Babies

Lance: "I don't want to eat lamb."

Me: "Why not, Lance?"

Lance: "Because a lamb is a baby sheep. And I don't eat babies."

Boys and Bread

As a mom, it's fun and gratifying to watch my children actually enjoy being together.  The older Jude gets, the more the boys find they have in common. Lance often takes some coaxing (it doesn't help that Jude drools buckets and Lance finds that gross), but Jude can't get enough of Lance and is constantly trying to love on him... or tackle him. Being boys, it's all the same, right?

To break up the dull days, Lance and I made bread on Friday. It was fun! It brought back so many memories of baking bread with my own mom when I was Lance's age. She always made 6 loaves at a time and would pinch off little mounds of dough for the kids to make mini loaves. Probably the thing I remember most clearly about baking bread was the part where we shaped the dough. Mom had a neat way of getting rid of air bubbles after she had carefully rolled the dough flat and rolled it up again to form a loaf. She would take mound of dough and throw it down on the counter with a huge bang that all the kids thought was awesome! I still can't make bread as well as Mom can, but I'm getting better and Lance thought it was neat he got to make his own bread, too.

"I have this all under control!"

On the drive back from Walmart where Lance purchased some toys with his Chinese New Year money, I heard this coming from the back seat:

"Oh man... this doesn't make any sense!"

I knew Lance was trying to put together these little foam airplanes he bought and I was worried he might break them in his zeal to quickly construct them.

"Lance, do you want me to help you in a minute? Don't do anything that will break it until we look at the instructions."

"I don't need to look at the instructions, Mom. I have this all under control!"

Yes, yes he did. The airplane looked great.

Dancing and Climbing Trees

Not much has happened this past week. We spent some time here in Charlottesville and some time up in Ashburn with family, but life has been fairly normal lately.

George finally finished his Trauma Surgery rotation and was sad to see it go. He's on Psych now and let's just say he's not too "psyched" about it. Four weeks and he'll be on Neurology and then it's on to 4th year! I can't believe we only have one year left of Med School! The time seems to have flown in retrospect, although living the day to day sometimes seems to take forever. Why is that?

While we were up in Northern VA with George's family, Jen and Bryce introduced us to a new Wii game called "Just Dance". I was horrible at it, but it was very addicting and tons of fun! Basically you have to do the same dance moves as the character on the game and you get points based on how well you did. Needless to say, it's hilarious watching people play this game. Lance had a good time playing it, too and I'm considering adding it to our collection of games. Maybe I'll tell the Easter Bunny. :)

These are a couple pictures of George helping his dad uproot a dead tree in the backyard when we were up there this past weekend. It was fun to watch them push and pull and jump on the tree until it finally gave up and came out of the ground.

Speaking of trees, yesterday Lance wanted to show me how high he could climb in the tree in front of our apartment complex. It's this huge tree perfect for climbing. The kids love playing in and on it because the branches start right next to the ground, so you climb in and it's like a little room made out of leaves and branches. The kids call it their "tree house".

Climbing...

Still climbing...

He got really high!

 Jude wanted to climb, too, but this is as far as he got. :) Soon enough, Jude. Soon enough.

Life continues to plug along. The weather is being bipolar which is both nice and not. Some days we get to play outside in short sleeves and the next we're bundled inside. Hopefully Spring will decided to come and stay one of these days.

This weekend should be fun. Callie is turning 7 so we're heading up to Ashburn again to celebrate with her on Saturday. Laser Tag! WooHoo! I'll be going up to New York at least once this month as well to help Chad in his Dental School final. I'm his patient, so he'll be filling a couple of my cavities which works out great for both of us. I'm excited to visit New York again and to see Chad. Can't wait!

Silhouette Giveaway!

Just a heads-up to those who follow my blog!

The blog The DIY Show Off is having a Silhouette giveaway! For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a great machine that is used to cut out different shapes and pictures you can use to do just about any craft. The best part is you don't need a cartridge to get the shapes like a Cricut. You can create your own images with the software provided or you can download images from the internet. I've been wanting one for a long time, so of course I entered the drawing.

Head on over and enter! Here is the link.

This is a great blog full of fun craft ideas. Even if you don't enter, you should check it out!

Warm weather, skateboards, and the writing on the wall

This past week has been a good one. Busy, but good. George is still "enjoying" his Trauma surgery rotation but is looking forward to a rotation that does not require him to make rounds in the hospital at 4:30 a.m. every morning. He loves what he's doing, but the crazy schedule is wearing him pretty thin. We don't get to see much of him, either, but we try to make the most of it and have our sights set one week from now when this rotation is officially over!

