New Job, Physical Therapy, Eye Healed, Mayo, Klondike, Student Driver, Valentine's Day, Simplot Track Meet, Urban Air

We have had a relatively slow two weeks and for that I am glad!!  Here's a few things that have happened in the last two weeks.

Aaron started physical therapy for his shoulder.  He is getting more movement slowly, but surely.  He still needs assistance with a few tasks, but he is getting more independent which is nice.  He goes to therapy twice a week.  

Even though we have had a rough month there has been some blessings thrown our way as well.  I was thankful for the dinners G&G T and Johanna brought in to help us out.  It was stressful trying to juggle everything by myself with Aaron being sidelined with his shoulder.  I am thankful to have him recovering to the point he can help now.  I also have some exciting news--I got kind of a new job!  The company that does the seasonal flu shots also does year around immunizations, but only a few nurses are on the regular yearly immunization schedule/payroll.  I got an email last month asking me to join the CORE staff as a year round immunization nurse.  I am pretty excited about that.  I had my first staff meeting last week.  It was 3 hours, but they provided lunch so it was good.  We learned about the updates for the Gardasil Vaccine as well as the new Hepatitis B vaccine.  I will be doing a few training clinics before we have our official training at the main office in Salt Lake.  We will be doing kindergarten round up clinics, Jr. High registration clinics, department of corrections employee clinics, refugee clinics, etc.  I have my first training clinic this week and I am pretty excited.  

Noah is a bit of a ham.  I asked him to go and get the mail the other day.  He walked over carrying my keys and a jar of mayo.  He then said, "Here's the mayo, Mom!"  Hardy har har kid.  He thought he was quite hilarious. Luckily, he chuckled for a little bit and then actually went and got me the mail shortly after.  What a dork!

 Daniel made a 3D key chain at school last week. I thought it was pretty cool:

 I am so happy to say that Josh had his last ophthalmologist appointment last week.  His eye had made significant progress in healing over the weekend and so Josh only had to do two more days of antibiotic drops and then he was done.  He has a small scar on his cornea, but thankfully, it ended up not being in his direct line of vision.  He will have some haloing effect when driving at night, but other than that he is great.  I was happy to hear that and even happier to know that we were done having frequent appointments at that office.  Wahoo!  Here's Josh getting his last corneal ulcer exam done:

 Josh had to wait almost a month to put contacts back in, but he is back to wearing them now.  The doctor did stress that at any point if he feels any irritation in his eye he needs to immediately remove the contact.  Hopefully, Josh really understands the importance of that and will heed the advice!!

Daniel felt he did not have a true Klondike experience last year since it ended up being a relatively warm year getting up to 40 degrees during the day so he wanted to try it again this year.  Well if he was looking for a very cold Klondike experience this year he was in luck.  I am grateful to the leaders that take these boys on such things because it definitely does not sound like how to have a good time to me.  Anyway, during the night the temperature dipped to -20 degrees.  Brrrrr!  Again not my idea of a good time, but to each their own.  The next day they had fun doing the activities during the morning.

 Daniel borrowed Josh's coat since it is a lot warmer than his regular one.  However, it was a tad big on him to say the least.  That's okay it really kept him warm so that's all that matters, right?!

 I think Daniel had a true bone chilling Klondike experience this year.  He did say that he didn't think he wanted to do it again for next year so is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I can't tell.  After he got home he took the world's longest shower to get warm.  He then laid down on the ground to watch some TV and shortly after fell asleep.  The poor guy was tired enough he slept through our noisy family (which is saying A LOT since no one in our house can talk lower than a yell it seems) for about two hours until Sophie saw him and started licking and climbing all over him.

 Thanks to his nap he wasn't too tired when it was time to go to bed so he stayed up with me to wait for Josh to come home. I didn't mind the snuggles.

 Aaron takes his cooking and smoking seriously.  He had smoked some hamburgers and then grilled them to get that sear on the outside.  Of course, he was still wearing his shorts and flip flops as it was really snowing outside.  What a crazy guy!  The hamburgers did taste good, though!

 Daniel has been going on YouTube to learn how to play his saxophone better.  He then will play what he learned for us whether we want to hear it or not--haha!  The good thing is he is starting to sound better.  The bad news is that he isn't quite up to Kenny G status yet--haha!

We have been severely neglecting Josh and his driving practice.  When Josh came home and said he needed to get 40 hours of driving practice done in the next month we got ourselves in gear.  Josh is still learning and sometimes (a LOT of times) scare even us, we decided to order some Student Driver magnets to help the people around us be more understanding while we are practicing with Josh on the road.  We have had a few people laugh, but all in all I think it was a good idea!  Aaron took one for the team and actually took him on the freeway this past weekend.  Josh is getting better, but he just needs a lot of practice.  He is actually going out driving with the Driver's Ed teacher tomorrow so hopefully he will do okay.  Here's our nice student driver magnets.  There are three so one for each side of the car--haha!

Sarah is continuing to participate in the ABCD study.  They called and asked her about 10 minutes worth of questions.  A week later we got an actual picture of her brain from her previous MRI in the mail.  I thought it was pretty fascinating to see:

 Valentine's snuck up on me this year.  Sarah and Noah needed a Valentine Box for their school parties.  I helped them do the basic decoration, but I had to be gone the night before so Aaron had to finish things up for them.  Noah wanted to do a funny mouth box so I have a ton of pictures of Noah on my phone just like this:

The kids really wanted to do the finishing touches on their boxes themselves this year and we let them.  Here's how Noah's mouth box turned out.  For some reason he cut off all his teeth in the picture so he looks like an old man. Crazy Kid!!:

 The bubble by his mouth says, "Feed me CANDY!!"  For some reason it didn't show up in the picture.

