Well, it seemed with moving out of my parents actual home into our new place (across the driveway from them. We mostly love it. My parents made it possible for our lives to be much easier and affordable. We live in a beautiful home. It's 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, a kitchen with actual counter space (thanks to "the bat cave" for perspective- aka one of my 1st apartments that had my table as counter space, and many other odd features), it fits everything we need. We got to picked mustard yellow for most of the house/apartment a light blue green for the bathroom and uneventful colors for Logan and our room. Love it...I got so tired of all the white in all my previous places, it was tempting to go for extremes as fire engine red and hot pink. Thankfully I was sensible...
Moving out created some computer challenges, not to mention Jimmy's computer is out of commission and has been for a while. Making updating blog posts particularly challenging. So here is what is feeling like may be a marathon of blog posts :)
 |
| Notice our pretty walls...uh I mean the cutest child on planet earth |
Christmas time. The past few years have seemed really dry. There is almost no excitment. Children change everything, including my favorite holiday. One of the most notable was the Portland International Raceway. It is lit up with the 12 days of christmas and tunnels of lights. Honestly if we went a year ago, I would have been disappointed spending the money for something so dull. Then there's Logan... I let him up front out of the car seat. What a treat. He started by plastering his face against the glass and squeal at every little light. Then it was jumping over to Daddy and "driving" the car. I thought it was all cute until he reached to point out our speedometer light and honked the horn. Suddenly I was embarrassed all the people thought we were upset with how slow people were driving through it. If there was any concern I had I was going to be bored...hah, that quickly disappated.
Logan is a natural at being the center of attention (which 1 year old isn't?). He loved dressing up as Joseph.
 |
| Mary & Joseph |
Christmas morning was rather dramatic. We spent it with the whole family, which was a little overstimulation for Logan. It was a challenge for this child to understand the the center of attention is not always on him, but drifts to multiple people opening presents. Once the dust settled we did pretty good with him and his presents. However, despite Jimmy's wishes this child loves to play pretend with Naomi's dolls and pushing her strollers around. Such a sweet boy. Granted the strollers often turn into him parking his slightly oversized tushy (in comparison to a doll's) into that too small doll stroller and have his Dad fly around the house like a mad man.
 |
| Christmas morning |
Probaby one of the most empowering moments was our realization that there is a our authority to exercise our powers as parents. Time out has revolutionized our life. He initially was in time outs frequently over being too loud after being warned, tossing food off his high chair, chucking the wash cloth out of the bath tub when he has been told multiple times no, getting into thing he has been told not to, biting, and whatever else a 1 year knows he can challenge the waters with. Every day is not perfect, but he now is almost never in time out. You either start counting to "3" and he stops to think about it and changes his mind now. Honestly he is a great little one. Below is our "time out corner", probably a little ineffective this time with it being a minor photo session from Dad.
 |
| Time-out |
Logan LOVES to be outside. This cold weather is challenging us all. Hence probably why we got so desparate and came to the realization of time-outs. Logan quickly picked up how to stay up on the swing and here is proof below. Just working on the pumping and avoiding getting distracted by the cats.
 |
| Swinging |
 |
| Puddle Jumping |
One of Logan's ultimate favorite past times of all is Elmo. If I ever need an instant babysitter, it is Elmo. Elmo makes dinner time possible. Elmo makes my sanity possible. Who knew that I would grow to love such an obnoxious voice.
 |
| Elmo watching |
When Elmo and outdoors are not occurring (and he is not getting into trouble), Logan is using all his powers to get us to read him stories. Tonight for example, we have this "Heads" book. It has all these pop-outs and pull outs. It takes all our attention to keep him from destroying the book, he LOVES it. Tonight after reading it about 4 times, we couldn't take it anymore. It got chucked out of his reach. You should have seen that tantrum...quite incredible and all over a story book. Generally speaking this boy has got us wrapped around his fingertips.
Below is my brother, this next week he leaves for Mexico for his mission. It has been great having him home for a time, although he is getting antsy to move onto this next phase. I will say, after speaking to my mom, I am worried that his area is not the safest. Thankfully there is a loving Heavenly Father that we can trust in. We'll definitely miss him.
 |
| Toddlers love Robert! |
Beyond our child, work is going well. In fact it is going so well, I'm afraid I'll be there forever. The latest is me thinking about wanting to change my job only because I'm concerned I'll be locked forever into the nursing home. It's hard coming to the realization that I actually love where I am and would be happy doing this as long as I am a nurse. Truth is I love working with the elderly. We have had some residents pass away that have come to have great meaning in my lift and it has made me realize the value of my work. It is funny how so many people can jointly not find the nursing home to be their dream they wished at ending up in (myself included) and that shared reality makes everyone come together and appreciate each other that much more. I have also found all my actual skills to be near the same of what was on the floor in the hospital, especially similar to comparison of the ER capstone. I'll always miss one or the other...if I went to peds, I'd miss the elderly. The grass is always greener, they say. We had another really couple code blues on my hall, one of which a full code was ran. It's never dull...
Jimmy continues to work through school. We have come to realize it is likely another 2-3 years of school. He is doing well, currently taking a speech class, spanish class, and a computer science one.
Our big goal together, a 50 mile bike ride. We'll see. We initially turned to attempting a bike ride on a Sunday morning...a really DUMB idea. I lasted maybe 15 minutes and then froze so bad, defrosting killed my hands. This led to us purchasing and attempting the insanity challenge to assist us in getting in shape. So far, so good...we're on day 5, so we'll see!
Life is good!
