The Bridge Man

My life is in a new place. Its a little new for me to have such a grown up kid around. I know Bridger is only three and all but really what a difference! He can dress himself...well, he needs help here and there but still that is huge. He can play and entertain himself for hours at a time playing all sorts of imaginary games, he talks to me all day long about what is on his mind (and his mind is a really adorable place). He is potty trained though he still has accidents about once a week or so but he hasn't wet his bed at all. He is a jolly little man with a tender heart and it "breaks" regularly when he thinks we are upset with him. He sits through long books now and asks questions and gives lots of commentary. He helps Benjie when he drops toys and lets me know when Benjie is sad. He loves to help his mom and dad with chores. He loves learning about everything around him. We love our happy, fun. smart, handsome, super energetic, tender hearted boy! Thank goodness he is ours.

Here are some small but significant moments with our Bridger

Awhile back he had been put in timeout for something... I don't remember what but he was still sulking about it when his daddy walked into the front door talking on the phone with his Grandma Rasmussen. Bridger wanted to talk too. So he gets the phone in his hands and what dose he tell his Grandma? Something like, "My mommy hurt my heart. My heart is broken. My Mommy broke my heart. Mommy did it." (big pout and everything). I got some giggles out of his telling on me and felt no remorse.:)

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The other night he gave his first unaided prayer...

"Dear Heavy Father. Thank you Angie and Daddy. Thank you Mommy and Benjie. Thank you PAPAS! Thank you nigh nigh time and then the sun come UP! Jesus Chist AMEN!"

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He and Angie act more like twins then big and little sister but he is starting to assume some big brother roles. He likes to help her with things that are hard for her to do. Sometimes she wants nothing to do with his help but when she lets him it is adorable. The other day she was trying to get her stroller up the steps to our back door. She was getting frustrated that it was stuck.
She screamed at the top of her lungs," Stuck. Mommy. Stuck!"
Bridger came smiling along, "Angie I help you. OK Angie? I help you."
She replied, "Ok Baba."
Bridger picked up her stroller like it was nothing carried it up the stairs and set it in the house. Angie smiled with glee that it was finally up and waddled up the stairs in her rather uncoordinated manner. Bridger rolled it over to her as she got to the top, "Here go Angie."
Angie almost giggling at him said, "Thank you Baba!"
Then they were off racing into the next room.

I cant believe my kids are finally at that point of social skills, language, and manners to do that all without me intervening.

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Bridger goes to speech or "big kid school" once a week. It is at our local elementary school. I love watching how confident he is about the whole thing. When we pulled up to school today Bridger told me he wanted to be the first one out of the car. I got him out and then he said "Bye Mommy." and took off running through the school. Angie, the baby, and I made our way behind him. I watched from across the little courtyard as he made his way to the classroom and knocked on the door. His teacher opened it and Bridger said, "Ello!" to his teacher and classmate. He then announced that he had to go potty and just like that he was off to the bathroom waving goodbye to me as he went. He is not afraid of the big school or the big kids or anything. He thinks its just a great place to be. I love how he greets everything with his arms wide open and with so much happiness. I hope he never loses that. Its one of his trademarks. ;)

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Here is the coloring he did at school all by himself. He even traced that "H" & "h" with no help. I am a little proud of him for that. He loves to color. I like to think that we have a little artist on our hands.

Homesick

Life is really really good. I am so happy in my life right now. I really don't think I could wish for anything to be different. (Well, except I wish I had some more money in the bank. We are used to poverty these days so we don't stress too much about it anymore, but basically life is fabulous.)

However, I have been homesick. I have been hoping it would just go away as I got busier and planned fun things here in Reno but it keeps getting harder to ignore. The homesick I have is not a wanting to getaway its just plain old missing my loved ones and my second homes. I want to walk into my parents' home, get a big hug, watch my children hug on their "papas" (as they call them) and let them play with their cousins. I want to feel the warmth of my Mom and Dad Ras' hospitality and love, I want to see beautiful Utah in the Spring and visit my dear Eden, siblings, and grandparents that all live there. I want to visit my family far away and be apart of their lives. I would love to see my brother and his sweet new wife and see their beautiful world in Alaska, or my sister in Alabama and meet her new little puppy and gush over all her home improvements, or my sweet sick sister in Arizona and cook her dinner, clean her house, and kiss on her kiddos, or go to Ohio and take in it's beauty and let me kids have the time of their life playing with their cousins. I want to be in my favorite places with my favorite people.

