Videos and brief update

Obviously I haven't been blogging much lately. I'll give you a quick update, hopefully in chronological order:

Our last laptop died. Sadness. Especially because I hadn't saved all of the pictures and videos to another source yet. Fortunately, I did save some of the latest vids like the day before it really bit the bullet, so that's good. And I'm hoping my bro Mike can access what was on the hard drive and we can retrieve anything else that I didn't save to an external source.

On the bright side, I found and secured an internship for Summer Term. Yay! I'll be interning with the Division of Child and Family Services, basically just shadowing for the extent of it. It surprised me, honestly: I thought I'd be...more hands on, maybe? Actually contributing to whatever organization I interned with. But they said since I'll be there for such a short amount of time and am an undergraduate student, they can't really give me many duties so my time would best be used just observing as many different things as I can. But really I think that'll be interesting, and informative. Basically I'll get an idea of what Social Workers do.

The only downside to me finding an internship is how crazy busy we're going to be. Sam has to complete 150 hours for his internship, and mine will require 135 hours. So basically that's around 20 hours per week each. Plus I'm scheduled for a world religions class, which is equivalent  to half-time student work again. Why does any of this matter? Jori pori. We'll finally really have to rely on others to care for her for quite a bit of those 8 weeks. It's discouraging, but I'm trying not to be prideful and accept help gratefully. Just easier said than done. 

I'm real excited for Spring Term to get done, even though Summer Term is going to be even crazier. I just really don't like group work! Not that there's anything wrong with the people, really. I'm just evil.

Though our laptop died, a couple days later my friend Laura was EXTREMELY generous, and offered to give us the laptop she used throughout college because she wasn't really using it anymore. So after my bro Mike fixed it up (thanks again), it's running great and we have a computer at home again. Yay!

That's about all to report. I have a few more cute pics and vids from our camera, but it's in the trunk of my parent's car so they'll have to wait. Still, here's some videos that I haven't yet loaded:

Fun in Wyoming...and then a deer jumped in front of our car

On Wednesday, the 18th of April, Sam, Jori and I set off for Wyoming, to visit Sam's oldest sister and her family (of nine!). We decided to wait to begin our journey at Jori's bedtime, because long car rides are such a struggle for her. Unfortunately, it's a roughly eight hour journey, and neither Sam nor I were able to sleep while the other one was driving. But we got there safely at about 3:15 in the morning Thursday and all was well.

We had a really great time while there! We spent time outside in their backyard, pushing Jori on the swings and jumping on the trampoline; we had fun in their hot tub; we got to see two of our oldest nieces and nephews, Phillip and Elena, perform in a dress rehearsal for their high school production of Into the Woods; we went out to eat; we rode their four wheelers; we watched movies in their theater room; we spent time with the family; and we even got our dental work done for free! (Jim, Heidi's husband, is a dentist. We were really grateful he could take care of our teeth for us while there-it was very generous of him.)

Perhaps my favorite aspect of our vacation, though, was how our Jori acted. She was fantastic! She's become much more independent over the past...by now it's been about 3 weeks, I think because she finally figured out how to use her knees while crawling. So she has been (and was up there) so pleasant to be with! It certainly didn't hurt that they have a fairly large house, so she had lots of areas to explore, and had lots of people paying attention to her. Whatever the reason she was so happy, I'm grateful! All mommies I'm sure could agree with me: the best vacation is good behavior of kids. ? Well that's what I think anyway.

 Hot tubbin' it up

 Dentist face!!!

 Cute Breidi

This is Jori's newest favorite trick: she smiles with realll squinty eyes 

 Tommy is two years older than Jori, which to me felt like good practice almost. :) 

 Ari is so sweet and thoughtful: she made me something almost every day I was there.

 Jori and Penny (the bird) did not really hit it off

 We (regretfully) came back to reality on Monday the 30th, daring to leave earlier and deal with an un-happy Jori in the hopes of getting a better night's sleep that night.

But this was actually a rather interesting happening too: we were going along at, all things considered, a very reasonable pace. Our projected arrival time was 11:00 pm, which I was very happy about. And then at about 10:00, a deer came out of nowhere and we hit it. Gah!!!!

It was one of the scariest moments in a car I've ever had. Sam was driving, so as soon as I saw it I grabbed the door handle and just squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for impact. (I wouldn't have done that if I was driving.)

But Heavenly Father was looking out for us: somehow, miraculously, Sam swerved enough that he didn't lose total control of the car (we WERE going 70 mph, can't swerve too much going that fast) but the only damage to the car was the driver's side mirror being knocked off. I still to this day can't believe how lucky we were. We started fish-tailing right after impact but Sam gained control again, and we were just fine.

Where the mirror hit the window when it was flying off

 Remains

Jori was all too happy to get to play at eleven o' clock at night

Anyway. Moral of the story: driving to or from Wyoming in the dark, be sure to pray for protection.