Sore mouth, broken car

So last week, while we were on vacation, someone hit our van (that we've had for like six weeks). Calvin and I had gone out for dinner to celebrate our 5 year anniversary and when we walked out of the restaurant we discovered that someone had hit our van and left. No note or anything.  It looks like it was a big black truck and it smashed the two passenger doors.  Great fun. We had to wait for the cop to come so we could file a report (though the cop was really nice about it).  And of course since we have no idea who it was that hit us and the likelihood of ever finding out who it was is slim to none, we are out our $500 deductible.


That also meant that this week I had to bring it in to get fixed. No big deal, especially since I am on break, right? Well, Tuesday I got my wisdom teeth out and the earliest we could bring it in was Wednesday. So I brought it in, no problem. The rental car guy met me at the collision place with my rental car for while the van is being fixed. A nice, brand new black Lincoln Town Car.  Apparently we have a $40 a day rental allowance and the rental company wanted to give us a car that used pretty much all of that amount. Anyways, I think I freaked out the rental guy when I had to sit down while he was showing me the car because I got woozy. I was fine to drive, since I was fine sitting down, just standing for any length of time kind of did me in.

So the estimate on the van is $2128 and we won't get it back until at least Thursday.  My teeth are starting to feel better, though I'm still eating only soft foods and loving my pain meds.  And Matthias looks for Grandpa Doornbos every he sees the rental car, since three of the last four cars Grandpa has rented while down here have been Lincoln's.

Vacation

I know it's been a while. School was crazy and now I'm on vacation.  I finished the summer semester strong with all As and am finishing up week one of a two week break.

No long post tonight, just a quick Matthias story. We're driving down main street in Branson, MO (where we're currently on vacation).  One of the buildings has a fake King Kong on the side of it.  We told Matthias to look out his window at the monkey. He sees it and goes 'Oh monkey'. And then he goes  'Oh No, Oh No, Oh No. Boom." Apparently in his head the monkey fell off the building.

Good boy, not so good parenting

So tonight after he went to bed, Matthias got up, left his room, found the potty, brought the potty to his room, stripped down and peed on the potty. YAY! Here's the unfortunate part. Calvin walked in and saw Matthias naked and  proceeded to punish him (if you remember, we had some pooping paintings that have made us gun shy of naked little boys).  He then realized that Matthias had peed on the potty, so he felt bad and told Matthias he was sorry for punishing him and praised him a lot. So hopefully that punishment won't deter the potty training, because that was a GIANT step forward for Matthias.

Have I mentioned that summer classes are crazy?

So I know there has been a lack of posts coming from me lately. Why? Because summer classes are crazy! Although I am only taking two classes at a time, they are extremely accelerated.  Normal semesters have about 13 or 14 weeks. Summer sessions have 5 or 6 weeks. This means that classes are longer and require more work. Instead of three hours of lecture a week, we have 6 to 9 hours a week. Labs are eight hours long, instead of the normal 2-3 hours in a normal semester. In a normal class, you spend the first week or two trying to get a feel for the class and the professor and reviewing old material and don't do a lot of "real" learning until week three or four.  In summer classes, you start into the meat of the material on the first day. You often have tests after only a day or two of class. We read 300-400 pages a week, as well as listen to lectures, watch videos, and do homework.

So balance all of that with taking care of a house and being a mom to two small children, I'm exhausted. My boys are at the sitter's house five days a week so I can study. This means I pretty much spend all day either in class or studying. I do that so that I can have most of my evenings and weekends free to spend with Calvin and the boys.  But it is definitely tiring. There is only so much information that you can absorb in one day without blowing your head up and each day during summer classes I get close to that head blowing feeling.  This also means that I don't have a lot of time or energy for things like blogging or cleaning my house for that matter. But this is just a season and God will help me through it. Thankfully, Calvin has been extremely supportive and has really picked up the slack around the house.

Rock a bye baby...

We had a rather eventful weekend.  On Friday afternoon a severe storm rolled through our area with winds over 70 mph.  Calvin arrived home with the boys about 4:15 and discovered that we had no power. After investigating, he found that a rather large tree from our neighbors' yard had come down into our backyard and had taken a power pole down with it, breaking the pole in at least three places and pulling down all the lines.  There were trees down all over our town, so we knew it would take a while to get power again.  The boys and I went to a friend's house while Calvin had to go to a wedding rehearsal that he was doing sound for. 

After the rain ended, we checked out the damage and realized that besides the power lines being down, we were smelling gas.  After reporting all the damage to the energy company, we decided that the boys and I would head up to my parents' house for the weekend and Calvin would stay down here to take care of coordinating the repairs and because he had to do the sound for that wedding on Saturday. 

Thankfully the energy company really worked hard and were able to replace the pole and restore our power by Saturday night after having no power for almost 30 hours.  The gas had been turned off Friday evening, so Sunday afternoon the gas company came back to fix the gas leak and the cable came back to rewire the internet lines.  So everything is working again.

So now the clean-up begins.  We still have a number of wires in our backyard and most of the three is one our property. And a good chunk of our fence is down.  Thankfully we had no damage to our house.

The tree down before the power company came.

The pile of tree trunks.

Our back fence. You can also see the top of the power pole. 

A big chunk of our fence down.

The large part of the tree trunk.

The root system. It was 8-10 feet off the ground and left a decent sized hole.

I'm still here

I'm here! I promise! I am just very busy. School started June 1 and it has been a whirlwind of classes and homework and trying to find time to spend with my boys.  Classes are going well, but very busy. This first session is especially hard, because we have to fit six weeks worth of class (which is already a lot) into five weeks. I am taking Nursing Assessment and Health & Nutrition. Health & Nutrition is a breeze (the exam class average is a high A), but Nursing Assessment makes worries me a bit. It is very interesting and I love the prof, but doing an assessment is really involved! Taking blood pressure makes me nervous. I had to do my check-off today and my partner took my blood pressure first. My blood pressure is normally about 105/65 or so. During check-offs it was 122/82! But I passed my check-off. So now I just have to get ready for the mastery assessment. That is a head to toe assessment that involves all the body systems. It is a lot to remember!

Well, it's been a long day (It's now quarter to 11 and I've been up since six this morning and was in class from 8:30 to 5:30, took a test, and had a meeting at church.) so I'm going to bed.

"We are ok. Really, we're ok..."

Is never the first thing you want to hear out of someone's mouth when they call you unexpectedly. Especially if that someone is driving with your children. But that was the beginning of the phone call I got this evening. Matthias and Ezra were riding in a car with Grandma and Grandpa D, when a woman ran a red light. Both cars are totalled, but everyone will be alright. After getting the phone call (I was shopping with my brother in law), I met them at the scene of the accident. The car looked awful and was in no way driveable (they front end was destroyed and although the paramedics thought they were both alright, I decided to have them brought to the ER to get checked out again.  Since they are so young, I didn't want to take chances. They can't really tell us if something hurts very well.  So the boys and I took a nice ambulance ride to the children's hospital. They are fine though. Matthias has some bruising on his shoulders and chest from his carseat straps, but no broken bones. Ezra seems completely fine. My father in law has a small burn on his arm from the air bag and my mother in law is a little sore, but they are both going to be just fine. Mom and dad already got a new rental car and tomorrow we will be going to get the boys new carseats. 

I am so thankful to God that they are alright.