Eat and sleep

Jacen loves brownie batter as much as I do. We were both fighting to see who could get the most left-over batter from the bowl. He calls brownies "cookies".

He then went into his room and grabbed his pillow and blankie, brought it into the living room, and tucked himself in as he said "Night night". He must've been tired because he doesn't like bedtime!

ABC's of me

So obviously I'm doing this because I have so much time in my hands, I thought I'd do a fun post (yeah, I'll post more LOL)

A
- Available: Nope, not really!
- Age: 23
- Animal: none
- Actor: Jim Carrey
- Actress: Meg Ryan
B
- Birthday: Aug. 3
- Best Friend: lots of them!
- Best feeling in the world: doing something people aren't usually capable of
- Blind or Deaf: neither, thank goodness!
- Best weather: blinding sheets of rain pouring down in the city, sunny 80's at the beach.
- Been on stage?: church play about Pioneers back in Brazil, mixed choir in 9th grade, High School graduation speech.
- Believe in yourself?: I'd have to say so...
- Believe in life on other planets: Yeah
- Believe in miracles: For the most part
- Believe in Magic: No... they are just optical illusions
- Believe in Satan: Yes
- Believe in Santa: Yes
C
- Car: 2001 gold Ford Focus. I love my U of U license plate!
- Candy: not a big fan, unless it's chocolate, then I'm all for it.
- Color: white
- Cake or pie: Cake
- Countries to visit: England, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland.
D
- Day or Night: Night
- Danced: today when I was getting ready to leave for work LOL (long story)
- Dance in the rain?: No, but I've been stuck outside in the rain for 3 hours. I was very cold.
E
- Eyes: Darkest brown
- Everyone has a: mouth
- Ever failed a class?: No, I think that'd be the day to bury me.
F
- Full name: Silvia Cristina Caswell
- First thoughts waking up: "You're kidding me..."
- Food: trying to not love it so much.
G
- Greatest Fear: not being happy
- Giver or taker: 50/50
- Gum: no, I get headaches when I chew it
- Get along with your parents?: Yes
- Good luck charm: my left shoe?! LOL none!!
H
- Hair Color: med. brown
- Height: 5' 7 3/4" (according to my flight attendant interview 5 years ago)
- Happy: mostly, sure.
- Holiday: Christmas
- Hate: Cooking, waking up early, derailed plans, making mistakes.
I
- Ice Cream: Chocolate
- Instrument: piano (a long time ago!)
J
- Jewelry: wedding ring, earrings
K
- Kids: 1 so far and probably the only one (I'm pushing for the "only one" plan)
- Kickboxing or karate: karate
- Keep a journal?: Yes, my other blog
L
- Longest Car Ride: Curitiba to Iguacu Falls (falls at the border between Paraguay/Brazil), then to Paraguay and Argentina.
- Letter: A
- Laughed so hard you cried: I don't think so
- Love at first sight? Yes
- Last person who...
1. Slept in a bed beside you?: Elijah
2. Saw you cry?: Elijah
3. Went to the movies with you?: Probably Elijah too
4. You went to the mall with?: Elijah and Jacen
5. You went to dinner with?: guess who??... Elijah.
6. You talked to on the phone?: Holly C.
7. Made you laugh?: Tina
M
- Milk flavor: chocolate
- Mooned anyone?: no, I would never dare!
- Marriage?: constantly working at it
- Motion sickness?: Extreme (car rides, and take off/landing in airplane)
- McD's or BK?: McDonald's
N
- Number of Siblings: 3: 1 full brother (21), 1 half brother (9), 1 half sister (7)
- Number of Piercings: 2, one in each ear
O
- Overused Phrases: Nice!
- One wish: to graduate on time and have enough money until then.
P
- Place you'd like to live: Oregon
- Perfect Pizza: All toppings, stuffed crust
- Pepsi/Coke: Coke all the way (Pepsi's too sweet)
Q
-Quail: shoot 'em!
R
- Reason to cry: being too overwhelmed, lack of sleep
S
- Song: "Hurt" by Christina Aguilera
- Shoe size: 9 1/2
- Salad Dressing: Poppy Seed
- Sushi: ewww no raw meats!
- Scent: Deep Red by Hugo Boss...
- Skipped school: yes, and I'm ashamed to admit it.
- Slept outside: Yes
- Seen a dead body?: yes, anatomy lab, and when a patient died on me. That was traumatizing.
- Smoked?: heavens no. It's gross.
- Skinny dipped?: hahaha no.
- Shower Daily?: Yeah, thank you very much!
- Sing well?: Yeah, I like to think so.
- In the shower?: No
- Swear?: Lately more and more... don't know why.
- Stuffed Animals?: too many!
- Strawberries/Blueberries: strawberries
- Scientists need to invent: time travel
T
- Time for bed: 10-11pm
- Thunderstorms: awesome! The bigger, the better!
- TV: Leverage, Human Target, Modern Family, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Paranormal State, King of Queens, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friday Night Lights.
- Touch your tongue to your nose? Yes, but just barely
U
- Unpredictable: Sometimes
V
- Vegetable you love: asparagus
- Vacation spot: Brazil!
W
- Weakness: intelligence
- When you grow up: Medical Doctor, mom
- Which one of your friends acts the most like you: No one. I'm the black sheep among all my friends!
- Who makes you laugh the most: Elijah, Jacen
- Worst feeling: making huge mistakes
- Wanted to be a model?: no, they're anorexic
- Where do we go when we die: To a place that has chocolate fountains for fruit to be dipped in and nice "sleep number" beds to sleep all the time at the beach while you listen to the sounds of the waves... aaahhh
- Worst weather: 110F temperature. Shoot me then.
X
-X-Rays: abdominal CT scans and MRI, tons of prenatal Ultrasounds, XRays for right broken wrist, left  fractured sesamoid bone on left foot, shattered all bones in right foot.
Y
-Year it is now: 2010
-Yellow: sun
Z
- Zoo animal: baby Koala
- Zodiac sign: Leo

Ready... set... GO!

