Winter Activities

I feel like the first few months of this year have been nutso.  I started my new surgery job.  I absolutely love it, and am less anxious about it than at the start when I would have stressful dreams all night long of things going wrong in surgery and me trying to think through how to fix it but having no clue how.  Dr. Gill is super nice and very patient with me.  The first surgery I scrubbed into was a completely open surgery for bowel obstruction.  I was literally holding intestines in my hand.  It was so neat I can't even explain.  I came home from that day and elatedly called Derek to tell him how cool it had been and then exclaimed, "That was the best day ever, and I got paid for it!"  Most of the surgeries I assist with are laparoscopic.  I hold the camera and other tools that assist with moving things out of the way and such for the surgeon during surgery then we jointly close all the holes we made.  Super fun.  I feel like such a dunce with the laparoscopic tools though.  He tells me to go one direction and I look at the screen which is not at all oriented the same way as the body and get completely lost.  I'll get it...over time...at least that's what I keep telling myself.

I have all the kids in ice skating again. The boys begged for me to sign them up for it again, but I was nervous because the last time I signed them up they spent more time crawling off the ice to me than they did in class.  Papou got them hockey sticks and balls for Christmas and I constantly have a floor hockey game going on in my kitchen, so I decided I'd give it another go.  Here they are on the first day of class.

 Don't let their excited faces confuse you.  Liv does great and speeds around the rink with no trouble.  Both boys do pretty well until they fall hard and then it's like pulling teeth to get them to go back out.  Last class they seemed to find joy in skating away while their teacher chased after them over and over again to corral them back to class.  Super fun for them, not so much for their teacher I'm sure.

Liv is in another Up With Kids play.  This year its a mash up between Beauty and the Beast and Minions.  She is one of the Minions and literally starts the show which she's pretty thrilled about.  Also our little thespian wanted to participate in an optional story telling competition at her school.  She recited one of her favorite books called Waking Beauty by Leah Wilcox.  Basically a story about the prince trying to wake sleeping beauty by shouting, and dumping water on her, and jumping on her bed, and shooting her out a cannon until he finds out he has to kiss her.  He's mortified about girl germs and the 100 years of morning breath she's going to have.  It was hilarious to watcher her.  She was so animated and such a hoot to watch perform.  

I was amazed at how quickly she memorized the book.  I started weeks before the competition date thinking it would take a while and after 4 days, she had the whole thing down pat.  

All my pictures for these winter months seem to consist of park days.  Derek twisted my arm into allowing him to by a new reclining love seat for the kitchen TV room.  After purchasing the new couch at RC Willey's we took the kids to play at the new play structures at the mall.

We've had a bunch of warm days this February.  Every time we happened upon a nice day I just felt like we had to get out and soak up some Vitamin D. 

 So we would pack picnics and go to the park.  We had a bike ride day where all 3 kids probably pedaled a mile and a half!

I took the boys to the park nearest Liv's play practice one day and we scored.  First, someone had a new puppy that the boys loved petting and playing with.  Then, this park just happened to be right by the horse park in Lindon and someone came walking their horse through the park to get to the horse park.  She let the boys pet the horse, then sit on the horse, then even gave each boy a little ride.

One day we went to the All Together Playground with the Davis kids.  

This is Liv sporting her new favorite dress that Babi picked up for her in Paris.  So my daughter is sporting the latest Parisian fashion.  The dress is pretty neat.  The straps at the shoulder can be buttoned on or off so that it can be worn as either a dress or a skirt.  Liv does both depending on how she feels that day.