Are They ALL Yours?!

This is the bucket of beans, the kids LOVE it.

That's what I get asked all the time lately. A couple of months ago I started watching two little sisters who are 2 and 7 months older than Davie and Macy. I always laugh when people ask me that question because my first thoughts in response to that question is 1)The kids would have to basically be two sets of twins and 2) The two sets of siblings couldn't look more different! My kids are blonde and blue eyed and the sisters I watch are brown and blue eyed with pretty brown hair.

It's also been fun to hear the comments I get in public or while getting the kids out of the car. One lady said "when you started unloading those kids I was just so surprised I kept thinking you were done and then someone else would get out of the car!" It always makes me laugh, because I've always said (and I'm more iron clad on this then I've ever been) I want to have 4 kids and it just doesn't seem like that many to me. It's a pain to be sure loading and unloading and helping with ALL the buckles (seriously who came up with that idea?) but it's not that hard. 

We've braved Publix, McDonald's, Wal*Mart, Target, Hobby Lobby, Joann's Fabric and the Pizza Hut buffet together and none of those experiences have even come close to our worst experiences. In fact for the most part the kids do great and the compliments we get definitely bring out my Mama bear side. After all who doesn't want to hear how great their kids and the kids in their care are AND how well behaved? 

Also because the girls go to school we don't pick them up until a little before lunch, which is nice because then we get to sleep in, run errands or just hangout alone in the morning. Many of you know I used to nanny so this might not come as a surprise to you now that I'm done with school and we have space in our house to have extra kids over. It's been a great job, with no weekends I might add, and an even bigger blessing in terms of our finances. Moving out of state and house buying is expensive! 

A trip to Publix 

Things would get patchy here and there at first because Davie has a bit of an "I love you so much I might suffocate you" way of showing he likes his new friend which lead to lots of crying, but I think for the most part we are over that. Also it FINALLY (depending on the day) has started to cool down so we have been making our way around to lots of parks in the area. Not only that but when David's parents visited they gave us pretty much the BEST gift ever. A swing set. That has given many an hour of pure childhood enjoyment in our backyard. We still don't have a TV so it's been nice to have the kids go outside and actually have something to do. I mean I'm all about them using their imaginations but our yard was just grass before that beloved swing set. 

Sharing a box 

Sitting on our friends 

Coloring 

The masks we made 

4 kiddos in a Joann's fabric cart 

They insisted on this set up, I just laughed. It didn't last long. 

Carseats galore 

I bought and framed a beautiful picture of Christ recently and it was wrapped in this paper, which worked great for a large coloring activity 

Hugs 

Sidewalk chalk 

A double stroller that became a triple :) 

Everybody riding the bus at the park 

A meal on the veranda, We spare no expense. 

This day we had an extra friend with us so I just had to take a picture of all those car seats, There was only one spot that was carseat free that day. So on top of the fact that I have two kids, am still not fully organized from our move, I am lazy and I don't always want to blog I've been watching more kiddos :) I'm hoping to have some more updates soon, but I hope this was good enough for now.

Gymnastics, Storytime and More

While we were in Columbus during the second polar vortex we experienced while in Ohio, I learned to find activities that the kids could do that gave our days some welcomed activity.

We made a bucket that has rice and beans in it that Davie can play with. It's such a great and simple toy! Literally hours of entertainment and depending on the size of your bucket and the kinds of toys you get for inside it the total cost can easily be under $10.

Lots of nice parks to go to if it wasn't freezing cold.

But like I said, there was a lot of this.

So when it was freezing outside we went to an indoor mall playground. Even though the boys liked this fountain better. 

Storytime

Can you guess the theme?

Davie loves storytime

Stomping like a dinosaur.

Kiddy art class. It was great because the whole class was only 30 min long.

The toughest part of this class was letting him do the project. Haha mommy control issues. 

St. Patrick's Day snow globe.

I hated driving in this stuff, wet, cold, icy, yuck.

We also signed up for and lived for our gymnastics class every week. 

One hour every day that the kids got to run around and jump on fluffy stuff.

Gymnastics had this GREAT trampoline that the kids absolutely loved. 

She LOVED running to the end.

This is the only picture I have of them together since they both wiggled and ran away so fast.

Macy was getting mobile and enjoyed this class a LOT.

Balance beam

He was pretty proud of himself

Snacks for our forts and books activity at the library. Our friends invited us to it and it was so great. Basically a bunch of families came and built little forts at the library and then read inside them.

Building our fort.

He was happier then he looks. I promise. 

Our Friend and her daddy. 

Hanging out in our fort.

Our friends who invited us. This activity was so basic, but it goes down in my books as one of the most fun ones. Who doesn't miss hanging out in a fort?!

The flashlight kind of took over the excitement after we built our fort and got inside. Davie loved shinning it in our eyes. 

Yummy public toys (yuck) at the end of story time. 

