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Friday, June 08, 2007

A week of field trips

Remember back in the good ol' days when field trips were looked forward to all year long because, although still educational, they were a great break from the monotonous schedule of school?

I remember once going to a museum in Calgary and writing a report after. The assignment was to write about our favorite exhibit. I chose to write about the Roaring Boring Alice and, being the perfectionist that I am, asked my mom to edit my paper for me before I handed it in. Unfortunately, she had no idea what a Roaring Boring Alice was until I described them as "lights flashing in the northern sky," or something like that. What I had meant to write was Aurora Borealis, but I'm sure you can understand my confusion. After all, I was only 9 years old.

Well, this week, Andrew and I took a few field trips ourselves in order to break up what has become our monotonous summer schedule of school and work and work and school.

On Wednesday we headed over to the Earth Science Museum on campus to do a homework assignment for Andrew's geology class. He had to do a bunch of random stuff like identifying 10 dinosaurs (difficult since I think there are only 11 dinosaurs in the whole museum, and one of them is just the thigh bone). It was pretty fun to go back to the museum. I don't think I've been there since I was really, really young when we would come and visit campus and reminisce about the times mom went to school here. If my memory serves me correctly, they have improved the museum quite a bit, although it still isn't that terrific. Once they finish going through the 100 tons of bones they have hidden underneath the stadium I think the museum will be pretty cool.

Today we took another field trip. This one, although more spur of the moment, certainly was educational. We were headed home from Macey's and because they are doing construction all around Macey's we couldn't turn left anywhere and ended up going a little farther out of our way to get home than we ordinarily would have. We drove right up to our doctor's office, which happens to be in the same complex as the Orem Community Hospital, which happens to be where we are planning on having our baby.

Now that we have a month and a half until our due date, we have been getting a little bit anxious about the whole process of having a baby. After all, neither one of us has done anything like this before, unless you count acting as midwife to my cat in which case I have helped deliver 12 little babies, including cutting the cord and wiping the face off for the last little runt to pop out.

Anyway, no one that we've talked to has been very helpful. The insurance guys, the ladies at the front desk, the doctor...no one could answer our questions in a way that we felt actually answered our questions. The insurance guys we simply can't seem to communicate with. The doctor directed us to the ladies at the front desk and the ladies at the front desk directed us to the hospital, so today we finally went over there to ask our questions.

We walked in the front doors and walked around in small circles in the hallway looking very lost and discussing where we should direct our questions. A nice nurse walked by and asked us if we needed help. Obviously we did--we were walking around in circles, after all. She was very helpful and walked us around trying to find the answer to our question and didn't leave us on our own until she had put us in the hands of someone who could help us.

Well, that person really did help us. Now we know which door to come to when we think I'm in labor. We know what the rooms are like. We know the approximate cost. We understand our insurance better (Orem Community Hospital is a partner with our insurance company so this lady knew a ton more than we did). We got all pre-registered and paid our down payment on the hospital fee. We even found out how to register for a prenatal class when we were wondering around the hospital with the first nurse.

We came out of there feeling so much more comfortable with everything that is going to happen in the next 2 months. We know how many bills we'll have to pay (four), we know what our insurance will cover, we understand what we've paid to meet our deductible, and we're very glad that we know which door to go in while I'm in labor so that we don't have to wonder around the hallways in small circles looking lost for as long as we did today.

I feel so much smarter this week I think we should plan a field trip or two every week!

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