Tech retard

So I have been really distracted lately due to the fact that I have like, 15 weeks until I graduate and I have been obsessing over business start-up...

I have started another blog...although it is not available for all to see....YET. It is a massage blog. Now here is a question...I started the blog under my current email account, the one that this blog is currently linked to. But I opened an email address for my business and all massage related things and was wondering...can I change the email address of my new blog to my new email address for massage related stuff?? Does that even make sense? Help?!

Classes are going pretty well. I can hardly believe I have finals in starting in like, less than four weeks. Gotta love short, crammed-full-of-info 10 week quarters!
My last quarter begins August 3rd. WOW. Seriously...nuts. My final finals will end October 8th. And then graduation is October 16th!!!! So if I am absent from blogging...please know I am insanely busier than ever. Although maybe I won't be that busy...cuz I am pretty sure you need money to start a business and the only way I could afford that is to be working at my business before it's really a fully functioning business....AH!!!! I also need more hours in my days...I know, we all do :)

One of my very biggest needs at this point is an on-site massage chair. After 9 months of being in massage school they FINALLY taught us chair massage and I KNOW it has the potential to be a massive marketing tool. I want to get in with a business or two that allows me to come to them and give massages to employees. I know anyone who gets to sample my work for 20, 15, or even 10 minutes will want to book a full session...because chair massage is THAT good. And full body is even better! It is also a good way to ease people into massage who are nervous about it. So now I am saving up pennies for my $300 on-site chair. Trust me, it's worth it.

Anybody who has ever started up your own business, have any suggestions? I have considered taking out a small loan. I say small because it's not like I am opening some big elaborate thing. But I need a little to get me started...supplies and whatnot. I think it would be nice to have a desktop computer for business record keeping too...but I just don't know!! The saying 'You gotta have money to make money' never rang truer that it does right now. :P

A Riley Post

These first two photos: Riley got ahold of my camera...and so they are self pics of her. She snapped one of her lips...then of half of her face :)

Here she is holding a new stuffed toy that Grandma Debbie sent



Isn't she so pretty??

After years and years of using the same old blow dryer it died. Seriously, I had that thing for like 12 years. It was totally ghetto! So here is the new one and Riley likes to be a big girl and dry her own hair.

Grandma Barb visited

But somehow managed to stay out of pictures! Today is her birthday, so Happy Birthday, Barb! It was nice to see you and the girls love having you around to do fun crafty things with them! Sorry I didn't get a video of them singing to you. Things have been hectic. But I will have Travis call you tonight and maybe they will sing to you!
Anyway, Barb brought Randee down to start her college career at BYU and was in town for almost a week. She bought the girls adorable matching dresses and painted them some personalized hair barrettes. On Saturday I got home from my clinic shift to see both of them with their hair done very cute. Not something Travis would have done (Although he can manage a ponytail quite alright). Here are a slew of photos from the past week.

Time for a break. Daddy and Ri needed a nap

Spaghetti, ABCs, and Racing

Yummy.

Messy, cute face.

I finally caught Isabelle on video singing her alphabet. See, she does pretty well...and she has even done it better than this before!

The girls love to race their cars around the kitchen. And this video doesn't do justice to how fast Isabelle can move her legs. It is awesome.

More updating...

Last week the girls were sick. High fevers and sore throats. I figured I had better take them to the doctor just to be safe. Luckily, he didn't think it was the flu, and kids this young don't generally get strep throat, but he could tell their throats were hurting them and I could too, do to the lack of drinking and eating going on. He checked for strep just in case and it wasn't strep, just some viral thing they would have to get over. BLAH. Well, thankfully the fevers only lasted about 2 days. But during the entire week Isabelle didn't want to nap or sleep at night very well. We would lay her down and she would scream and cry for over an hour. It was so frustrating!! One afternoon after trying to get her to nap for hours it seemed, I put on a movie for her and laid her on our bed. She didn't last 5 minutes, she was out!
And the next two pictures were taken one morning after a very sleepless night. Again,

we put on a movie for her, downstairs this time, and she fell asleep on the recliner. She is getting back to normal now. Begging for naps, at least! And waking up maybe only once or twice at night as opposed to 5 or 6 times.

Was uploading pics to the computer...

from our cameras and realized that I am far behind on this whole posting thing. Oops. So I will attempt to catch up a bit. The following are some photos from May. We spent Mother's Day afternoon on Temple Square in Salt Lake. It was wonderful. We also got to visit with Trav's Aunt Vickie, Uncle Doug, and two cousins, one of which had just returned from her mission back east. Vickie and Doug are currently serving a church mission in Salt Lake. Anyway, we didn't get any pictures of the Young family, or even very many pictures at all, but here are a few.


