Dallin graduated from medical school 2 weeks ago but we have been soooooo busy getting ready to move across the country for residency and helping the kids finish the school year! It has been crazy. If you want to see us before we go… you can keep us company while we move or clean the house. 😆 We wish we had more time to visit all of you individually but we’re taking off after Sunday. We won’t be visiting Utah for at least a year or more. Come say goodbye or visit us in Indiana! 👋
Dear Portland, you were a big surprise to me. I’ve never been to a city like you. The pregnancy exhibit at the OMSI kinda freaked me out. 🧐 We tried eating at Voodoo Donuts and Pok Pok because everyone told us to. They were literally a hole in the wall and one time at those places was enough for me. However, Petunia’s Pies & Pastries was fabulous! Powell’s City of Books was a fun place to get lost. The tram was cool and I could see Mt. St. Helen. The best attraction was Multnomah Falls. Even in January Dallin convinced me to hike to the top with little Jakey in our arms. At the end of our trip, you really got us confused when we couldn’t pump our own gas. Well, let’s just say, Portland, you have succeeded to be the weirdest place I have ever been to. Sincerely, May Bo
#portland #thoughts #multnomahfalls #multnomah #keepportlandweird #photography
I am pretending to only have 1 child today while the older kids are at their cousin’s house and daddy is at his interview. Time goes by a lot slower with just 1 kid because he needs to be entertained all the time. I have gotten a lot of “Is this your first?” 😂 and “He is so cute!” Jakey doesn’t get this much attention when all his siblings are around. I usually just get “Wow, your hands are full!” or “Are these all yours?” 😂 I wonder what people would say if I told them he’s the 4th child?!
#waitingfordad #jakey #lovehim #portland #oregon
Hi Everyone!
This is a little belated… OK may be it is very belated but we have been relaxing and enjoying our time at home for Christmas and New Year. We were just trying to catch up on life and sleep. We have been traveling a lot since October for Dallin’s residency interviews. We decided to home school our kids for three months as we traveled coast-to-coast. Dallin is in his fourth year of medical school which means he is entering the “National Resident Matching Program“. Every fourth year medical student, who decides to pursue a practicing career in medicine, needs to complete a minimum of three year residency. These medical students apply across the country for a residency in their desired specialty. Some people interview at only a few programs while others interview at twenty five programs or more! It really depends on the specialty they choose. Dallin decided to interview at twelve pediatric residency programs. About half of the programs he applied to have a special Physician-Scientist track for MD/PhD’s. Dallin has currently finished 9 out of the 12 interviews. After the remaining interviews, we will complete our match list and submit it. The programs also rank all their applicants. March 15, 2019 is “Match Day” when graduating medical students nationwide will open their match letter to find out where they go for residency. It is a fun and stressful time filled with uncertainty and much excitement. We are so grateful for all the family and friends who have helped us these last few months! We are humbled by everyone who has message us, taken us in, helped us when we lost our luggage (… Don’t worry we eventually got it back!), given us advice, babysat the kids on the road, filled our callings at church, fed us, housed us, and kept us going. We have traveled approximately 14,700 miles by plane and roads. We couldn’t have made it this far without you guys! Thanks so much!
Love,
The Hubbards
Dallin, May Bo, Micah (7), Quentin (5), Emily (3), and Jakey (1)
PS – 2018 family video is still in the making!
Here’s our past years Christmas Cards:
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Sorry for the late Christmas Card and family update. As you can see it’s been a little busy around here with a new little one.
Dallin: He is in his third year of medical school (post-PhD). He has rotated through internal medicine, surgery, neurology, occupational medicine, rheumatology and psychiatry. He is having fun working on his side business and research project. This year he was called to be the primary chorister at church leading the children’s choir. How he finds time to do everything?…. I don’t know! 🙂
May Bo: I have been busy running kids to school and teaching them at home. There is lots and lots of laundry now with 4 kids. The summer was really busy with soccer and swimming lessons. This year consisted a lot of doctor visits which took up a lot of my free time and it did not allow me to take as many pictures as I’m used to. The nice part of going to the doctors is that I got to run into Dallin at the hospital!
Micah: He discovered his passion for chess this year. He learned the game really fast through an online website called Chess Kid. We spend our weekends at chess tournaments and we are having a great time. Micah loves to read. He spends a lot of time reading and writing books. In August, he started Kindergarten but after 5 weeks we decided to advance him to first grade. Micah loves first grade!
