Sunday Update

RHETT:

Home from Belize! He had a good experience but missed us so much he ended up changing his flight and coming home two days early. We were excited! You can read about his experience on his Belize blog if you want to. I'm hoping to get some photos from his trip up.

Rhett is currently in his ER rotation and enjoying it.

He's planning all these interviews for this fall and winter. He applied to Family Medicine MD residencies and we find out where we move next in March. So far our future home possibilities lie in Utah, Idaho, Washington, Colorado, or Oregon. Maybe I missed some states, I should check the spreadsheet. We are staying in the west this time around.

Also, he wants me to come to as many interviews as I can. Most are driving distance, so it wouldn't require extra plane ticket, and Rhett said he didn't want a "Kirksville repeat". A Kirksville repeat would be me agree to move somewhere, and get there, and complain about the town for two years solid. Ya, buddy. I don't want a Kirksville repeat either. I better come so I know what I'm getting into. Some people love Kirksville.

But Rhett's biggest news is: HE IS OFFICIALLY OVERWEIGHT! There was a time where his BMI teetered into the OBESE category. But thanks to a month in a third world country, and our new deal with exercise, he's lost over 15 pounds or something. It's so funny. Rhett must either have a heavy skeleton, or the fact he's built so thick, or maybe both. But he says he's always been in the overweight category going by his BMI. Even when he was sucking weight and disgustingly trim for wrestling in high school, according to his height and weight he was overweight. So for Rhett, overweight on the chart = normal. We've actually done well exercising together, it's really helped to be responsible for the other person for some reason.

JESSICA:

Had my photo taken for the magazine recipe contest. Remember how I was freaking out? It was this last week. Natalie recommended I go to the MAC counter at Nordstroms to learn how to do eye makeup. I have to admit I was hesitant and that was totally out of my comfort zone. I called to set up an appointment, and they said it was $50.00 and so I said never mind. Natalie ended up calling and making an appt for me, clarifying I just needed eyes so it was free. What a great friend huh? And she sent me a cute apron to wear for it, because I had granny aprons. So the above photo was taken after the MAC chick tried to teach me what everyone else already knows, how to apply eye makeup. The photoshoot was pretty low-key and so we'll see how it turns out, I did my best trying to recreate the MAC chick's work. She'd written things out on this little card and I did my best. I only bought two things from MAC, so I had to borrow my sister's makeup. I am so incredibly lame. So hope the photo ends up OK... I felt like I had the cheesiest smile the whole time...probably did.

I've been sewing a ton to try to take advantage of moms purchasing Halloween costumes for the etsy shop. So I have a superhero cape sweatshop that runs during naps and after bed time into the wee hours of the night. I watch movies as I sew, and have watched all the Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskel, George Elliot british period films in the house. I also have watched the whole Lord o Rings trilogy and all the Harry Potters. So if you have good film recommendations that are longer so I don't have to stop to change DVDs, tell me!

Oh, and my childhood was almost crushed when I realized the Ann of Green Gables series totally ripped off Louisa May Alcott. Little Women is such a similar love story, almost identical dialog in the proposals. "You can't even propose without quarreling!" etc. Except in the Anne of Green Gables version, Jo ends up with the young hot Lawrence rather than the old german dude. Similar love story, and the whole writer identity crisis, listening to the dude to write about home in the end. I can't believe I never saw it before now!

By the way, which character do you prefer? I think I may lean to Gilbert, except he has that annoying Canadian way of saying "sorry" like "soarry". Lynette and I always have to say "I'm soarry Anne. I'm soarry." every time Anne of GG is mentioned, it bugs us so bad. But then again, Lynette and I also always observed Lawrence seems like a slobbery kisser in Little Women when he proposed to Jo at the fence. Major gleekage or something going on. It's a toss up. I guess I'd just have to go with the one who has the most money. :)

Not much else going on in my life of note. Well the above two things are lame, but they are the most exciting, so you get the picture.

Rhett James:

Turns 18 months old next week and has been going to nursery for almost 2 months. Our ward only has 4 kids in their nursery, and so I took him early and it's been great! Church is so much better not trying to entertain a toddler the whole three hours! Rhett and I served in the nursery our whole marriage until we had our son, so we had a combined almost 8 years experience babysitting toddlers at church. We saw tons of parents use different strategies to ween their kids into nursery and so over the years we concocted what we thought was the perfect plan. In jest we'd always talk up our strategy and say we should publish a pamphlet, but we'd never actually performed our ideas until we had our own kid. I was kind of nervous because we have so much family around, he's never been to play groups and the majority of his peer interactions are with his cousins. He's also never been babysat by anyone other than family. So we put our nursery plan to the test, and it was awesome with RJ at least. Two weeks and he was going in without tears and happily stayed the full two hours, I don't even go in with him in the beginning! Talk about spiritual liberation, actually being able to go to church and listen and participate.

He got a tricycle from a garage sale for cheap. It was missing a tire, so I just got an inexpensive lawn mower tire to replace it. So the back wheels don't match and it's a little white trash...but so are we so it suits our fam.

He is funny and starting to develop imagination which is fun. He has this stuffed polar bear and he put it up on a plate and mashed it's face into a pear, then stood back and said "food"! He's still using sign language, but it's waning as he's becoming more skilled at verbal speech. My favorite is "thank you". He's mixed up the sign for thank you where you bring your hand palm up from your chin forward, with blowing kisses. So now he always blows you a kiss and says "thank you". Or I'll remind him to say thank you and he'll blow a kiss.

He can be so dang cute and nice, but then one minute later be a little terd. I'm told it's the age. But we love him either way. And 20 second time-outs seem to be beneficial. He'll probably know how to count to 20 by the end of the year. Just kidding.