Monday, September 20, 2010

Give me a Break!

     After 6 long and hard weeks of Block 1, Mitch finally got to rest from studying for about 4 days. It was a well deserved break. After 7 hours of testing which included identifying which muscle was which, which nerve innervates which muscle, and actually, I don't know what else. I'm not the one in medical school. Lucky me! Sure I help Mitch study and all that, but I don't learn a thing. I'm not saying I'm not a supportive wife, but here's how our study sessions usually go. Mitch: "Hey Kels. Want to come quiz me on something?" Me: "Sure. What is it on?" Mitch: "It's on the essential and non essential and polar and non-polar amino acids." Me: "Ok great. Where's the answers?" Then I quiz him on the crazy nonsense words (to me at least) and make sure the answers match up. Well I guess I can't pretend I haven't learned some things. Like the fact that your skin is actually considered an organ and it is therefore the largest organ in your body and other cool facts like that. But if it has to do with amino acids, I'm out.
                                               Mitch right before he took his first big test...

Mitch after his big test! If you're wondering about the balloons, I was too. I bought the cheapest ones I could find and they said easy blow up but they lied. I seriously almost blew my eyes out trying to get those things to inflate so I just settled for making them water balloons. It made for a fun water fight after anyway.
I made some limeade pie for a treat for Mitch because he loves key-lime pie. It turned out really yummy, even if it's not much to look at. (My mom would have made this pie look 100 times better.)

     Mitch's last test was on Wednesday so we planned to go to Galveston on Thursday but then that morning, the private school called me in to sub and obviously, I didn't want to turn down a job. I subbed in kindergarten which was very fun. I had forgotten how hard it was to remember how to form a p, or what sound the o made. It was fun to see those little hands try and spell as they tried to sound out big words like computer.

So the next day, we packed up some lunches (we're on a tight budget and eating out doesn't really fit it anywhere...I don't know why but I love budgeting by the way) and headed down to the beach in Galveston. On our way down there, we hit a pretty good rainstorm and from the looks of the dark sky, a hurricane could have been rolling in for all we knew. We just kept driving though, and eventually we made it to the beach! It was so much fun to see the ocean waves and jump in the amazingly warm water. We only stayed for a couple hours though because after a while, we got enough salt water in our throats to last us a few months, and the storm was getting worse so we ate our lunch and packed up.

For some reason, we always have bad luck with weather. Our trip to Oregon in May was like this only worse for the whole week we were there. We just try to ignore the weather and do everything that we had planned to do.

Another fun thing we did over the break was go to the BYU women's soccer game. Someone is our ward let us know they were coming to play Rice and offered us tickets. We decided that it would be fun to go and cheer on our Cougs. The Rice soccer stadium was really pretty with the med center in the background all lit up at night. I can honestly say that this was one of the first nights that Mitch and I felt like we were just comfortable outside instead of blazing hot. I hope Houston starts to cool down because I am missing the fall that I know in Utah. There were quite a few Cougar fans there, mostly from our ward.

 The Cougs did win 1-0!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Visitors!!

We had some visitors last week, Dean and Ted, who came to interview with Baylor. I knew the boys from BYU and my good friend Sara is best friends with them. She told me they were coming to interview here so we got it all figured out so they could come stay with us. We showed them a little bit of Houston and we got to have some visitors!
                                  Dean and Ted all ready for their first medical school interview...
We got to talk to Sara who is in D.C. at George Washington on face time. (You can see her little excited face on the phone) I miss Sara so much! We both gave each other tours of our new places and just got caught up. She was wishing the boys good luck on their interviews.
 
Dean and Ted were so nice and took us out to dinner for letting them stay with us. We were just glad to have visitors. We went to Good Company, a great bbq place in Houston. It is a fun outdoor place and it just feels like Texas.

The next visitors we had were the Maxwells, Mitch's cousins, for the opening BYU football game! We had hamburgers and hot dogs and cheered the Cougs on to victory against Washington.

Bradley and Emmi were so cute. Bradley kept posing for pictures with his little arm around his sister. What a great way to open the football season! Go Cougs!

Monday, September 6, 2010

Home

Here are some pictures of our home sweet home so you can get an idea of where we live.

Now and Then

It seems like so much has happened this past year. I am amazed at how fast time flies. Mitch and I celebrated our one year anniversary on July 22- the day we drove into Houston with a big moving truck full of everything we own. Is there a better way to celebrate an anniversary? I don't think there is.

 There have been a lot of changes in our lives over the past year, and as hard as change is, it always brings new adventures, experiences, friends, and hopefully, growth. Here are some of the changes that we have experienced so far...

                                                                               Then...
    

  The house we lived in for the first year of our marriage in Springville.

The big backyard that we irrigated every couple of weeks. So many fun memories. One time we were both walking in our rubber boots to turn the water down to the next house after we finished irrigating and a neighbor stopped us and asked, "what's with the rubber boots?"
 
                          This was the day we drove away and started our long road to Houston.   

Now...


Our condo in Houston. Sometimes when I'm walking around our complex, I feel like I'm in the rain forest because there's some crazy sounding birds, annoying insects, lizards running all over the place, and beautiful green  trees and bushes. I was not expecting palm trees in Texas. 
     
Then...        




                                                      Our old swimming pool...pretty nice

                                                                         Now...

Our new swimming pool...a small step up. 

Then...



The beautiful mountains in Utah. We miss them for more than just their beauty. I don't know which way is East here!

Now...



The flat lands of Texas. It stretches on forever! This isn't how Houston looks like by the way. Houston is much greener, but still flat and no mountains.This was about 12 hours out of Houston around El Paso.You could drive all day and still not be out of Texas. I'm not saying I'm jumping on the 'everything's bigger and better in Texas' band wagon, I'm just saying, Texas is huge!

Then...
Now...


Those were some tough changes. Handing over our Utah citizenship and paying our dues to get licensed in Texas.

We've seen that change is hard but it's wonderful too. At first, you don't want the changes to come because life is comfortable and good the way it is. But then you know that you have to move forward and see what else life has to offer and have faith that it will always get better!