Quentin: He is learning to read and is doing really well. He is on lesson 60 in the book called “Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons.” Quentin’s strength is showing love to everyone including his brothers and sister. He loves to snuggle and play with legos. He really enjoyed swimming lessons this summer!
Emily: She loves being an older sister. She is girly as girls get. She loves purses, shoes, nail polish, jewelry, shopping carts, babies and pretty things. She is dying to get potty trained but we’re not quite ready for that yet. 😂
Jacob: We call him Jake, Jakey or JJ. He is just barely learning to smile. We love him so much and we are so excited he joined our family. We can already tell he loves music!
Enjoy this video we make of our little Jake! We love you all and love all the cards/updates we get from you.
Here’s our past years Christmas Cards:
We had a cute professional Santa come to our Christmas party so I had to take advantage of the moment to take some cute pictures of my kids!
Santa with the littlest one:
Micah was telling Santa he wanted a robot!
Quentin says he wants a Star Wars lego set.
Emily didn’t care for Santa at all! She insisted on wearing her favorite Halloween skirt. She was born in October so I guess she must like Halloween more than Christmas?
Here are some cute Thanksgiving onsies I found at the thrift store. They are a little bit too bit but I had to put them on at least once before Thanksgiving was over! Happy Thanksgiving!!
No More Milk Pass Me the Leftovers!
Everyone is Thankful for Me!
Daddy’s Little Drumstick
Sometimes we call our little Emily “Boo Boo” so I had to find her a Boo costume from Monster’s inc. It was super easy!
I’ve had rashes ever since I was born!
First, I got diagnose with eczema.
Then, later on I got diagnose with psoriasis.
Then, again the dermatologist said it was eczema not psoriasis… hmm..
I still have a hard time telling the difference between the two disease. From what I understand eczema is not an allergy but can flare up when you’re around allergens. Psoriasis is an autoimmune disorder. Psoriasis is where skin cells grows really fast! Normal skin cells takes about 28 days to grow but people with psoriasis their skin cells can grow in as fast as 3 days!
I’ve had it all… rashes on my joints, hands, scalp, feet, ankles, back, face, ect. My mom worked hard putting topicals on me when I was little. I have never been good at doing it by myself. I would put it off and then get really bad rashes. It was really embarrassing!!! Sometimes it was terrible dry skin which crack really easy! Other times it was plaques of hard flaky skin… I’ve even had blisters and bumps. Most common it was just red itchy round spots of skin. Oh boy… it was itchy! Sometimes I would be up all night itching.
I realized throughout my life that I had seasonal eczema. My rashes would clear up when it was summer and then come back in the winter. When I lived in Ireland, I had rashes the whole time there because it rained so much and there was no sun! I went to the dermatologist to ask him why?! He told me sun helps eczema and psoriasis. He prescribed me 15 mins of direct sunlight a day on my rashes… ya kinda hard in mid-winter Utah… There are UV treatments I can do at a hospital but it’s just sitting under a UV light so I never wanted to pay for that. LOL. During the summer I would try to get sun and my rashes were significantly better. I usually was almost cured by the end of the summer!
Why direct sunlight works is a little unknown but UV light is a natural way to suppress your immune system. So for people with overactive immune systems like mine, it is good to have sunlight to tone down my immune system.
The other time in my life when my eczema and psoriasis went completely in remission is when I was taking a daily biologic injection called Kineret. The Rheumatologist was using it to treat my Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was on the drug for over 6 months. During that time, I was completely cured of my eczema and psoriasis. I was even cured for another 6 months after getting off the medication but the rash came back. Kineret is also another immune suppressant which is probably why my rashes went away.
Now miraculously for the first time in my entire life… I’m in remission for my eczema and psoriasis without any medications or sun!!!! Glory to God for being so merciful. I honestly don’t know the exact reason why I’m in remission right now. The only thing I can say is that I’ve been eating gluten free for almost 3 years now. My rashes started to go away after 6 months of being on a very strict gluten free diet. It hasn’t come back… yet! It’s even winter time right now where I don’t get any sun. I do, however, get a little itchy when I’m not careful and eat gluten contaminated foods but I’m no where near as itchy as I use to be!! I don’t know if my diet changed has put my rashes in remission or if it’s just a coincidence. I almost take it for granted because I’ve had these rashes all my life. Now I have almost forgotten what an annoyance it was to have it! I hope it never comes back.
