Bountiful Baskets and our Winter Wonderland

We decided to try ordering from the Bountiful Baskets food co-op. Today was the first pick up, and I am IN LOVE!!!

One "basket" is $15. And AMAZING! We got a head of romaine lettuce, a bunch of spinach, 2 avocados, 3-4 tomatoes, a bunch of apples, 2-3 Asian pears (!!!), 3 clementines, broccoli, blackberries, 2 bunches of radishes, 7 bananas... and I can't remember what else. But WOW! That would cost so much more than $15 to buy in a grocery store! 

I'm so excited to get to use them, I LOVE fresh fruits and veggies.

We also ordered a 30 pound box of Minneola tangerines. I made a tactical error in underestimating just how many tangerines it would take to make up 30 pounds. I told Jake (only halfway joking), that he should be prepared to eat a tangerine with every meal until they're gone. HAHA. Good thing we're sharing some of the box with our good buddies Josh and Shelby!

Over Christmas break, Grammy McDonald taught Tim about how yummy oranges and clementines are. So he was very excited to see the tangerines! At first he was content with taking them in and out of the box, licking them, hugging them, and rolling them around. 

But not for long...

He needed to be a little closer to the action!

We bought Tim a cute little snowsuit knowing that we would be spending Thanksgiving and Christmas in the Midwest. Over break it was 40-50 degrees in Nebraska AND Minnesota with NO snow! So we didn't get a chance to use it. 

This morning, we woke up to a lovely white surprise!

Someone had a little sled out in the quad. We tried to pull Tim around on it... But he kept crawling off.

We didn't build this snowman, we just used it as a prop for our photo shoot!

Dinosaurs at the Mall

 Some friends from Omaha were out here visiting family this week. They have a little boy (Creighton) who is only 1-2 days younger than Tim. So we met them at a play area in the University Mall to catch up and let the boys meet and run around.

Creighton is a FANTASTIC walker! He has Tim beat. DEFINITELY.

Tim wasn't a super big fan of the slide. He either bonked his head or his shoes kept sticking and slowing him down.

You can see Jake's Christmas Break goatee. 

Aren't we such a cute little family getting eaten by the dinosaur? :-)

Christmas Break

So.... This will have to suffice for coverage of Christmas break. :-)

PHOTO MONTAGE!!

**Christmas (especially when it has thirty people packed into one room) can be a little overwhelming for little guys. Especially little guys who are recovering from roseola. When this is combined with the fact that kiddos don't sleep as well in new places, Tim had his share of grumpy moments. But he was still pretty darn cute!**

Live from Christmas Break

I was getting better at posting, and now I've been slacking. 

But it is because we are busy enjoying the holiday break with family in the Midwest! Some highlights though:

Tim is walking. On his own. Not for long stretches, but now fairly consistently.

Jake and I both got these for Christmas:

They're fantastic. I love it! And I finally jumped on the bandwagon to read:

OH MY GOSH!! I can't believe that no one insisted I read them sooner! For real, I read straight through all three books in two days. They were fantastic. And now I'm super excited for the movie to come out in March!

And Tim has had a grand time chasing after the cats here in Nebraska. Since I can never get my videos to upload into Blogger, I'm trying a new way - uploading to youtube and embedding it here. Hopefully this works out!

Preceptor Assignment

I have a few more tests to take today and a few assignments to finish... Then I will be on to my last semester of nursing school.

Which means I have to complete my Preceptorship (like a capstone, if you are more familiar with that term).

I've been assigned to do night shifts on the Pediatrics unit at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.

I'm excited about this.

I always thought that I would never want to work with sick babies or children. Then, when Tim was very sick during his first month with us, we spent the better part of 2 weeks in the hospital. Both at Utah Valley and at Children's Hospital in Omaha. We had some nurses who were less than caring. I remember one in particular. I stayed awake all night long because we didn't feel like we could trust the care she would provide. But we also had some AMAZING nurses who were so kind and comforting and made the whole ordeal bearable.

In any unit on a hospital you interact with the patients' families. But on pediatrics they are really like a second patient. You have to pay attention to their needs as well. I really like that you can help and touch so many more people this way.

It also scares the bajinkies out of me.Those parents can be intimidating, second guessing everything you do because it is THEIR baby who is in danger.  But I was that scared, pushy, grumpy mom. I remember sassing nurses who weren't providing the care I thought Tim needed and asking questions that I'm sure exasperated them.

Despite how scary it is, I know this is where I need to be. When we did our pediatrics rotation last summer, it felt so right to be there that my heart almost burst each day I got to go. 

Also, Jake has applied for some jobs here:

And if we move to Memphis, there is another children's hospital within a mile from Saint Jude's. As well as 2-3 other major hospitals nearby. So spending the semester on the pediatrics unit will be some good experience for me.

Christmas Pies and a Goofy Bear

 We went to two Christmas parties on Friday. One for Jake's coworkers from the Inorganic Chemistry Stockroom at BYU and one for our ward.

So I made pies to bring. Christmas pies. 

An apple/Christmas tree pie:

And a raspberry/candy cane pie:

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Tim the goofy bear somehow managed to slip his arm out of his shirt without having it unsnapped.

He thought it was HILARIOUS!

Also... He is into EVERYTHING these days. And LOVES the keyboard on my computer. In fact, he loves it so much that he pulled it down on top of himself and scratched his face up. 

Poor kid!