Falling Trees

These are the trees that have been such a problem for us since we've moved into our house. We were unable to get satellite TV since they blocked all chances of getting reception. The birds sit in them all night long and crap on my car. The birds sit in them every Saturday morning and wake us up early due to their singing. They are trashy cottonwoods and when the wind blows I'm afraid their branches will take out my car or Jason's truck. Also we really want a driveway and they only way to get one is by taking out the trees. The main and final reason they had to come down is that cottonwoods rot from the inside out and one fell on my car while I was in college and totalled it so I didn't want this to happen to me again........ SOOOO we blocked off our street and cut them down today. It was quite the project and lucky for us we had lots of great friends to help us so it went quickly.

Thanks to my grandpa Johnson we were able to get his bucket truck and the biggest thanks to my dad for his willingness to bring it from the valley and crawl up in it all morning to cut our trees for us.

Here is a pic of Jason working hard hauling branches to put on the trailers that my Uncle Randy and Neal Walker let us borrow. What life savers these two were for us today. Neal also let us use his bobcat to load the huge tree trunk pieces onto the trailers which saves us a lot of time.

This is only a small piece of all of the branches we hauled off today.

This is the final product. You can see the three stumps. WOW... lots of work.

Now instead of having beautiful shade our house looks like this from the street. I'll update you as we tear out the stumps and put our driveway in. I'm so excited to have a driveway and not have to park on the street.

We are so grateful for such great family & friends that helped us today. My mom and dad they are so awesome and have always been such great examples of hard work to me. My mom was out there the whole time working her little tail off hauling away the trees. Thanks mom and dad for the gift of learning to work hard from your examples.

We would also like to thank my uncle Randy Johnson for coming over to help us all day.

Our good friends Travis, Alisa & Hannah were also here. Travis is Jason's best friend and he is also such a hard worker we're grateful he would come spend his Saturday helping us.

Finally, Neal and Weston walker were also so much help. Thank you all for everything. We hope to be able to pay you all back someday.

NOW......ONTO THE NEXT PROJECT.......REMOVAL TREE STUMPS

A normal Friday

For those of you that love Fridays just be happy that you don't have my job. Our busiest surgery day is always on Friday so I usually end up at work till later in the evenings which makes it hard to plan anything. I used to look forward to Fridays but now I just dread them until they are over each week. I'd just like to walk you through my day yesterday and keep in mind this is a normal friday for me.
5:10 am Our alarms go off. We've been trying to go to spin class in the mornings since there is no time to work out in the evenings especially on friday. I know you think we're crazy but don't worry yesterday we just turned the alarms off and fell back to sleep. Hopefully we'll get out of bed next time.
6:30 am I finally get out of bed, shower, read scriptures and eat a nutritious breakfast (usually just cereal). I learned that I must eat before work at my old job when I saw many students almost faint during surgery when they had nothing on their stomachs. I've never had this problem but I don't really want to have it either so I decided to just prevent it by eating.
7:30 am I arive at work. Do some meditation and deep breathing exercises to prepare for the screaming children that I always face first thing in the morning.
8:00 am I find that I didn't need to work out this morning as I start wrestling with a little 8 month old child just waking up from anesthesia. I yell for somebody to grab her mom and quickly I feel relieved as I hand her to her mother and out of my hands. Luckily most kids are much happier after they start breastfeeding or drinking out of their bottles or sippy cups and this little one was no exception. Now that the child is calm I can finally talk to her parents and go over discharge instructions. While I am doing this the now happy little girl realizes that I am in the room with her. She turns and looks at me and BAM... starts crying and screaming again. I turn and walk out of the curtain thinking... I definantely don't get paid enough to do this job. Little kids look at you and automatically they are so scared and crying. She continuted crying until we walked outside and she knew she was free again.
8:30am-12:00pm I continue taking care of many children who have pretty much the exact same reaction to me. The only difference is the kids keep getting bigger and the wrestling is more intense for me as they wake up.
12:30 Only one kid left. He is 5 and his mom is holding him in a chair. As I start going over discharge instructions I havn't heard this kiddo talk at all and he looks up from pouting in his moms lap and says as clear and loud as he can while he is pointing his finger at me "Just so you know I am NEVER coming back here!" All I can do at this point is laugh because I really don't blame the kid. One of the nurses comes to ask me if' i've gotten lunch and I havn't so I tell her the next thing coming out is another tonsillectomy but on an adult. This little 5 year old looks at me again and says." Go tell them to leave that guys tonsils in." haha I needed this humor after taking care of a bunch of screaming kids all morning.
2:30pm Now it's all adults we're coming down the home stretch. However, I realize every kiddo day that even though screaming kids are hard to take care of they are usually tougher than most adults. Lets just face it the older we get the sissier we become. Kids are tough. They might cry for a while but then they get over it and deal with it.
5:00pm Jason calls my work to see what time I'll get off. I estimate maybe 8:00pm and so he tells me he's going to dinner and to play softball without me. This has to be the hardest part of the day just because I am stuck at work and I know Jason is having a fun time without me.
7:30pm I send my last patient home. I'm all out of energy and I think that being a stay at home house wife sounds pretty good even if I don't have kids to take care of.
SATURDAY: I decide I'm kind of bored and there is no way I could be a stay at home house wife until I have kids to keep me busy. So I plan on going back to work for another long week and fun Friday.

~ARIZONA~

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go on a nice warm vacation to Arizona. Jason has some awesome friends "the Flamms" that live there and they invited us to come and stay with them. They have the cutest little boy who smiles all of the time. It was such a nice break from our hectic lives here in Wyoming. I'm kind of sad that Jason and I didn't take more pictures of us but we got some great pics of our friends. Aren't they such a cute family! Bryce loves his thumb.

On Friday morning Cody had to work so Michelle took us on a hike up a hill called Camelback. I wasn't prepared for how hard the hike was going to be. Jason carried Bryce up the hill and Michelle and him had to keep stopping for me because it killed me. When we got to the top and could see the whole Phoenix valley it was well worth it. We hiked pretty high and you can see the houses in the background of our pics.

This is what the hike looks like.

Michelle and Bryce

Friday afternoon we were able to head to the lake for a fun boating and camping trip. We were on the lake till dark and at it again the next morning before 6:00am. The morning was the best time for skiing since nobody is on the lake. I tried slalom skiing for the first time and I would get up and crash right away but it was still so much fun. Cody and Michelle are awesome skiers but they were so nice to me since it was my first time. Jason was getting way good at wake boarding before the day was over.

Jason Wake boarding

Jason on the air chair. This is the funniest thing.

I am so grateful for the Flamms and their willingness to entertain us for the weekend. We had such a great time. I came home last night but Jason stays in Arizona till Friday for work. SAD! It's hard for me to sleep and keep myself from feeling lonely when Jason is gone. Hopefully Friday will come soon.