Done with the internship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(And I mean each and every one of those exclamation points!)

After 7 surprisingly short months, I am officially finished with my dietetic internship!  For those of you unfamiliar with what that means, allow me to enlighten you.  For 7 months (and usually longer), students with a degree in dietetics work full time and do loads of homework every day.  Is it paid?  Of course not!  In fact, we pay big money to do it.  The only student loan we have is for my internship. 

The internship is divided into 3 parts – clinical, foodservice, and community nutrition.  I did my 3-month clinical rotation at Utah Valley Medical Center in Provo.  I loved clinical nutrition!  I assessed and counseled patients, wrote chart notes, and recommended tube feedings and TPN (intravenous feeding).  For 2 weeks I worked in the outpatient Diabetes Center where I worked with patients with Type 1, 2, and Gestational Diabetes.  Outpatient counseling is my absolute favorite.  If I could do anything, it would be that.

For foodservice, I was at Provo School District, where I learned more about school lunch and management.  I wrote menus, managed a kitchen, helped with their Jungle Theme Day, and did a Halloween taste test in an elementary school where we allowed the kids to try a bunch of different “scary” fruits and vegetables (jicama, lychee, prickly pear, and pomegranate).  My favorite part of this rotation was the nutrition education component, where I taught a series of classes to middle and high school students on body image.  I even got to teach it in an inservice to all the school lunch workers.  So fun!

I just finished my community nutrition rotation at Utah County WIC.  I would love to work at WIC one day.  I really enjoyed working with that clientele (women, infants, and children) and loved helping families become stronger and healthier. 

My biggest concern going into the internship was how Henry would handle it.  Luckily I found the best babysitter ever.  She is a stay-at-home mom of 4 boys, the youngest is 3, so Henry fit right in at the end of her family.  She loved him almost as much as I do, and he loved her just as much in return.  From the very first day, he never cried when I dropped him off, and cried more often when he had to go home.  I couldn’t have done this without her help, and appreciate so much the way she took care of my little boy!

Why did I go through this long and stressful internship?  Well, folks, that may be the saddest part.  We go through it for the right to take a test.  The test, however, has a much better payoff – once we pass, we are dubbed Registered Dietitians (RDs) – the only nutrition credential with any backbone.  Anyone can call herself a nutritionist and you have no idea what kind of training or schooling she has had.  If you see “RD” after her name, though, you know that not only does she have a bachelor’s in dietetics, but she has also done a rigorous internship and passed a hefty test.  So excited to join those ranks!

Henry’s First Birthday (Only 2 months late!)

My very dear friend, Natalie Stephens, had a brilliant idea of throwing a combined birthday party for our 2 babies who would be turning 1 this year.  She knew I wouldn’t have time to throw one for Henry myself right now (and boy was she right!), so she ended up doing pretty much all the work.  So, thank you, Natalie!  You’re the best!  It turned out to be exactly everything I would have loved to do myself and more, and I was so impressed with how it all turned out!

The set-up:

A cute birthday boy

The food:

We each made a cake for our kids – Natalie made the adorable ladybug for her daughter, Elena, and I made the hungry caterpillar for Henry.  Unfortunately mine fell apart in the car, so it was infinitely cuter about 30 minutes before this picture was taken!

  In this one, look at the apple in the middle with worms coming out!  She did such a great job!

These were my favorites!  The ice cubes even had worms coming out of them.  And they were raspberry flavored!

The cake-cutting ceremony

Guests:

Cute boy :)  I love him!  He found a pinecone and a flower to smell.

Henry’s best car-ride home EVER!

Messy Dinner

Henry had fish sticks for dinner a couple weeks ago, and Daddy had the brilliant idea to let him try ketchup with them . . .

Turns out, Henry likes ketchup.

Henry’s First Camping Trip

Over Independence Day Weekend, we and Tiffany went camping up in American Fork Canyon.  Of course all the good campgrounds were packed, so our site was a little lame, but it worked just fine for us!  Henry did really well.  He loved walking around the woods, and even though he got to bed pretty late, he slept okay.  We’ll have to go again!

This is our shiny new tent!  It has 2 rooms and is rather luxurious

Henry was such a good helper

We went out the next morning, and a couple had brought horses to ride some trails!  Henry was thrilled!  The people were so nice and even let Henry sit up on the horses.

He was a natural!

That last picture was Henry not wanting to get down. 

Then it was time to break down camp.

Again, Henry was a good helper.

All in all, we had a good time!  On the way home, we had the windows down and Henry kept throwing his hands in the air like he was on a roller coaster.

We drove by our favorite place in this canyon.  If you get a chance, check out Tibble Creek Reservoir, or go even further to Silver Lake.  Definitely worth it!!

Playing with Kids

Jimmy’s sister, Trisha, and her husband have a goat in their yard.  We went to see it, and Henry had a blast! 