My heart hurts to think that most all my family has never even seen Benjamin, they are all missing his babyhood. Thanks to blogs I know they see him lots but its not the same as real interaction. I am seriously thinking of just loading up the car and leaving somewhere but every time I get all excited about just going I realize I cant. First, I cant afford the gas. Second, I have too many responsibilities here: dinners to cook for people, sharing times to teach, ceramics to finish up for Mother's day, a yard project to finish up before it gets too hot, and so on.

So I guess I just want all my family out there to know that I miss you. I really really miss you. I love you. I really really love you. And someday I will get to visit you again.

Until then thank goodness for phones, blogs, and email! :O)

Mission Completed

When Emily convinced me to build her a fence I had NO idea how much time and effort it would take. She told me that I could put it up during my spring break (which was over a month ago). We were blessed to have a Ward service project to put posts in (Emily already posted about that). I will now take you through the remainder of our project which cost me countless hours and probably some letter grades in a few of my classes.

After the posts set it was my job to put up the vinyl slates so we could have a fence and not just a nice row of white posts. This was a very rewarding part of the project because in a short amount of time you could see a drastic change. Not all our posts were the correct distance apart so I got to measure and saw the slates so we could get a custom fit.
The next part of the fence project was to get the front gate finished. We had to put in two more posts for the part of the fence next to our house and assemble the gate. The kids helped us get the holes ready. When we were done with this our house looked really good from the street, but the work was far from over.

Because the very back of our property has a steep slope we couldn't complete the last 16 feet when we did the rest of the fence. Thus our fence was completely un-functional as the kids demonstrated daily by bolting into our neighbors yards. To complete those last 16 feet on both sides I first had to make a cinder block wall the fence could go on top of. Building a wall is no easy project and I had to build one on each side of our yard. I first had to dig a large trench which was framed with wood, build a rebar support skeleton and then pour cement.
One of the new skills that I developed was tying rebar. I found a new level of respect for steel workers who do this for a living. I had 4 long rebar pieces that ran horizontal through the trench that were tied together in a square and then vertical pieces to come out of the cement at specific intervals. This took a good deal of planning and I got many, many cuts from the sharp rebar and wire I used to tie it.
After the cement cured I had to build my cinder block wall. Luckily my planning paid off and the rebar matched with the holes in the blocks. I made sure everything fit together nicely and then I went to work teaching myself masonry. After a while the walls started to come together. We then filled the entire walls with cement. One side note is that the holes for the blocks were slightly smaller than the posts for the fence. I had to saw and grind down the blocks so the posts would fit. It ended up working nicely, but really every step of this wall building was laborious at best.
Now that the posts were in place and my wall was mostly finished I topped off the wall with capstones. Again I had to cut the capstones to fit around the posts. It took a long time to get things to fit well but I thought it looked good. Then I could finally finish the vinyl portion of those last 16 feet on each side of our back yard.
Here are some pictures of the final project. It only took me a month longer than I had originally planned but we are pleased with the results. I am so grateful for all the friends who helped me along the way. They too put in many hours, were sunburned, and cut and covered in blisters like myself and I really appreciate their service. I am especially thankful for George Baker who helped with the design and lent me tons of his tools which made the project possible. Without him I am sure the fence would have blown down by now. I hope this summer, even with me gone so much, that the kids will have fun playing outside and Emily will have the peace of mind that they are safe.

Snip-Snip

I cut Angie's hair today sort of spur of the moment. I think it turned out really cute.

The hair that was sacrificed for greater cuteness. :)

There is her little do. Now we are twiners.

I think her eyes sort of steal this shot but still the hair is cute.

Our sweet little beauty.

BAD BILL: putting doctors out of business

Since my husband has started medical school I have been more interested in medical law. Basically doctors have awful laws passed against them and their practice all the time thanks in part to all the insurance and drug companies lobbyists. Anyways, I thought I would be a little more vocal about this pending law that just passed the committee here in Nevada. If this bill passes no new doctors will be starting practices in Nevada because it will make their malpractice insurance go through the roof and will make the shortage of doctors in Nevada plunge to an all time low. So if you are a Nevadan please take a moment to email or call your legislators to tell them how lame this bill is and pass on this info onto your friends and neighbors here in Nevada!

