2009 September: Hope

This month of September has been fun I went to the nickel arcade with Rob and played some old games it was fun.

Michelle has started going to a cake decorating class and she is getting better, she will pass me up here in a few more classes, then I will have to ask here how to do stuff. She really likes it.

Scott is back in pre-school and is doing great and loving it, Kyle is learning from his older brother and is a smart little guy.

In school we are just getting ready to start cleaning more difficult patients and it is so fun getting off a big piece of calculus (tarter) from a people teeth, but hey that's just me.

It is just same old same old other than that.
The Hopes

2009 September: Bates

Orianna has been very frustrated this month. She has been trying to talk a lot, but she really only knows a few words, and she gets really mad that we don't understand what she is saying. But, hopefully this will lead to her being able to talk faster- so we will just have a short period of frustration rather than a long period of ambiguous toddler-speak.
She has a small tricycle that she likes to ride around the house, and when she isn't on that she is either jogging (not quite running yet) or dancing. Her *favorite* past time is to dance, especially if she can try to mimic a dancer on TV. Luckily BYU-TV shows lots of dance shows- so she is very pleased with our TV programming.

Work has been busy as ever, especially this month. Last year we started a conference for customers and prospective customers. About 60 people came. This year we did it again and 163 customers came. It was fun though. I had a pretty intense planning session with one of our prospective customers. It took about an hour for us to plan out this complex workflow that would do exactly what they needed. I was worried that they would hate it (because it's very complex), but at the end he said, "Actually- this is all pretty easy. I'm impressed." Phew! What a relief on my part :)
We are trying to wrap up this year's product by the end of November, so we are in frantic mode right now as management tries to squeeze in as many enhancements as they can before we only work on bugs/stabilization.

Well, that's about it for this month. Hopefully next month will have more (as we are leaving for Idaho today for conference weekend).
Cheers,
The Bates Family

2009 September: Robertson

Greetings Everyone,

I’m trying to think about what happened in the month of September. Let me see… Something happened I’m sure about it. Well, we did have a boy move in with us. Things seem to be going pretty well so far; I mean all that he does is eat and sleep and mess himself. Granted, I’m not a huge fan of the messing of one’s self, but I understand that it is pretty normal for someone in his condition (not to be passing judgment or anything). I’m just waiting for him to start helping out about the place. I’m told that will happen later, but first he has to at least learn how to walk – again it’s his condition. His arrival has affected everyone here. For starters Morgan for the first few days of his arrival stayed in bed constantly. She had a “spinal headache” brought on just before this boy decided to make an appearance. But, she seems to be doing much better. She is up and about, and she tells me that she is “healing well” – whatever that means.

Kyla and Daria seem to have taken to him quite well. Kyla immediately was taken in by him, but Daria resisted him for a few days. For her, he was something that needed to be studied thoroughly before she could make a judgment call on whether or not to allow him within her inner circle. I was almost expecting her to pull out a notebook whenever he hiccupped and enter in some scientific log. But, she must have come to a favorable conclusion about him, and now she wants to hold him all the time (along with Kyla). At least to this point, the two girls have refrained from playing tug-of-war with him in their attempts to hold him. Quite frankly using the new arrival as a rope is frowned upon in developed societies. I think that the girls understand this and will refrain. Although the girls have claimed him as one of their own. They have given him a name of “babybrudderjamis” or sometimes they shorten his name to “babyjamis.” Either way, whenever they say it, it produces a large grin on the faces of every adult in the room. It must be some new type of joke that is circulating out among the two-year-old set that just hasn’t made it into the university setting yet.

Speaking of… I have had to do some changing due to this arrival as well. As I started the semester, I was taking a Shakespeare on Film class, but as the semester progressed, I realized that I would need to be home a bit more than I had been (prevent any tug-of-wars and other breaches of civility – that sort of thing). Unfortunately, the professor had a very strict attendance policy that she was not going to budge from: on the second absence, the student fails the course – no questions asked. I pulled out before it was too late. In its place, I am doing an internship for the English department, studying the trends of MA English programs in the country, and I am looking at hiring trends for English majors with a Masters (mainly in the field of education). It has been a bit eye opening for me, but very good so far. I feel confident that I will be able to find a job after graduation no matter what – whether or not the job will pay any money is another question all together.

We thank everyone for your support and well wishes with the arrival of Jamis. Until next time.

Derik, Morgan, Kyla, Daria, & Babybrudderjamis

2009 September: North

Things continue to move incredibly fast out here. We’re almost done with our anatomy course. I can’t believe I’m saying that. All my friends back at ISU are just getting settled into their new routines and here I am almost finishing one of the major courses of first year medical students. We have a big test tomorrow morning, so I’m going to go to bed early tonight so I can get up early and study.

One of the nice things about medical school compared to the University, is that here I am learning real skills that have a real-world application. There have been a couple of instances where Becky has hurt a leg stepping off a curb, or jogging at the gym and I have been able to use some of the techniques that I have learned to relieve her pain. It makes me feel good to know a useful skill. In undergraduate school my useful skills included being able to discuss the role of natural selection and genetic drift in evolution, and being able to name the branches off the aorta (if anyone needs help with any of those I think I could still manage).

Today was Stake Conference for us. Our stake center is in Lexington, Virginia. It’s about an hour and a half away. Imagine driving from Pocatello to Rexburg to go to stake conference. It was good to be in the company of so many saints again. I didn’t realize I had missed being around that many members of the Church until we started singing the opening hymn and instead of a few voices spread around the chapel I heard a wall of sound. The meetings were wonderful. I left feeling uplifted and strengthened. Becky and I are living blessed, happy lives out here. We have some fantastic opportunities for service and growth.

We wish the best to all of you,

Stewart and Becky