Hangin' in Utah

My girls and I are now in Utah. We will be here for 3 weeks for the purpose of me doing my clinicals in a local hospital (AF) in the ICU and ER so I can finish getting my BSN.
Me n' my girls flew to Utah and it was a pretty easy trip except for when we were boarding the plane. Picture me carrying Lydia in the baby carrier in front of me down the narrow airplane aisles while wearing a HUGE backpack with all their necessities while dragging my 2 year old who is screaming/crying "no ride a blue airplane! no ride a blue airplane!" Luckily once we got seated the stewardess brought her an "airplane snack" and she stopped screaming as if I was trying to kill her.
Kiera ventured outside to see the snow just once so far. We bundled everyone up and went outside and I showed her how we could make footprints in the snow. She finally got brave enough to try it (with her new princess boots on), and was fine with it until some snow got on top of her boots. After that we had to go in. It took more time to get everyone bundled up than the time we actually spent outside (about 3 minutes).

First haircut

After much internal debate, I cut Lydias hair (and not just the mullet). For some reason it is sad to me to cut baby hair off, but I'm so glad that I decided to do it. She looks much better without the crazy 4inch hair that was never tame for more than 2 seconds.

Behind every cute picture of a child...

Behind every cute picture of a child is a exasperated parent who is doing cartwheels and pulling faces trying to get the child to smile for one precious moment.
Lydias pictures turned out beautifully, but after 2 different photo shoots I had to settle on this picture of Kiera (although not very good at all). I'm embarassed to think of everything I did in order to try to get that little lady to smile. The photographer probably thought I was an idiot. Oh well. I tried. Good thing I have lots of cute non-professional pictures to make up for it.

My dancing experience

1999: Made it onto the Ballroom dance team in high school but graduated a year early so never got to do it.

2003: Made it onto the Country Western Swing dance team at UVSC but since I also got accepted to the nursing program I had to forgo dance.

2009: Made it onto the Nelson-Family-Dancing-With-Tutu-In-The-Kitchen team. Enjoy it thoroughly.

Warm weather and mullets

So I'm just writing this to make all of you non-Southern-California folk jealous. Yesterday we had a picnic and it was beautiful and warm (75 degrees-- I have no clue why Steve wore a jacket-- he said he didn't want to be itchy from the grass). Today Steve and Kiera read books in the hammock outside. I put a little local weather thingy on the side of our blog so ya'll can see how warm it is here and have incentive to come visit us in the cold winter months.

If your daughter had a bald spot and a mullet like this would YOU cut it? I've seen some pretty funny looking babies out there and thought "why doesn't somebody tell those parents that their baby looks ridiculous?" I just don't want mine to be in the same category. So, let's be honest folks-- would you cut her hair?

Somethin's gotta give.....

Next week I will be starting school again online through BYU idaho to finish my BSN in nursing. No, I don't have extra time on my hands-- in fact, I still don't know just how I'm going to be able to achieve it since I'm going to be taking the BEASTLY critical care class with nasty nasty papers and 60 hours of required clinical time.
Basically, something else in life has got to give. So here are some the things I'm going to do to make room for my schooling--

1. No long distance running-- I'll stick with 2-3 miles only.
2. I'm no longer in charge of my local babysitting co-op. I handed the responsibility back over to my friend.
3. I can't blog as much. I have a new goal of only blogging once a week (sundays).
4. No entertaining this semester. I LOVE having people over and hosting huge events. I'll have to wait till the semester is over to take it up again. (I'm doing a very simple baby shower this weekend, but that's it).

The crazy thing about all this is that I never PLAN on using my nursing degree again. But you never know....