Monday, January 21, 2013

Big Time

I made it into the Caller Times (our local paper)!

http://www.caller.com/news/2013/jan/21/college-notes-for-the-coastal-bend-012113/

Scroll pretty much to the last 3 paragraphs...so maybe I'm not as big of a deal as I'd like to be!  Here is the original press release (with way more information) from our marketing and communications department that ran in our student paper:

http://www.tamuk.edu/news/2013/01/performance_psych%20.html

This has been my work life for the last 6 months or so...getting this program proposed and accepted by our curriculum committee.  We already have 45 students who have declared this emphasis as their major - which means my days of teaching freshman and sophomore classes are dwindling fast! (yay!)  This will make my teaching load to be strictly sport psychology classes with one sport sociology class in the summers. This makes me happy!

Friday, January 18, 2013

I Still Don't Want to Talk About It...

I still can't believe we lost.  I know - I'm probably not normal, but my friend Kari says I am so I'm going to agree with her.  This Broncos loss has probably been the hardest to get over that I can remember.  We were so close.  We had all of the pieces.  And we lost.  Lost.
I painted my toenails for the playoffs...and put about 7 layers of top coat on it so it would stay through the Super Bowl.
We just needed to win, and we'd get to avenge our loss to the Patriots - at home - and then we were on to the Super Bowl.  We had 31 seconds on the clock, and Peyton Manning as our quarterback, and we took a knee.  Sigh.  We lost.  I don't want to talk about it.  Still.  Maybe in a few months.  Ugh.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Sandbox

It has warmed up over the last couple of days here and been really nice.  I'm not quite ready for it to get warm yet because that means it's going to be insanely hot all too soon.  Ugh.  But getting into the 60s without rain had gotten us back to playing outside.  Today I kept telling Evelyn to keep the sand in the sandbox...this was her response.
"This sand is so fun!"
 "Hmmm...Mom, what should I do with this?"
"Is this what you mean by 'keep the sand in the sandbox?'"
Ornery.  I don't know where she gets it from.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Random Pictures and Videos

Sometimes you just want to eat nuggets with a spoon!
Watching Pocoyo on her new bean bag
Our robot vacuum stopped working, and I told Dan we needed to try to fix it.
Evelyn went and got a screwdriver from our toolbox and did this.
We haven't officially started potty training yet, but we have her toilet out so she can start to get used to it.  Sometimes you just want to sit on your potty with your slippers on.  She loves these slippers.
She has started climbing up on our bathtub and rocking back and forth like this.
We got a new car seat for Evelyn in our nanny's car and she loves the box it came in!
This picture cracks me up...trying to open the markers!
Cheese!
More cheese!
One of my favorite things is watching Evelyn growing into a worshiper.  Like I have said before, she loves music and dancing - so this is what she does during our family worship time.
Grow this in her, Lord!!
We have officially taken Evelyn's pluggies (pacifier) away except for at bed time.  Those will be going away in the next few weeks.  It's a shame, because she has started calling them "plubbie" and it is the cutest thing in the world that I'm going to miss!
Plubbie...
We may have a future trumpet player on our hands...
This is such a fun age!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

We Have a Sports Fan!

Over the past month or so, Evelyn has started cheering with us when we watch different sporting events.  She says things like "touchdown," "swish," "nice," "go go go," and "nooo".  It's hilarious.
In this video she is watching basketball with Dan.
This one was watching one of the wild card football games.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Dancing

Evelyn has always loved music and dancing.  Lately she has been cracking us up with some of her moves.  Here are some videos for you to enjoy (and laugh with us)!


Thursday, January 3, 2013

Gastro-Intestinal Specialist

We had Evelyn's appointment with the gastro-intestinal specialist yesterday morning.  This doctor is not my favorite.  He seems very good, but his manner of questioning and dealing with his patients is really odd and uncomfortable.  They took her weight and height, then had us talk with a dietician to discuss her normal diet.  She said that there were some places where we could improve her diet, namely her snacks - to try and give her two things instead of one so that she will eat more, but that on the whole her diet looked good.  She also suggested that, since she hates Pediasure, we add the Pediasure to her milk small bits at a time to try to add in those extra calories each day.  We then met with Dr. Jain.  Like I said, he wasn't my favorite, but he seemed very thorough.  He said she doesn't look malnourished, and she has hit all of her developmental milestones on time.  He ordered a number of tests to test for several things, one of which is Celiac disease (where your body can't process gluten).  We won't get the results of that for at least 2 weeks. 

