Christmas and New Years 2014

We spent the holidays in Cedar. Though I tried to not get too busy with projects and obligations in December, I failed. I was very busy. We still managed to do some fun things with the kids.

We went up the mountain to my family's ranch and cut our own Christmas tree. It's been a few years since we've been able to have a live tree and our house smelled wonderful.

We also have an elf on the shelf named Benji who comes to visit every Christmas season. The boys loved waking up in the morning and running around the house to find Benji to see what he was up to in the night.

After one Family Home Evening we made a rice crispy train and decorated it. It was a lot better than the gingerbread train we did last year. Malachi liked to stick his finger in the icing and lick it. Levi took quite a bit of time decorating his engine. 

By the end Levi was squirting icing on his belly and sticking little candy balls to it.

We opened presents at our house Christmas morning. We got each boy 2 gifts and some stocking stuffers. We've realized they don't need much at all. In fact, after Levi opened his first gift, he said he wanted to wait until the next day to open any more gifts. Adrian and I would not go for that, so we coaxed him into opening all his gifts. Adrian and I did not get any gifts for each other or from Santa. 

Here's the tree Christmas morning.

Levi got a take-apart jeep with a power drill! He's pretty smart and can take it apart and put it together all by himself.

Malachi loves animals and he got some toy animals and a barn.

Levi got a new bike with pedals. He's not able to ride it yet. He needs a bit more confidence in himself to do it.

Malachi got a tool bench from grandma and grandpa. Both boys enjoy playing with this.

We woke up Christmas morning to snow, and it snowed all day long. It made for the perfect white Christmas.

We spent Christmas afternoon at my parent's house with my whole family. We had a short Christmas program and had a Christmas dinner. We did a white elephant gift exchange where Adrian and I both got gifts. My parents also got us each a gift, a manual wheat grinder and some 72 hour food blocks. It was just what we wanted, some additions to our emergency preparations.

We walked Main Street one December evening to look at Christmas Lights. We started at Lin's and got some chocolate chip cookies to eat while we walked. It was an enjoyable time. 

Here's one of my projects I did. I made some new ornaments for our tree. I cut off a limb from a fallen aspen tree up the mountain. My dad sliced it and drilled holes in them and I burned some Christmas images on them. I really liked how they turned out. I made about 40 ornaments total.

For New Year's we had a party at my sister Jana's house with most of my family. We had homemade pretzels and played New Years themed minute-to-win-it games. We all laughed a lot and really enjoyed our time together.

Thanksgiving 2014

For Thanksgiving dinner we got together with my dad's side of the family. We had the dinner at my grandma Vera's house after she passed. It was a sunny, but chilly day and the boys enjoyed playing with cousins and running around.

Grandma Vera

My grandma, my father's mother, Vera Davis Bulloch passed away on November 14, 2014. 

That evening my aunt Nicole had been with her when she started having chest pain. Nicole asked my grandma if she had been taking her medications lately and my grandma said no. So, Nicole left to go to the pharmacy to pick up my grandma's medications. When Nicole came back about 1.5 hours later my grandma was laying in her bed cold and blue. Nicole ran over to my aunt Lesa's house across the street and Lesa and her husband Matt started CPR. Family and ambulances were called. My grandma had no vital signs or heart activity. They transported her to the hospital where they intubated her and ultimately pronounced her dead. We're assuming it was from a heart attack since she was having chest pain earlier that evening.

A photographer was hired to take pictures of the funeral. These pictures were from her funeral.

 At the cemetery. 

Malachi putting a flower on her coffin.

We gave Levi a flower to put on her coffin, but he did not want to.

We had some family pictures taken at the luncheon after the burial.

I did not know my grandma Vera very well. I visited her a few times a year in her home. I saw her at family get togethers. At her funeral everyone talked so well about her and stated she was elect lady. I feel as if I missed out personally because I did not get to know her well.

There was two chances in her last month when I could have gone to go visit her. Both times I did not go because I did not want the hassle of going with the boys. Now, I wish I had gone.

As the family has gone through her home and personal belongings, I have acquired a large amount of her food storage. I've been really concerned lately about getting our family's food storage in place. This was definitely a blessing for our family and an answer to my prayers. 

Halloween 2014

Adrian was gone on Halloween. He had an interview in El Paso that day. 

When I asked Levi what he and Malachi wanted to dress up as for Halloween he said he wanted to be a bat. And he wanted Malachi to be a mosquito. Adrain and Levi often play a pretend game where Levi's hands are bats and Adrian's hands are mosquitos. In Levi's mind, bats eat mosquitos. So, it was quite funny that Levi said he wanted Malachi to be a mosquito. 

