Thursday, September 25, 2008

The United States of Mind

What seems like EONS ago, I majored in Psychology so I've always been such a junkie for personality tests and psychological studies. Which is why a new study caught my "ear" the other day on a radio station when they talked about a study recently published in the Wall Street Journal and how it showed distinict personality characteristics for each state in our nation. I know I'm a dork, but I loved it!


The short version: how cool is it that the study showed Utah to be high in Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and low in Neuroticism (whew, that's a good thing!). We also ranked relatively high in Openess.

So, there you go. Because I'm sure you've always wondered . . . :)

Friday, September 19, 2008

A Month of Firsts

Our life lately seems to feel like the first steep hill of a great big roller-coaster. It just seems to keep going up and up, always changing, always busy and there never seems to be any much-needed down time! We had hoped things to calm down a little bit after we moved in August, but they never have. And it's definitely been a time of many "firsts..." for our family. Over the past few weeks we've had our:

First day of Kindergarten for Ethan. Ethan is in the AM class and is loving school--he is so smart and continues to amaze everyone with his reading ability. He makes us laugh with stories he comes home with. My favorite was about a friend in his class that came to school with dental floss in his pocket. The boy pulled out the floss, showed it to Ethan, and then proceeded to put it in his mouth to eat it. Ethan said "I told him not to eat it, and that it would make him sick, but he ate it anyway!" which made Ethan laugh hilariously! Makes me wonder what the stories other kids are telling their parents about my children!

First day of preschool for Noah. Noah started at a new preschool this year out by our new house and he's doing great. He's a kid who loves structure (and obviously we don't have much of that around here lately!) and I'm so grateful we finally found him a preschool for this year. He's having a blast, and came out the other day wearing a cute astronaut helmet (they were learning the letter A) that he had painted himself.

First time Noah was admitted to the hospital--this year. Yes, unfortunately our poor Noah had a bad asthma attack again and since they couldn't get his oxygen level up high enough they had to keep an eye on him at the hospital. Poor kid, but he's doing better now.

First time painting an entire, brand-new house (and probably the last!) I have to give huge kudos to Chad for all of the time and effort he spent on this one. He's such a good sport (picky me requested 3-tone paint) and took an entire week off of work (plus a holiday and a few Saturdays) and worked out at the house from sun-up to almost sun-up somedays just to get it done. It looks beautiful though, thanks babe!

First family trip to Disneyland! We had so much fun and the boys just had a blast. Even little Aaron got to go on most of the rides (I was so shocked and pleasantly surprised!) and he loved every minute. Ethan's favorite ride was the new Finding Nemo Submarine Adventure and Noah's favorite was Splash Mountain. Funny enough these guys loved the roller-coaster type rides! Our favorite ride was Tower of Terror at California Adventure. We also visited SeaWorld and the beach--it was hard to come home to the chaos our life has become.

and finally...

First time a new house has ever been built this fast. Okay, so I might technically be wrong on that one but it still seems that way! We started building our house in the middle of July and it's almost done already. All that's left is painting the garage, a few light fixtures and countertops and sinks. It looks like we'll have our final walk-through on October 3. (I hope they move the porta-potty before we move in!)

So, it feels like we'll be moving out of the frying pan and into the fire (or using my roller-coaster analogy: moving up another big hill before going back down) since it looks like we'll be moving in a few weeks. But we have so much to be thankful for and so many good things to be involved in. And, it was nice to take a quick breath and dabble around in the blogging world for a few hours!