 2-3 times and i hate it! good luck with everything!

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