This has been a week of snowstorms, beautiful summer weather, playing with cousins, and lots of studying and job searching. In an effort to stay connected to grandparents far and wide, we're trying to do a better job of keeping you in the loop about our lives. We wish we were better phone people or writing people, but you need to know that we are definitely people who love you lots.
Board Review
Even
though Ben graduated earlier this month "school" is still omnipresent
in our lives. Because Ben has a degree but not the license to work he needs to take the nurse practitioner boards. As such Ben attended a three day review
course Monday through Wednesday. Last year when he went to the same review course Ben came out worried and anxious. He felt he didn't know anything.This year he came out far more confident. Guess that a year does make a big difference!!! No scheduled date for the test, but he's planning on sometime in June.
Job Hunt
The
unfortunate thing about graduating is that it is not longer to be a full-time
student and thus have an excuse to not work full-time. Ben and Wendy are
looking for a job. This has been an interesting experience for both of them;
mainly due to different perspectives. Ben has been reading about how there is a
massive primary care provider shortage in the nation; and thus is surprised to
find out that there are not many primary care jobs available in Utah.
Wendy, due to her museum job hunting experience, is shocked that there
are so many job posting available and that recruiters are constantly contacting
Ben. Guess perspective and experience change a lot of how we interpret the same
situations.
Ben
has his first job interview. He interviewed at the Rocky Mountain
Care Clinic which is a combination occupational medicine and
urgent care. Ben wants to work in a family clinic so did not have a lot of
interest in the job; we applied mainly to get the first application out. He did
not expect to be conflicted after the interview. The company is extremely
family friendly, has very low turnover (the average provider stays longer than
9 years), and appears to be close knit. AKA, the culture of the company is
something the Ben loves; the job description, not as much. Wendy continually
assures Ben that it will be possible to find a place that has both.
Tuesday
Spencer helps weed
Spencer
likes to be outside. Going outside often is the last recourse that Ben uses to
calm his normally happy baby before giving up and passing the baby off to
Wendy. Spencer recently has discovered how to sit up on his own. There are also
a lot of weeds in the front yard area. The confluence of this factors led to
the following situation; Spencer sitting happily in the yard ground cover while
his Daddy pulled all of the weeks around him. Plants are fascinating when you
are 6 months old.
Wednesday May 17th
Cutting down the trees
Arden has a supper nice
orchard in his backyard. Unfortunately, the people who are house/yard sitting
while he is in Argentina are not Arborists. Thus, we did what any self respecting
youtube using adult would do; we hired someone to prune the trees for us. Let
us just say that the trees look significantly different than they did before.
The real arborists cut the trees far more aggressively than we would have ever
considered. That said, the orchard trees actually look like orchard trees now.
All the branches are low enough that we can reach them without the use of
ladders. The tree branches are all spread out and are not blocking each other
from the sun. The end result? We may have a pretty good fruit crop this
year.
The arborists also
"fixed" the shade tree that a snow storm significantly damaged a few
weeks ago. They noticed a lot more tree damage than we did. The only thing I
can say about this poor tree is that it is still alive, but does not provide
nearly as much shade as it used to. This appears to have hit Karoline the
hardest.
Elliot and Trevor visit
The Stuart household
hosted a superheros and ninja training camp.
Sessions included combat training,
communication with non-verbal informants,
cryptology,
cleaning up evidence,
and
shelter construction,
Thursday May 18th
Lemonade Stand
Andrew is becoming a
little entrepreneur. Today he decided to open up his own lemonade stand. He
made his own lemonade, wrote a sign, gathered his cash register, and set up his
own location.
As any entrepreneur knows, location is everything. Therefore,
Andrew set up his lemonade stand in the prime location at the household. He
completely blockaded the front door so no one could enter the house without
buying some lemonade.
Fortunately, he also knows that quality is everything. He
only served freshly squeezed lemonade (that may have been a mixture of severe
different citrus fruits...shhhh!). Finally, targeted advertising is one of the
best ways to expand your clientele; especially if you write down the names of
every person expected to buy from his lemonade stand.
He may have to learn a
little bit more about a cash economy; he accepted pretend money from all of his
clients. No profit makes for a sad entrepreneur.
Friday May 19th
Racing
We love the long and
wide driveway at this house. It makes it possible to safely do some activities
that would be a little bit more worrisome if done in middle of an active
street. Activities such as bike and running races. Karoline is adept at
creating racetracks with sidewalk chalk.
Cameron likes taking shortcuts.
Pulling weeds and hay
Wendy, inspired by her
husband, continued working on clearing out the long tall grass that has
overgrown in the front area ground cover. She works a lot faster than her
husband. Spencer continued to be impressed with the whole process. Cameron
enjoyed making "hay" piles.
Saturday May 20th
Day of Service
The Ward held the day of
service today. Unlike past years Ben did not work, have clinicals, or have
school so he participated this year. One of the "captains" for
the day for service, Kevin, lives downstairs which precludes the excuse of "forgetting."
Andrew and Cameron excitedly joined Ben and Kevin in cleaning the windows of
several neighbors houses. We than enjoyed a nice hamburger and hot dog bbq.
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