October Happenings and News!!

I am the worst at keeping in touch. I am also horrible at keeping a constant blog going. I have a lot going on right now, but i think I come with every excuse in the world so I don't post on this blog. I am trying.. failing miserably, but trying.

In the beginning of October we had General Conference. We do not have cable so we pulled it up on our phone and plugged that into a IPod speaker and listened/watched it off of Trevor's phone. Both Saturday and Sunday's sessions. It was so good. I got so much out of it.

On October 24th, Hyrum turned 2! I still cannot believe it. He is growing up was too fast. We were able to have Trevor home for most of the day. (he was over with our nieces and nephews that morning waiting for their dad and mom to get home from a concert the previous day in the valley.. we babysat them all Friday to saturday) Once Trevor got home, we played around the house for a couple hours and then we headed out to a pumpkin patch here in Thatcher. It was about 10 minutes away from where we live and when we got there, there was no other people there. It was a smaller pumkin patch that our kids were able to walk around by themself and pick out their own pumpkins. We let them each pick out a pumpkin and before we were able to check out the lady who owned the pumpkin patch said that Hyrum was small enough that he would be able to pick out a small one to have for free. So when we headed home we had 3 pumpkins that we only bought two and paid $3.25! Such an awesome price for 10 pounds worth of pumkin. On the way home we bought pizza (one of hyrum's favorite foods.. besides french fries and burgers or spaghetti) and then invited chauncy and shar and their family over to eat some cake and ice cream. The kids all ran around and played in our house for about an hour and then they all headed home. We played hide and go seek for another hour or so and then we put kids down to bed after a bath, milk, scriptures and prayers. It was a great day and I sure hyrum wont rememeber a thing about it. haha.

Trevor was offered a job to work PRN (as needed) at the hospital in Med. Surge starting training the Monday before Thanksgiving. We are so excited and hope that it will be a great source of another income and work experience for Trevor's future career. My parents also have asked that I start answering phones again for my dad's plumbing business as they will be out of town a couple times and my mom is too busy to answer phones while running her long arm quilting machine/business. I dont know her name of her business but I will hopefully be able to tell that once i know. I also have been cutting out fabric (cordura and pack cloth) for David Bosen (my sisters awesome husband) He has a side business that he has had since before I can remember and he is always at his career and doesnt have the time to cut out the fabric for the projects he does. He owns Coyote Tactical and is very talented with the stuff he makes. Currently i just finished cutting out pieces for him to make 30 tool bags for a gun. (from what I understood, I may be wrong, it is a machine gun that hooks into a seat in a hum-v and the tool bag will hold all the tools to repair the gun and the instruction manual)

Also, I found I am pregnant again in October. Currently I am 9 weeks 5 days along. It was kinda a big surprise to find out I was pregnant. I was hoping that Trevor could get through a couple semesters of Nursing School before we got pregnant again but I guess it was just the right time for us. Once we found out I am pregnant, I had several nights of dreams about being pregnant with twins. Thenone night we were watching the tv show "Once Upon a Time" on Netflix and Trevor had a Dejavu moment where he rememebered a dream that he had of us talking about our pregnancy of twins when a certain scene came on the screan. Since then we has had 3 or 4 more of those Dejavu moments while we are watching new episodes of that same show. I have had twins on my mind constantly since I found out I was pregnant and I cant seem to move on about that. We have out first doctors appointment  in 6 days and are super excited to hear a baby/s heartbeat. We are finally coming to the conclusion that if it is one baby then we are super happy, but ig it is two babies then we are super super happy. We will have to trade our car in for a bigger car if it is twins and buy a new bed for Hyrum and a new infant car seat but we will make it work. We are excited and happy either way.

A week ago we were also able to go take some family pictures with my sister-in-law shar. Both Trevor and I have been wanting to take some family pictures in the bloomed cotton fields since we moved down here and we finally had an opportune time to go and get them done. I think they turned out so cute and I cant wait to probably do it again next year with our new addition/s!!

We also hate halloween so we decided to skip this year. We stayed home and ate spaghetti in jack-o-lanthern cut out bell peppers. It was a fun way to celebrate without having to waste money on costumes for one night and candy for the whole town at the ward trunk-or-treat. It was a good choice and fun to stay home as a family.

We are now in the middle of November and getting close to having Thanksgiving in Snowflake with all of the Russell family. It will be a fun time and we are excited to be able to tell the family about if we are having twins or not. Since I still have this feeling that this pregnancy feels so much different and I swear is twins.

Hope you enjoy some of the pictures from our photo shoot.

I dont want to put out to many pictures in case I use some on our Christmas card this year. I hope you are having a great November so far and enjoy your family and friends as the holidays get closer.

Love to all,
Trevor, Kim, Olivia, Hyrum and Baby/s Due June 2016!!

Birthday week and fun!!

Yesterday was my 27th birthday. That is too crazy. I don't feel that old but I guess aging happens whether we want it or not. I haven't blogged in a while but it is because I have been crazy busy keeping up with life.