So this morning we headed to Driscoll (our local children's hospital) for her tests.  First it was a blood draw, where I think they took about every drop of blood she had.  Poor baby.  Then she had to have an x-ray done of her wrist.  Dr. Jain wanted to look to see that her bones look like 19-month old bones and not 12-month bones.  Dan had to come help with that because, being pregnant, I could not be in the room with her. 

So now we wait...and try to get her to drink Pediasure in her milk.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

A Few Days at Home

Our trip home was a little less than fun (ok, a lot).  I came down with a stomach bug of some sort on the morning we were planning to leave.  Without giving details, I couldn't hold anything down - either way - and pretty much felt like death.  Dan was really wanting to get home so that we could have a few days home before he had to go back to work (and I was on board with that plan).  He said he was ready to drive as much as possible, so we went ahead and packed up to head out after lunch.  Ugh - what a terrible drive home.  We had to pull over so I could puke less than 10 minutes out of town.  Awesome.  Dan drove from Wray to Amarillo (about 7 hours) where we stopped for dinner - well, dinner for Evelyn and Dan - some quality time in the bathroom for me.  I usually felt better for a little while after I would throw up, so I decided to take a turn driving.  I made it to about 30 minutes south of Lubbock (a total of about 2 hours).  Poor Dan.  He then drove the rest of the drive home - 15 hours of our 17 hour trip.  He's pretty much a rock star.  I wish I could say I slept through it, but I couldn't get comfortable - so I slept in bits and pieces.  Evelyn, again, did pretty well.  She was a little more fussy on the way home, but all in all did great.
Dan snapped this as the sun was coming up - we were about 30 minutes from home here.
The good news of that trip is that we got home about 30 minutes after Evelyn woke up - so again the majority of her trip was spent sleeping.  I was still pretty much out of commission, feeling like a truck ran over me.  I hadn't vomited since Amarillo, but was still dealing with the other end.  For the first time ever, I let all of our suitcases and bags sit in the entry way for almost the whole day.  I usually can't sit and rest until everything is put away.  Thankfully, I took our Christmas stuff down the day we left for Colorado - so while those boxes still had to be put up in the garage, at least it was all put away.  All I wanted to do was sleep and not be sick.  Dan did awesome taking care of Evelyn after he had driven all night long.  I have the best husband in the world.  He got her castle tent put together and all she wanted to do for the first 10 minutes or so was lay in it.  We figured it was time for an early nap (she didn't sleep real well through the night, and hadn't slept real well in Colorado - too much excitement knowing her cousins were just down the hall!).
Night night...
The next morning, we woke up and our house was 58 degrees (since having Evelyn we usually try to keep it around 68 at night).  Dan had been so happy to come home to nothing wrong (in years past, we've had our deep freeze go out, garage doors not open, lizards in the house...). 
Evelyn insisted on wearing her new slippers that she got from Grammie and Grandad for Christmas.
Fortunately, it wasn't our furnace (which we couldn't believe it would be...we just replaced that a little over a year ago).  We had a breaker that had melted in some way.  The HVAC guy showed Dan what he needed to do to fix it, so Dan headed to Home Depot to get a new breaker to fix it.  We had a good laugh (or, at least I did...) because just a few days before, Dan had gone up to my sister and brother-in-law's new house that is being built in Wray to help the boys with some electrical work (my brother-in-law has electrical experience).  When he went up there, his job was holding a flashlight.  I told Mike maybe we could have fixed this ourselves if Dan got to hold more than a flashlight! :-)
Dan fixing our melted breaker.
For New Years Eve, we went to dinner at Johnny Carino's then had planned to go to the mall so I could spend a gift card that I got for the Motherhood store.  When we got there around 5:45, we found out that the mall was closing at 6pm.  So I spent my gift card, then we went up to the play place to let Evelyn play for a while after the stores closed. 
We were pretty much the only ones there, so she loved running around with free reign of the place. 
We then let her just run up and down the mall hallways for a while.  She thought that was pretty awesome since usually she is confined to a stroller so we can keep track of her!  We were home, and Evelyn and I were in bed around 9pm.  Happy New Year, Dan.  Maybe I'll make it to midnight next year.  Or not...because we'll have a 5-month old and our kids don't seem to sleep through the night until 10 months.