Birthday highlights

Wow... there are no words to describe how my birthday was on Monday! I tear up just thinking about it.
I do have to start by saying how I miss my birthdays from when I was younger... a lot younger.

Every year, either my mom or my aunt would bake me a cake shaped like Minnie Mouse's head or a Strawberry Shortcake cake, amongst different cartoon-ish characters.

I'd get all sorts of brazilian hors d'oeuvres and the sweet little party treats. My whole family would come over for dinner and we'd have so much fun opening presents....
Then adulthood comes.

How is it that we spend so much time as parents planning incredible, top of the notch birthday parties for our kids every year and we don't spend nearly 1/10 of that time for our own? Do we just all of the sudden stop deserving good birthday parties- or birthdays at all? Let's not even talk about presents at this point... For living these many years, we deserve better birthday parties than our kids! We work so hard, we should party just as hard!

A good rule of thumb, they say, is to invite as many people according to how many years old you're turning. So for example: Jacen turned 1 in April, so he had 1 little friend over. When he turns 2, he'll have 2 friends, and so forth. For adult birthday parties, it should be the same: I should've had 23 people over for a birthday party, but I only managed 1 (thanks Nikki!). My calculations may be wrong, but I think I was short 22 people.... and I had no party at all.

Here's how my birthday went:

-At 3am, upon arriving at the nurse's desk to report amount of urine dumped from foleys in 2 different rooms, I get a *breathe in deep* "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SILVIA... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU" from Debbie, Heidi, and Pam. I first thought they were suffocating and needing oxygen, but they quickly began singing. That was a close call!

-At 7:30am, I drive home from work in a cloud of exhaustion. I pondered over the dilemma of whether or not I should shower before Jacen wakes up. After debating for some time, I decide it's easier on me to shower before going to bed for 1 hour. This should be the only day of the year Jacen really doesn't need to scream his head off while I'm getting myself cleaned up from a 12 hour shift.

-Get up at 9:30am and cook breakfast for me and Jacen. I didn't think it was possible to cook a whole entire meal and not remember any of it. The rest of the morning was spent somewhere still unknown at this time.

-Go to bed at noon and wake up at 2:30pm, just in time to hurry and get dressed before Nikki comes over with AMAZING chocolate cupcakes, along with two crocheted hand towels to hang on my oven door, courtesy of her mom (Michelle- thanks!). In total, I had 2-3 just that afternoon to give me enough of a sugar boost to hold a meaningful and decent conversation with her.

-At 5:15pm, Elijah comes home. In hopes to be able to hold myself awake enough to enjoy a nice, quiet evening together, I take a 15 minute nap on the couch. My nap turned into "Good night, I'm going to bed" at 5:45pm. And the rest of my birthday was spent joyfully in DreamLand....

I sure hope next year to get a bit more planning done ahead of time in order to have more of a decent birthday... along with 24 other friends :)

Happy (Sleepy) 23rd Birthday to me!

Cousins, water, and a mess!

COUSINS: My cousin Ana, her husband Joseph, and their two kids (Nicholas and Aubrey) came to Utah for a couple of days, and they stopped by to visit. It was so good to see them, and Jacen met his 2nd cousins :)

WATER: Jacen's afraid of water. Well, I should say spraying water, and large bodies of water. We took him to Grandma and Grandpa Glazier's house one afternoon to play in the sprinklers (which, we don't have a luxury of having a yard), and he was absolutely terrified for the water. It probably took him half an hour to detach from me and go with daddy.

Daddy decided it was great to scare the living crap out of the child and send him flying over the water.

But eventually Jacen got the hang of it and enjoyed watching Duckie get soaked... from a distance. He wouldn't come near the water and the bigger the fountain, the more terrified he got. So the water only reached 1/2 foot high in the air for him to play with it.

MESS: This is what happens when the house gets really quiet while your toddler's awake. Good thing the potty wasn't filled, otherwise I would have cursed.

Are you ready for some football?!!

