All the things I'm grateful for...

The tradition of celebrating a day of giving thanks is a new concept to me, introduced only within the last decade. It's interesting to see how ungrateful people can be throughout the year, especially when they have so much. In Brazil, people don't have nearly as many things as we do here (i.e. dishwashers, washers/dryers, bathtubs, etc). I know I've been very ungrateful this year, mostly because of all the other huge problems hovering over us. It's easy to forget to thank our Heavenly Father who sends us abundant blessings each and every day. In light of the Thanksgiving holiday that came and went in the blink of an eye, I wanted to post about a few things that I'm grateful for.
-I'm grateful to have a healthy family who is supportive of me going through this much schooling so one day we can have a better life. You don't usually find that supportive of a husband. Elijah's been sacrificing the little time we have each week together so I can barricade myself in the office doing endless hours of homework and research work. (For info on how my school is doing, click here)
-I'm grateful for having jobs. Jobs are so scarce, especially now that the unemployment rate is 10%+. We've been very blessed to work for stable companies that are flexible enough to schedule us when it works best for us.
-I'm grateful for all the things we own, including, but are not limited to, our house, our (now) functioning cars, all of Bubba's toys, furniture, pantry and fridge full of food, and all of the appliances that are working properly.
-I'm grateful for our parents and friends that help us with babysitting while Elijah and I are either at work or at school. It's HUGE to not have to pay for daycare or to have some strange person watch him.
-I'm grateful for the Gospel in our lives, although we haven't been to church in a while (because of work). It helps to know someone's there listening.
-I'm grateful for our friends and family that are also supportive and are there to help us whenever we need it.

For Thanksgiving this year, we went to Elijah's moms house and had dinner there, along with my mom and my brother James. Jacen went to town on the food. He ate a lot of what was on his plate, which was A LOT... The food and the company were great! The last two years have been quieter because Victor's gone on his mission and our family got smaller. But they've been good because it gives us a chance to really enjoy the holidays without it being chaotic. Then later that night I had to go into work, which was fine. I like spending a part of the holidays with co-workers. They make it fun and entertaining!

On a side note, I wanted to publicly announce I'm retiring my black backpack.

Obviously it doesn't look like this anymore, but it's still not worn out either. For any of you that went to Cottonwood High School with me, I've been using this same backpack since 9th grade. Yes, you read it right: 9TH GRADE. This backpack has survived almost 10 school years. It's been a very dependable, sturdy backpack, which I currently consider to be my lucky charm. It got me through high school graduation, and my associates degree. When I first saw it, my mom almost had a stroke when we found out it cost $60, but it's been a good investment. Thanks, mom!

Now that I'm a big girl and I'm going to the U for good, I'm thinking of switching to either a messenger bag or a more lively version of the black backpack:

What do you think?

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday! Now, on to Christmas... Our favorite holiday of the year!

Bowlin'

After not doing anything as a family for nearly a month, we decided it was time to go out and do something different. I didn't realize how stress was piling on so fast!
On tuesday we took Jacen to The Pizza Factory and to Fat Cats for a round of bowling. He was so happy to eat pizza, first of all. He ate the majority of what was on his plate, and didn't complain one bit. What a good boy! He didn't even make the usual embarrassing mess of food on the floor, which was a nice bonus. I was shocked!
After that we went to the bowling lanes. I don't think we've ever seen Jacen so excited about something. He had his own turns, with the bumpers and the "grandma walker" looking thing that's used for the ball to roll off of. He loved pushing the ball at a whopping 4.5 mph. He'd clap and squeal with happiness. He'd even clap when other people would cheer. Funniest thing ever.
I don't remember the scores, but I know Elijah kicked my hiney by like 50 points, and hmm... Jacen kicked mine as well.
Let's not talk about it.

Halloween 2009

Despite begging Elijah for almost one week to post pictures of Halloween on the blog, he still refused, which left me to post these late.

Halloween was fun for the boys. I had to work the night before and the night of Halloween, so I didn't do anything except for sleep and clean the floors during the day. Also, I've been so busy with school these days that I sort of ran out of time trying to find the perfect Halloween costume for Jacen... I more like forgot to get him a good costume until the day before. *sigh* Elijah and I just figured on saturday morning he'd be the same thing he was last year: a pumpkin. Eighteen month olds don't remember, right? I still felt like a horrible mother.

Elijah took him to Fashion Place Mall to go trick or treating this year, that way he could bypass the monster that comes out of Jacen when exhaustion settles in. It was a good idea except they didn't start until 6pm, and a few angry store employees did not want Elijah to leave without feeling guilty for trick or treating at 4pm. Sheesh!

Jacen didn't know what to do at first, but towards the end he'd just walk into a store, and point to the bucket of candy since he couldn't say "I'm here for some of that, please. According to my parents I'm dressed cute, so please pass the candy over here and get this over and done with". Elijah recorded some of it and it was pretty funny! I wish I had been there :( His favorite was the Honey Teddy Grahams fun packs. He loves those! And I also found out he loves chocolate, just like I do. That made my day!
I hope everyone had a good Halloween!
And happy 50th birthday to my dad :) I love you!

Dance, dance!

I figured everyone would like to see Jacen dancing to Little Einsteins. He even claps with them at the end of the show! It's sooo cute!
Speaking of him... he's a BIG boy. Just had the 18-month well-baby checkup, and he weighs 29.5 lbs and is 35 inches tall. He's on the 98% for his height. It's crazy how much he grew in the last 6 months! We had to buy him a whole bunch of 2T clothes, and he'll be needing 3T PJ's here pretty soon.
He also has become quite the chatterbox! He speaks in his own gibberish, but he'll go on and on, talking with his hands (that's a Mourao trait). He totally thinks we know what he's saying!
We love Jacen so much!

Wow... really?

I was watching the Rachael Ray show this morning, like I regularly do, and this lady was on there, and she loves to bake. In fact, her husband got the whole kitchen remodeled, and with it, they bought a new stove/oven. Because they got a new oven, her baking took off, and she's so obsessed with it that she will go as far as using a hair net when she's baking cupcakes for her daughter's class. Which is fine, I mean, I wouldn't want anyone's hair in my cupcake! So it's all fun and games until she says something along the lines like "I think it's important for a mom to stay at home with her kids and to have the house smelling like baked goods when they come home from school. It's what moms should do"- or something like that.
Wow.
I admire moms who stay at home. Holy cow, if I could mentally and financially handle it, I would. It takes such an enormous amount of patience to stay at home. But staying at home isn't the best fit for every mom.
Then the other day I was talking to someone, and she said what I was doing was unrealistic and that I needed to give up something (she sounded like I needed to give up school more than work, and that I needed to pay more attention to my family). Ok. To a degree that's true, we don't ever go out as a family much anymore, but that's because our schedules are the opposite... well, the point is: I'm not gonna give up my dream of medical school because society tells me staying at home is more important to my family.
For thousands of years women have stayed at home and done the nurturing and taking care of the children, while the men have gone out hunting and now, working. But since women have become such an important part of the workforce, and some families need that 2nd income (either from working at home or outside the home), women have not necessarily put their families/kids in the backburner, they just learned to adjust to having a work life and a family life.
It's especially a huge problem here in Utah with the LDS church saying it's important for women to go to school, but also to stay at home with their kids. So women are supposed to spend thousands of dollars for schooling only to stay home (because most likely they got married and had kids while going to school) and not fulfill the dream of a career they studied for 4-8 years?
It's possible to juggle both, and be happy doing both. I've been doing this "full time work, full time school, full time mom/wife" role for 6 weeks now and it's been doable. Yeah, it's been busy, and sometimes I felt like punching a hole through the wall, but it's fine. I work because we need the income and it's become my social life. I go to school because it's not only my hobby, but it's necessary education for my future. And I'm a mom because... it happened. LOL I like all 3 roles, and I don't need someone telling me I'm going to fail at one of them, because I can do this. Elijah, Jacen, and I are going to make it work for us. Elijah's gonna be a SAHD for 7+ years and he's happy with that decision. We're all happy with it. But for someone to imply that I was going to fail as a mom and a wife because I want to be happy with myself as a doctor???
Nah, I don't think so.