Thursday, February 26, 2015

Weekly Update: A Week of Birthdays

Funny story.  Time flew and I missed last week's update!  Here's how serious our time warp issues are.  I asked Reed what he would like for dinner and he says "oh, whatever's on the list I sent you would be good" (periodically he'll send me a list of dinners he feels like...it makes it suuuuper easy when I have to decide what to make for dinner).  I said "umm, what list?" and he said "the one I sent you!" and I was like "you didn't send me anything" and he was like "yes, I did!  See?" and he scrolled through his phone to the text message.  It was from the 13th of February.  I laughed and said "that was like two weeks ago!" and he goes "no way" and I said "yeah, today's the 25th" and he's like "what?!  I thought today was the 22nd or something!".  haha  We both had a good laugh over that one.  We lost three whole days and have no idea what happened.  Oh well. 

Baby Ellie
Last week was pretty good. We had a lot of fun going to birthday parties!  First was Arami's 2nd birthday.  She's the daughter of my co-worker and she had a Minnie Mouse themed birthday.  They had rented a facility with a great view of the city AND the temple....it was decorated all pink and cute.  Reed and I pigged out on empanadas and barbecue and had fun chatting with my friend and her family.  The next day was Sage's 1st birthday party!  She's got a major thing for Reed.  :-)  Sage looooved her birthday cupcake.  She hesitated at first and then held it up to her face and licked the frosting off the top.  haha  So cute!  

Reed's sleep has been improving and that is such a wonderful thing!  He has been very consistent with his sleep patterns and he even programmed a sleep app for his phone to help him maintain his sleep schedule.  It was tough getting the whole app programmed because the Android stuff is new to him.  But he learned a lot and has a fully functioning app....it even has a cute app button!  (That's my favorite part.  haha)

The Big BIG news of the week though is that my sissie Leesa and her husband Mike had their baby!!!!!  It sounded like it was quite the experience.  :-)  Little Ellie Dakota Echols was born weighing 7-ish pounds.  She's ADORABLE!!!!!  I truly can't wait to meet her.  She looks a lot like her daddy but that could be because they're both bald.  ;-)  That little girl is going to be so intelligent and kind.  And I've just gotta say, I'm so incredibly proud of Leesa!  She's got an amazing amount of mental toughness and fortitude.  What a gal! 
It snowed!

So that's about it for today.  We're counting down the days until we go to Disneyland/California Adventure!  It's supposed to be good weather...maybe just enough rain to keep the kids out of the parks.  ;-)  We love you all and hope for a wonderful rest of the week for everybody.

<3 The Jacobsens

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Weekly Update - Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Sunday!  It's been a good week and it just keeps getting better.  For instance, this morning the sun is rising and it's going to be a beautiful 77 degree day.  February in Vegas is tough!  ;-) 

Reed has been doing something 'fun' the past two weeks.  His insomnia is just not improving and he's tried numerous different methods to fight it over the years.  This time we're trying a program that is originally based out of the University of Virginia. For the first week he had to keep a sleep diary and now he's working through modules that are based on his sleep patterns.  He's going through the sleep restriction phase where you limit the hours spent in bed to only the hours when you are sleeping.  The first day was rough because he hadn't slept well and was exhausted but the subsequent nights have been much better resulting in approximately 5 straight hours of sleep.  We know it will not be an easy program but it's worth it for better sleep! 

Work has been busy for me.  We're still preparing for inspections and that looms over me every single day.  I really dislike waiting for the inspectors to come....I just want to get it over with!  Wednesday was a fairly challenging day as far as patients go.  We had some very anxious patients who needed some extra TLC which is hard to give when you have very limited time to prepare them in.  Fortunately, my IV's went well which is a huge blessing from Heavenly Father.  And for the first time ever, my Friday the 13th at work went well!  I can distinctly remember every Friday the 13th at CMC and they were memorable in the bad way.  But this time it was a great day! 

We booked our hotel for Disneyland!  We like to joke that our reason for moving to Vegas was so we could be closer to Disneyland.  Anyway, we chose a date that should be less busy but still good weather-wise.  I can't wait!  We're going to ride Space Mountain like ten times and I'll finally get to go on the Indiana Jones ride! 

Valentine's Day was an awesome event.  Reed and I choose not to celebrate in the conventional way (flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep...name that movie).  Rather, we commemorate our first date seeing as how our first date was on Valentine's Day.  So, we went to the store and bought pizza fixings (even though we had everything at home) then came home to make the pizza together.  After dinner, we watched Firefly episodes and chatted.  That is exactly what we did on our first date and it's what we'll do every Valentine's Day forever.  I do enjoy reminiscing about that first date and how I knew that my life was going to change.  Reed is a very special man and I can't imagine any day without his calm personality, funny jokes, and handsome smile!  I'm a lucky lucky girl!  