Aaron before he left for work Valentine's Day morning snuck a rose onto Sarah's bed while she was still sleeping.  She was excited about it when she woke up and found it later on that morning.

 Sarah wanted a Valentine's hairdo so we did a heart mermaid braid:

 Noah's class was going to have a 50's party so he needed to dress up like someone from the 50s.  Here was our attempt at a costume and slicked back hair:

 Here's the cute kids with their Valentine boxes before they left for school that morning:

The night before Valentine's Day I had to pick up a few things from Walmart.  While we were there Daniel asked if we could pick up something for his Valentine.  Wwwwhhhhhhaaaaaatttttt????  I said we could and he started looking for something for her.  The funny thing was that his Valentine was in the same section of the store we were and was doing the same thing--picking something out for Daniel.  She had her mom and sister with her as well.  Daniel was a bit embarrassed so he had me wave bye and keep walking.  I just waved hi but never said anything to her, but she was a cute girl.  She ended up giving Daniel this the next morning:

Along with a homemade card:

 Daniel seems to be one 'Smooth Operator!!'--haha!  I am a bit embarrassed since all I let Daniel pick up for her was a $3 box of chocolates.  I felt bad.  Hopefully, she just is happy and knows that it is the thought that counts, right?!

Josh got a Valentine's gift from a girl at school, too.  He was pretty excited and texted me a picture of the goods:

 For Valentine's Day I had to check Josh out of school during last period.  He had a 3 day track meet up in Pocatello.  Since they were not taking a bus up there (just relied on parents driving) I had to physically be the one to check Josh out of school in order for him to go.  Thankfully, he and a few friends were able to get a ride up to Pocatello with the coach.  I brought Josh his suitcase he had packed the night before and checked him out of seminary.  He just grabbed his suitcase and started walking away.  I had to tell him to stop and give me a hug since I wouldn't be seeing him for 3 days.  The little punk was in too much of a hurry to give me love.  I am afraid this is how he will be when he moves out--he will just grab his stuff and not look back.  Luckily, he smiled and came bag to hug me and then left on his way to meet up with the coach.  Here he is walking away with his suitcase:

This track meet was a big one called Simplot Games.  There were teams from all over the USA as well as some from New Zealand, Canada, and other countries.  His 1600 meter event was that first evening. He did text us a picture of him before he ran just to let me know he got there safely:

His stuff was over the first day, but he stayed the next two to cheer on his teammates.  They spent the nights in a nearby hotel so Josh was living the high life--haha!  Things weren't always super exciting, though, because someone did snap a picture of Josh taking a nap in the bleachers--haha!

There were some famous people there Josh got to meet and had a few of them sign a shirt and his program.  There was Dick Fosbury, Willie Banks, Dan O'Brien, Andre Phillips, etc.:

 All in all it looks like he had a fun trip:

He got back Saturday afternoon.

Back to Valentine's Day...Noah's teacher posted a few pictures of their classroom Valentine's party.  Noah looked like he had some fun:

 For dinnertime we picked up a heart pizza for the kids to eat:

Aaron picked up some tomahawk steaks he had been wanting to try out for a romantic dinner just for us.  We had steak and potatoes.

 He smoked them and they were pretty delicious.  However, they were HUGE.  I couldn't finish most of it, but the kids were more than willing to eat the leftovers for me.

 Presidents' Day was yesterday and we wanted to do something as a family.  Josh has been begging us to go to Urban Air to try it out.  That is where he works so he wanted us to see what he does at work. They were running a special so we decided to take everyone.  Aaron wasn't going to participate since he still has a bum shoulder, but he said he wanted to go and he would take the pictures.  Here's Josh showing us around:

 Noah tried out the Warrior Course very first.  He didn't last too long until he fell into the balls.

 All of us tried out the Sky Rider which is kind of like a zip line, but you have some control over your movements.  Matthew went first:

 Sarah went next:

 I followed Sarah:

 Josh rode it as well:

 Here's what Daniel's ride looked like:

 Sarah's ride:

Those pictures were only the first half of the Sky Rider.  There was a second part to the ride that Aaron didn't get a picture of, but it was just as fun.  We then moved on to the ropes course.  Matthew went first again--he's getting to be a bit of a daredevil!

 The rest of us followed:

During our time there they had a dance off.  All the kids ran over to be a part of it except Noah.  I think he was still lost in the Warrior Course ball pit....

Anyway, the owner saw Josh and another employee on their off days dancing along with the dance off.  He had them pick out who they thought danced best.  Josh tried to do eenie, meanie, minee, mo, but ended up picking Daniel who in turn got a free pass to come again.  I had to chuckle a bit because that wasn't biased at all, right?!  Haha--I guess it's not what you know, but who, right?!  Here's my dance off kids:

Noah loved the many trampolines to jump on:

 They had one trampoline up agains a foam wall where you could jump on the foam wall and then jump down onto the trampoline.  Daniel thought that was pretty cool:

I have always wanted to try the Wipeout swisher thing so when it wasn't too crowded Daniel, Noah and I jumped in.  Then things went horribly wrong and I totally biffed it and landed on my neck.  Let's just say I am not Wipeout material and I can't turn my head today because my necked is jacked up.  The heating pad has been a life saver today--haha!  However, everyone in my family got a pretty good laugh at my expense--haha!  I laughed at myself, too, after seeing my fall.  I guess I can be pretty hilarious.  I guess this is why there weren't very many adults on the courses....Oh well at least we all had fun together.

We also did the climbing area with the different climbing walls and obstacles.  I did the trust grab!  Even though I don't have a picture I did do it.  Wahoo!  Here's Sarah climbing a wall and Josh waiting for his turn on climbing one of the obstacles: