Surviving Medical School

Medical School is HARD. Lonely. Discouraging. Overwhelming. Never - ending. Disappointing. Time Consuming. Awful. Trust me, I could easily go on! We are at the beginning of our second year and it has been a tough year (all four weeks) for us. We have had a lot additional challenges on top of school in the last month, and I feel like I have been rapidly approaching my limit.

Today was not a good day for me. Paul took a test this morning, (his third in four weeks) and I spent the day feeling miserable. By the time Paul walked in the door, he was greeted by hungry, tired, sick kids and a crying wife. Welcome home! I sent a message to a friend about my day - looking for support and friendship.

Ally and McKenzie showed up a couple hours later with this!

They found me not dressed, watching crap TV, in a messy house .... basically the epitome of pathetic. They didn't make me feel stupid or guilty for being a mess - just grateful to have such awesome friends. Not only that, but they let me vent, completely incoherently, about my day, and life, and medical school. They brought a lot of support, encouragement, and love and made my week!

I can honestly say the only thing that has gotten me through our first year and this year so far are my friends. I believe Paul and I came to this school so that I would have my girlfriends. These girls are my life line. I am so blessed to have them in my life and so grateful the Lord knew that I would need each of them and brought them here for me.

Now - I am going to watch a chick flick, eat chocolate, and get ready to face reality again tomorrow. I feel like now I can go back to surviving!

Week 1

  

Here are some pictures of all the other fun things we did during school! I didn't get pictures of the girls working on patterns, opposites, or colors. Maybe next week.

Cutting with scissors is hard. Right now we are working on straight lines. I printed off thick lines to make it easier. V is ready for a smaller line but B needs a little more practice first.

We played a game where our friend Sandy the Square lost his squares all over our whole house. The girls loved retrieving the squares and then we sorted them into piles by color, then size, then color and size. Hopefully, someday I can have more than one shape "lost" in the house so they have to specifically find only one shape. Next week...next month...someday :)

We practiced counting. They each got a bag full of assorted, well, just junk. But fun junk! Stuff I had in our craft drawer or kitchen. First, they sorted them into piles, then counted how many they had, and finally, we put them on the right number board. This was really easy for V and next time I am going to have her do 11 through 20. B had to put more work into but like it enough to do it twice.

Our first week was so fun! I hope I can maintain this! :) As always suggestions are always welcome! 

Letter E

Our first Letter of the Week! The Letter E. V already knows her letters so she is working on sounds and handwriting. B knows most of her letters but needs a good review and is working on writing and sounds. Here are our Letter E pictures.

The girl's got to color their own smaller versions of these pictures and then make them into a  collage for their letter books.

This week we did 5 tracing worksheets to practice how to write E. Bristol can trace them great but still gets confused trying to free hand a lower case e.

Look at that concentration! :)

Here are three of their favorite letter E crafts/activities from the week. The shadow letters was the favorite! They had so much fun punching out the letters - B kept saying, "This is so much fun - pokey fun!" I think this will be a weekly activity!

Next time I am going to make the letters closer together so we can
get both letters on the wall together. 

E is for elephant craft:

And finally, eggs in a basket. When I did this craft I wasn't thinking specifically about Easter. But as soon as the girls started it quickly became an Easter craft. The best thing about it was it was something to play with after "school". The girl's did Easter egg hunts for the rest of the afternoon.

At the end of the week, both girls had 4 letter E pages to put in their Alphabet Books. E is for Elephant, a picture collage, a coloring page, and letter E craft page (we decorated E and e - pictures to come)! 

It was a busy week but so fun! It was a great way to spend time with the girls. They want to start school every morning first thing. Of course, they could just be trying to get out of doing jobs! :)

Preschool Setup

Week One: Letter E, Number 1 and Squares

Here is my basic preschool plan. I found some education sites online that I get most of my worksheets and crafts from. I do make some things myself when I want to tweek things or if I can only find it in color (I am WAY to cheep to print in color). I rarely come up with all new stuff on my own - I am not that creative and I don't have to be cause there are lots of brilliant people who share their ideas with me!

Every week we cover one of each of these:

• Letter 
• Number 
• Shape

Every day we cover one of these: 

• Cutting
• Matching
• Colors
• Opposites
• Sizes
• etc.