This month we have had many adventures like going to the park, helping work on Chauncy and Shar's new house (Trevors brother and his wife), Trevor applying to get into the EAC nursing program (again... hopefully we will find out if he got in by October 10th) and Trevor working hard all the time. He also applied to get a job at Mt. Graham Hospital to work in the Med. Surge Department as a CNA. We totally thought that he got the job (it took over a week to hear anything back about if he got the job or not) but he got an email this morning saying "Thank you for applying but they are persuing a different applicant." It was a complete bummer and we were really sad, but we know that we will be blessed in other ways and just need to be faithful and hopefully find a different job. Trevor has a current job but it is hard for him to get work hours and get paid enough when he is going to school full time also. We know that we are meant to be down here and that we are doing all that we hope is good in Heavenly Fathers eyes for our family... hopefully blessings will follow!!

Trevor had an amazing experience with his current job working plumbing/construction. But, he will have to blog about that later and tell all about it. We want this blog to be an update on all that we do and experience while we are down here in the Pima valley, so if you dont care to hear all about it you are welcome to tune me out for the next 2 1/2 years. (we can catch up after we graduate)

I have been cutting out fabric for my brother-in-law David. He has a personal company called "coyote tactical" were see sews and makes tools bags, hunting gear, etc.. It is kinda cool to see what he does. Anyways, I have been cutting out fabric for some tool bags and some other stuff to help him out. He is really busy with his career and so he has a hard time finding the time to cut out this stuff for his side business and during the summer tries to hire youth from his ward or something but now that it is school season he needed some help. He asked if I was interested and so I said I would love to help. I am hoping to get a job to start working at Walmart Pharmacy as a Technician but we will see how that all pans out. I will still plan on helping David and Jen (my sister is Jen) out by cutting stuff out too.

Kids are doing great. Olivia is struggling in the listening department. She is having a hard time understanding that she is not in charge and that she has to listen to mom and dad and all other adults. She thinks that she is the boss of everyone and likes to try dragging Hyrum around by his clothes or his feet so he is on his belly being drugg. She actually loves to watch the new disney movie "descendants" (I am listening to them watch it now as I am typing this actually) It is a super cute movie and is one that has great music. She loves to do anything Trevor and I do (even dress up like us) and she loves to repeat anything anyone says. She actually has a knack at when I change into comfy clothes at the end of a day, she will go in her room and do that same and say "See, I am just like mommy."  Hyrum had a little accident today of putting a bobby pin (I still have no idea where he found it) in his ear. I walked into the living room as he started screaming and was pulling it out of his ear. I ran over and picked him up, and he will still pulling it out of his ear and a little stream of blood came out with it too. So we called the doctors office (Mt. Graham Family Practice) and got him in to see a doctor within another hour. The doctor said that there was too much wax build up to see if he punctured his ear drum or not but there was some blood in his ear. Trevor and I actually had to pin him down so that the doctor could look into his ear with the ear light thing. Trevor held his head down and I held his arms and legs down. It was so hard to see him in so much pain screaming. The doctor ended up prescribing an ear drop that will help reduce the wax in his ear and keep an infection at bay (so he wont get an infection if it is punctured) and the doctor wants to see him back at the clinic on Tuesday to see how it looks. We were all more worried about infection or loss of hearing than if it did have a puncture. They cant do anything for a puncture but if it is completely destroyed then he could have ear problems the rest of his life. The poor kid turns 2 in a month and I really just hope this is just a little problem and not a long lasting future problem.
 Well that is what is going on lately for us. I hope you are all having a great last couple weeks of September. Happy Friday. Enjoy your weekend.
p.s here are some pictures we took the other night on our computers photo booth. They are goofy. Enjoy!!!

Our new life in the Gila Valley!!

So I guess i havent posted since July of last year. I have had several family member and friends tell me that they miss me posting on my blog and so now that I finally have internet (after not having interent in our house for over 2 years) I have decided that I will finally post more. I want to keep a documentary of things that happen on Trevors journey through Nursing School down here so I am gonna start off with a little intro describing how we came to decide to move here.

In September of 2013 Trevor came home from a class feeling very bummed about his schooling. At the time he was taking classes from the community college called Northland Pioneer College(NPC). He had just had a meeting with the school counselor to talk about what classes he needed to get his Associates in Science emphasis in nursing. And the counselor had told him that they were planning on changing the requirements of what was needed to get that degree. He went into the meeting hoping she would say that he was in his final two classes to get the degree and would be able to apply for the nursing program that semester.... Not So!! She told him that they were going to add 5 new requirements to the degree and that it would put him back by about 3 years of doing more prerequisites to get into the nursing program (and to get his associates)  He was so disappointed. That would be the third time in 3 years that they have added more classes or adjusted the requirements to be able to get his associates of science in nursing (what is needed to apply to NPC's nursing program).

