the ardyer olympics

because the ardens have been coming to the midwest with such frequency the past few years, i was long overdue for a trip to see them. this was my first visit to their very own house, and i am now able to again say that i have visited them in every place they've ever lived. right after landing in sunny california we went straight from the airport to in-n-out. because of course we did. it's what we do. and spoiler alert: we stopped on our way back to the airport too.

after getting the grand house tour we settled in for a couple days of just hanging out together. which led to playing games. which led to the inaugural ardyer olympics. this is where one team [shelly, tara & sophia] competes against the other team [donald, matt & tori] in a variety of events over the course of our stay. the first official event was guesstures, which was also one of the most hilarious. there were also many other thrilling events like bocce ball, just dance and softball in the park.

as is our tradition during my visits, we also went on an out of town adventure. this time it was a day trip for a hike through muir woods and an afternoon in san francisco. we hit up the golden gate bridge and did a drive by of the full house house. we also rented a surrey bike for a ride through golden gate park. after our big loop of the park we ended up with some time to spare on our rental so we figured we should add an olympic event to our day in the form of surrey bike racing. we all came out in one piece so that's a win for everyone.

on our late night drive home tara had her heart set on stopping at a dutch bros. coffee because she'd heard such great things. siri helped us find one not too far off our route, but just as we turned into the parking lot they switched off the lights. it was so sad. and hilarious. so after spending saturday recovering from our busy day and lamenting the loss of a dutch bros. opportunity, we made the short trip to chico on sunday for not one, but two stops at dutch bros. we managed to fill up a punch card in a matter of hours. it was probably a world record.

we had a great visit and we're always thankful to get to spend time with our favorite ardens!

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storms, star wars and summer

friday morning i rolled over in bed and noticed donald looking at me intently as if he wanted me to wake up. i mumbled some incoherent jargon questioning why in the world he would be waking me up at the crack of 9:30 in the morning. and then we had this conversation:

d: i think the power is still out.

s: okay.  did it storm?

d: yes, it was very bad. it looked like a monsoon outside. i considered waking you up so we could go to the basement.

s: [rolls eyes] i'm sure it wasn't that bad.

fast forward a few minutes. donald looks out the window and sees that one of our [very large] backyard trees has fallen into the power lines that run parallel to our house and all the lines connecting the pole to our house had been pulled away and were lying in the yard. i guess there was a storm after all.

this kicked off our already fun filled weekend a little early. after a bit of sitting around and twiddling our thumbs [what did people do with themselves before the internet] we ventured outside and determined we would not be back on the grid for awhile. so we packed up dag, along with the contents of our refrigerator, and moved in with biscuit and pep pep. between that, swapping stories with the neighbors and trying to squeeze in a little homework it was all of a sudden time for jedi nights.

i love our church for a lot of different reasons. sometimes i like to think lakeland exists because God thought it would be fun to have a church just for people like donald. the ratio of sci-fi/fantasy movie enthusiast to regular people is surprisingly low. as you might imagine, the anticipation of the upcoming star wars movie is quite high and out of that came a fun event for kids and parents called jedi nights. and when lakeland does an event like this, they do it up right. donald was tapped to be darth vader and i know i am biased, but he stole the show. the church rented a pretty serious vader costume and that combined with the light saber moves donald has been practicing for a couple decades made for an epic performance. we did almost lose him to heat exhaustion a couple time [that costume was hot!] but he persevered and the kids totally loved it.

then came saturday and a day of lake fun! scott and ali were in town so the king's invited a bunch of sbu-ers down for a little reunion. i had been trying to concoct a plan that did not include driving down and back in a day, but with all the other excitement that's what ended up happening. we left at 7:30am [yuck] and didn't roll back into raytona until 1am the next morning. the drive was brutal but the day was awesome! we spent twelve hours chillin' by the water with our college friends and their twenty six kids. we took the boat out, swam off the dock, rode jet skis and laid in the sun [well, some of us sat in the shade]. it was good times.

by sunday i felt like a walking zombie but it was totally worth it. our tree is still lying in its sad, mangled state but thankfully we hopped back on the power grid sunday afternoon.

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the struggle is real

ah...nursing school.  such an elusive little thing.

donald has worked on the psych unit at ku med ever since he graduated from sbu. he likes it and he's good at it. [like, really good at it] the trick is that there is really only one position you can hold in a hospital with a psychology degree and he already has it. so in order for it to make sense for him to stay there forever, which he would love, the most logical option is for him to become a nurse.

nursing school was already on our radar when we were engaged, and we knew it would be a future goal for our family. however in my naiveté i thought we'd be wrapping things up in the school department by about year three of our marriage. donald didn't want to jump right into school during our few months of marriage, but i figured he'd just need a year of pre reqs and then a year or so at an accelerated program and we'd call it a day. that was so cute of me.

what i have learned is that attempting to complete nursing school as a non-traditional adult student is like trying to lick your elbow. it's nearly impossible.

here are some examples:

after spending two months incessantly attempting to get ahold of the supervisor of the nursing program to discuss donald's transcript were were finally informed that donald, who has a bachelors degree in psychology and has worked in the psychology field for ten years, needed to take psychology 101 before he could submit his application to the nursing program. this information was very conveniently shared 48 hours after the cutoff for enrolling in summer classes. so that was fun.

and while we're on the subject of silly, freshmen level pre-reqs...we both thought college algebra was going to kill us dead. it did not. but it was close.

then this one is my favorite [so far]. without going into all the specifics, as soon as donald finishes his rn program he'll need to begin a bsn bridge program right away. our track record being what it is, we decided to be as proactive as possible and once he was accepted into an rn program we turned our sights to the bsn bridge to see if we could get a jump on things. 

to back up, going into this whole thing there were two classes donald did not ever want to have to take again...speech and statistics.  the bsn program needed a stats pre-req and there was a question as to whether they would accept the credit he had from sbu.  so there was this exchange:

monday @ 2:12pm : your stats class won't transfer, you'll need to take it again .

[panic. sorrow. gnashing of teeth.]

monday @ 2:18pm : your stats class is fine, you don't need to take it again.

[relief. hesitant celebration.]

wednesday afternoon : we can't accept your stats, you'll need to take it again.

[confusion. defeat.]

later wednesday afternoon: oh, i remember talking to you!  you're fine.  you don't need to take stats again.

[blank stares.]

i'm sure that one day [i'd like to say five years, but i think ten is the safer bet] we will look back, laugh, and think it really didn't take that long after all. today is not that day, but i'm doing my best to just enjoy the ride.

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