Happy Birthday to Me!

December 31st is a very good day to have a birthday, everyone in the world has a party on my birthday!  And Happy Birthday to my new niece, Annie, she was born on the 27th!

Christmas in review

All in all, we had a pretty good Christmas. We had fun spending time with the Serafines, as well as all of the Bradshaws. Santa treated us pretty well, too.

What a day

Have you ever had one of those days where one unexpected, somewhat stressful thing happens and the whole day is shot? Today is one of those days. In my first hour, I have a student that has frequent seizures. I've always lived in fear that he'd have a seizure in my class. Well, today was the day. We were playing a review game, and I looked at him and he was twitching. Now, this student is Samoan, plays football, and is not little. Immediately I had to get him out of the desk and onto the floor. I found myself with superhuman strength (not really) and moved the desk, and pulled the student to the floor. He started seizing pretty bad, and I had one of my students (bless her heart) call the office. Pretty soon we had the school nurse, the head secretary, the student's sister, the paramedics, and the fire department in my classroom. Needless to say, my first hour didn't do much today. In high school, I took a first responder course and learned a bunch (thanks Miss King) of first aid stuff. I also worked as a nurse aid (which stunk) so I knew what to do. Whew. What a day.

Gingerbread Houses!

It's been a while since I've posted anything; we haven't had much going on and haven't had much time to sit and put things online. I'll try to catch up on some of the things we've done. This last Monday, we got together with the Sommerfeldts and made gingerbread houses. I'd never made real gingerbread before by myself, and that was an adventure. When the recipe says 6 1/2 cups of cake flour, you probably don't really need that much real flour. Be careful. It makes your KitchenAid make funny noises.

This is my best friend, Claire. She didn't make a gingerbread house, but did sample all of the candy to make sure it was safe to eat. : )

Laurel's house was much more artistic than ours.

See our little Santas on top? They even have sleighs. The Sommerfeldts have reindeer. We aren't as cool so we just copied their Santa and Laurel made us a sleigh. Ours is the one on the left.

Stinkin' Jazz

A few weeks ago we got to go to a Jazz game courtesy of one of Matt's patients. It was my first Jazz game, and not suprisingly, the Jazz lost at the last second to the Bulls.

Thanks, Matt

I just wanted to do one quick post and publicly tell the best husband in the world thanks. Thanks, Matt, for being the best person in the world, for being extreemly supportive, for being the one who always knows what's best, and who always knows what to say at just the right time. I appreciate your kindness and love for me even on the hard days. I love you and am so grateful that I was lucky enough to be your girl. Thanks!

They lost his luggage!

At this very moment, Matt is in Arizona heading to his interview at Midwestern. This is the school that we want to get into. Last night, Matt calls me and says, "I'm here at the airport, but I can't find my luggage." The airport didn't put his luggage on the plane!!!!!!! So, Matt doesn't have his suit, his shoes, his tie, his shirt, his razor, his toothbrush, or anything else you would absolutely want to have the day you go to interview. He borrowed some slacks, a shirt and a blazer from his uncle Logan. Meanwhile, I am freaking out. What is he going to do? If I were the one interviewing, I would have panicked and gone to WalMart in search of the things I lost. Matt, on the other hand, won't let this kind of thing worry him. Good thing it's him and not me.

Apples!

Earlier this month, our ward did an applesauce canning activity where we could buy quarts of apple sauce for $1.25. Thinking this was a deal-of-a-lifetime, I bought 12 quarts. The week after, I got a bunch of apples from Matt's grandma and grandpa Bradshaw (and thank you Lori for getting them to us!). There was no way Matt and I could eat so many apples and not have some dire consequences, so I decided to can them. So with my mom's recipe, and Matt's mom's canner, I began the chore of canning the apples. I ended up with 14 quarts of apple pie filling, 6 pints of apples, plus the 6 other jars of apple pie filling my mom gave me last month. Now, we have no where to put our 40 jars of apples. I don't know what I was thinking, but if the stores stop selling apples, we'll be okay.

Matt has been accepted to Medical School!

We've been accepted to AT Still in Kirksville, Missouri! Well, Matt has. We aren't sure if that's where we'll be going since Matt still has 3 more interviews to go in the next few weeks.

