The Hunt

That's right, I'm woefully behind in blog updates but the start of "The Hunt", aka the duck hunting opener has left me a duck widow for quite a while. The amount of work it takes to maintain two duck boats is apparently quite plentiful. Luckily for Kevin he has a new helper..

He has been pretty busy with the hunting and pretty successful. Luckily he has also had a chance to catch a couple of pretty sunrises with his cellphone camera.

Florida

Yay! We made it through the storm and finally got a real vacation. It was so much fun. We started off a little rocky with the pink eye, cough, etc. But the true testament of what our vacation would be like was the fact that Isaac was an angel, as usual, on the 7 hour plane ride. We had a layover in Houston, which was great to feed, change etc. It was a perfect flight. Then our good friend Joe picked us up at the airport and drove us to his house in Ormond beach. Joe and Heidi were AMAZING. They drove us to and from the airport, gave us an amazing guest room in their spectacular new house (pack n play included for isaac), let us borrow one of their cars for the entire week AND were amazing hosts taking us to all the hot spots central Florida has to offer.
The first day was a dream come true for Kevin with deep sea fishing of the coast. He had a great time and caught all sorts of fish and even a couple of sharks. We naturally had to make the best of the shark photo op with Isaac at the beach later that evening. Then the boys cooked up all the fish (shark included) and we had a seafood feast for dinner. I had a wonderful day sleeping in, shopping, seeing the alligator in their local pond, and hanging out at the beach with Isaac, Heidi and her two kiddos.

The next day we had some family time and went canoeing on the intercoastal waterway. This started off excitingly. As I got Isaac out of the car, Kevin packed up our canoe and ran up to the shop to pay.... only to see our canoe floating away. He ran back, grabbed a kayak, and rescued our canoe from the gator infested waters. The rest of the time on the kayak was much less eventful. Nonetheless, I have to admit I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to gators. The water we were in has aligators, dolphins, and manatee. Everytime our boat hit an unexpected bump in the murky water, I was convinced our boat was going to tip and our child eaten by an alligator. This high stress level made the canoeing seem much more adventurous and made the 3 hour nap we all took when we got back to the Atkin's house all the more enjoyable. That evening we spent enjoying the Atkin's neighborhood pool.

The next day we went to a natural spring and had a great time floating. It was beautiful and the pictures absolutely don't do it justice. Kev was holding Isaac when he bumped up against the edge of the river, and noticed a huge snake in the foliage. Needless to say, we were more careful to stay away from the edges after that. Supposedly these are also gator infested waters but, thankfully, we never saw any.

Thursday was an event. Both Kevin and Isaac's first Disney experience. We only went to the Magic Kingdom part of disneyland since it would take a week to do more than that. It was so much fun. Kev's favorite ride was Splash Mountain. (I forgot to mention that in yet another testament of their awesomeness, Joe and Heidi took Isaac for a while so we could go on a few grown up rides.) My favorite ride remains space mountain. Isaac seemed to enjoy all the rides but he definately fell in love with Minnie Mouse.

Friday we went to the Alligator farm and then Heidi and I got our kid free time (like the boys fishing) and we went shopping. It was fun to just relax and actually be able to try clothes on! That night we went on a walking tour of the city and learned all about St. Augustine, which is the oldest, continually inhabited, city in North America. It was fun learning about pirates and seeing the forts.

Saturday was just a relaxing day at the beach. I managed to read a book! Kev and Isaac had a great time building drip castles and boogeyboarding. Isaac seemed to love the beach, the only downside was his faceplanting in the sand or surf and trying to eat his way out. Luckily there were beachside showers that were super convenient. That night we went out to eat at the Riverside Grille which was delicious and really fun. It was located right on the intercoastal waterway and there is a dock at the bottom (and a wild alligator).

Oh and I forgot to mention some other unsung heros of our vacation. Jason brown, our neighbor and friend, drove us to and from the airport on the salt lake side of things, also at very inconvenient hours. And of course my dad who is Jezebel's guardian angel.

August 2010

August was a rollercoaster. First... the highs...We went to wyoming something like three times in the last month. It was so much fun to be camping with my family, hanging out at the cabin with Kev's family, and just enjoying the fresh air. Isaac had a few firsts, like his first run down the snake river (we took out at wolf creek, but still impressive), first spaghetti dinner, and his first trip to Jackson. In true Kevin style, he and my dad managed to track down (on KSL of course) some guy that was willing to sell bladders for some pontoon boats his family had long since given up on for dead. I'm not sure they were worth the price, but they sure are fun to take down the river and in Kevin's mind, anything that makes fishing even more fun, is priceless. (Kevin actutally floated down in an innertube before upgrading to the pontoon boats). Also, it was Kev's birthday and he turned 29 again! Yay! He and his dad celebrated in style with the family and although I was bummed I couldn't be there I was glad they had such a great time.