I made them both bat costumes. All it was, was felt wings connected to the bottom of the shirt sleeves and side of the shirt. I matched that with sweat pants and that's it. I did make a mask for Levi and hat with bat ears for Malachi, but neither of them wore those. 

The day before Halloween went to a Halloween Party at Kolob Regional with Cari where she works. The boys trick or treated to the resident's who were lined up along the hallway. They both enjoyed getting candy in their buckets. 

On Halloween night, we trick or treated around my parent's neighborhood with Cari and LeAnn's families. The boys lasted about ½ an hour before they were done. 

Here's their candy haul. They basically liked to play with it. Levi does not like candy so I ate most of his. Malachi was not into the chocolate candy bars so I ate those for him. All in all I'd say I ate 80% of both their candy. 

I made some halloween shaped jello jigglers for the boys. All they did was squish them and would not eat them.

I got pumpkins for the boys from my mom's garden. Cari invited us to go to a pumpkin farm in town so we went with her too.

I carved both the boys pumpkins. We carved a spider on Levi's and a cat on Malachi's. It was a lot of unappreciated work that rotted way too fast. Levi did enjoy pulling the seeds out of his though.

Fall 2014

During the fall when Adrian was gone we went up to the mountain (up right hand canyon) to take pictures of the kids with leaves. I went up twice. Once with Cari and Levi, and another time with Cari, both boys, and Jana . Levi was compleatly into playing and would not slow down to look at the camera. Malachi held still for just a minute, long enough to snap a few good pictures. 

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We tried to get a picture of all the kiddos. It's hard to get 4 kids looking happy and at the camera at the same time.

I tried to get some pictures of me with the kids. Levi was not happy to be told to hold still long enough for a picture.

We had our first snow storm in Cedar while Adrian was away in Salt Lake.  There was not much snow, but there was enough to build a snowman. I made a snowman, and Levi, all by himself, added a bum and and told me the snowman was pooping. Levi pretended the cleared snow tracks were train tracks. He loves trains!

They both had to have trucks to zoom around in the snow.

Malachi suddenly got the flu. Adrian had been gone for two months and day after he got back the car battery died and Malachi got very sick. I'm lucky God waited for him to be home before things fell apart. Malachi's breathing became very labored that we pulled out all our medicines and tricks to help him. He had heavy labored breathing for 48 hours straight. He coughed a lot and had a fever. We ended up calling the doctor, who we never got a hold of. Adrian and I had stayed up very late into the night talking and catching up since he'd been gone for 2 months and around 2 in the morning Malachi woke up restless and couldn't breathe.  Adrian gave him a blessing and by the end of the day Malachi was much better and breathing normally. It was kind of scary to see someone so little be so sick.

Here's a picture of the boys laying around trying to catch up on some sleep.

Adrian the last few months

Adrian has been super busy the last few months. He has been away on rotations and flying all around the country for residency interviews. 

He applied for residency on September 16th. He applied to about 50 different programs around the country for a MD residency in OB/GYN. The very next day he got first invite for an interview in El Paso, Tx. In total he got invited to 8 interviews which he accepted all the invites and interviewed at all the places. He's been told that having about 13 interviews will guarantee him a spot somewhere so we came up just a bit shy of his goal. 

In the course of 2.5 months he interviewed in Charleston, West Virginia; El Paso, Tx; University of Utah in Salt Lake; Toledo, Ohio; Buffalo, New York; Kansas City, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland and lastly Hartford, Connecticut. He can only get accepted into a program in which he interviewed. Which means we will be going to one of these sites for 4 years. On January 15th we will submit our ranking of these 8 programs. Each program in return will rank all their applicants including Adrian. On March 16th we will get an email stating whether we matched to a program or not. Then on March 20th we will get another email stating which program we matched to. Adrian's stress never ends. There is always a possibility of not matching to any program at all. That will be really bad. Adrain would have to frantically call programs that have an open spot and beg to get in. He might even have to switch to something besides OB/GYN.  We are not hoping for that. 

In September Adrian flew to Philadelphia for some testing, which he passed. He spent the next couple days with his buddy who was also in Philly for testing, touring the city. Here's some pictures of their trip. They also drove to New York City for a day.

He started a month long rotation in Charleston, WV on Sept. 29th. He stayed in a dorm with other roommates that were also med students. He had to commute by bus to the hospital for 40 minutes one way each day. The medical staff he was working with told him he was commuting in the absolute worst part of the city with the worst crimes/drug activity. I made sure he checked in with me every time he came and went from his dorm. It was hard for him be away from family so long. We in turn also missed him. I at least have my family here for someone to talk to and hang out with.