Main points of AB 495:
-Repeal the protections of the "Keep Our Doctors In Nevada" (KODIN) initiative
-Eliminate the cap for malpractice law-suits (the "pain and suffering" portion)...there are many portions on which patience get a ton of money. This portion is now capped at $300,000 and with this law they will remove it completely and thus patience can not just get a couple millions in their suits but 10s of millions. Way do doctors care? Because they have to pay for these suits! Their malpractice insurance will be impossibly expensive to pay and doctors will essentially go out of business here in Nevada! Hello that is not good!
-Eliminate the limitations on how much lawyers can charge. Again malpractice will go through the roof with this though lawyers will be loving it and probably go to town suing doctors left and right.
-Alter the financial obligations of doctors ....doctors have to pay more to practice!
-Alter the standing of "informed consent "...make it easier to sue doctors! like we need more lawsuits against doctors!

And FYI 80% of doctors get sued at some point of their career . This doesn't mean that 80% of doctors are bad doctors, it means that good doctors sometimes get bad results with the tried and true procedures they do every day.

To call your state legislator

(800)944-6709

Tell them to vote NO on Assembly Bill 495 to help keep doctors in Nevada

To email your legislators:

Assembly: www.leg.state.nv.us/75th2009/Legislators/Assembly/alist.cfm
Senate: www.leg.state.nv.us/75th2009/Legislators/Senators/slist.cfm
To find your legislator: www.leg.state.nv.us/ and click on Who’s My Legislator on the right.

-For more specifics, you can read what the Nevada State Medical Association thinks of this at http://www.nsmadocs.org/latest.asp

-And, for those of you who weren't living in Nevada before KODIN was passed (or were too young to remember), this web-site briefly mentions why doctors wanted it passed in the first place: http://www.protectpatientsnow.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=8oIDJLNnHlE&b=1091203&ct=1321731

A Sunny Sunday

Finally we had a free Sunday that was SUNNY. We went on our first Sunday walk of the year. I love family walks! :O) The kids and I got to show Stewart the "River Park" (as we call it) that we have been enjoying for weeks now during Stew' fence building hours. Its the new park they have in the works to be completed later this spring. We had a really great time.

The Benjie Man

The kids thought they could take on the tractors.

You Go Girl!

Part of the "River Park"

The kids favorite thing is throwing rocks in the river. They ask to go every day.

Jumping Rocks with Dad

Testing out his legs, chubby but strong!

Heading home in our Beloved Beast. ;)

Class of 2009

Today we had our graduation from preschool. It was cute and like all things preschool, CRAZY. Since Benjie has gotten older it has been harder for me to do so I am a little relieved to be done for the year. I made myself in charge of the graduation and I had visions of them walking so dignified to get their diplomas. Ha Ha. I guess I forgot they are all three and under! :O) It was a fun year learning about seasons, bugs, colors, shapes, trains, planes, boats, animals, numbers, letters, doing art work, eating snacks, and learning how to try and focus for more then 1 minute at a time ;). I am really glad we did it. Thanks Janie and Amy for doing this with me! My kids adore you and their little classmates too!

Here are the proud graduates of our Mommy & Me preschool:

Angeli

Bridger

Patrick

Anne

Sam

Here is the video of our little "ceremony".
*Just FYI the kids are all wearing my black shirts. :O) Who knew I had so many?

Britains Got Talent

If you haven't seen these yet watch them. They are great. My mom told me about them. We love you Brits! :O)

Susan Boyle

Greek Irish Dance

Flawless

Growing Up Benjie

This kid is growing up! Besides wishing I had more new born days with him I am really excited for him to be learning and growing more and more. I can already tell that he wants to be doing whatever his siblings are doing. The kids love him to death and delight in all his baby achievements. His two latest and greatest are rolling over, and eating "solid" food. Bridger and Angie clap and cheer every time he rolls over. So sweet. After I fed him his first rice slop :) I had to run outside really quick to help Stew with the fence and when I came back in I could tell Angie had tried to feed him. He was covered in riceness and Sikttells were strewn about his tray. Good thing his fine motor skills aren't such that he can pick those up and get them in his mouth. That would have been bad. Now that he sits in his high chair next to us as we eat dinner we can tell he is thrilled to be joining in on the family fun. He really is one of the most smiley little babies I have ever seen and to watch his face light up when he sees his brother, sister, and daddy is one of the highlights of my day. At four months he has already made our family so much richer! Here are some super cute pics of our littlest man.

