Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween y'all! 

We've been celebrating Halloween all week long.  Last night, it was the barrel racing association's annual costume contest.  I believe Squeaks and my horse looked pretty darn cute.  I made their costumes.  I know, I know.  I'm great. 

And not only did my horse look good, she ran good too.  I finally landed in the pay window.  $42.  It's been a while since I've won money.  But that's the way it goes when you're away from home for almost four years.  With us being home since August (for Mav's away rotations), I've been riding nearly every day.  Riding consistently sure does pay off.  Literally. 

Life is Good

You know those moments?  The ones where everything is going your way and there is nothing to complain about?  I'm pretty sure the planets have to align just right for it to happen but occasionally it happens and you find yourself thinking, "Life is good." 

Life is good. 

Wanna know why? 

I'm home.  With my family.  My whole family.

Wanna know what else? 

I just spent all morning pampering my horse.  It's therapeutic for me.  And I have missed it so much. 

Wanna know more?

As I was braiding my horse's tail, I could hear Squeaks giggling as she was being chased around the yard by my dog. 

Life is so good, guys.  So, so good.   

Wifey-1 Hubs-0

Remember when Squeaks was sick?  It was a couple weeks back.  She had a pretty good fever but that was it.  We didn't rush to the doctor or anything.  We gave her some Tylenol and that was good enough.

Three days later, I was so sick.  I noticed Sunday night that my throat was getting sore. 

Monday morning, my throat was on fire and my entire body ached.  By Monday night, I was shaking with a fever.  To tell you the truth, I have never had the chills and a fever.  It was horrible!  I didn't sleep at all that night.  I was so sore the next morning.  

Tuesday was no better.  I still had a fever, the chills and a super sore throat.  So sore that all I wanted was chicken broth to eat.  I couldn't eat real food because it hurt. 

Wednesday morning I woke up free from the fever but my throat hurt still.  Whatever.  But I noticed this weird bump on the side of my thumb.  I didn't think anything of it.  It was actually similar to a callus I used to have on my thumb from roping.  Did you know I can rope?  I'm pretty handy with a rope y'all.  Anyway, the bump turned into many bumps and it had this weird itchy sensation.  It didn't hurt.  It just bugged.  Mav could barely see them.  He thought I was nuts. 

Of course, it took Mav a matter of seconds to pull out his doctor-groove and get to work on Squeaks.  Me, I had to wait three days for him to eve notice I was sick.  He checked out my throat.  I had something he said, maybe strep and my ears looked weird and my hands, meh.  He said if I didn't feel better by Thursday morning, I should call a real doctor.  

Thursday came.  My throat still hurt.  My hands still had the weird bump-rash-thing.  But now, my feet were having the same weird itchy sensation but no rash.  I went to the doctor.  I really hate it when doctors only talk to my husband about medical school stuff.  It drives me nuts.  I don't mind friendly chatting for about a minute but past that, I feel like I'm being ripped off as a patient.  So the doc and Mav were talking and then she turned to me and said, "What's up?"  I tell her.  She runs a strep test, it comes back negative.  I do have an ear infection.  She isn't sure about the sore throat though.  She tried to write off my hands like I was crazy, just like Mav.  I seriously had to put them in front of her face and scream, "LOOK!"  She takes a look and then I tell her it's happening around my feet too. 

Light bulb!  I could seriously see the light switch flip on. 

She examines me closer.  Tells me to open my mouth one more time.  And she sees it!! 

I had hand-foot-and-mouth!!  

I turn to Mav and say, "Told you so!!"  He laughed at me when I told him prior to that, that I really thought I had hand-foot-and-mouth.  He explained it was a childhood disease, rare in adults.  I know all this.  Squeaks has had hand-foot-and-mouth before, when she was about 16 months old. 

Squeaks might have had this too and gave it to me.  It's weird.  I hear it's going around like crazy though. 

So I diagnosed myself.  Without the help of my almost-a-doctor-husband.  I'm proud of it too.  I know moments like these will not happen often.  Kind of like the one time we were golfing in Seattle and I made a 30 foot putt and he didn't.  Things like that are rare and I'm not about to let him forget about them either. 

