Couch Redo

Here is our old couch. We got it from Curt's sister, Christy. It's nice because it is light and easy to move around. But I got tired of the plaid. This is a before picture. I forgot to take it before I took the first cushion cover off, so piled the pillows up instead, but you get the idea.



So here is my new couch. It took me three weeks to finish it, just because I took breaks between recovering cushions. I used a 2 drop clothes (the kind that you buy to cover stuff while you paint) at Lowe's and then some cording to do the piping. It probably cost $35 for materials, but I like it, and that is pretty cheap for fabric for that big a couch. And it kept me occupied for a lot of time too. It was a good experiment, and I have learned a few things about doing it, which if you look, you can tell which ones I did first and how they got better as I went along. But, because I made it makes me more aware of its flaws and I think it probably looks pretty good to everyone else. The fabric does kind of wrinkle a little, but that is okay. This was all an experiment to see if I could do it.

I did not intend to have a red, white and blue theme, but it worked out that way unintentionally. Plus the quilt that Aunt Kathy went right along with it, so it all came together. I think I may make some new pillow covers for the pillows sometime, but I cannot decide on colors for sure, so I am waiting for inspiration to strike.

Until then, here is my next project. What am I supposed to do with this weird fireplace/ TV stand area? the TV doesn't really have anywhere else to go, but I think it would look better if it didn't cover the mantle up. I want to get a lower stand type of thing. And then I like the picture, but not really where it is. So I am thinking about doing a picture collage or a mirror or something?? And some bigger items to display on the sides? I don't know, but it will have to wait for a little while anyways. Until them I am looking for ideas.

The Alamo and White Coat Ceremony

Here are some pictures as promised of events here in Texas.

The Alamo

After unpacking all week, and getting mostly done with it, we decided to take Friday afternoon to visit the Alamo. It is 20 minutes away. You probably can't live in San Antonio for more than a week and not go to its claim to fame right? We did our homework before-- one of the medical students in our ward let us borrow The Alamo movie (the old one with John Wayne in it). It is three hours long with only 20 minutes of Alamo battle stuff in it, but funny to watch. Actors sure used to be corny. Anyway, everyone told us that we would be disappointed with the Alamo because it was so small, but I was actually thinking it would be smaller. I guess you just have to be sure to watch the old Alamo movie and not the new one beforehand. We went down part of the Riverwalk and are looking forward to exploring it more (now that we know better places to park!)



White Coat Ceremony

Today was Curt's White Coat Ceremony. It felt just like a graduation ceremony. In fact, Curt said that it should be basically the same as a graduation from medical school will be except that they will give him a longer coat for graduation. The length of the coat has to do with your status so students get the short ones and the doctors have the typical long ones.

Walking in (luckily I was a few rows behind him):

Getting his coat on:

Here Curt is shaking someone's hand. It was really funny-- they had any teachers left from when the medical school opened in 1968 there and had them stand up to introduce them. They are all pretty old now and several tried to stand up but then couldn't or had trouble doing it so they would just try and then shrug and wave. It was cute but a little scary. Luckily none of them fell off the stage.


They had a luncheon thing afterward outside and we took a tour. It made me kind of sad that I don't get to go to school this year, which was kind of weird. One last picture:

Curt starts orientation tomorrow. And I will continue looking for jobs.... Otherwise, we are slowing adjusting to the heat. I will try to update this blog with anything else that might interest our farawary family ;)