Spring and Sugar Love

Have you all seen this blog? BAKERELLA If not check it out. I am more of a cook then a baker so I really don't have enough gumption to do these super cute things but I figure these sort of things would be great visiting teaching, party favors/decorations, and kid fun treats that should be sprinkled around the world spreading sugar love everywhere. :)

And it is snowing here is Reno. So random. It was really quite hot yesterday and today it is like a blizzard outside. Spring, please just stay for more then a day!

Celebrating Easter

It was a really happy Easter. I am so very grateful for our Savior who paid the price for our redemption. As I have studied my scriptures and the Ensign this past month I have been so touched to think of what the Atonement means to me personally. I am so very grateful for the Savior who heals all my heart aches making it possible I can be made whole time and time again. To have never fading hope in this life and for all eternity is my most cherished gift.

When we did our family scripture study this week we tried to teach the kids about the meaning of Easter. Bridger asked, "Jesus makes my broken heart all better?"
I replied, "Yes, Bridger. Jesus makes our broken hearts and all our owies all better so we can be happy again."
Bridger then exclaimed, "Jesus makes my heart and owies all better!?!?! Yay, Jesus!"

Yes, Bridger. Yay for Jesus! ;)

Our celebrations were really fun and honestly sort of a blur of happy goings, comings, and parties. Last night as I sat back to review our Easter experience for this year I realized how very grown up I felt. This was our second year totally on our own for Easter and while we were a little homesick ever since conference we really felt so very grateful to have to do our own thing. I guess when there was always a parent, a grandparent, or a big sister around we seemed to just follow what the "grown-ups" were doing and let them take care of everything. But not anymore, its all on us and we really have come to appreciate that fact. Here are some highlights:

We colored eggs twice. Once with our own little family and then with some friends. The kids call it "painting eggs" and they loved it. They have been obsessed with colors lately so this activity was right up their ally.

We went to my girl friend's annual Easter party which was really fun. The kids did an Easter egg hunt and played like kids should while the parents chatted and Stew got his Foosball on! ;)


Then we had our Easter morning which was so great seeing the kids excitement getting their Easter baskets and hunting for the eggs.

Their dumped out Easter baskets
(bless the Dollar store! )

Then ofter church we invited a bunch of people over for an nice Easter dinner. I think I forget how small our house was when I invited people because we had 11 adults and 8 kids crammed in our house. Despite our squishiness we had a great time. Growing up with such big families we sort of don't feel like we have really celebrated unless we are surrounded by twenty people. :) And what was really great was that people got to go in our backyard, our ward feels a little proud of our fence because they have all helped to build it. They come over and want to check it out and comment on its "beauty". It will be great when the fence in 100% complete and we have our patio. Then it wont be nearly as tight with so many people over.



One thing that really made my Easter was that my dear friend and neighbor Emily came to our dinner. I wasn't sure she would come since she is in the advanced stages of MS and is confined to a wheel chair but she called to say she was taking me up on my offer and came. The men folk helped carry her into our house and I think she felt right at home. She needs help eating and so I know she gets a little nervous accepting dinner invitations but she came, loved the food and we talked the night away. I really love that women. I hope she makes it a tradition to come every year.

We hope you all had a great Easter too!

a good day

why I know today is going to be a good day:

I woke up to a misty rain and I got to jog in it,I got a kiss from this hunk,


this man greeted me this morning all wiggles, giggles, and uncontrollable smiles,


and I know I get to hang out with not one but two Batmans all day long.

Shoot, I got it good. ;)

Happy 4 Months to You!

Benjie is now 4 months old. This kiddo is nothing but a joy. He is looking more and more like Bridger did when he was a baby just minus those huge-o cheeks. ;) He is liking toys now and grabs them and tries to eat them all day long. He is also getting an opinion about life as well which is fun for us to see how much he likes our company since his most common complaint is that we aren't toting him from room to room with us as we go about our daily chores. We are learning his best tickle spots and torture him with them regularly. Basically he is our mostest favoritest Benjamin ever! Thanks for being ours Benja-Boo.

The Benjie Stats:

Weight: 16.7 lbs.
Height: 26 inches
Head Circumference: 16.3/4 inches
Cuteness: Out of this world!

Our Happy Boy

Our thug ;)

Our favorite boys together