A Pumpkin Patch, Desert-Style

It was a hot, dry, dusty 95 degree day, but despite all that we decided to check out Las Vegas' very own pumpkin patch...along with the rest of North Las Vegas. The place was packed!! We went to Gilcrease Orchard, hiked about half a mile in, battled hoards of sweaty people, to see if anything really CAN grow in the desert, and discovered that yes, apparently pumpkins can.

First though, Lucy decided to go down the hay slide in a dress, which only resulted in getting hay slivers stuck up her panties. Poor Luce! She complained about it the rest of the day.

Next we finally found the pumpkins, which were a little sickly looking, even Lucy asked, "what's wrong with these pumpkins?" But it was more about the outing than anything else.

We had fun walking through sand (literally), rolling the pumpkins over trying to find the best one, and finally deciding not to purchase any of them b/c a)they were more expensive than the ones in the grocery store (must have had to subsidize their watering costs), and b) the line to purchase pumpkins was at least 50 people deep.

Lucy was pretty sad once she'd found the perfect pumpkin, but we told her that we would call the little Pumpkin Elves who would then go back and deliver it to our house later (we ended up buying some $2 lookers at Trader Joe's, shhhh!).


Zachy definitely has his daddy's genes!! That boy loves to wander!! He liked getting lost in the dusty desert corn field and then tripping over some rocks so that he was covered in DIRT by the time we were done.

A Jonathan Day

Normally I like to portray things on our blog as pretty positive-- that we're lovin' life, and that we're always doing fun and adventurous things, so if I've fooled anyone into thinking that life doesn't have its thorns for us, I apologize!:) Obviously, these are our family memories and I want to focus on all the good things we get to do with the opportunities presented us. But with this post I have to give a much needed shout-out to my husband, so bear with me! We need to remember the good AND the bad, so I'm officially making note of it.

We have definitely met our match with this AEGD residency. It's funny too because we knew all along going into it that it would be difficult--everyone we'd spoken to had given us ample warning that this year would be harder than any year of dental school, so maybe it isn't right to start complaining now, but boy were they right. Poor Jonathan. Every day he is up by 4:30 or 5 a.m. on his way to the base to get a head start on the mountains of government paperwork and "charts," and to begin a grueling day of being "pimped"-- where the commanding officers in charge of him pump him for obscure information one-on-one in front of everyone else. They are MEAN about it too. If the resident wavers at all, they smell blood in the water and go after the person even more-- "You're an idiot! You didn't know that?!? How can you call yourself a Dr.? Did you even go to dental school?" etc. Then, they egg the other residents on to be super cut-throat and competitive with what they're doing, so that they all want to earn the coveted "Golden Apple Award" (which doesn't even exist, by the way), but it basically ensures that a horrible environment reigns supreme so that nobody can become friends, otherwise they'd wise up and realize there is no point to being kept to such grueling hours for this residency. But that's it, every day, 5 days a week, until at least 6 or 7 p.m. (on a good day), or 8 or 9 p.m. on a bad day. So then Jonathan comes home, where I lay into how bad my day has been, he stuffs down dinner (he doesn't get a lunch break), helps me put the kids to bed (if it's early enough that I haven't already-- so often he doesn't actually see them), and then he goes right into studying for the next day so he doesn't have to feel too stupid when he's being pimped again. He goes to bed around 12 or 1 a.m. and it starts ALL OVER AGAIN. I don't know how he does it. I surely couldn't.

But I guess that's the fate of a father-- which I've often felt is unfair. There is SO much pressure on dads to provide for their families, to make sure everyone has money for new shoes and that there's food on the table, to be the husband that can take over for the "exhausted" mom when they walk in the door, and play with their kids so there's something meaningful snuck in there, and to be good priesthood holders who do all their home teaching, and good sons who are always considerate and available, and good brothers, and friends, and, and, and. But never much time for THEM. And most of the time Jon, and probably most dads (I know mine included) doesn't complain. I think he feels like he can't, because isn't it just his duty?? But it's exhausting, and draining, and tiring to never get a break. He's been going without a significant break for 9 years-- first a mission, then undergraduate school, then dental school, and now a 60 hour+ a week residency. So, anyway. I guess 99% of the time what you see on the blog is the 1% of time we actually have Jonathan around to go do something fun together.






In honor of all of his hard work and stress the past couple of months, he had Monday (Columbus Day) off, and he got to go on an Extreme Hike at Mt. Charleston. He and another resident named Trent left just before sunrise to reach the summit (Trent had to be back by 3 p.m. to pick his wife up from the airport)-- which meant they did 16 miles in 6 hours with 4,000 feet of elevation gain. He got his Jonathan Day. But I think the strain of the hike may have contributed a bit to the fact that later that night he came down with the pukes. He had the 24 hour flu (and so did we all), but still managed to get up at 5 a.m. for work. When it rains, it pours I guess. Jonathan, WE LOVE YOU!! THANKS FOR WORKING SO HARD!!!!