The Fair

Have I mentioned lately that I the most awesome sister ever? Well I do! Case in point- Last week she found an advertisement for a free fair and so today we went. It was sponsored by a Senator who is up for re-election. It was really, REALLY amazing!!
It was about 40 minutes away and the drive was beautiful. I'm still not used to all of the trees out here. At the fair there was free food (hot dogs, chips, popcorn, drinks, and cotton candy), face painting, balloon animals, and a bunch of booths where people kept giving us free things.

First we went to get Angelique's face painted. There was a sign showing all of the options. I suggested some of the nice things like butterflies, flowers, etc, but Gigi saw a pig and she was all about becoming a little pig. It turned out quite cute though :)

Here she is getting her face painted. She held still the whole time! I was amazed.


Here's my little piggy :) She does a really good piggy impression now complete with a few oink oinks.



We got some food and went to all of the booths. She met Ben Franklin, who let her spin a wheel, where she won a coloring book and crayons.


She also met the little mermaid, who made her a special princess crown, and Cinderella (well, Cinderella for the second time :) ) She was in awe!


We went to the fireman booth where they gave her a cool hat. Outside the fair there was an ambulance and firetruck to look through, but we ran out of time.



The Philadelphia zoo and the Franklin institute of science both did presentations. Angelique saw a chinchilla, a dove and an armadillo.

She got a balloon animal, well 3 actually, the guy kept asking her what else she wanted, so she got 2 penguins and a huge flower.

To top it off, Elmo, from Sesame Place (it's a great attraction park here with all of the sesame street characters) made a special appearance. She was thrilled!!


At one of the booths they gave us 3 coupons for free water ices from Rita's (water ice is essentially a really good snow cone), but the catch was that it was only good at 1 location, which happened to be around the corner from the fair. Since we figured we wouldn't want to drive 40 minutes just to get a free snow cone we decided to go. Gigi chose Chocolate and Candy and I both chose Mango. YUMMY!

Gigi fell asleep in the car, but was only able to sleep for about 15 minutes before we got home. When we got inside she was too excited to tell her daddy about her day to sleep, so needless to say she was wired the rest of the night.

While I made dinner David and Gigi played fireman rescue, essentially they would take turns hiding and say help me, help me and the other person would wear the fireman hat and find the one hiding. It was TOO funny seeing David running around in a kid's fireman hat.
To be honest I think he had more fun playing the game than Gigi :)


It was my first real outing since I have moved here and I have to say if all of their free attractions are like this one it is a pretty awesome place to live :)
Oh and I guess I should put a plug in for the senator- Go Senator Chuck McIlhinney!!!

Marriage

Last Saturday Candy and Tony had a ceremony to renew their vows. Before the big day Angelique helped Candy and me prepare for a party that would follow the ceremony. She helped clean, shop and cook. She was really excited for the party, but we hadn't really talked much about the fact that the ceremony had to do with their marriage. The ceremony took place in Tony's church and it was great. The priest talked about how Christ's first miracle happened at a wedding, which I hadn't really realized.
Of course, Candy and Tony cried. It was really sweet to see how much they still love each other.
After the ceremony there was a big party outside, complete with tents and tons of ribs and yes David was in heaven!!! They even had a cake made with a picture of them cutting their cake at their wedding:) The whole thing was lovely. I forgot my camera however and so I have no pictures from the event. Hopefully Candy will post some on her blog soon :) (hint, hint)
On the way home Gigi piped up- Mommy and Daddy are married. I turned around and she had a gigantic grin on her face. It was adorable to see her so happy about the fact that David and I are married :)
Well, later that night Angelique got to the clean clothes basket (which was full of sheets and blankets because Gigi had thrown up so much we had to wash a lot of them). Gigi found one of her fitted sheets. It was white and she put it on her head. She then asked for flowers. I really had no clue what she was doing until I gave her the flowers. Then she explained that she was getting married. It was really cute to see her walk around really seriously talking about getting married. We joked that she could marry Bjorn (my friend's little boy, whom she hasn't seen for over a year) and she got really excited about the idea. The whole next day she kept reciting, Bjorn, Bjorn, Bjorn. It was fun to see her so excited about getting married :)

Mommy, I burped.