This is Stu.  Or as Jimmy spells it, Stew.

Henry chasing chickens

My boy is an excellent chicken herder.  Look at how he separated them by color!  (Baaa Ram Ewe!)

Farm life makes a little boy sleepy

Henry Miscellany

Because we haven’t posted in . . . forever, here’s a melange of pictures too fun to pass up, but too random to get their own post

After a bath one morning snuggling with dad

These are obviously pre-hair cut!                  

This next one was at an Ultimate tournament of ours.

Happy Birthday, Henry!

Can you believe it’s already been a year?  Henry turned 1 on July 15.  He hardly fits in my arms anymore, and he definitely doesn’t stay there long.  He’s growing into a fun-loving, happy toddler, but deep down, he’ll always be my baby.  Right now some of his favorite things are going outside, watching big kids play, swinging at the park, and pretty much doing anything physical.  He climbs on everything, spins around in circles, and the other day he figured out how to climb up the slide at Grandma & Grandpa Dunn’s house!  It’s sad that I only get to see him for a couple hours most days, but at least we still have bedtime.  That is when he still lets me rock him and sing to him, and he’ll give me hugs and kisses and snuggle up in my arms.  Then we lay him in bed and he snuggles his dog and his gorilla.  Incidentally, that gorilla was given him by his pediatrician because Henry’s just so loveable and passed his well-child checkup with an A+.  He wins hearts wherever he goes, smiling or chatting with people at church and running around being so cute the old ladies let him steal their walkers

We still haven’t had a party for him, but on his real birthday, we did go out to eat, open some presents, and have a cupcake.

After much debate, we ended up getting Henry a Tonka-type truck that he can ride or push around.

Then we gave him his cupcake – you have to take these pictures – I’m pretty sure it’s a rule.

It’s hard to see the mess in this lighting, but there was a big one!  Happy birthday, little boy!

Catch-Up Posting: Haircut

Neither Jimmy nor I, nor Henry, for that matter, have posted anything in a long, long time.  So I’m just going to blog-storm for a little bit and see how much gets up.  These may not be current, and they may not even be in chronological order.  But at least they’re here!

My little brother’s hair curled ever-so-cutely when he was Henry’s age, so I was excited that Henry’s hair was getting long enough to curl at the bottom, too.  Then he got called a girl twice in one day and Jimmy said it was time for a hair cut.  Here’s how Henry took it:

You can see how he banged his head, screaming, onto his tray, so it came up with Chex all over his forehead.

Notice the long locks

Priceless.

New Camera!

We had to get a new camera because our last one was stolen (see previous post), and it finally came!  So here’s the few pictures we’ve taken with it so far.

Cruise!

Sorry we’ve been neglecting our blog lately.  The last month or so has been absolutely nuts!  I graduated, got accepted into my internship and had a bunch of work to do preparing for that, we moved, and we went on a cruise.  The highlight of all of it was, of course, the cruise. 

We went with two of our best friends, Lewis and Natalie Gunter, and it was fabulous!  Except that somebody stole our camera.  The first day.  So all the pictures you’re about to see are graciously donated by Lewis and Natalie! 

  Every morning and evening, a chilly mist hid the sky, but you could see sunspots out on the ocean where some light found its way down. 

As we were leaving San Diego, we saw this buoy pretty far offshore, covered in sea lions.  Later that day, most of us saw one sea lion jumping in and out of the water below us (despite all our best efforts, we could never get Jimmy to see it).

The cruise certainly fostered a healthy attitude.

  One of the coolest things was that every time housekeeping came through your room, they’d leave your towels on your bed folded into animals!  Later in the week we went to a workshop where they showed you how to make some yourself!

We couldn’t stop in Mexico because of that terrifying Swine Flu, but we still got to go to Catalina Island.  It was SO fun!

Views from our little dinghy going ashore.

Catalina Island is 95% uninhabited, and the waiting list to bring a car onto the island is 11 years, so most people just drive golf carts everywhere.  We rented one and drove it around the island.

We went snorkeling – mine and Jimmy’s first time!  Look at those sexy wetsuits! 

He got bit by a giant fish.  It scared the rest of us, so I always swam with my hands tucked into my chest!

Interesting golf carts

They had a formal night which was pretty fun.

One of our favorite parts of the cruise was the fantastic food!

. . . and great waiters

But mostly playing games and catching up with good friends!

Us listening to some live jazz music.

Fun times all around!

Each room had these pictures above the beds, and most were pretty normal, but ours was just bizarre – some lady in a negligee laying on a bed with a weird man sitting behind her.  We couldn’t resist posing like them!

What a fun, relaxing week!  I just have to say thank you to my darling Mommy, who watched Henry for us and took such great care of him while we were gone.  Now they’re great friends