Bookstore Scavenger Hunt

In the Mormon culture, married couples are encouraged to keep courting each other through weekly date night.  As you can imagine, having kids makes this really hard.  But we know how important it is, so we have made it a goal to start trying to do this again, like we did when we were first married.

We needed a free date idea and so I was doing some research online and came across a blogger who had made a bookstore scavenger hunt for her newly married friend and her spouse to do.  I thought it looked really fun and FREE!  So I looked at her template and I altered it a little to suit my husband and me. We dropped the kids off with some friends and were off to the bookstore!

The envelopes with our scavenger lists

We got to the bookstore, found a quiet secluded spot to be our meeting place, and opened our envelopes to find 3 lists.  We started with Set 1 and set out to find our Recipe, Quiz, and Memory.

When we met back up at our spot, this is what we had found...

This is what I would cook for my husband.  He LOVES Sriracha sauce (rooster sauce) and he smothers whatever Asian food I make for him with it.  When I make non-Asian food he smothers it in Tabasco, haha.  Anyways, this book even had a recipe for homemade Sriracha sauce!  It was SO him.

 I found a quiz in a teeny-bopper magazine that was called "Which Amusement Park Ride Are You Most Like?"  We both did it, and we went in totally different directions at one point, but we both ended up being a Water Ride!  I guess we are different, but similar... PERFECT.

My husband read me Ferdinand the Bull in Spanish!  He loved that book as a child, and he has since learned to speak Spanish quite well, so he picked it up in Spanish and he translated for me.  It was fun.

Then it was on to Set 2...

Neither of us really found any good joke books.  Most of them were really raunchy and vulgar.  But we both found a book about something we want to learn more about!

My husband is a certified Sous Chef, so he loves cooking and food.  He wants to learn how to hunt for mushrooms.  I studied Interior Design in college, but I would love to learn more about how to design exteriors, especially landscaping.

It was quite hard to find bizarre book covers, but we both agreed that the top left one was the most bizarre.  It was a book about being homosexual, but you would NEVER guess that from the cover.  Weird.


On to set 3...

This is what we found for date ideas in the future.  My husband picked up the coloring book and I about died laughing.

I didn't get a picture of our vacation books, but I picked up a travel guide for Greece and my husband just got excited about a book about Alaska because he knows how much I am dying to go there and he's already been there.  He can't say that about too many places, hehe.

The poetry section was fiercely lacking at the bookstore we went to.  We couldn't even find a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets.  LAME.

For the last section, this is what I came up with to represent my husband:

Neuroscience Haikus and The Marriage Artist

And this is what he chose to represent me:

He said that he was a zombie until he met me.  Aww.

We also found a book that we think represents us as a couple:

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It was a really fun date.  We got to know each other even better and it was good at starting conversation.  And FREE!  We passed the envelopes on to the friends who watched our kids and told them that they needed to do it next.

Here's my template:  (Cut the 3 sets apart and put in envelopes marked His and Hers)

Blessing in Disguise

Today I had an interesting experience.  I was off to the beach with the kiddos, and was carrying baby J and the huge beach bag full of diapers, towels, sand toys, snacks, etc.  I was walking in that awkward area where the dirt is becoming sand, and it was a downhill slope with plants on either side of me, and my foot slipped.  At this point it was either fall face first and crash poor J's face into the sand as well or sit on the plants to the left of me.  I chose the latter.  What I didn't know was that the plants had thorns!  Miniscule, almost invisible thorns, and luckily I just ended up with a couple in my fingers and I was able to remove them fairly easily, although they hurt something fierce while they were in there!

As we were leaving the beach and loading into the car, N started crying randomly.  When I asked her what was wrong she said, "I got an ouchy at the beach."  I tried to ask her where, but she was crying so much I couldn't understand what she was saying.  She was pointing toward the legs/feet so I did a quick check and didn't see any blood or anything, so I just buckled her in and drove home.  It was nap time so I put the kiddos down and took a nap myself.

When N woke up, I took her out of the pack n play and put her down on the floor to walk herself (she is almost 3 after all) and she immediately started crying and asking to be carried.  This is weird.  She is all about being independent and doing everything "by my own self".  She needed a diaper change so I put her up on the changing table and she started talking about her ouchy from the beach again.  I was thoroughly frustrated, but I tried to stay calm and ask her where the ouchy was.  We finally used the point-and-ask method to determine that the pain was in her right foot.  I looked and could not see anything wrong.  Frustrating. 

Then I remembered the thorns I had gotten at the beach.  I remembered that N had walked barefoot back to the car because she had refused to put her shoes back on.  So I examined her foot VERY closely, and sure enough, in the middle of the bottom of her foot there was a thorn sticking out.  I was able to use my long nails and get a hold of it and pull it out.  It was amazing, the crying instantly stopped and N was happy. 

Thinking about it, I really don't think I would have thought to look for a thorn if I hadn't experienced it myself earlier.  I was thinking about how the Lord prepares us for certain experiences.  He sometimes gives us certain trials I think JUST so that we will be prepared to help someone else with a trial in the future.  I sure am grateful that I fell into those thorns earlier or I would probably still have a screaming daughter!  It was a blessing in disguise.

Tecfidera Update

This is an update on my earlier post about starting Tecfidera.  I have now been on Tecfidera for about 2 months.  After starting the full dosage, I started having the flushing reaction everyday, a few hours after taking the pill.  I also got REALLY itchy, ALL OVER.  It was driving me crazy, and I was making myself bleed from scratching so much.  So my mom (a pharmacist) recommended taking Benadryl, as she had a Chemo drug that made her itchy and her doctors recommended it to her for that.  So I called my doctor and started taking Benadryl each time I take it, in hopes that it would lessen the itching.  The itchiness and flushing has lessened a lot.  I am not sure if this is because of the Benadryl or the symptoms just lessening over time like the disclosure says they may.  I still occasionally get the flushing, as you can see today.

For me, I feel like these symptoms are definitely better than injecting myself every other night.  Although, when the itchiness was driving me crazy, there may have been a few times I may have said differently...  We'll see how things go, but right now I am so grateful for modern medicine!

God bless America!

I love this country.  I didn't always, though.  I was raised mainly overseas, attending international schools, where there tends to be a lot of anti-American sentiments.  And I fell for it.  I thought that Americans were loud and obnoxious and ignorant of world affairs, and it's true that we can be quite conspicuous while traveling in other countries.  But Americans are very friendly and outgoing, which I now appreciate as a good thing.

People talk all the time on the fourth of July about how grateful they are for the freedoms we enjoy in this country.  I echo this.  I am thankful that we live in a nation where there is freedom of religion.  Only in this free land could Jesus Christ appear to Joseph Smith and restore the fullness of His gospel on the earth.  And it was difficult even here, but it could only happen in a place where the law was on Joseph's side.

I am grateful to live in a nation where almost anyone has access to good education.  People come from all over the world to the USA to get educated because it is quality education that is pretty easily available.  

I am grateful to live in a nation with leading medical research, where I have access to the most advanced medical care and treatment.

I am grateful to live in a land with freedom of speech, where I will not be punished for anything I say on this blog.  I can think for myself and discuss these thoughts openly, without fear.

I am grateful to live in a beautiful country that I love exploring.  I have visited 36 of the 50 states, and they are each so different and beautiful.

God Bless America,
Land that I love. 

Stand beside her, and guide her

Thru the night with a light from above.

From the mountains,

to the prairies,

To the oceans, white with foam

God bless America, My home sweet home.

Losing Myself

These days, I am wondering where I went?  Even my husband has been caught saying, "Where's the woman I married?"  And it's true.  I am so different from when we got married.  When we got married I was responsible for only myself.  Now I am completely responsible for 3 people!  That's a lot of pressure!  I am really high-strung these days, and my sweet family has been suffering because of it. 

But with my recent double relapse I have been so exhausted that I feel like all I ever do is the bare minimum of taking care of the household and sleep, and I am still exhausted.  It's exhausting just thinking about it, haha!  But I never have time to do anything I like doing.  I feel like I barely even remember what those things are anymore.  I still try to get out with the kids because I know they need to get out of the house and do things, but it's so exhausting to pack them all up and go do things.  Even things that I love, like swimming, just sound exhausting these days.

I know this is kind of a depressing post, sorry, but this is something I am worrying about these days. 

Bicycle Fun!

I hate exercising.  I listen to many of my friends talk about how much they love running and how good it feels.  I don't buy it, haha!  I HATE running.  It hurts.  I get all sweaty and hot.  I just don't like it.  My preferred forms of exercise are swimming (no sweat), pilates (the non-intense kind), and bicycling! 

This weekend we hitched up the bicycle trailer and went for a couple of bike rides with the whole gang.  It was so much fun!  We did one shorter ride to one of our favorite ice cream shops, where N tried her first ice cream cone.  She has eaten ice cream plenty of times, but she had never had it in a cone and it was fun teaching her how to eat it.

We also went on a longer ride, 7.6 miles to be exact, along the coast.  It was a tad too long, especially with a numb leg, but still fun.  It was a warm day, so it was good to get out of our un-air-conditioned house and have the wind in my face.  And it is always cooler on the coast.  It was such a fun family activity.

The family that plays together stays together!