My life is now back to 100mph... I only have one day off every two weeks (every other sunday) and I have to get up at 6am every morning except for 2 days every 14 days. It sucks because I'm not a morning person at all, but at least it's a schedule that somewhat works for now. I don't even know if I'll be able to stay in school because of tuition/government money disbursement issues, but I'll get to it once I cross that bridge on the 25th. Other than that, I love my classes and my teachers seem very nice so far. I'm taking Physiology, Gen. Chem II, Calculus I, and doing some independent research with Dr. Henry Harpending (click on his name to see his CV) on genetics and evolution. I haven't narrowed down my research hypothesis quite yet but I'll be meeting with him tomorrow to discuss some options, which unfortunately, will require time spent in an actual lab dealing with DNA strands and banks of very old genes from who knows when, and that's a whole other problem (my last research I could do from home).
It's been terribly difficult to find babysitting this semester, but I'm grateful to all of those who offered and are able to do it. I can't thank you enough! I was going to take Genetics this semester but had to switch it with Physiology instead due to not finding anyone to watch Jacen during the times I needed. We could just put him in daycare, but it's hard to make it work when our income is going down now that I switched back to "half-time". I hope the Lord will help us through -yet another- semester of chaos.
Just an update... New Years went well. Our usual cabin trip up to Heber that we do every year didn't happen because of some transportation/time issues. So we chilled in the valley with some good friends of ours. Didn't get pictures because I forgot the camera. We had a wonderful break from school and we got to spend a lot of time together, which was really nice.
Jacen is now wearing Pull-Ups and the whole "cool alert" thing doesn't seem to phase him one bit. I swore I'd never give him candy for PT'ing successes but I've gotten desperate and caved in. Until yesterday he was having at least 2 successes/day and he was getting lots of candy. But we stalled, and I'm not sure why. He's been a crank lately and not sleeping well. He learned he can now get out of bed and pile 8-10 books on his bed and climb back in to read. Or he'll stand at the door and pound his fist on it to be let out (like today, I had to guide him back to bed 11 times for nap time- no exageration!). This "terrible two's" thing is not sitting well with me. I don't know if I want to do it again later in life. We'll wait and see...
BTW, I was wondering if anyone does any couponing. I'm interested but it seems very time consuming and like it's rocket science. If any of you have any suggestions or ideas on how to do it effectively, please comment! I'd love to hear from ya. I started looking into but it sounds so difficult!!! Help!
It'll be a while until I update this thing again, maybe March sometime. I got busy!
(Sorry, no pictures, I'm in a hurry today...)

Christmas week

Because the New Year is approaching, we decided it was time to turn Jacen's crib into a toddler bed. There are two reasons why we just went ahead and did it: 1) our crib was among the 2.1 million cribs that got recalled for having a drop-side, so instead of buying a new crib, we took the side off; and 2) we wanted him to get used to sleeping like that so when we seriously start potty training him at the first of January, he'd be able to get out and use the potty when he felt like it. He loves his new big boy bed!

We took the time this past week to go see the Christmas lights downtown, like we've done the past couple of years. We are going to start a tradition and get our picture taken at this spot every year. We had our picture taken there last year and Jacen seemed so small... It looks like the same picture from last year! Looks like we need to buy new winter jackets :P

After having breakfast and reading the Bible passage of Christ's birth, we opened gifts. He really doesn't look happy in this picture... He was actually really overwhelmed. We didn't know why but as I was talking to a co-worker last night who has a daughter about the same age as Jacen, she pointed out her daughter was also too overwhelmed. Jacen was so overwhelmed he began putting unopened gifts on the kitchen floor. If we would've given him just the stuff from his stocking, he would've been a happy camper.

Just around the time he began freaking out.

Later that morning, we went up the street to Elijah's mom's house and opened more presents there.

And I didn't think I was that good of a girl this year, but apparently I was! I got a Wii for Christmas. I've always thought they were cool and wanted one just "because", but couldn't justify paying $200+ for a video game system. Somehow Elijah saved money all year to buy me this. He also got me the Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii which is awesome! It brings back old memories from when I was a kid and played it on the Nintendo 64. I'm looking forward to getting Wii Fit Plus soon so I can lose some weight, along with Elijah. My goal is to drop about 30 lbs this next year. I hope Elijah and I can both succeed!

Since when?

I just had to blog about this super quick because I really thought it was quite sad.
I blogged a few weeks ago about the true meaning of Christmas and how we really need to think of whose birthday we're celebrating.
Tonight we're going to go to Fashion Place Mall to get a picture of Jacen on Santa's lap, and although Santa is a nice man, he's not the focus of Christmas like SouthTowne Mall thinks he is.
This is what showed on SouthTowne Mall's website when I went to look for Santa's hours:

Really? Since when did Santa Claus become the "Most Essential Man" of the Holidays?
I thought it was Him:

Now, unless I missed something, Christ has done a lot more for us than Santa has.

A couple of years ago, Elijah and I started reading the passage of Christ's birth straight from the Bible, first thing when we wake up on Christmas morning. It has helped us remember the true meaning of Christmas throughout the day, especially when the day revolves so much around presents.

Merry Christmas to everyone!