Destroying the house is always a reasonable option if there isn't 

story time, gymnastics, or art class that day.

Hey..... Where did all those diapers go??

Must. pull. out. every. baby. wipe.

SOOOO much snow scraping and it was COLD.

Play group trip to the zoo. Once the earth started warming up FINALLY.

3 little Monkeys and a gorilla ;)

Internship

Now that I can say we are in recovery mode I'd like to talk about last year and David's internship. In one of my posts last year I mentioned that we did nothing for the 4th of July and that David did not get to join us in Idaho for Christmas.... at all. Well to be honest internship year was pretty tough, not as tough as some (ie- surgery), but David was still gone plenty.

 His first rotation in the ICU was 4 weeks of 6-6pm, 6-8pm, 6-10pm, a day off, 8pm- midnight, repeat. That one was tough but I think I hated night float more (that is when he works all day and basically only comes home to sleep) because I didn't get to sleep with him and we had to be quiet while he slept at home during the day (that always stinks). Thankfully night float is only 2 weeks. HOWEVER, one of the second year internal medicine residents randomly decided to drop out of the program so David got to do a second ICU and night float rotation in November/December, along with surgery and renal. Basically he was never home so our plan to cope was to run away to Idaho for about 2 months.

His first day as Dr. Warden. So young, so naive.

Did I mention that David came home late almost all the time while on the ICU shift, especially on the 6- 8pm days. He reported his hour overages a couple of times and was then told to stop doing that. Interns and residents have new and better rules so that hospitals can't run their workers into the ground like they did in the past, but they still only do so much. These hours are even worse for those in surgery. Here are just a couple of different reasons why not reporting his overage hours sucks-
A) then David and other interns still get overworked
B) interns and residents are salaried so no bonuses and
C) they can get "talked to" like David did for reporting it.
What's interesting to me is that I'm sure there is some kind of fine that the hospital pays when they have employees who go over on their hours so I'd like to know where that money goes. Just a thought.

night float.

When we got home from Idaho David was essentially working 6 days a week 12-14 hours each day. It stunk. We have been filling out tax forms and David and I both guestimated (for one of the forms) that he works about 75 hours a week. Which like I will repeatedly say IS way better than the 80-100 hours a week that his dad used to work or the 100+ some odd hours some of our friends in surgery work, but comparing bad and horrible aren't going to make me feel better about barely ever having him around. Also he kind of got tricked out of one of his weeks of vacation last year. I won't go into detail but it was super frustrating.

Last year he even took naps. David NEVER takes naps.
The farther into this doctor stuff the more irritated I get at people being irritated at doctors (in general) or how much they make, or the tax laws that will eventually be taking a third of our money or the fact that we owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in school debt (some of those loans are at 8% and we won't get to write off ANY of the interest on our taxes). It's not all because we, or I, want to be rich because I would gladly donate a third of our money if it meant that the government didn't get it. I'm all for giving back but the government is not a charity. I guess the other thing that I get frustrated about pretty quickly is watching David and the other great men (a couple of women too :) work so hard and then to have people poo-poo that.

Sleeping at church. Poor guy. I'm sure if we were to look at his attendance last year he could have qualified as inactive. He had to work SOO many Sundays :(
I don't know how to not feel personally slighted by some of the rude comments that people make about doctors and how "rich" they are. Hello! My husband is never home and we haven't even had a couch for the last year and a half because we have been trying to save! Don't talk to me about being selfish. Or use doctors as an all-encompassing way to complain about people who are wealthy. I absolutely believe that there are doctors out there who are total jerks, but that is not unique to medicine. Everyone has choices in life. We chose a life of patience when we chose medical school. We have put in 4 more years of school and NO pay and we are about to put in 6 years of lower pay. It was our choice and I am happy with it, but I don't like being told we are selfish or "rich" with such a negative connotation.

He is super exhausted in this picture. He's about to leave for night float. Did I mention that he also kind of got roped into doing 2 extra weeks of night float last year? Yea last year just stunk.

I just really dislike people making me feel bad about our career choices. I wish people would stop complaining. Lets all complain about people who are actually worth being irritated over like worthless celebrities who make millions for being naked and holding bottles of perfume (haha I saw a perfume add the other day and WOW). I guess what I'm trying to say is I love David and I think he really is one of THE MOST altruistic people I know and have ever known. So when I see his career choice being demonized I can't help but be frustrated really fast. I'm sure it goes with the territory though because one of our friends who was in law school is struggling with similar stereotypes. Can't we all just get along? That's all rant over.

Basically last year was awful and the farther away from it we get the more I realize how stressed out, sad and lonely we all really were. This is a good moment to mention before I end this post that this year so far has been 100 times better. We (David especially) are getting some much needed rest and togetherness. Doing "hard" things is tough, but the blessing that are starting to come to us through David's sacrifices are so wonderful. We truly are so blessed.