Window Rock

Well, it has been another week here in Arizona. I was pretty much the Med-surge queen this week-- I went there 3/4 days for clinical. It was the best place in the hospital that I have been and I was with this really great and funny nurse there for 2 of those days. On Thursday, I went out with a Community Health Representative which is a CNA that goes and visits all the elders and makes sure they are okay and checks their blood pressure. There were some pretty nasty hoghans and trailers that we went to. I think Navajos don't place very much emphasis on material things to the point that they don't really take care of their homes either. We were going to chop wood if any of them needed it, which would have been hilarious me trying to do that, but they were all okay on wood. Most of the time I would just sit and listen because they only spoke Navajo and then I would take their blood pressure.
Anyway, yesterday we went up to Window Rock which is the capital of the Navajo Nation. We went up there to go to a Flea Market and do health screenings. We did blood sugars, BMI, and blood pressures. Here's a picture. I promise we did more than just make glove puppets.
There were some scary rodeo guys that would come and tell us about their bulls and how they were getting a tattoo and would not leave our table, so we left after about 3 hours as they became more frequent. I told Curt about them and he said to just tell them that they weren't impressive and that I had a sharpshooter husband and they would leave us alone. Good idea for next time. Anyway, the highest blood pressure of the day was 220/108 which is pretty scary. A surprising number of the people we screened had hypertension and/or uncontrolled diabetes it seemed like and were convinced that traditional medicine would cure them because their western meds made them edgy. I think they are crazy but I couldn't tell them that of course. I'm not really sure how effective our screening was considering.
After the flea market, we went to Window Rock named because it does look like a window:

There was a memorial to the Codetalkers there too. And some really cute puppies. There are dogs all over here, so next time you want a pet, you could seriously just come here and pick one up. They would probably pay you to do it. Next, we went to Gallup, New Mexico, which was 20 minutes away, and went to a ton of trading posts/pawn shops looking at jewelery. They had some turquoise beaded necklaces going for 15,000 which is ridiculous and must have been very old from a famous person of something. Navajos are very much into turquoise and you could buy whole slabs of it for a belt buckle and it would be cool. Anne would probably like to come here since she likes the color so much. Anyway, we did dinner at Sonic and then went to McDonalds for flurries which ended pretty fast when one of the rodeo guys from the flea market came up to us and was very drunk. So, went to our hotel room in Window Rock and watched a movie. Our instructor paid for 2 hotel rooms to stay in Window Rock because it is a 2 hour drive from Chinle and then she decided she would sleep in the car because she snores so bad. Crazy, huh?
Today, we went to another town near Window Rock and taught girls camp first aid stuff for a few hours. Then, another trading post and we are back in Chinle now. Here's another picture for good measure:

The Sweat Lodge

So, here is my interesting thing of the week. We went to a Navajo Sweat Lodge yesterday! Apparently it is not traditional for women to do and is looked down upon by the really tradition-keeping Navajos, but we went anyway. Here is a picture:We were probably in there for an hour and a half or so. The great thing is we managed to fit all 11 people in the BYU nursing group and then six Navajo women in there too! It was really cramped. They had four phases that we went through and we had to focus on a different phase each time. They were 1) thinking about your problems, 2) thinking about how to solve your problems, 3) Planning and 4) Giving thanks. The first time they brought in six rocks that had been baking in a fire all day, and the Navajo lead lady of the ceremony told us a creation story, sprinkled cedar on the rocks and then water too. Then they closed the flap and had us all introduce ourselves and then the first phase began where we were supposed to think about our problems. Then the Navajo women said a prayer and sang a song in Navajo and we were supposed to be praying while she did it. The other Navajo women were singing along, either that or praying out loud, but we white people were all pretty quiet. The first phase was about half an hour long and then they finally opened the flap again. We lost a few people at that point because they were claustrophobic so we had more room and it was good. Then, after maybe five minutes, they brought in more rocks and closed the flap again. The Navajo women did the same thing each time and we were supposed to be praying too but that is hard when someone is singing in Navajo right next to you. Luckily, each phase got shorter each time as far as how long we were in there in the dark with no air which was good because they brought more rocks every time too so it got way hotter too.

Us with the Lead Lady of the Sweat Lodge (that really is her title)

Halfway through, after the 2nd phase, they brought this home depot bucket filled with water and passed around this buffalo horn to drink out of. First of all, we aren't supposed to drink the water down here because it has uranium and other chemicals that the hospital people told us not to drink, and then its a nasty hairy horn thing in an old home depot paint bucket and then all these other strangers have just drunk out of it. They handed it to me, the first white person to get it, and the Navajo lady next to me whispers to me that I have to drink it all. So, thinking I would be in trouble if I didn't, I tried to but wasn't really getting too far and then the head lady told me I didn't have to finish it after I had already gotten through about half of it. The Navajo lady was probably laughing at me later because I listened to her, but I haven't died from it so that is good.
Then they brought out a peace pipe and we were all supposed to smoke it, but we got the ceremony modified so we only had to do a Catholic cross thing with it instead. Anyway, it was an interesting sauna-like experience. It was really kind of fun.
As far as nursing stuff, this week I got to start a lot of IVs in the ER and spend one day doing nothing on L&D. The first week here has gone pretty past and been mostly fun. Tomorrow we are going to a Rodeo. We'll see if it is any better than the one I went to in the past in Burley, Idaho. Apparently it is a big thing around here so we'll see.