The 5K

The morning of the race, it was 30 degrees. Burr. Then, during the race, the weather didn't feel all that bad. It was cool and refreshing. But when the race was done, I got cold again. Then about an hour after the race, it snowed and snowed and got colder and colder.

We were freezing, if you can't tell. The wind always blows in Idaho Falls, so it didn't help our cause.
Hannah is finishing the race here. She walked the first lap, and ran the second, and somehow beat Nicole, who ran both laps. We think Hannah may have cut some corners. : )

My mom beat all of us. Nice job, mom!

Lawrence, Kansas and Kirksville, Missouri

This last week, Matt had a med school interview in Missouri. Matt's older brother and his family live in Lawrence, Kansas, so we got to stay with them for a few days. It was a lot of fun to see the world outside of Utah and remind ourselves that it really does exist.

First of all, come on Utah. Seriously? The gas is 2.49 in Missouri and falling. Let's get with the program here.

This was the tiny plane we flew on. I had to take a picture because I've never been on a plane that was small enough that you had to walk out on the tarmac to board. When we came home, they didn't even put that nice little ramp up. We walked down those little stairs, and I thought to myself, "No wonder the Presidents of the United States have fallen down these steps before. They're tricky."We were welcomed with a lovely sign...

Went to the pumpkin patch,

went on a slide,

and attended "A Night in the Phog"
where we saw Bill Self,
the old basketball court,

the trophy from the Orange Bowl,

and the trophy.

We also got to sample some of the famous Kansas City Bar-B-Que. Needless to say, Kansas City, Kansas is kind of scary. Kansas City, Missouri, from what I hear, is better. We got to see a lovely tour of the slums of Kansas City because of the police officers who kept blocking off the streets we needed to be on for what I'm sure was a sudden slew of simultaneous gang related drive-by-shootings. Or something like that. Whatever it was, we were sure that if we hung around any longer, we'd wind up on an episode of COPS.
I had no idea, but Missouri was beautiful. We didn't take many pictures on interview day, because we were inside the whole day. This is the sunrise coming into Missouri, though. The interview went well though, and we expect to hear from the school late this week.

So you think you can dance?

On Tuesday, So you think you can dance was in Salt Lake on tour. My mom, my sisters, and I went--and it was AMAZING! If you think the dances are good on TV, you should see them live. It was the absolute best dance concert I've ever been too. Growing up dancing, it's one of my passions. It was fun to watch it with my sisters who are also big dancers and who understand the emotion and skill that goes into dance. So now I'm officially the biggest Mia Michaels fan--she has choreographed some of the most amazing dances. They were absolutely brilliant. I could go on and on about how great it was, but I'll spare you the boredom. This concert though, was SO LOUD. The music was almost deafening. My ear drums still hurt. But despite the sound, it was the best, the best, the best. Here are some pictures I took, and some videos that I "borrowed" from youtube. Some of them are not very good because I couldn't figure out how to get this to upload the higher quality versions. I just wanted you to see some of the Mia Michaels pieces that I thought were brilliant. I put them my order of favorites:

This one wasn't choreographed by Mia Michaels, but I still like it. The bottom two are.

The Finished Project

Our bench is now finished! Didn't Matt do a good job? Notice how the legs of the bench are tapered just like the legs of the chair and table? Special thanks go out to Uncle Glen and Aunt Paula, Glen's workshop, Paula's yummy bread, and the garden vegitables they gave us!

Riker for the Touchdown

One of Matt's fastest players is Riker, and here he is going for a touchdown.

New Bench

Matthew is currently building a bench for our table. Once it's finished, we will be able to have more people sit with us. We will stain it espresso color to match.

Coach Matt

This fall, Matt has a team of 8 and 9 year old flag football players. So far, they are doing quite well. Here are some pictures, video to come soon...

Utah State Fair

Since we couldn't go to the Idaho State Fair, we decided to go the Utah State Fair instead. Last year, at the Idaho Fair, Matt tried to win a basketball game with over-inflated basketballs and undersized rims, but to no avail. This year, Matt wanted to redeem himself. (Sorry for the bad picture quality, our camera resolution is set too high.)

This is what he won...

This is what I got. Much better.

Addendum...

Earlier this summer we went to Disneyland with my whole extended family to celebrate my Grandma and Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary. Well, I didn't have any pictures of my grandparents until now, so here they are! Happy anniversary, we love you!