Another thing I changed in my diet is eating dairy free… but I don’t think that was what was causing my rashes… it was just causing me stomach pain. Well… this is a post for another day!
Do you have eczema or psoriasis or another rash? If so, what helps you?
I couldn’t decide what words to use for this title. I wanted to say “Lazy Mom Preschool” or “Preschool for Dummies”… but I don’t want to call Moms lazy or dummies! I just mean this is an easy way to do preschool with very little cost and prep work. Easy and simple is my way of doing things now-a-days. With cleaning the home, teaching the kids, making dinner, church responsibilities and my hobbies… I need to maximize my time by doing things very simple and efficient.
Here are the general learning principles I follow:
These are the subjects I try to do everyday:
The only exception is that my husband is in charge of a science lesson once a week during family night. I try to add music or piano to the daily list… but I seem to never be able to get to that everyday… yet! My kids also to do crafts and art on their own so I don’t mandate that either.
I’ve seen people make weekly calendars… Monday is Math. Tuesday is Reading. Wednesday is Science… ect. The reason why I think this isn’t the most efficient way to do preschool is because preschool aged kids learn by repetition.
God tells us to read our scriptures and pray everyday. Why? It’s so we can learn his words, remember them and master them! Doing something everyday will help anyone master any skills they want to learn! I know from experience that reading my scriptures everyday has made me a better reader as well as a better person. Doing photography everyday has helped me get better at photography. So if I want my kids to get good at something… I’m going to have to help them practice it everyday.
So doing every subject everyday has helped my kids learn these various subjects really well. The repetition really works and they are mastering skills like using scissors and handwriting. We do however take a break on Sunday to go to church and do Sunday activities.
Now… you may think… “Well you must spend an awful amount of time doing this everyday!” My oldest child is 5 years old. We spend 30-45 minutes max on all the subjects. My second child is 3 years old and we spend 15 to 25 minutes. My youngest is 1 years old and we spend about 5 to 10 minutes on it! So for me I spend about 1 to 1.5 hours total in focused learning sessions with my kids.
The key is to be consistent and making the time worth it! I try to get rid of distractions and put my phone away and turn off the computer. These precious minutes are spent in one-on-one focused learning sessions. I make the time efficient by gauging their interest on the subjects. If they are bored then I changed it up. If they are wanting more I usually give them more but I eventually make them stop and say… “Sorry you have to wait to have more fun tomorrow!” “But mom! I LOVE Math… please let me do more math!” In order to be consistent, I have to make teaching a priority in my life. I try to teach even if the house is messy or my projects are not done.
Lastly, I test their knowledge. I am always asking them questions to make sure they have master the concepts I’m teaching them. I test them in all the subjects including gospel learning, reading comprehension and math.
So here is an example of what I do every time. I try to consistently do the same routine every time. I also teach every subject every time. I make things simple by just using a notebook and pencil. Everyday I just make a new page or two in the notebook. It’s really nice to use one notebook so I can see how they progress over days, weeks and months.
A preschool daily learning routine:
Once my child is ready to write on their own then I add these into the curriculum.
Adjusting the way I teach for each child has been a fun challenge. My first son likes to do book work while my second son likes to play games especially computer games. No matter what the content is… the principles I follow are the same:
This all didn’t come naturally. I had to learn from my other mom friends! I also had to learn from trial and error. I get criticism sometimes… “Your kids are young… they should just play!” Yes it’s true… there’s lots of learning when they are playing. After I do the focused learning session with my kids… they get so sick of me sometimes that they run away and play the rest of the day. All I have to do after is referee and resolve conflicts with sharing toys… lol! Oh… and I guess I feed them too! So my kids do play hard and work hard.
Of course… I’m not perfect at this routine… we have good days and bad days! But I try really hard to be consistent. Over time I see that the routine is working. The repetition has really given my kids a foundation of skills and knowledge they need for future learning.
I have found great joy in teaching my children the basics and while I understand that this method may not work for all moms/kids. I would love to hear what works for you!
Hubbard's Cupboard 