Bwhahaha!

Huge Sigh of Relief

I finally received my grades for the semester.  

I was all sorts of nervous because my proctor didn't follow my teacher's simple instructions of faxing the test and then mailing the hard copy to her.  They just mailed it.  My teacher and I have been waiting on the mail for the past eight days.  And you know the mail...

Well, she received my test yesterday.  I got my final grade.  And I passed! 

No more math for me!  No more math!  No more math! And yes!  I'm singing and doing a happy dance. 

So I'm just two classes short of getting my associates.  Come December, I'll have a fancy-shmancy paper to hang up.  And you know what?  I'm going to hang it proudly.  It's taken me nearly six years to get this far.

Yeah.  Six years to get an associates.  Kinda sad but if some people knew what exactly I've been doing for the past six years they'd understand.  It's been a long, hard road to get this far.  I worked full time, got married, supported Mav through undergrad, helped Mav apply and get accepted to med school, got pregnant, still worked, moved across the country, Mav started medical school, we had a baby and the baby is now 2 1/2.  I've been going to school the whole time.  Can I tell how big of a pain it is to do online classes and the whole proctoring thing from your home school in a different state?  The biggest pain ever!

For the past six years, especially since my baby was born, I've felt like a person in the circus.  The person who has about ten plates spinning atop sticks.  It takes a lot of time management to keep all of them spinning at once; you can't neglect any of them.  If one of them gets neglected, it slows and then falls, smashing to pieces.  While the person it busy cleaning up the mess, the next thing they know they all start to smash to the ground.  It's a juggling act but it is a very possible juggling act.

It's been a hard juggling act for the past six years, but I've done it.  And I'm letting out a huge sigh of relief here...

Poor Sport

I'm sometimes a poor sport.  So what.  Tell me who isn't?  At some point, someone will show unsportsmanlike conduct.  Even the most mellow people will do it.  Really.  It's only a matter time.

Let me explain.  For Easter, I played the Easter Bunny.  (By the way, Happy Easter!)  Squeaks got an adorable, super poofy dress, sunglasses, and a baseball glove with velcro to help her learn to catch.  Mine and Mav's basket was filled with a movie and a card game.  It was simple.  I'm not sure why some people go to crazy Christmas-birthday-elaborate attempts for Easter.  Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way.  Anyway, our movie was Bruce Almighty.  I explained to Mav that at Christmas we get Christmas movies and Bruce Almighty was the closest thing to an Easter movie that I could find.  It has God in it, right?  Our card game, Monopoly Deal.  We played it with friends a while back.  It was a lot of fun.  And we are always looking for good games to play. 

I'm warning you now, do not get this game to play with just you and your husband.  It causes fights.  Big fights.  Mav actually went straight to bed after I threw my cards at him.  For a second time.  This is where my unsportsmanlike conduct comes in.

Really.  I'm actually mad that the kid is a genius.  I hate him for it.  It makes me mad.  And it really makes me mad when he beats me in stupid, simple games like checkers.  In school, he was the punk kid who sat in the back of the class, hardly paying attention.  I was in the front row trying to listen to everything.  Come test day, he's the kid who scores 120% on the test, which throws off the curve, making kids like me fail regardless of how hard we try.  It's not fair!  And once again I got beat by the smart kid! 

This game really is fun to play with a group.  We like it because unlike Monopoly, it doesn't take 20 hours to play instead it's about 20 minutes.  But when it's just two players, there is only one person to steal properties and money from.  That is not a good thing.  Personally, I don't like being screwed with on purpose and that's what this game encourages.  Stealing and screwing other players.

Now, we do have some awesome marriage friendly games that don't result in couples sleeping in separate rooms.

For a group we recommend:

• Pirates of the Caribbean Dice Game
• Farkle
• Catch Phrase
• Dicecapades

For just the two of you but still super fun with groups, we highly recommend:

• Ticket to Ride- US version with 1910 expansion pack and the Dexter & Alvin expansion
• Carcassonne with the Princess & Dragon, Inns and Cathedrals, The River, and Traders and Builders expansions.  
• Sequence

We have spent a lot of playing Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride.  We actually got Carcassonne for Christmas two years ago.  We seriously played it almost every night for two or three hours or until we were too tired to see anymore.  Then we got Ticket to Ride and it was the same thing.  Now, all our neighbors and friends are addicted.  They are such good games.  We haven't bored of them yet.  

