Nomads

So I am sure you have all seen PBS specials on strange cultures in foreign lands where people spend most of their time travelling around as nomads. I usually think of outer Mongolia, Gypsies, Amazon tribes, Bedouins . . . Did you know that nomads exist in modern America too?

I didn't think so either, but here we are - modern day nomads moving from place to place every few months. But we probably won't be coming to a PBS special anytime soon.

I will spare you a long diatribe of how medical education is structured, but suffice it to say that one thing many medical students do is audition rotations. We do part of our clinical training at another hospital around the country that we want to go to for the next step in our training hoping they will like us. Mix this in with the fact that my school doesn't have a hospital associated with it (meaning we have to set up some of our own rotations) and you have the perfect storm for 6 months living the nomadic lifestyle.

So catching up on our lives means a long list of travels!

We started out in May, when everything miraculously fell in place for Samira and I to go to Hawaii (including Samira's Mom coming to watch the kids). I was there for a conference, but we still found a little time to go enjoy the beaches and scenery. Perhaps the Lord knew things were going to get crazy and wanted to give us some time to muster up our strength.

The storm hit pretty quickly. Looking at our schedule for the summer and fall we decided it would be best to stop renting our home in Portland and save money. We packed everything up in 2 weeks (with the Hawaii trip in the middle) and put everything in storage then drove to Arizona for a few months. Yeah, we are crazy enough to leave the beautiful Portland summer for of all places Arizona . . .

After finished some of my licencing exams we headed back to Portland for a month where I did a rotation. Thankfully some friends let us stay in their house and we got to enjoy a little bit of the Portland summer. Then I was off to Utah and Samira and the kids went to Las Vegas to stay with my parents. Since Samira is pregnant, she will be staying there until after the baby comes in December. While Samira is amazingly holding down the fort with two very energetic kids, I am off galavanting around the country. My parents have of course been a tremendous help - the kids love spending time with them. I will be done with rotations by Thanksgiving and the light at the end of the tunnel is being off for the holidays and for the baby to be born!

Grandpa entertaining the grandkids.

So when people at the hospital ask me where I am from it goes something like this . . . My school is in Arizona, but I have been living in Oregon for the last several years, but my family is in Las Vegas right now with my parents, but I didn't grow up there . . . Its at about that point that everyone's eyes glaze over and I give up trying to explain it all. Which, I am sure I have lost several of you in this meandering post, but at least you have some idea of where we are or are not living at the moment . . . maybe . . .

Going Private

I know it has taken me a long time to decide, but we are going private. I would love to send you an invite so just email or comment your address.

Where are you Summer??

We had the most beautiful day of the year on Saturday! It was 68 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. However come Monday it is raining so hard and the sun is hiding behind some very thick clouds. The kids and I are ready to have the windows and doors open and soak up some sun.

On a happy note Isabella has finally relearned how to sleep at night. For about 8 months Isabella has had lots of trouble sleeping. Waking anywhere form 3 times a night to 10 times. Needless to say we were trying everything we could think of. We finally decided on a strict night time routine. We had always done similar things at night but this time we actually wrote one out and followed it to the "T". After several weeks of the night time routine she went to bed great. However she was still waking up all night. So we finally decided to lock her out of our room. We didn't want to lock her in her room for many reasons, but we could lock her out of our room and not have to worry. The first week she tried everything she could think of to get us to come out of our room. It was really sad and I probably would have had a hard time ignoring her except for the fact that I hadn't had a full night sleep in almost a year. So after a long hard week she actually slept most of the night. For the past week she has woken only once or or not at all. We feel that it is an answer from the Lord, because I was at my wits end. Now if she wakes we help her to potty once and make sure her bed isn't wet, then the rest of the night our door is locked and she has learned to stay in bed. YEAH!!!!!!

Totally different subject....Easter was great! Stan was the Easter Bunny. He made the baskets up for the kids and hid their eggs. Isabella got a memory game, and Isaac got an airplane puzzle. He has been so interested in airplanes lately. He hears everyone that flies by and when he can't see them he says I hear airplane. If you ask him where they go he tells you the airport.

For Easter I made my first turkey!! It wasn't actually that hard, and it tasted great. The gravy that I made from the drippings was fantastic too! I was pretty proud of myself for being able to do that on my own. Holidays are always hard to be away from family. However we had a great time sharing a meal with our friends the Wadsworths. They have 2 kids close in age to ours so we actually could have a dinner conversation because the kids played so well together. I am truly blessed with great friends!

Carefree...... Someday

This past few weeks have been especially trying. I have felt overwhelmed in many areas in my life. Feel as though I am failing in all my roles and responsibilities. I am not sure why I am not dealing with it as well as usual.... Today I just wanted to go home and be a carefree kid rather than a parent, leader, teacher, adule.... and all the other rolls that come with growing up. I know I need to change my attitude but haven't found motivation yet to do it. I am sure it will come.... until then I will just keep trudging a long.