The rest of Valentine's Day was fun too.  We went on a walk around our favorite park and then decided to venture down the neighboring subdivision.  As we were going by one of the houses, someone called out to us and it was a member of our ward that we haven't gotten to know too well yet!  We stopped and chatted for a few minutes.  The youngest two kids came running out and used Reed as a jungle gym.  haha  After we left our friends' house we came across a real estate open house.  We've been contemplating buying a house so we decided to walk on in.  It was so much fun!  The house was beautiful.  And some sick part of me really enjoys going through other peoples' houses and opening closets.  haha  The open house got us even more interested in buying a home and so we had a great time chatting about what we want and all that good stuff.  We'll see what happens...we've still got a while left on our renal agreement.  :-) 

My co-worker Emily would appreciate this story.  At the grocery store I was wearing my Seahawks shirt (Go Hawks!) and some lady walked by and called out "Yeah!  Seahawks!" and I called back "We'll get 'em next year!" and another guy walked by and said "Go Hawks!".  I'm finding a very small, quiet population of Hawks fans here in Vegas! Everybody roots for different teams here and it's honestly super irritating to not have at least one unifying sports team! 

Another funny little story...I went to my weightlifting class and it was taught by a tall, middle-aged, German man who had a German accent.  He was hysterically funny!  He would say "Aiii" and "Yah" during the final repetitions as if it was so difficult (when you know it's easy for him) but the way he would say those things with his accent would crack me up so I would push through those last reps. Okay, you had to be there for it to be funny.  ;-)

Reed collects quotes and this morning he came across another really good one.  I think it's Jeffrey R. Holland that says "Remember: what you do, where you go, and what you see, will shape who you become".  A good reminder that those little things every day influence what we will become further down the road.  All choices are important! 

I better get to work on preparing songs for choir practice but I hope you all have a wonderful week!  We love you! 

<3 The Jacobsens

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Super Bowl Sunday - Go Seahawks!!!!! (Weekly Update)

Happy Seahawks Super Bowl Sunday!  Win or Lose, it's been an incredible season and I'm super pumped about repeat Super Bowl appearances!  :-)  Go Seahawks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The week has been super duper busy....because we've been such delinquent friends throughout the past two months (actually even longer), we made effort to open our schedule to the people that have supported us so kindly throughout this tough time.   We had fun with our friends', the Trouts a couple of evenings in the week.  I made lasagna and had too much so we took some over and spent some time chatting with Anna while Reed played with the kiddos.  A few days later we got to watch the kids for a few hours which was a lot of fun!  Jackson drew us a snowman picture and we all had a great time bouncing on the trampoline.  We also got to have pizza and game night with our friends, Liz and Alayne.  We played dominos (and ate domino's pizza too) and I ACTUALLY won a round!  Beginners luck for sure.  It was great fun! 

Reed was a busy man this week.  He worked on projects for his clients, cleaned out a nasty freezer full of rotting elk meat, and helped our friends David and Sarah paint their new house.  He also managed to come down with yet another cold/flu bug.  I'm thinking his immune system is lower because of stress and lack of sleep...his insomnia hit another rough patch this week so now we're looking at treatments that might help.  He's tried a lot of things already so now we're branching out and have something picked out to try.  Wish us luck!

I set a few New Years Resolutions back at the beginning of January.  (Feels like so long ago now!).  I resolved to go to the temple at least once a month and to go on an official date with Reed at least once a month.  Well, ka-blam!  We knocked both of those out in one day!  Sure, we waited until the last day of the month but who cares.  haha  Yesterday, Reed took me up to the temple and we got to do a session.  It was great!  We even got to see Grandpa Doxey while we were there.  After the temple we went to our friends' house for game night.  Andrew and Robin throw an awesome game night every week and this week was even awesome-er because it was to celebrate Robin's birthday!  We ate delicious food and amazing cake, played fun games (our group played Puerto Rico), and laughed a lot.  Reed and I bought Robin Minion Dave from Despicable Me that talks, laughs, and farts....of course, we all had a good time making the Minion fart.   What a great temple date day! 


Now we're getting ready for church and I am strongly considering leaving church a half hour early to watch the BIG GAME!!!!  We'll see....it might be bad luck to leave church early for a football game and we certainly don't want me to be the downfall of any Seahawks games.  haha   Anyway, we love you all and hope that life is treating you well.  Stay happy!

<3 The Jacobsens