poor, poor trees

Well, there you have it:

...the stuff that beckons me from my kitchen counter. And what my head has been wrapped around for the past few weeks and will continue to do so for the next five months. Apart from knowing the material cold and practically verbatim, I think the toughest part of the process has been trying to gather all the material. You see, they only provide you initially with a reading list. They'll give us a disc in a month with a lot of the info we need to learn but I need the head start... besides, I'm not one of those people who learns well off a computer screen. I like my highlighters! So I bought textbooks and photocopied a kajillion policies on a whole lotta paper. Poor poor trees. Now that I have gathered my little library of study material I feel a lot better... kind of like having a security blanket. So now when I wake up in the middle of the night with a nagging question about flammable liquids and containment, I can look it up right away in the Fire Code and go back to bed in sweet slumber. Yup... I'm sounding lime a total nerd but believe it or not, I am actually really enjoying the material and learning. My biggest challenge is finding the time. I'm doing as much as I can on shift between calls because when the kids are home of course they want my undivided attention. Speaking of which, here are my tired babes last night:

It was pretty cute how Jacob was stroking his sister's hair. I was actually surprised how patient he is with her.... she tends to really push his buttons always trying to get her way and grabbing his toys from him. I'd love to claim that he got his patience from me but nope.... I think he was just born an old, old, soul. xo