I'm trying to present a balanced way to achieve our weekly goals. I am using worksheets, games, crafts, activities, long-term projects, and more. I am hoping that we can learn other skills along the way like following directions, taking turns, independent thinking, and that 'school' is fun. 

As always - suggestions/advice are more than welcome!! We are all learning as we go. Well, at least I am - no guarantees that V and B are learning anything! :)

Pinterest

Unless you are living under a rock - you have heard of Pinterest. I heard of this a long time ago and finally joined and started pinning a few weeks ago. Since I am a copycat - I very rarely, if ever 'create' something original. I enjoy finding ideas on Pinterest. But there are some things that I think are CRAZY about Pinterest:

1. Birthdays:

Via - tiffanybillsdesign.blogspot.com

Maybe a little much for a first birthday? Or any kid birthday......I mean seriously!! I love to have birthday parties for my kids but this is a little much for me. Every possible theme by year and gender can be found and some make the above look simple and understated. Who spends $50 on party favors? 

2.  Hair:

This is probably because I am HORRIBLE at doing anything besides a basic ponytail. Poor V and B. I will not be doing their hair, or mine, like this anytime soon. Even though "they" say this style takes minutes and is super easy it looks like an entire army of hairdressers wielding curling irons and straighteners and an entire ozone of hairspray were involved.... 

Via - girlydohairstyles.com

                  

3. The four hundred people who re-pinned that couldn't possible have made it right? RIGHT???

Via - cs.uofs.com

4. Beauty Tips: Some of these are brilliant some of them leave me speechless...

Via - 500px.com

5.  From now on, anytime I give someone a cute gift, make a dinner, actually complete a pinned project - all of my friends and family will say - "Oh, from Pinterest right?"

For me, the trick is to let Pinterest live in 'perfect world.' Where my neatly organized boards highlight what my life would be like if I didn't have 3 kids, a husband, a house, only two hands, a need to sleep, a budget, etc. When I close the internet I am back in "real life". No sense comparing the two.

And, in case you were wondering, I did stop mid-post to pin something.....twice....it's a love - hate relationship.....

Preschool

Vienna starts school next year! Can you believe it? Typically, Vienna would be starting preschool this fall. Cue the debate - should we vs. shouldn't we?!? I was leaning towards - shouldn't.  This is my last year with her. My last chance to have exclusive teaching and influence on her before I expose her to - I don't even know!!! Fortunately, I was spared making a final decision when I investigated the cost of preschool. Prohibitive. End of discussion.

I was relieved at first, knowing I could keep her with me one more year. But being me - I also feel guilty thinking that I could be holding her back and negatively influencing her future. Being a parent is hard - its hard to make decisions for my kids' lives!

My solution - preschool at home! I did this off and on last year - but this year my goal is to be really consistent so that V is ready to take on Kindergarten - preschool-less. Wish us all luck! I am going to try to post about what we are doing with school. This is a huge part of each of our days, and some of my favorite time with the girls.

What is your solution/opinion on preschool? Any tips for things we should be covering?

Honesty

February 29 2012 was my last blog. It's been a while.

I was talking to one of my closest friends, who inspired me to start a blog and who wondered what happened to my "inspired" blog. I told her (in a way I can't tell most people) that my life was tough enough with out faking it online. I was too tired to maintain an all positive, couldn't be more perfect, 'I make a six course meal every night and custom center piece to match' lifestyle. I can't compete or even compare to the LDS Blogosphere ideal - so why I am I even trying?

Ironically - the original purpose of this blog was not to compete or compare with that elusive (yet remarkably in your face) standard I was falling short of; I was supposed to be keeping friends and family up to date with our lives - particularly our kids.

So I am resetting and restarting. I am not going to try to pretend that things in my life are perfect all the time because honestly they never are. Of course I will probably post mostly the positive stuff, but I like the freedom of knowing that I don't have to - or more importantly want to.

If you are looking for a perfect blog about a perfect family with perfect children whose hair gets combed everyday and they wear perfectly clean and matching clothes (heck even clothes) everyday - this is not that blog. I have no intention of trying to be super inspiring or give unsolicited advice on "How to buy groceries for an entire year in one 1/2 hour shopping trip - sorry wrong blog.

If you are looking for perfect. Google it. Trust me they are everywhere.