Boards, Step 1

George took his Boards, Step 1 on April 21st! It had been a long few months of studying non-stop. In fact, George moved to his parent's house for a little over a month so he could concentrate on his studies. I guess we're just too much fun. :)

Lance and I made him a Red Velvet Cake (one of his favorites) to celebrate. It turned out really well.

Can you see the relief on his face?

The cake we made. Those are nuts in the frosting, not bits of cake. Just for the record.

While we were making the cake, we made sugar cookies as well. Lance and his cousins had a great time decorating them with little squeeze bottles filled with icing. Lance was pretty proud of his little man.

During the 5 weeks George was living in Ashburn, Lance and Jude and I had to find ways to stay busy. We did pre school in Charlottesville, but for a lot of the time we were up in Ashburn also (counterproductive, I know). George did manage to take some time off from his studies to play with the kiddies and be with us at night. While we missed getting to play with him more, we had a good time filling the days with other activities.

Daddy and Jude relaxing in the hammock. George liked to lay outside to read and study.

While Lance was visiting his dad, Jude and I helped my mom organize and move most of her things from the old house. This is my little brother Jason helping my mom decide what to throw away from the garage.

Jason and Amy enjoying pizza after a long day of packing and moving.

It was fun to go through old boxes filled with school projects, journal entries, and little mementos collected over the years. So many fun memories! Laura (above), Amy and I shared a room for several years and when we were going through it together we found a lot of boxes full of things we had forgotten about. It was a lot of fun!

We even found this great fake mustache. Nice look, Jude.

George's mom makes these wonderful homemade egg rolls and dumplings and I've been wanting to learn how to make them for a long time. A few weeks ago, she sat down and showed me how to make dumplings. I think I got the hang of it, but it'll be a while before I can whip them out like she can.

We did stay down in Charlottesville some during that time so Lance could attend pre-school during the week. I have to admit it was difficult to be a single parent. Lance was a huge help in keeping Jude entertained and helping me with everything from making dinner to bathing. Jude thinks his big brother is the best thing in the world and always has a huge smile for him.

I needed both hands to do my make up. Jude didn't seem to mind.

Lance is getting really good at building with Legos. He can sit for hours on end building mostly airplanes or space ships (you know, like the ones in Star Wars). We are slowly but surely increasing our Lego collection.

At Easter, my aunt gave us some tadpoles to take home. However, they were getting cramped in the half-gallon tank we had, so Lance and I bought this tank for our 60+ amphibians to swim around in. I think they were happier. I just don't know what we're going to do when they start actually turning into frogs.

We celebrated George's dad's birthday by going to a Hibachi restaurant in Ashburn. It was really good, as usual.

While up in Ashburn, we spend most days playing with Lance's cousins Callie and Bryce. One of their favorite things to do beside watch Star Wars and play with lightsabers was to play Mario Party on the Wii.

All my boys. :)

We are so glad Boards are over and we can get back to life in Charlottesville. Now it's on to hospital rotations! Yay!

I laughed.

So while George is studying for USMLE Step 1, Lance and Jude and I have been traveling up and down between Ashburn and Charlottesville for the past month. We sleep at George's parents' house (since there is room for us all) and usually hang out with George's mom during the day while she watches our niece and nephew. It's fun for all of us, but especially for Lance who LOVES to be with his cousins. There is one downside, however.

It has been my experience that, individually, children are usually fairly well-behaved and easy to rein in when needed. However, you get them together with any number of children similar in age and suddenly you have a pack of wild little hooligans that not only feed off of each other in terms of excitement, but manage to invent all kinds of mischievous things to do and say that they would have never come up with by themselves.

Such was the case today. After calling Lance on the carpet a number of times for, well, acting like a four-year-old, I finally lost my temper. Lance had done something, like pretended to hit a cousin--something I had told him not to do numerous times prior. I caught him mid-act, took him by the arm and sat him down in a corner for time-out. After spending a good 30 seconds trying to get him to look at me, I (in a very angry-mother voice) asked him:

"Lance! How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?"

Lance looked at me, totally serious, and replied, "Fourteen."

Callie, Lance, and Bryce

And the movie is...

Okay, quick trivia question. Lance and I were starting to watch a movie the other day and the previews were on. During one, Lance turned to me and asked:

"How does a wood boy turn into a meat boy?"

Uh, magic?

Can you guess what the preview was for?

Missing you...

To my husband-

I miss you. I know you're where you need to be, two hours north of here studying frantically for Step 1. I know it's for the best and will benefit us all, and I know I'll get to see you tomorrow, but there is no denying I want you to be here with me.

