What have the Terry's been up to?

Answer is a whole lotta nothing. We have been keeping busy, but not doing anything exciting. Right now i am trying to catch up on "Lost" for this season while people are pounding and ripping out our kitchen lights. Yes our ugly panels of light surrounded by nasty wood will be gone today. We are getting recessed lighting today and crown molding in the little box that is cut out of our celing where our old lights were. It should look really nice and with this bad economy we got it all for half off. This is our last home improvement for a while (years). Over Tristan's christmas break we installed 2 bathroom fixture lights which we got for free from our citibank points. We also got some toilet paper holders with a wedding gift card we just got. Then with our christmas money we bought new door handles for all the doors and painted all the doors and door jams (actually my dad did the painting). It all looks so nice. And of course i love it cause we did not really have to spend any money to do it. I am a saver, so it was really hard to spend the money on the lights and not save it. However, we had to take advantage of this economy and get this kitchen spruced up. We have decided to post pone getting new windows and painting the outside of the house. Our goal is to save enough money to pay for most of Tristans grad school. A lofty goal, but if we can realistically pay for half of it that will be wonderful. Besides, once we got the new garage door, the house looked so good it doesn't need to be painted yet.

Tristan passed his EMT class he took over Christmas break. It was a challenge and there were weeks we did not know if it was going to turn out well. Yet Tristan stepped it up and on the last test he got a 96% and then he passed the final with 80.6%. YEAH!!! Now he is preparing for the national test to be an EMT. He takes it on Monday Feb 2nd.

As for me, I got another job. Yes that is three jobs on the tally sheet. My friend Sarah text me while I was on the way to the interview. I told her I was interviewing for a job and she wrote back asking me how many jobs a girl needs. Well in this economy it is more than one. In november we found out that my CHOC job was cutting our night call for the nurse practitioners. I was to start in november taking call from home one night a week for 300 bucks a night. We were counting on that money as our savings but they cut that program due to the debt the hospital is in. The month we bought our house, they cut my hours from 40 a week to 36 which cut our income and left us with no savings. THat is why we were counting on the night call money so much. To make up for this I am continuing to teach for Cal State Long Beach one day a week, but that will end in May. I needed to find a job for the summer so we can keep saving for Tristan's schooling. I called up Cal State Fullerton and they are looking for peds teachers for this summer. YEAH AGAIN! I went and interviewed and I will be teaching two summer sessions to total 11 weeks this summer. I am really excited to have this search out of the way.

I still have Christmas pictures to post and hope to do so this weekend. Sorry it has taken so long to write. I will also be updating about Heather as she just had a scan this week and we will find out on monday feb 2nd how it turned out. She had been very sick lately with the chemo and is loosing weight now from it so the doctors stopped increasing her medicine. HOpefully the scan will show that the cancer has not spread any further. It would be nice to have it show it improving, but i won't hold my breath.

Happy New Year!

Well, I have a bunch of pictures i need to post about our December adventures. There were not many due to Tristan's busy schedule, but we had some great times. I know how to post them if they are already loaded on the computer, but of coarse Tristan has not had time to and i don't dare try on my own. So those pictures will have to be on my next post. For now you will be stuck with the usual writing only posts. One of my friends Heidi B. did a really cute post where she listed all the months and put a few highlights from 2008 under each one. I thought about doing that, but was not sure that i had more than a few highlights for the whole year. But i do want to share some of the funny things i have learned in 2008.

1)Never tell anyone you play the piano, not even if it is the Bishop asking, or this will be your calling for life. (I was able to avoid this until i sat in the Bishop's office and couldn't lie to his face, but next time perhaps I will have the strength to do so...OK probably NOT).

2)If you think some of the people in your ward are strange that are inviting you over, they probably are. We have had some very interesting experiences with this.

3)Surely my parents must have bought Tristan and I our house, or atleast I am finding out that lots of people think we were helped out. This is really funny cause if you know my parents this is so far from the truth.

4)My favorite hospital story of the year is : There was a patient name La-ah. Everyone was making bets on how to pronounce it. Most decided it was lauh or laay but nay nay. Mother informed the doctors that you "pronounce the dash", it is pronounced ladashah. I laughed so hard i was crying. Who would do that. Oh yes, a fifteen year old having a baby that is who.

5)Top favorite quote of 2008: One of my friends i made from when i worked at UCI always says this. Her children moved to virginia at the beginning of 08. It was quite a shock to them at how backwards and hickish people were in the area they moved to. To comfort themsleves that they were not so badly off and that it could be worse, they made up the following slogan: "Virginia, its better than Bakersfield." Ok lets face it folks, what isn't better than bakersfield its pretty much the armpit of california. I have some great friends from there that i love dearly ,but i can't help a good laugh eveytime i hear this saying.

Well, that is just a few of my random thoughts on 2008.