Another perspective

Adam, I found your post very interesting. Pioneer Day here is not a day off, so it doesn't feel so much like a holiday. I associate it with firesides and BYUTV specials about pioneers as well as youth treks. I think that is just the difference between Utah's version of celebrating Pioneer Day and the "other" Mormons who don't get the day off. On Sunday, sacrament meeting had a pioneer theme in honor of Pioneer Day.

I also found your reaction to a day off in the middle of the week interesting. It was the opposite of my reaction when I worked in an office. Instead of a feeling of one long week it always felt like to really short weeks. I'm sure it wouldn't feel like that if it happened all the time, though. And my days off were national holidays, so everyone had them off. Right now I'm enjoying setting my own schedule for work.

I also was quite interested in a few other things you said. Stephen is always working on the design for our dream home. He often comes to me with a new design or a change to a previous version asking for my input. We really like working on our dream home. Stephen has also worked with that drafting program from Google and while he likes the free aspect, it is difficult to work with. He also likes all the downloads of model on the internet with the program and that it is transferable to CAD.

We also often look at land for sale. Sigh. It is a dream for us right now, too, but that doesn't mean we can't look! It's fun to try to find the "perfect" piece of land, which includes enough land for us to grow our own food (sound familiar?), raise some animals, and have some water rights on our property. Also, not having a house already build on it would be great. Then we can have a clean slate to build our house! Solar and wind power are also something in our "dream plan".

Our 72 hour kit could use some work, but I have been working on our food storage. Thanks for the interesting post! It always amazes me how much the "brothers" have in common even though they are all very different.

Sarah

Made-up Holidays

In Utah they have a made-up holiday called Pioneer Day. They celebrate the pioneers' journey to the West by doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with their journey to the West. This must be an American tradition.

What this means for me is that I got to take a day off on Thursday. We went to my sister-in-law's house and had a nice meal and ate outside. It threw my schedule off because it felt like a Saturday and then only a day later I had another day off and so this week has felt longer than most.

I've been a little anxious about the results of the IUI but not too bad. There's nothing to do but wait. We'll be sure to let all of you know the results as soon as possible. It will probably be another week or maybe longer. So don't hold your breath.

I've been pretty busy at work but our project seems to be on schedule and I am relieved. I've been working on putting together a 72-hour kit for emergencies and drafting up our dream home. I found some free drafting software published by Google but it's pretty complicated so don't look for any drafts too soon. I have also been looking at how much land costs (not that I can afford it but it's fun to dream). I want to grow my own food some day so we have to start looking now ;).

Laura has been enjoying her time off from work. She's mostly been working out, reading, working on the Primary presentation, and cleaning our house. She's a good worker.

Well, here's to made up holidays and extra days off.

New callings

The day that Stephen's and my records were read into the ward we were pulled aside by one of the Bishopric members after church for our first callings in the ward. We have been called as the Junior Nursery Leaders! We are in charge of the nursery for children ages 18 months to 2 years. Children who are turning 3 during the year are in Senior Nursery. We had our first Sunday in Nursery yesterday and all went well. We had four little girls who all played well and were very quite, partly because 2 of them are very shy. We actually have a lesson manual to prepare short (5 minutes max) lessons for them each week and the Primary Chorister comes in for about 5 minutes of "singing time" with the kids. As with most things involving children, the hardest part is going to be the adults. We had several people coming to check and make sure we were doing o.k. on our first Sunday and they were louder than the kids. But hopefully that will taper off as the weeks go by. We are happy in our new callings! The challenge is going to be getting to know people in the ward while serving in Nursery.

Infertility update!

Hey all! So, some relatively good news on the infertility front. I don't know if you guys knew this, or if you remember, but I had to take some pills and then also give myself a shot for three days. Anyway, the last shot was Tuesday and then yesterday I had to go see the doctor for an internal ultrasound. They look at the ovaries to see how many follicles (future eggs) I have been developing and if they are big enough to go forward with the insemination. Well, the good news is, I have three big follicles (you want at least two) and they are big enough to go forward. Yay! To stimulate all three follicles to burst, become eggs, and actually go down the tubes (ovulation) I had to give myself another shot last night of a different medicine. So I should be ovulating by tomorrow, which is when we go in for the insemination.

Adam goes in first to give his contribution to the baby making process. They give the "guys" a bath and look at them to make sure they keep only the best and brightest - or in other words, the best formed and fastest. After they do that, they take those guys, put them in a tube, and I become the happy recipient of the contents of the tube. It's actually a pretty quick process, all in all.

So, we should know by about two weeks from tomorrow (around the beginning of August or so) whether we are pregnant or not. All things considered, I actually feel pretty calm about everything. We'll keep you updated with everything that happens!

Baby no name...

Ok, so I finally got on here! Great pics Adam, thank you guys!

Things are staying pretty busy around here. Josh has a pretty good cold going, hopped up on DayQuil and Vitamin C. Bank of America has officially taken over so he is a busy boy at work. He has also taken on a new ROC (Regional Operating Center) in addition to his Chicago and Cinncinnati locations. The new one is a government loan based ROC and is there in Plano where he works. This is good news for us and even better that he doesn't have another city to travel to.

We still have NO NAME FOR THIS BABY! Please help! Some ideas: Chloe, Phoebe, Adalaide (sp?) Anabelle, Claire, Evelyn (Eve), Katherine (Kate, Katy)..there is a pretty long list of names we like, but none that we are in love with...I have about 76 days to go, yes, 76 days! That is a VERY, VERY long time! I don't know how I am going to make it that long, but I am counting down already!

Gillian is doing well, we are babysitting my girlfriends kids a couple days a week for the next 3 weeks, so she is loving having friends to play with. I am thinking about getting her hair trimmed. Just trimmed though, I just love it long and am scared to cut it. Last time we went in for a trim though (it's been almost 2 years ago I think!) the lady said, "ok, so are we taking about 2 inches off or so?" And I just couldn't stand that so she barely trimmed it, pretty ridiculous. I'll have to do better this time!

Ok, well this is already longer than I had planned, so take care everyone, we love you guys!

Ouch, my toe!

Just kidding. Adam said to post anything, even if it was just a stubbed toe. Both Stephen's and my toes are fine. I just wanted to post something. As soon as anything happens here, I'll be sure to post again. :)

Chiggers

So, poor Adam has been suffering with his recent episode with chiggers. I was asking him all sorts of questions about them since we don't really have them out in California - at least, not that I know of. I did some research online, and I found out some interesting stuff that I thought you all might like to know, especially should you have any future encounters with them!

First, chiggers actually do not burrow into your skin. Chiggers that attach to humans are actually in the larval stage and bite you. They then inject their saliva into your skin and it has these powerful digestive agents that basically dissolve your skin cells. They then drink your liquified skin. Gross huh? What makes it itch isn't anything from the bug itself at all - it's your own body's immune system reaction. It hardens all the cells around the saliva injection site (which is why the bites feel kinda hard if you press on them) so that the saliva doesn't liquify anymore of your body. Basically, it's an allergic reaction.

So putting on nail polish to "suffocate" the chigger? Totally bogus - the only thing it might do it help you not scratch the bite. The longest a chigger will stay on is about 4 days - once it is filled up it drops off and ends its larval stage. The best thing you can do to get rid of the actual chigger is to take a bath as soon as you can. Once they bite you though, you'll have the allergic reaction no matter what. The only thing you can do is try to relieve the itching by using creams or other anti-itch medicines.

Pretty much everything I read said the same thing (even Wikipedia, so you know it's the gospel truth), but there was one article that was very well written, if you're interested in reading it: (Chiggers!)

I hope you found this interesting - I sure did!

Pictures

I have uploaded a bunch of our pictures to a Picasa Web Album. Just click the link and it will take you to the photos. Feel free to look at some of the other pictures while you're there.

Thanks!

Hi all! I hope we can get into writing on this blog, I think it will be really fun.

Mainly I just wanted to say thanks to everyone. Adam and I had such a great time visiting, and everyone was so generous to us. Thank you for feeding us, letting us stay with you, driving us around everywhere, and entertaining us. We know it was a lot of work and we appreciate it. We're especially grateful to all of you for your thoughtfulness and sensitivity to the infertility stuff we have going on - it really helps to know that you support us.

We've made it back to Utah safely. The moisture is already leaving my body, and I miss Texas! Back to business as usual now, I guess!!

Welcome

Welcome to the Guillermo Anguiano Family Blog. This is an Anguiano Family experiment to see if we can expand and improve our communications. Now that we have basically two camps (Texas and Utah) and we may continue to move around the country I think it will be interesting to see how we do.

The idea here is for us to make posts about how we're doing. If we wait until something magical happens to make a post then we probably won't have too much up here. So if you stub your toe write about it. If you found your dream house, write about it (even if you're not going to move in right away). We just want every one to share and get in the habit of talking about our lives.

We love you all so much and hope that this will be a success.