I missed you yesterday when Lance and I made a recipe from the Alton Brown show and he made the cheese sauce all by himself. I missed you when we went to the grocery store and Lance got a little package of donuts and ate all but two because he was saving them for DaddyG. I missed you when Jude laughed out loud and smiled at my funny face. I missed you last night when I wasn't feeling very well and still had to bathe the boys and get them to bed without any help. I missed you today when Lance wanted to play Lego Star Wars but I couldn't play with him because I was feeding Jude. I missed you tonight at the BBQ when all the other wives had their husbands right there. I missed you and your laugh when a friend of ours thought I had made the glass bowl I used to bring the dessert to the BBQ and innocently asked, "Heather blows glass?" I missed you the past two nights while I slept alone between two very squirmy boys on our bed. I missed you as I surfed reddit late at night finding posts I thought you would like. I missed you today when the boys and I went to WalMart to find a bigger tank for our tadpoles and I had to make a special trip to a grocery store for six gallons of distilled water (which WalMart did not carry) while carrying Jude who was crying and trying to keep Lance on task instead of looking at every single item in the store on our way in and out.

I miss you. I miss your smile, I miss your laugh, I miss the way our home feels when you're here. I miss how you make me laugh at myself and how much happier I am. Telephones just don't cut it. I can't wait for you to come home from your month-long hiatus from Charlottesville as you study for Boards. You truly are the love of my life and I simply cannot get along without you.

Easter Bunny, Tadpoles, and an Announcement

In our family, the Easter Bunny always comes on the Saturday right before Easter so Sunday would be a special day to think about what Easter is really about. This year, we had Easter at the Simmon's house in Potomac, MD. Lance was so excited to see what the Easter Bunny brought him. Even Jude had a little something from the E.B. My favorite thing the E.B. brought our family was the movie "Sherlock Holmes". Great movie!





Jude is such a happy baby!



Surveying the loot.

After eating our candy for breakfast, George took off for his parent's house to study for his Boards he has coming up, and the rest of us went on a short walk on a path next to the Potomac River. It was beautiful. I love the Spring. Everything is turning green and the animals are all starting to come out. Lance had a great time finding the perfect throwing rocks and watching how far he could make them fly before they hit the river.



General Conference just so happened to fall on Easter weekend, so we went back to the Simmon's house and got to watch both sessions. I can't remember the last time I was able to sit and watch Conference all the way through, so it was a huge treat (not at all diminished by the tasty treats we got to munch on provided by my Aunt and Uncle).

On Sunday, we watched the last two sessions of Conference at the Simmon's house and just enjoyed being outside in the beautiful spring weather. You couldn't have asked for a more perfect day. Aunt Linda has a little pond in her front yard that had newly hatched tadpoles, so we caught some and put them in a little container for Lance to raise. He thought it was great fun to use the cup to capture as many as he could.



Tadpoles! You have to look closely--they're pretty small.



I love this picture. I think Jude looks just like his daddy.



My two boys!



Our family.



And for the announcement--Laura is 15 weeks pregnant! Yay!! We were taking pictures and right before this one, she shouted, "Laura's pregnant!" Finally, my children will have a cousin close in age on my side of the family. Thanks, Laura!

Beautiful day, family, good food, and wonderful news--Easter doesn't get much better than that!

Decorating Eggs for Easter!

This year we decorated Easter Eggs with the Glass Family up in Ashburn, VA. We had a great time! Lance kept repeating all that day, "I love to dye Easter Eggs." At one point, he turned to me and asked, "why do we want to kill the eggs?" I had to explain what "dying eggs" meant. I think he finally understood.







I had a glue gun that we used to write our names on the eggs and then dye them. I think they turned out rather well.

Valuable Life Lesson Number 1...

Never leave your digital camera containing irreplaceable pictures from your recent trip to Italy in reach of a curious 4-year-old.

After four days, some tears, money, and an immense amount of guilt fueling my efforts, I have successfully dredged from the bowels of the empty memory card about 90% of the Italy photos Lance accidentally deleted from my mother's digital camera. Deleting the entire memory card in one go is a complex process and I have to fiddle around with the camera every time I attempt to do it, so how a four year old pushing random buttons in an attempt to take a picture can do it is beyond me.

There was an air of panic Monday morning when I went over to my mom's house to offer to take her memory card to Costco to have all the pictures burned to a DVD and I learned what my little boy had done. In my mind I thought, "that's too bad and I feel terrible, but Amy (my sister who also went on the trip) took about 1600 pictures while there, so at least they have those." They had just returned from the week-long trip the Saturday before and I knew Amy was anxious to download and print her pictures. I mentioned this glimmer of hope to my mom to which she replied that all Amy's pictures, save about 100, had been corrupted by her computer and her card was now unreadable. I couldn't believe it. Thus began my week-long journey to recover as many pictures as possible.

Our saving grace: a program we downloaded off the internet from cardrecovery.com. It brought back 90% of my mom's deleted photos and almost all of Amy's corrupted ones! Amy had even taken her card to BestBuy where they told her there was nothing to be done except mail her card to some obscure place and pay $300. So, if by chance you delete your memory card by accident, this program worked wonders!

Moral of the story--never leave your camera where your kids can reach it. Or, teach your children not to touch your camera. That's probably the better idea.