2 nights ago I woke up to Gigi calling out, Mommy, Mommy. I reluctantly got up out of bed to check on her. When I opened the door my pregnant nose smelled an awful, familiar smell. She said, Mommmy, I burped. There was throw up all over the bed, but because she has never thrown up she didn't know what she had done. She then went on to say, but my duck is okay. She has a favorite stuffed animal and she was more concerned about it than herself. She stayed so happy during the whole ordeal. It made me realize even more how blessed I am to have such a great kid.
After cleaning up the bed and getting her in the bath we stayed up and watched The Incredibles until 4am and then went back to bed. She is almost over whatever she has and I may have it. It's hard to say because I throw up so often anyway, but needless to say we both feel a little yucky. David has stayed with us all weekend and taken care of us beautifully. I don't know what I would do without him.

The Decision

While we were living in Illinois I needed to work to pay off some debt and to compensate the small amount that we were receiving on student loans. Luckily we were able to pay off all of our debt so I was only needing to work 1 day a week here to compensate our funds.
Well, I searched for a job and finally found one possibility. I applied and never heard back (when I applied at Carle hospital in Illinois they called me the next day!). I talked with a nurse in our ward and she highly recommended working for an agency. Basically it would entail going to different hospitals with a small orientation first and working a shift and probably never going back.
I have been dreading the idea of working for an agency, but I decided to give it a try. I went in and was offered a job on the spot with my first scheduled day this Saturday.
I found out that there would be a good chance that I would be going to work in inner-city Philadelphia, which pretty much means a really scary area. The type of area where you hope and pray to never get stopped at a red light. For everyone who knows me, they know how paranoid I am anyway about scary areas. To make matters worse David then told me about a case he recently read for class about someone being raped in a hospital. AHH!
On top of all of that it makes me really nervous to be thrown into a different situation with different people each day. I worry that I would be given the worst patients with the smallest amount of help, which means more danger for infectious diseases being spread to the baby and risk of lifting very heavy patients by myself, which could lead to pre-term labor.
Also another large concern is that David is completely swamped with school. He gets up every morning at 6am and gets home usually around 9pm. Despite this rigorous schedule he still sometimes doesn't get all of his readings done. (I'm so glad that I have no desire to be a lawyer :) ) So with me working it puts a lot of extra strain on him.
Anyway those have been my concerns. David has always hated the fact that I have to work. So after much thought, close financial calculations and many prayers we have decided that I will not be going to work. I am really happy about this, but it is still pretty weird. I can't believe that I will be able to do normal mom stuff now. However, that being said, we now have pretty much no money. For any grad students reading this I know you can relate, but it is a bit scary. I guess that is why we need to rely on the lord right? For now I will try not to think about the negative and just enjoy spending a lot of quality time with my sweet girl!

Eventful Week

My mom has been in town since Monday evening and it has been quite fun. On Tuesday we went shopping at an outlet mall and on Wednesday we went to a small town where one of my ancestors was born in the 1700's. My mom came out to go to a genealogy conference with my sister, but they played hooky for a day so I could see her :) It was perfect timing since David just started school and I have been worried about getting lonely.


Last night was a very special night. My mom took my family and my sister's family out to dinner at a place called the William Penn Inn. William Penn was the founder of Pennsylvania and apparently in 1740 something he stayed at the place that we ate dinner and so they named the Inn and restaurant after him. I am still in awe at the old buildings that they have here. It is really cool!



They had a wonderful buffet and it was so much fun to be there. Angelique was the only kid in the place and had the everyone wrapped around her finger. She was able to pick out what she wanted to eat and so of course my meat eater picked ribs, chicken wings and bread. After a while she decided to branch out and try some croutons. After she had eaten an entire plate full of croutons the waiter immediately rushed over and asked if he could get her some more. It was really cute to see her treated like royalty, but trust me she does not get that kind of treatment at home.


In other news- Gigi has now peed on the potty twice by herself! This is BIG news at our house and hopefully Gigi will be fully potty trained in a couple of months :)
Oh yeah and you probably noticed, but I got my hair cut off! I hadn't had a hair cut in over a year and my hair was desperately needing a trim. Amy, my sister in law, cut it to about shoulder length and then when I came out here my sister had me go with her to her hairdresser's just to meet her and after beginning by evening out the edges ended with what you see in the pictures. I actually really like it! I was nervous about David's reaction since he really likes me with long hair, but he really likes it too. Hopefully it will continue to look good as it grows, but for now I'm just enjoying the easiness of this cut :)