We are proud to announce Elijah is the Editor-in-Chief and co-author of a brand new website called College Football Connection! This website is all about football, which means this post is for none of you, but for your husbands who just won't be quiet about football... Do you ladies realize football season is starting up again in 5 weeks?! The off season went by way too fast... But I savored- and still am savoring- every last minute of the TV NOT being tuned into a football game.
BUT, I am excited about this new gig Elijah and his new buddies started up! It was put together because ESPN is biased, and this one isn't. It's informative and none of the writers favor certain teams (including their own). They will be talking about who's best and who's not according to their stats, and not their personal opinions.
Reason why I post about it is because we need as MANY people as we possibly can to get on the website and check it out! They may be getting an advertising deal with a popular restaurant chain if they get enough traffic on there! So tell all your husbands, friends, and family that are just DYING to get an unbiased opinion about football!
www.collegefootballconnection.net

Ugh! What to do?!

Ok, so I'm alerting everyone this post is probably going to be really boring with no pictures to share, but I'm having a problem figuring stuff out- lately I can't seem to be able to make decisions on my own, fearing I may make bad decisions. So I've been branching out, trying to find support and advice from people who have walked the walk, and talked the talk. Or maybe just some downright good support.
I know I've always said in the past, because of the circumstances we're in, that I wouldn't want to even THINK about having another child until Jacen is at least 5 years old. Financially it's not advisable, and for sanity purposes, it's just too hard on me. Well... I had to think long and hard about this because since my school plans changed, my personal decision of when to have another child had to get up on the pedestal and be analyzed.
If it was up to Elijah, we'd already have 3 kids at this point. LOL No, we'd be pregnant again with our second. And he understands the situation and is gladly waiting until I decide it's time to stop trying NOT to get pregnant. But because he'd say, "Let's have another one", I already know what his decision is, and it doesn't help mine as much.
The original plan was to have a child after I got my bachelor's, just in time to deliver and start medical school. Jacen would be 4-5 years old and everything would be peachy keen. Except I found some flaws to this plan, since it has been changed. Who would want to father a newborn and deal with a 5 year old as a single parent while the wife is out slaving in front of the books? It'd be extremely hard for Elijah.
Here's the time plan I'm having to look at:
A) We either get pregnant now and have our kids 2 years apart. That will give them a chance to be close and the youngest will be about 2 when I start med school, and they won't miss me that much. The problem: who can afford another child at CNA wages?!
B) We get pregnant as soon as I finish my bachelor's (in roughly 2 years). Jacen will be a bit older (3-4 yrs old), and Elijah will be the only one taking care of a newborn, and that's if I get accepted into med school the first time around.
C) Wait until med school and residency are all done, roughly 10 years from now. It'll be great, I'll still be in my early 30's and we'll definitely be able to afford one then.... but poor Jacen! He won't have anyone to play with for 10 years!
So far, I've asked a couple of people at work, and they definitely go with choice A. You can never afford your kids, no matter how much money you make.
Any thoughts? I'm putting up a poll on the right hand side and I'd like some votes, please! And maybe if you wouldn't mind commenting on this post as to why you chose what you did, that would be just fabulous. Thank you!
Oh, and I'm sorry this is so long.

Summer vacation 2009

This year was the first time in 3 1/2 years that we got to leave the state and go on a decent vacation. After finding an AMAZING deal for airfare ($148/person), we traveled to Washington DC for this year's vacation. We only went there because Elijah's dad and step-mom live there, and they were able to accomodate us for the week. It even turned out that his dad got that entire time off work, and his sister Jenn and her husband Jake ended up being there at the same time as well. It was great!Out trip started with a very curious Jacen trying to push buttons on the vending machines in front of our gate, while we waited an excruciating 2 hours to board the plane. When we had gotten to the airport we found out our plane was going to be late, and we were going to miss our plane in Dallas/Ft. Worth, so American Airlines was nice enough to get us a hotel room in Dallas overnight and vouchers for food. Although breaking the trip up in two parts was probably better for Jacen, I hated Texas. Those stupid bugs were too big, not to mention arriving at the wrong terminal and trying to get to the next one took 20 minutes on the shuttle, was just plain awful.

That was Elijah reading Mr. Brown Can Moo to Jacen on the plane. We got lucky and Jacen had his own seat when we hadn't paid for it. He was mostly good on the plane except for when it was his nap time and he was too interested in pushing the light buttons overhead.

Once we got to DC on wednesday afternoon, Terry (Elijah's dad) took us on a driving tour of DC. These pictures aren't great because they were taken from inside a moving vehicle, but they'll do for now. This was the Washington Monument and it was quite tall.

This is the 0.5 second view of the White House. The TV and cameras make it seem so big, but it's actually quite small. I was shocked and somehow disappointed...

And here's the Capitol Building. We took more pictures of it but this was the best one of them all. It was a big building, and much bigger than the White House!

On our way back home from our tour, they took us to see the Washington DC Temple. It was beautiful. It has caused many accidents on the freeway, apparently. It comes out of nowhere after the road curves and it shocks anyone who doesn't know what it is. And it's also a point of reference on the traffic portion of the news in the morning as well. The dots everywhere were from raindrops, just FYI.

On Thursday, we went to the American History Smithsonian. That place was so huge we were only able to tour half of it, and it still took us about 2-3 hrs. This C3PO is the actual costume worn for episode 6. I hate Star Wars, but I thought the costume was cool anyway.

This is a vest used by someone who survived the sinking of the Titanic. That was definitely something worth taking a picture of.

And I just had to take a picture of that coin. They also had a coin that was used here in Utah, called "Utah Mormons". It was worth $20 and it was from 1849.

Our last stop in the museum was to see the original USA flag. They keep it in a dark room chilled to 30F to preserve the fibers and it was so reverent in there. We were not allowed to take pictures or film it because the flash accelerated the deterioration of the flag.

On Saturday, we had yummy BBQ provided by Jake and Terry. We hung out at home and played games, then in the evening we ended up going somewhere nearby to watch a fireworks display. I originally wanted to go to DC and watch the fireworks there, but because they were expecting 1.2 million tourists to visit and were shutting all the streets down, it wouldn't have been a great place to drag Jacen to. So we opted for a fireworks display that was still bigger than anything I've seen here in Utah. I was quite impressed, and the place was packed!

On Sunday, we visited another one of the Smithsonians. This one is outside of DC and it was closer to where we were staying. This is the Air and Space Museum. The museum is placed in a hangar, and it's absolutely MASSIVE. The picture above is of Enterprise, which is a space shuttle. That thing was huge. And you can see the tiles they always talk about falling in space on the right side of the picture.

From all the airplanes in there, this one was the most interesting of them all (besides the SR-71 and the Indiana Jones plane). This is Enola Gay, which was the bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and killed about 85,000 people. The guide was saying that the atomic bombs dropped there and in Nagazaki still didn't kill as many people as regular bombs did in one night.
I was only interested in this plane because my brother Victor is serving his LDS mission in Hiroshima, Japan, and it was cool to see it.

Monday was our last full day of vacation, and I had requested that we would go to the nearest beach. Jenn and Jake left for home that morning and we left shortly after that. The drive to Ocean City, Maryland was about 4 hrs (45 minutes of it was spent somewhere eating). The beach was wonderful! It was in the low 80's and the breeze was fantastic. It felt so nice to just sit on the sand and enjoy the sun! This picture is of Jacen freaking out about the water. He absolutely HATED it, and bawled every time Elijah would put him down in it. He was so mad at me for letting Elijah put him down in the water, he bit my shoulder, which was the least of my injuries while on vacation. My other one was slipping in the laundry room that was covered 1/2 inch deep in liquid laundry detergent (that was my bad) and hurting my head so bad I was in a haze most of the day and the next day, not to mention I couldn't turn my head without my neck hurting. Then I hurt myself again by slipping and sliding down carpeted stairs while bringing the bigger suitcase down to the main level. OUCH! I've been way clutzy lately, don't know why...

Anyway, shortly after this picture was taken, Jacen decided it was a good time to put a handful of sand in his mouth. So we ended up calling it a day and left before Jacen gagged on sand even more.

Our vacation was awesome and I was so excited we were able to go and relax for a change. We've had such awful schedules and hectic lives in the last 3 years that we needed something before we exploded! I'm ready for the next year now that I start my pre-med classes and things get a bit worse with our schedules, and I'll be glad to take another vacation next year for Elijah's family reunion in Myrtle Beach, SC! But if I can get away with buying tickets to go see my family in Brazil, you better believe we'll be going there instead!