And these next few photos are just some pics of Riley I tried to capture for Grandma Debbie because Ri was sporting a new outfit from Grandma. I think the close ups are really cute but when I wanted to get a full body shot of the outfit, forget about it!

Story time

Today I did something I have been wanting to do for quite awhile now. A few months after Isabelle was born, I tried on my wedding dress, just to see how far off I was from my wedding day size. Big mistake. I knew it wouldn't fit. But I tried it on anyway. As you can guess after two babies in less than two years, 3 years after that wedding day...I couldn't even begin to zip the darn thing up. Well....when we moved to Utah I slowly started to shed some weight. A couple pounds a month, slow and steady. It's not like I have lost some huge number, I am not a very big person to begin with but I definitely could stand to lose some poundage.
Well, mission accomplished. I am not in the process of shedding any more right now, but thought for the heck of it I would drag that dress out again. Now, yes, I have shed some...in fact, I weigh about what I did when we got married...but don't mistake that to mean this body looks the same. TWO kids later...things are not as pretty. The numbers on the scale are great but things have shifted, sagged a bit, you know...I don't think I need to paint the whole entire picture...no one wants to see that, but that is the price you pay for being able to create life! Mostly worth it ;) So...back to the story...
I brought it (the dress in its boxes) in from the garage and the girls watched, not knowing what was going on. Finally, after pulling it from inside 3 boxes, Riley exclaimed, "It's a beautiful dress!" I explained that yes, it was beautiful and that I wore it on the day Daddy and Mommy went to the temple and were married. She said she would like to get married in the temple (I think partly because she will get to wear a beautiful dress and partly because we talk about it with her all the time anyway).
I put the dress on...and UP, UP, UP the zipper went. The whole freaking way! And Riley said, "I want to give you a hug" Little girls idolize princesses and when I put that dress on, that is what I became in the eyes of my soon-to-be three year old.

Anyway, it was precious and fun and I wanted to journal it before I forgot the things she said. Isabelle didn't seem too impressed. She was more happy to play with the boxes the dress was packed away in.

I forgot...

our biggest news/update is that Isabelle is in nursery now! YAY!!!

Today was her first Sunday in nursery class and I think it went well. She went in and didn't look back...and when I checked on her they said things were fine. At the end, she got a little sad, but overall it seemed a definite success. It makes me happy that I have kids who are secure enough to know I wouldn't leave them somewhere for too long :) Maybe it helps that Riley is there with her...or maybe they didn't even play together? I don't know because there are A LOT of kids in there.

The only downside to nursery is...well...think of all the germs being passed around and on those toys. EW. It doesn't help that I am in a very in depth pathology class right now. Makes me want to puke, really...

Weekend update...

not that there is much to post about, but it's a weekend and it's time for an update anyway. Yesterday was my fifth clinic shift. 5 out of 21...so I am about a quarter of the way through with clinic. Whoo hoo!!! After clinic I also had a house call to make...I have a massage client who wanted me to come to her home and give her and her fiance massages. So I gave seven massages yesterday in about 9 hours time. I was a little exhausted but it's nice to know that I am capable and my hands/body can last that long.

In other news, I found a preschool this week that Riley will go to in the fall. I am really, really excited....I cannot even tell you how much! I know she is ready and it will be really good for her. And for for me to get somewhat of a break...although I know I may miss her.

It is a three day a week program for two and a half hours a day. I took Riley to meet Miss Rebecca and tour the school on Thursday. Each month they study a new artist and composer. They also study geography, history, botany, and zoology. Kids also learn to recognize and write all their letters, the sounds they make, and then are taught to read! They also teach recognition of numbers 0-9 and writing them. Then they start in on simple math. They do art projects, and as long as the weather is nice they get outside playtime! It is a little pricey...but when it comes to your child getting a good head start in education and a love for learning...I feel it's worth it. If I don't see that growth and excitement from her, of course we can decide to pull her out. But I highly doubt that will happen. Miss Rebecca also uses music as much as she can in teaching the kids. Riley LOVES learning songs! On Wednesdays they have Kindermusic but even on the other days they use song to learn days of the week, months, continents, etc. YAY!!! SO looking forward to September! I know Riley will love it!

That's about it...I can't think of much else that is exciting...except for Grandma Barb visiting this week! She is moving Randee down here for college at BYU. So she will be here for 5 or 6 days. YAY!!! I know the girls will be so happy to see grandma. I have felt really lonely not having family around lately, almost like, what's the point of family if they aren't even around to share life with day to day. I know...depressing. So it will be good for the girls and us, too :) Grandpa Gary is flying in on the 19th for a few days as well so that will be another treat. Sorry for the lack of pictures...hopefully soon!

Update on what we have been up to lately...

I feel bad that my posts have become so infrequent...but so have MOST of the bloggers who I like to keep up with. Don't get me wrong, some of you update faithfully a good few times a week. Thank you for that!
So here is an attempt to update on the last couple weeks.

I had finals the week of May 18th and survived somehow, while also maintaining my 4.0

I believe I am the only one in the class with a 4.0 still, which I consider quite an accomplishment. There are a few who are right there behind me...with really, really high 3. somethings....but 4.0 is my goal. Three quarters down, two to go. The bad news, they just keep getting harder!

For Memorial Day we wanted to do something fun so Sunday night Travis and I talked about taking the girls to the zoo and not telling them where we were going. But then we thought...we can do that anytime, let's do something new. Our options were going to the Aquarium in Sandy or an activity at Thanksgiving Point. I sort of wanted to visit the Aquarium, knowing the girls would love it but that didn't sound as fun to Trav...so the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point won. It's not that I didn't want to do there, I just wanted the aquarium a little more.
The Museum was really neat. They have a big screen that they show 3D movies on and they had 3 different movies to choose from...a dinosaur one that I figured would be too scary, an African safari one, and a Dolphins and Whales one. We got there just about 10 minutes before the Dolphins and Whales one was starting, so we chose that one. I think it was a little scary for the girls, the fact that with the 3D glasses on they were up close and personal with huge underwater animals, but they did REALLY well and didn't start to fall apart until the last 5 or 6 minutes. The rest of the museum was really cool too. I want to go back to Thanksgiving Point to walk through the gardens or take the girls to farm country. Hopefully soon! Monday afternoon/evening Travis cleaned out and organized the garage a lot more and now we can actually fit BOTH of our cars in there!! YAY!!! Our two car garage now fulfilling what it was built for :) One other thing Travis did here at the house that I am really grateful for is the shelf he built me for the laundry room. I love it! So he cut the wood, painted it, and hung it....so now I have a shelf for all my laundry supplies with a rod below it to hang clothes as they come out of the dryer. I am SO happy about this :) Thanks baby!! I love you and you are the best.

Then because Monday was a holiday and I had no class, I had class Tuesday-FRIDAY night instead of Monday-Thursday. EW. I really dislike Friday evening classes because I get home just before 11 and then I need to wake up for Saturday Clinic at 5 am. And it's really hard for me to unwind after class each night...my brain is just going and going so I laid in bed for what seemed like hours. And even after falling asleep...I would wake up every so often and check the clock because I am so paranoid of sleeping in and missing my clinic shift. That would be a nightmare considering it drops you a letter grade and then my 4.0 would be GONE! Even if you are late...but you work MOST of the shift, it doesn't matter, you still have to come in and make up an entire other 5.5 hour shift. So it's really important that my attendance is perfect there.

My classes this quarter are Shiatsu, Pathology II, Trigger Point Therapy (OUCH), Structural Bodywork I, and Professional Development III....so I think it's gonna be a lot of work but hopefully a lot of fun...

Last night we went to John and Dana's. It is so nice to hang out there because of their backyard. My girls LOVE it! It's heaven, really. I tried getting some good pics of the Anderson granddaughters all together...so here is what I was able to capture: Camryn!!

Hailee loves holding the little girls...such a big girl :)
All looking in different directions, but what do you expect? There were 3 people behind me trying to get them to smile. ha ha
Izzy is just about as big as Hailee. I am sure Hailee doesn't outweigh her by more than a few pounds...

This one is pretty cute...they all are, but I like this one best I think.
Riley relaxing in the grass.
Hailee and Izzy hanging out. SO CUTE!!!
Cam again

Action shot of Izzy kicking a ball.

One more thing I wanted to blog about is my wonderful "house husband". he he

He has been on his own a lot lately since he comes home and I go to class or I have my clinic shifts on Saturdays. He bathes the girls a lot of evenings which I really appreciate...although undoubtedly at some point during the week they end up messy enough that I still give them baths some afternoons.

Well I got home from clinic Saturday and Travis had vacuumed the entire house, picked up, washed, folded, and put away two loads of laundry with a third in the dryer and a fourth in the washer by the time I got home, cleaned the girls tub, and ran and unloaded the dishwasher. So amazing!! Thanks babe! I love you! Is anyone jealous of my wonderful husband?? You should be!!