Navajo Nation

So, I am in the desert here in Arizona for school for three weeks. We drove down on Friday, which took 8 hours mostly because we detoured an hour out to see Four Corners (which by the way is closed right now). Yesterday we went around to all the clinics, hospital etc where we will be doing clinicals and then did not much for the rest of the day. We did watch Sense and Sensibility and I think we have all the Jane Austen movies ever made so we will watch them all I am sure. By the way, BBC just put out a four hour long Emma so I will tell you if it is good when we get around to watching it.
Today we went to Canyon de Chelly which is where some Navajos apparently hid out to avoid the Long Walk, and it is the only place around here where anyone farms too. Otherwise they just live in trailers or hogans in the middle of all the dust and I am not sure what they all do. Anyway, we hiked down from the top to the valley below and it was like a 2.5 mile hike or something. Only natives are allowed to drive down into the valley because us belagana (white people) will get lost down there apparently. They had several tables set up with people selling jewelery which was a good price, but nothing really stuck out as spectacular so I didn't buy anything. We saw some really cool Anasazi ruins up on the cliff. They had to rock climb to get to them. We stayed down there for a while and then hiked back up and are now again free for most of the rest of the day.

More camping...

So, I realize that all I blog about is camping, but we do live in Utah.... This will probably be the last camping trip we take for a while I think. Darn school takes up too much time. We went camping at Zion National Park with Curt's family and met their old exchange student that lived with them for a year way back when. She is from Belgium. We had lots of little kids along, so didn't do any very intense hikes or anything, but it was fun.

The first day we did the River Walk hike and then some of us continued to hike down the Narrows. The Narrows is a hike down a river in a slot canyon. And when I say down a river I mean in the river. It was really neat. You are walking in water pretty much all of the time. I just had tennis shoes without socks that were mesh in most parts and they worked okay. And it cleaned them up a little. I think I need to get some hiking sandals because the would be better. It took maybe 3-4 hours out and back. Here are some pictures:

This was the deepest part we went through. Good thing it was a hot day because the water was cold!

The second day we were there we did another hike to see some Emerald Pools and then found a pretty random swimming hole and swam in it. It had a 10-12 foot cliff where you had to jump in a particular spot so as to land between two underwater rocks versus on top of them and breaking your legs. Of course Curt was right up there wanting to jump first thing. But he didn't until I gave him permission (after I saw two other people do it multiple times and not die). So he is a very good husband. I didn't take the camera so no pictures of that. It was a good time. We need to go back for longer than a weekend and explore some more!

Summer's Over...

So, as I am writing, it is the last Sunday before school starts. It has been a good summer and passed altogether too quickly in hindsight. It has been nice to see all of our family members and get some good fun beaching (thanks to very nice and wonderful parents), camping or just hanging out together in. I will be glad to quit working as much. This last month it hasn't been as much because they cut back my hours because they did away with one of the aids, but it will still be nice to get back into school nonetheless. I did not get to my summer goal of using all of the spices in my spice rack (silly goal I know) but I think I might get to it next summer. That and some more camping. It has been my hobby the last few weeks to try and find some places to camp that are close and also free. I think that it is ridiculous that you can't just go camping wherever you want. Well, you probably could, you just can't have a fire and what is camping without a fire? Curt would like to do more backpacking of course-- I got out of hiking King's Peak this year and watched some cute little boys instead (aka Nathan and Daniel), while Curt went with his dad and broher. However, it sounds like it might be becoming something of a family tradition and there is already talk of next year. I think I can handle it every other year or so. We'll see. We are soon headed up to Liza's for dinner. Turky and chocolate cheesecake, mmmm.