It has been one month into residency for Jeff, and I have only cried about four or five times. Not bad right? It is just hard being home with the kids so much without a break. Maybe I need to hire a babysitter to come and be with them for a while when Jeff is going to be late. But that is the problem. Jeff never knows when he is coming home. Sign-out (when they stop taking admissions and give their pager to someone else) is at 4:00pm on short call days. But that doesn't mean he comes home at 4:00pm. Yesterday he had to stay and write notes on all of his patients and didn't get home until 7:30pm. Which isn't terrible except he didn't get home until 10:15 the night before. So I don't really have any chance to leave the house and run errands. But I would rather spend some time with Jeff then go run errands. He is supposed to get one day off every 6 days. But they consider the day you are on-call (goes in at 7:00pm and stays until 11:30am)a day off because you are away from the hospital for 24 hours. 


Sorry for my rant. I guess its just hard. I know I have it much better than some people. 


Everyone in Wisconsin has been so friendly. There are several people in our ward that are walking distance away. It is always fun getting to know new people. But I do miss all of my friends back home. Whenever I was bored I could just text them and we would get together. I miss that. And I miss my family. But we are getting by and usually have smiles on our faces. Except when we don't. 

Piano Pictures

 It is here. And I love it. I pulled out all of my piano books and it is amazing what my brain remembers. I would barely look at the notes and my hands could practically play the whole song. There was one little glitch with the delivery. So I have learned that one of the three legs is longer than the other two and it is important that the longer leg goes on the back otherwise you have a lope-sided piano. Like we had. We called the piano store when we thought it looked funny and they sent the movers back out a couple days later to fix it. 

It is only 4'10". Good thing because when they brought it in I realized how very small our condo is. It seemed much smaller in the store. 

It is perhaps not exactly my style, but this is kind of a starter piano for us. So I'm not too worried about it not being perfect. But I am glad it is not black. I have no love for black pianos. I feel like they have no character. When I saw this cherry colored one I fell in love. It is such a pretty color. 

My New Piano

We ended up buying the piano yesterday. We were a little excited and a little nervous. It was pretty much half of our savings. Now when you think of 'savings' you have to remember that we have made no money for the last four years, so if you are thinking of half of your savings, it probably wasn't that much. But still we were a little light-headed. It gets delivered on Tuesday. Yay.

Accomplishment

Today was the last swim lessons for Lauren and McKenna. Their teacher told me that Lauren can move onto level two, and that McKenna could do level one again. Basically means she didn't pass. Which is no big deal. She's three. Like her mama, she doesn't like to get her face wet. (What can I say? I don't want to mess up my make-up). And you can't be a great swimmer if you don't put your face in the water. Which is why I would probably not pass level 1. 


On the way home from swimming Lauren was in the backseat saying "Ann, said I can move up to level 2."  "Yes, Yes. Yes. I get to do level 2," over and over and over. She was so proud of herself. I really enjoyed seeing her enjoy her accomplishments. Jeff and I hadn't talked about doing anymore swim classes, but I have a feeling she would be broken-hearted if she didn't get to do more. 


In other news we went browsing through and piano store today. They were really friendly and we put a deposit on one that I really like, but not totally in love with. It has queen anne styling and that isn't my favorite. Basically the deposit means that nobody can have until tomorrow we when we make up our minds, and its refundable so its not like we are invested in it. So only tomorrow will tell. 


We had a pretty fun fourth of July. Jeff worked in the morning so I took the kids to the ward breakfast. That was fun, but REALLY HOT. I think that Callum was uncomfortable in the heat because he was a little grumpy. Then we came home and napped. We had some new friends come over and BBQ and let the kids play in the swimming pool, which then led to tons of grass in my house, which then led to the 5th of July being spent cleaning my house. But, I digress. We did a few sparklers and our friends went home and we went to bed before we got to see any real fireworks. I am a little bummed. What's the 4th of July without fireworks? We did have fruit pizza. Perhaps that makes up for it some. Ohhh and some really awesome festive jell-o that our friends brought. That totally made up for no fireworks.