One funny story from WV is that Adrian lost his iPhone. He knew he left it in the public bathroom next to the sink when he washed his hands. When he realized this and went back for it, it was gone. He had the gps activated on his phone and used an app to track his phone. He, along with all the medical staff at the nurses station, was able to track his phone down to the exact location. They watched as his phone went to one mall for ten minutes. Then it traveled to another mall and stopped for ten minutes. During this time he was getting email notifications on his iPad that his phone had been attempted to be deactivated twice. So, whoever had his phone was at the malls trying to deactivate his phone so they could probably sell it. Adrian has a passcode that automatically comes up on his phone every time it turns off so anyone other than us would not be able to access the phone. Then he watched as his phone travelled 30 miles out of town and stopped at someones house. One of the nurses looked at the address where the phone was and she knew the exact patient who had been discharged that day who lived at that location. Adrian did not know what else to to do do he called 911 and reported the whole story to the police. They gave him the run around for two hours and in the end told him they could not help him. So Adrian called the local police office of the town where his phone was and told the local sheriff his story. The sheriff asked for Adrian's phone number so he could possible call it and he said he would go check it out. The sheriff knocked on this lady's door and told her that he had reason to suspect a stolen phone was at her house. She of course denied it and so the sheriff stated that if he called Adrian's phone number and a phone rang in her house he was arresting her. Then he told her that if she turned over phone right then before he dialed the phone number he would take the phone and leave with no other questions asked. She then stated that her child had come home with a phone earlier that day (most likely a lie) and she turned over Adrain's phone to him. Adrian then drove the 30 miles to that town the next day and got his phone. Talk about a crazy story!!

After a month in WV, Adrian came home for 1.5 days and then started a rotation in Salt Lake at the University of Utah for a month. He stayed with my Aunt Denise and Uncle Paul Pratt. He said over and over that although he was away from family, he felt so much better being with a family instead of in a dorm by himself.

He was traveling all throughout this month to his interviews. While he was in Buffalo NY,  he went to see Niagra Falls, from the U.S. side.

After a month at the University of Utah, Adrian did a month in St. George at an orthopedic surgery office. He was gone so much of this month for interviews. 

We had a free Delta companion certificate that expired at the end of the year so I accompanied Adrian to Hartford Connecticut. We woke up at 2 am and drove to Vegas for our flight. We finally landed in Hartford at 3 pm and had to be at a dinner by 5pm. We had read online that Hartford is a really dangerous city and to especially avoid the north part of the city. The dinner was for the people interviewing the following day. It was at an OB doc's house and some current residents and OB doctors were there to get to know. The dinner was fun. It was very family friendly, there were kids there and Adrian said it was the only resident dinner he went to where there kids.  The city had a very New England look to it and it was fun to see all the houses. Adrian went to his interviews the following morning while I was a the hotel. I slept in,  watched tv (which I never do) and exercised in the fitness center. After the interviews we drove around the city and ate, went to a movie and walked around the outdoor mall. We flew home the following afternoon and got to Vegas at midnight. We drove all the way home and watched a meteor shower the whole way. We did get really drowsy and every place Adrain chose to pull over to sleep I made him leave because it was too secluded and I was afraid we would get robbed and killed and nobody would even know because nobody was around. So, we ended up driving the whole way home half asleep only stopping for gas once.

My mom watched the boys while we were gone. Unfortunately, while we were away Levi got sick and vomited and had diarrhea for a few days. My mom said it was tough, but they survived. A couple days later I came down with the same sickness. It went around  most of my family. Oddly, there were some in each family who were exposed to the sickness, but never caught it.

We're so glad interviews are done, but now Adrian's stressing ( and I'm excited) to find out where we will be moving to this summer.

Back yard sleep out

Back in September we had a backyard sleep out with the boys in the back yard. We had been wanting to take them camping again during the summer, but we were busy and it was too cold on the mountain at night for the boys. We learned from our last camping adventure that the nights need to be above 60 degrees for the boys to sleep comfortably. 

We decided to sleep out in the backyard. If all went wrong during the night we figured we could just slip right inside and be in our own beds.  We still had my parent's tent and we have our own outdoor fire pit. We grilled hotdogs and ate chips and dip for dinner.  Once it got dark we made a fire and drank hot chocolate around the fire. My parents joined us for some hot chocolate. The boys loved running around with flashlights.

We each had our own sleeping bag and we stayed up late watching a movie in the tent. Once it came time to go to sleep the boys both snuggled down around Adrian. I slept quite well considering we were in a tent. Adrian on the other hand had to deal with the kids all night and he himself hardly slept. The boys would prefer Adrian over me so he had to handle them all night. 

All in all it made some good memories.