Now the lows...We keep trucking along with work, but to be completely honest, with neither of us having so much as a day off together that we didn't spend out of town, our house was pretty much in ruins by the end of the month. There were laundry piles the size of Mt. Killamanjaro. Plus my week long, every other night, spend the night in the hospital, call shift didn't help stabilize matters either. Eventually our immune systems wore down and we were pretty much dead. Kev had felt ill for a couple of nights before and so I had slept on the couch to take care of Isaac without waking Kev or spreading germs.... to no avail. Meanwhile Kevin keeps complaining that he thinks he has and ingrown finger nail that hurts... this of course is secondary in priority to his intermittent fever, cough etc. It all comes full circle when Tuesday I felt pretty feverish on and off all day, but it was a long day at work and as any adult knows, you don't get to call in sick to real jobs unless you're dead.... I send Kevin text emails all day about how I'm pretty sure I'm dying... and to have Gregg Fisher taxadermy me and put me in the living room and stuff like that. 16 hours later I finally get to crawl into bed and steal all the covers at which point Kevin sticks a thermometer under my arm and declares I'm burning up and cannot keep roasting in the covers, a few wimpers and some tylenol later I sleep my blissful 5 hours and go back to work feeling pretty good.... except over the next couple of days my voice slowly but surely disappears. This was pretty comical at work as I would have to lean down and whisper into my patients ears explaining that I lost my voice but I'm going to be their doctor that day. Inevidably they would whisper their replies because when one preson whispers you just automatically whisper back. The people at work found this hillarious and I'm pretty sure Kevin wasn't lamenting the loss of my voice for those few days. That same five hours of feverish sleep night for me was far worse for Kevin. Kevin's finger turned out not to be an ingrown nail but some random raging infection that needed drained and antibiotics started. This however could not be done until Wednesday so Kevin spent Tuesday night on the couch with his throbbing finger elevated so it would hurt less, waking up and feeding Isaac (who of course also has a cold). Then, just when things were starting to look up... Kevin completely lost his sense of smell for three days and I landed some pink eye. I don't know what it is, I must have defective eyes or the world's worst hand-eye hygeine because I am a pink eye magnet. When I was little I would get it so often I could put in my own eye drops.. luckily this dissappeared with some treatment too... but for a couple of days we were quite the site of a family. Dad with bandaged finger, cough, runny nose. Mom with pinkeye, no voice. Baby with pinkeye and runny nose. Luckily this all subsided and we recovered just in the nick of time for vacation. But since the vacation technically happened in September... that's the next post.

The local park

Part of the reason we chose our house was the number of nearby parks. We hoped our future kiddos would like 'em. If Isaac's face is any indication, we're on the right track.

July flew by and now I'm sitting in the operating room, trying to catch up. This month started off with a bang... mainly us moving back to Utah and trying to unpack enough during my first week of anesthesia to have everyone over for Isaac's blessing on the 4th. It was a great success and I feel so fortunate to have such a wonderful husband to give our amazing baby a great blessing. It was so fun to have everyone over and get to see family. Everyone was so helpful; it felt like the whole family was putting on the party. We even managed to get some family pictures at the Clubhouse after the blessing.

The next week we started our new family schedule. On Kevin's workweek we all wake up at 4:45, all hop in the shower, wash, pass the baby, wash, pass the baby, wash the baby, get ready and rush out the door to be in the hospital by 6 and to ARUP for work and school shortly thereafter. Isaac seems to really be enjoying his time at preschool and all the ladies there love him (rightfully so). He comes home with a new hairstyle everyday. He has also taken to solid foods like a fish to water. Consequently he eats two to three solid meals everyday, plus all the breastmilk I can manage, plus formula. Needless to say he's gaining weight like a champ - Finally!

My uncle Joey came to visit this month and we had a great time shooting skeet. Kevin was by far the best shot, but I wasn't bad either. Even the little dude got in on the action.

My parents saved us numerous times while we went to many required, no children invited, fancy schmancy anesthesia dinners. Isaac loves hanging out with his grandparents and Kev and I loved having a chance to just be us again.

Last, but certaintly not least... we finally made it back to Wyoming. I couldn't believe it had been 2 years since I had been there. It was so much fun to be up with my family camping, raft the snake river, and then fish of course. The rafting was great and Kevin even managed to convice part of our crew to hike the raft back up so that we could hit Kahuna again, better. Needless to say, they tipped over, but everyone had a great time. The little dude was taught the fine art of fishing by a very kind daddy who wore Isaac on his chest most of the morning.