Maybe to avoid the fights, we'll have to stick to Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride with just the two of us playing. 

Do you know of any other games that are couple friendly?  Or maybe ones that aren't?  What are your favorites?

Pretty Spoiled

Mav is on outpatient pediatrics.  It's sweet.

The weather here has been glorious.  It was 90 today.  Squeaks and I, along with our neighbors, blew up the pool in the backyard and played all day long.

Spoiled, huh?

Around five this evening, I felt horrible.  I thought I had tunnel vision.  I was woozy.  It felt like my brain was swollen and could possibly blow out of my head.  I was hot but cold.  Maybe dehydration or heat exhaustion.  Who knows.

Well, I laid on the couch and told Mav I was going to die.  Dramatic, I know.   He asked me what was for dinner.  I didn't even raise my head to stare at him but I told him I was going to make tater-tot casserole.  Now, I was doing nothing but dying!  I told him that he and Squeaks were on their own.

Mav told me to go take a nap and he'd make dinner.  I refused.  I needed to do my homework.  I only have two weeks left and I have to pass this blasted math class.  I tried to listen to a lecture.  I tried for about two minutes but couldn't manage.  I got up slowly and walked past Mav who was starting dinner.  I told him to wake me up in 45 minutes or so.

And I crashed.  I woke up 45 minutes later to dinner on the table.

Spoiled, huh?


Want the recipe for my tater-tot casserole?  Click below to see it.  My two year old and picky husband love it.  Best of all, it was easy enough to explain to Mav how to make it, all by himself. 

Feeling Like a Single Parent

Some days I feel like a single parent.  It comes with the territory of being a med school wife.  Some rotations are cake but then there's the horrible ones.  You know, the ones where you only see your better half when they're climbing into or out of bed.  Or not at all, I've had to meet Mav at the hospital for lunch so Squeak and I could actually see him in only partial zombie mode.  The joys of third year...

Today is one of those days that I feel like a single parent.  I've rarely had this feeling.  Squeaks is a super easy toddler.  Nonetheless, she's still a toddler.  But Squeaks makes it easy being a single parent for a short amount of time.

Until today.  Squeaks had a slight running nose yesterday.  I think it's allergies.  Nothing horrible.  But this morning, she came into my room with thick, gooey snot creeping from her nose to her chin.  Gross!!

Now, this wouldn't be a problem any other day of the week but today is Sunday.  We have church.  Squeaks attends her own classes.  (Yes, my two year old attends church classes but it's more of two hours of play time with a five minute lesson about Jesus.)  And I teach a class too, the five to six year old kids.  And Mav is working.

So today, I had to call in sick for my class.  I feel bad.  But I'd feel worse knowing that someone else would be constantly wiping my child's gooey nose.  Oh.  And I would feel twice as bad if Squeaks actually had a cold that spread to the whole class.  That's just not cool.

So today, I had to be a single parent.  I had to suck it up and ask someone else to take over my responsibilities.  It's actually a good thing for me.  I'm a rather prideful person.  I need to learn that sometimes I simply can't be there all. the. time.  And that's ok.  Because we all know, there's going to be a lot more of this single parent thing in the years to come.  And that's ok too.

P.S.
I'm secretly excited to sit at home and watch some NCAA basketball.  Hee!  Hee!     Go SLU!  Tip off is at 1:45.

No Homework!

Squeaks said a new word today.  Usually I'd be jumping with joy but today it made me sad.  She said homework.

This morning I sat grabbed my books and went to the kitchen table.  Before I could sit down, Squeaks was clawing up my leg screaming, "No!  No homework!" 

Sad, huh?  I've been doing a lot of homework lately.  I actually have two math units due tonight and Mav has his surgery shelf exam on Friday.  We've been doing a lot of studying around this house. 

Luckily, there's only six weeks left in the semester.  After that, I am Squeak's for the whole summer. 

And yes, I'm counting down!!