Over the course of the next semester (septemer 2013-may 2014) we looked at several options because Trevor was almost to the point of quitting school and just working for his dad for the rest of his life delivering propane(not my idea of a job suited for Trevor, who was so set on becoming a nurse for the whole time we dated after his mission until this point.. he had big dreams and was crushed!) As we were looking a different schools and the idea of moving away from Snowflake Trevor came across a fast paced school down in the valley of the sun (Phoenix,AZ) that he would be able to be accepted and start the nursing program and finish with a bachelors degree as a RN within 18 months. He was so excited and had made so many plans to go meet with a couseler and take a tour of the campus the following weekend. Mind you, we were in the middle of the summer of 2014 so he was only working and had time that he could go do all of this. He made all the arangments to go too the school to make sure that is where he wanted to go and asked if the couselor would send him an email with financial obligatiions and how much it would cost. I was devastated. We got this email of how much the school would cost and I didnt want to make trevor feel bad but We could not afford to go there... and if we did go there we would have to take out students loans to help pay for the cost and we probably would never be able to buy a house in the future. The cost of this fast paced school that had a great rep. and accredidation would cost around $150,000 for the 18 months of the program. (and that price did not include books)

We had prayed about going to this school and Trevor was so sure that we were going to go and that Heavenly Father wanted us to go there. (I was not OK with it nor did I feel good about it... I could not get over that price) Trevor was so sure and was working towards being able to start Fall of 2014. In the meantime I was praying that something else would be put in front of him that would change his mind of this decision. Oh how I love when heavenly father answers prayers. About a month into his planning and my praying Trevor's oldest sibling called him and said "Hey, I know you guys have been frustrated with your current school at NPC and I have an idea. Shar and I (Chauncy) have been talking and were wondering how open to you guys moving down to come live in our trailer and go to school down here (they lived in Pima, AZ ) and Shar will watch kids for you guys so Kim can work to put you through school. The school down here has great accreditation and I loved going to school here." That was exactly what I wanted to hear. I had started praying for another opportunity to arise that would be cheaper and sound more appealing to Trevor. Trevor had recieved numerous answers to prayers that going to new school is what needed to happen for our family but he never recieved an answer that the school in Phooenix was the right school to got too.

WE started praying about the option of going to Eastern Arizona College down in the Gila Valley. Instantly we knew that it is where we needed to go. Plans started to fall into place of transferring his NPC school trascripts and being accetped into the school. In Fall of 2014 and Spring 2015 semesters Trevor took the final prerequisits he needed to be able to apply to the nursing program. Or so we thought.

Trevor applied into the nursing program in April 2015 and was accepted into the EA nursing program. we couldnt believe it. He had applied with a paper stating that he didnt have their top requirement of needing a Integrated Algebra class or placement score in Math of 60, but that he would take math in the summer and have that requirement finished before the Fall 2015 semster started. Through several set backs, he was not able to get that math class and after trying 2 times to take the math placement test he deicided that he would prefer that we moved down to the Gila Valley for the fall semester and take that math class that was needed and then reapply to the nursing program to start Spring of 2016. He was very bummed that he had to turn down his position for the nursing program when he was so close to being at the end of his schooling. But it turns out that being down here is what we were set up to do after all.

Today is his first day of school and he is taking his last class of his last semester of prerequisites. We are thrilled. I am so proud of him and all that he has accomplished the past 3 years. He has buckled down to get his schooling done even though he has wanted to give up several times. He has been able to take an average of 13 credit hours per semester (Fall 2014 & Spring 2015) while working a full time job (and he actually had to keep his CNA current so he had to volunteer at a nursing home for a couple months... which turned into a second full time job because they wanted to hire him instead of him just volunteering) So we saw him an average of 1 hour a day for about 6 months (2 full time jobs, full time school and he was the scout master for the 10 yr old scouts) all so that he would be able to move down here to the Gila Valley to be able to get into a nursing program that is going to be so good for him. He is such a hard worker and we are all so proud of him.

Moral to this long story is... If you have dreams of becoming something, dont give up at the first or second or third problem or hard time in life.  Keep trying and looking for a new way to make things easier. 5 years down of schooling and not getting anywhere.... after this current semester we will be able to do a 2 year nursing program. We are so excited. Thank you for all the prayers and help that we have received and had sent our way the past 3 years as we have been praying and struggling with how our life was not going anywhere.

Love you all so much! WE hope that your life is what you want it to be and that you are happy.
Happy Monday!

(P.S I forgot to say that we went to the temple and prayed and fasted for an answer of where we were to go and that the answer to move to phoenix was an answer that we just needed to be open to moving away. And then when we got the offer from his brother, we prayed and fasted again and received the answer that we need to be open to moving, and willing to go to where Heavenly Father wanted us to go and that we needed to go to EA and that we needed to get out of debt first. (We were able to get out of debt because of that second job at the nursing home. We were able to pay off about $20,000 in debt in this 2 year process because of all the blessing and prayers that were sent our way) We have received so many blessing the past year that have undeniably pointed towards moving down here. So far we love it (now that our house is working and we are not living out of boxes) I will try to update once a week on living down here.. to hopefully keep a journal of this experience for us. I have info to write for this past week, but Trevor just got home from his first day of school and we are gonna go buy a grill so that it isn't so hot in our house cooking dinner every night. I will try to post some pictures too. Love you all)