The boys and I have tried to stay busy and not fall into our regular trap of turning on the TV to fill the time. 

Every morning while I cook breakfast and clean up the dishes, it's always interesting trying to keep Jude entertained while still getting the work done. One morning, he was playing with the pots and pans and discovered a new hiding place:

Yeah, don't look too closely at our cupboards. After I took this picture and looked at it, I spent the next 15 minutes scrubbing all the doors and handles. There is only so much you can do to improve these "lovely" cabinets (most of the drips you see are permanently in the finish), but at least they are now clean!

The boys played Legos together (Lance is getting much better at being patient with Jude)...

 ...and even built forts out of couch cushions! 

This is one of Jude's favorite things. For his Birthday he got this great tube that folds down to a small disc. He will find it and carry it around and beg you to open it so he can crawl through. It's really cute and keeps him happy for a long time. Best gift ever!

Lance and I have been trying to do a little school each morning and work on reading and writing and a little math. We do okay for the most part, but it's been difficult trying to find ways to teach that will captivate Lance's attention while still getting the point across. This morning we tried something new to practice writing our letters and it turned out to be a lot of fun! 

We wrote on the wall.

Okay, we wrote on the sliding glass door with dry erase markers, but for the destructive little guy that's bottled up inside of Lance begging to come out, it might as well have been the wall. He LOVED it!

 I would write words or letters and he would read them and then write the word himself. We did letters, we did numbers, we did math. Lance smiled and laughed and thought this was just the greatest thing ever! It lasted for a long time... 

About 20 minutes.

And we were done.

(And if you're wondering why Lance is wearing shorts on the bottom AND the top, he wanted to. It's his "Indian clothes" as he calls them. Not terribly PC, but whatever.)

The weather has been unseasonably warm for the past couple days so we have all had a great time playing outside. I LOVE this time of year. So much energy and fun.

Lance, Jabrien, Killian and Kendall found an old skateboard over by the dumpster a couple days ago and spend a good hour riding it down the hill behind our friend's apartment.

 Killian

 Jude scooting down the hill

Killian rolling down the hill backwards... brave boy!

My boys having a great time in the warm afternoon.

Trying to stand while going down the hill...

The kids experimented rolling down the hill in different ways to determine which was the most fun.

Jude was content to just walk around and hang out. He loves being outside!

Lance and Jabrien

Weee!

Today the weather was even nicer and we spent a large chunk of the afternoon playing on the playground with our friends.

I love this series of pictures. Jude and Bo walked over to this little bench and ate their lollipops sitting next to each other. It was so cute! They are great buddies and have a great time playing together. We are lucky to have such good friends that live so close.

Lance wanted to swing in the baby swing for some reason, but was quite content to swing and eat his own lollipop. Silly boy!

Jude and Olivia

Jude loves climbing all over the jungle gym now and thinks he's one of the big boys.

Some of the many friends we were playing with.

 Lance being a monkey.

Crazy boy!

It was wonderful to be outside enjoying the warm weather for the first time in months! Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 70's! I can't wait!

How you know you're married to a Med Student...

1.  When you empty out his pockets before doing laundry, you find gauze, alcohol prep pads and even sutures instead of coins and receipts

2.  When you’re out with friends (who are, of course, other students), the topic of conversation inevitably turns to what rotation they are currently on, the different patients they’ve seen, and how the medical system is ultimately flawed.

3.  Even when he’s participated in a code where the patient didn’t make it, he still comes home and talks about how cool it was to see them crack open a chest right there in the ED and manually pump the heart.

4.  He’s gone around 4:30 a.m. every morning to round on patients.

5.  He’s usually home for dinner, but asleep before the kids.

6.  More often than not, Saturday and Sunday mornings find you alone with the kids while he’s off at the hospital.

7.  He spends the night before a different rotation begins moaning about how terrible it will be and how much he’ll hate it, but then afterwards can’t stop talking about how great it was and how much he enjoyed it.

8.  What he wants to do “when he grows up” changes with each rotation.

9.  He sheepishly asks to celebrate Valentine's Day in a couple weeks when his Trauma Surgery rotation is over and he's not a zombie and you can't be even a little disappointed because you know how tired he is and how hard he's been working.

10.  You spend a good amount of time each night telling him he’s almost done, being tired does not mean you’re going to die, that he really does like medicine, and we will all survive to reach residency.