Random happenings. This isn't in any specific order.

• Isabella is doing great in speech therapy, they think she has speech apraxia. She has a great therapist and we work with her a lot at home. In the past 4 months her language has bloomed. She can say so much now, and actually be understood. It has been so fun to see her personality coming out more and more each day. Her nursery leader at church commented that she has really been able to understand Isabella now, and just realized that she loves being bossy. It cracked me up, because Isabella is very bossy and now that she can speak she has to tell everyone what to do or not to do. She loves to tell Dad all about her day when he comes home from school. One day he was so excited because he actually understood what she had done that day, without my translations. I think it is still going to be a long process with her language but at least she can communicate and is much happier.... and so are we. Isabella get to go to her friends house for a preschool day every now and then. She loves it, and looks so cute with her back pack on. We are hoping to get her into preschool in the fall. She would love the interaction and the activities. I am hoping to get her in one that I get to help in the classroom 2x a month. I think it would be fun, and give me more ideas of activities to do at home.
• Isaac on the other hand talks all the time. He can say all of the words that Isabella practices and repeats what we are saying. He is saying sentences, and will be well on his way to talking over his sister soon. He is getting so big. He has surpassed Bella in weight and has enough energy to keep up with her most of the time. He loves to sit down and read and do puzzles and can be kept busy for quite a while. I have been trying to find activities that they can sit down to the table and work on. I got a book called What to do with Toddlers and Twos, it has lots of ideas of activities, and helps me be more creative with our days. It has been fun doing projects like painting, putting beans in glass jars, or milk jugs, making shakers from old pill bottles, pasta necklaces, play-dough, coloring.
• I participated in a Health Challenge for 60 day. I won second place! It really helped me get back to exercising. I try to run several times a week and was up to about 4 miles at a time. Currently I am planning on running a 5k so I am working on running 3 miles faster. I enjoy running and it is a stress reliever. I am the Young Women's president at church and enjoy working with the girls. The friends I have made in Portland have been such a blessing. I have made several through church and the community and they help keep me sane. Most of us have little kids, and busy husbands, and working off a small budget. It's nice to have friends with so much in common. I am so very blessed with the friends in my life. My Ellen has become such a close friend. The kids love her, she is like a grandma next door. She is helping me with my first quilt. I am to the stage of sewing all the squares together. She is a professional quilter, so I am soaking up her knowledge. It is so fun to have a project to work on when I get some free time.
• Stanley has been pretty busy with rotations all over Portland. This month he drives over an hour one way to work. He has really enjoyed his pediatric rotations, he had a chance to do OBGY and delivered a few babies. Currently he is working at a Psychiatric Hospital. The stories he tells me are so sad. I could never work in that environment. He really enjoys child psych and is hoping to be able to do both pediatrics and child psych. Hopefully in the next 6 months we will have narrowed down what he wants to do and where we want to go next May. He graduates in just over a year. The time has gone fast! No matter how busy he is he always finds time to play with the kids and spend time with me. We enjoy every spare minute we all get together. Last week we took the kids to a play place that was showing Toy Story 3. They got to play and have fun while Stan studied. It was a fun family date. Today is a beautiful day. Sunny and 60 degrees, so we are going to go to the Tulip Festival. I love being outside when the weather is so nice.

We like to take walks even when it is cold outside. Thankfully it wasn't raining this day.

Isabella, Abby, Andy and Isaac chilling out on Abby's cool bed.
Poor Isaac wasn't feeling good this day, so Isabella laid down by him and comforted him. It was sweet... even if it only lasted a little bit.
This was a cow they saw while visiting Grandpa Rhoton in WA. They loved to see it!
Isabella has so many little friends to come play. This is her friend "Annie" (Real name is Andy, but she has a hard time saying that. They are all rowdy and love running around and being silly. Isaac is getting big enough to join in on the fun.

I haven't been able to find our camera since December so thus the lack of photos. Life is great and we have been able to do a lot of fun things as a family. I love that the kids are getting a little older and are able to do more outings. Alaenya and Lila came to visit us for a few days. It was so nice to have my sister and niece. However everyone was sick most of the time, but we still got to try some fun restaurants and we went and visited Grandpa Rhoton in Washington. He was so exctied to see Alaenya and Lila. He hadn't sen Alaenya in over 10+ yrs. I wish my family lived closer so we could have more visits. I am so lucky because my sister comes to visit me once or twice a year. :)

At the beginning of March we got snow! The kids saw it out the window and wanted to play in it even before breakfast. This is their first chance of seeing it at home. We loved it!

We had friends over for Valentine's day and the kids decorated cookies.