Prospectus Meeting

I had my Prospectus meeting on Friday, March 13th. It was the official time for all the professors on my thesis committee to get together, review my thesis proposal that I have been working on for months, and to officially "accept" that proposal. It was approved! So now I can move forward with IRB approval, recruit participants, and collect my data. This is the kickstart to the "middle" of my project, the end of the beginning process.

We were pretty excited, so we headed to the BYU Creamery for some ice cream to celebrate. I've noticed that if we say we'll do something to celebrate an achievement later, it never happens, so we went immediately to the Creamery, and stuffed ourselves with dairy goodness.

Hopefully we'll be celebrating the next step before too long!

My Internship

I'm finally doing my first internship for my program. I am going to Life Care Centers of America at Bountiful fulltime for 8 weeks. It is a nursing home, and I work a lot with residents on practicing swallowing exercises, and strategies to make swallowing stronger. Many of them have had pneumonia a number of times when their food and drink enter their airway, rather than the esophogus. It's a serious problem, and it's nice to see some progress over time. I also work some with individuals with dementia, and try to help their cognition a little bit. It's interesting to learn how much Medicare limits what you can and cannot do with residents.

It is quite a commute to and from Bountiful, but it's worth it to be earning my clinical hours and to finally be working towards graduation in that sense. It has been difficult to get up and out of the apartment by 6 every morning, but it's helped that I drop Benjamin off at BYU before I head out. At least we're both dragging by 8:00 pm, and ready for early bedtime. We can do anything for just 8 weeks, right?

To help it go by more visually, I made a paper chain so that I can tear a link every day, and SEE how the appointed time is getting shorter all the time. It really helps. This is a picture of the chain closer to the beginning. It's looking superlong, isn't it?

15 weeks

Hello everyone.

I have felt wonderful all throughout the pregnancy so far. I have had very little nausea and have lost my breakfast only once in the 3.5 months we have known we are expecting. Since so little has happened, I haven't been inspired to post anything.

To answer questions we've been getting, we are fully planning on finding out the gender of mini Heaton as soon as possible, despite the wording on our announcement card. August 27th is still the expected due date, and hopefully we'll know in the next 5 weeks if we'll have a Benjamin or an Emily.

We haven't taken any pictures lately, except my weekly documentation. So, although it isn't flattering, we'll make an effort to take more pictures in the future. This photo is my 14 week picture, taken three days ago. Enjoy. We also had just eaten dinner, with I've noticed helps the effect.

OUR BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Mullins family photo shoot

I am slowly trying to get Christmas break events posted on this blog (which many of you may have wondered where we went). We had a fabulous break in Georgia with family everywhere you turned. We got to visit with the Heatons and the Mullins, not to mention the Kotters, Pruitts, Kings, Ogdens, Shurtliffs, and Cannons...All in all, it was busy, but exciting.

While the entire Mullins clan was around, including the most recently added Katie Cannon Mullins, we had some family pictures taken. Here is a very small sampling of what happened in 35 minutes worth of smiling.

The Heatons

Children and eternal companions of Suzanne and Richard Mullins

The overall damage of the Rich Mullins project, up to date. Notice the 8 grandsons,
one more cooking, and no grand-girlies.

More holiday cheer to come (hopefully not too slowly).

CHRISTMAS TIME!

We have been excited to get Christmas decorations out for a while. I took advantage of Benjamin working a couple Saturdays ago, and wrapped his Christmas gifts. He couldn't be outdone, so within a day or two, he also wrapped presents for me. We had two different piles of gifts, since we haven't invested in tags yet. But looking at a pile of presents doesn't lend itself to putting Christmas off until after the Thanksgiving holiday.

We finally got ourselves a Christmas tree! It's BEAUTIFUL. We decided to put it in the kitchen corner this winter, since our living room is so crowded.


(By the way, the angel on top was a Shopko buy in our Thanksgiving adventure! We're excited to have an angel to use this year.)



Ok, so this is what our tree REALLY looks like. We wanted to cut our own tree this year, and found out the closest place we could go to do it was in Price. AND we don't have a truck or anything to put a tree into. AND we are seldom at home before it's quite dark, which makes it less exciting to wander around the wild and chop/drag a tree home. We talked about it, and decided we'd go for a fake tree this year, since it's already a week into December, and we fly to Georgia in just two weeks. That's a lot of work for only a couple weeks enjoyment.
We were lucky to find this little tree at DI, and we won't feel bad disposing of it after just one year of use. I especially love our presents at the base.

Isn't he cute?

Thanksgiving in Idaho!!

Well, we're a little late in getting everything announced to the world, but we had a great Thanksgiving! Thanks for asking! We drove to Idaho, and played for a few days with our favorite Grunigs! Heather was my longest roommate from years past, and I was there when she and Trevor began to be an item...ah...the Brentwood!

So, we spent the big day in Pocatello at Trevor's parents' house, and then a couple days in Idaho Falls at Heather and Trevor's very own beautiful house. Someday, I hope Benjamin and I can be all grown up like the Grunigs. Both out of school, at least one real-life job, and a little Grunig to keep them laughing every day. Little James is a cutie, and I'm so happy that he warmed up to us before we left.

Thanksgiving dinner!









We saw the Idaho Falls Temple, where our Kotter grand-parents were married.










We helped get ready for the next big day.


Benjamin and I had our very first day-after shopping experience. We hit ShopKo first. This is the line at 5 am outside the doors... Some people are REALLY crazy...But we had fun, and even found a deal or two we couldn't resist.







Playing games with the Grunigs and Heather's siblings: Jarom and Amy.





Ahhh...the fun times!
Little James with a big cheeser!