The rest of Christmas...

Christmas in Missouri

If you are our family, and thought we were pulling the old "we aren't coming home for Christmas, but then actually come home " trick, well we are sorry! We really did stay in Missouri. Its not like we didn't want to come home, realistically, we just couldn't. So sorry if we didn't come through! We sure missed ya'll!

We still wanted to make it the best Christmas ever, so this is what we did.

We made a sweet (pun intended) gingerbread house with Jesse, Kim, Rach and Leif

We went to the ghetto mall and Avery rode the train

We watched a lot of people's pets
Bruce the fish

Kijo the dog, sorry about Avery Kijo. She just couldn't help herself.

I have to brag and say we had zero casualties

We had an amazing Christmas Eve dinner with the Johnson's, it was the first ham we ever cooked!

We opened up our traditional PJ's.
I picked out Trav's, and he picked out mine. We both randomly went to Aeropostle. Can you tell?

We wore them all night, and then for the whole next day!

We woke up to a very white Christmas... it stormed all night long!

Santa remembered that we stayed in Missouri and visited us, well mostly Avery

We watched Avery open her many presents

She loved them all and wanted to play with them all. We had to open presents in shifts. Our kid is spoiled! Thanks for all the nice gifts!

We ate cinnamon rolls and ham and cheese omelets for breakfast

We had a village monster cause havoc on the local Christmas village

We kept a Christmas tradition.
Every year we buy an ornament that represents a big event of our year. Our first year was a "just married" ornament. Our second year was a "Kansas city chiefs" ornament because we just moved. Last year was a "baby's first Christmas" ornament. This year was kind of hard because nothing really spectacular happened. When Travis saw this ornament, we had to get it because it reminded us that this year, we made our first vegetable garden... ... it was kind of an uneventful year, but sometimes that's OK!

In conclusion, we had a cozy little Christmas. We really missed a lot of people, but made the best out of the situation. We love and appreciate our good friends we have out here who also couldn't go home. They are basically our Missouri family.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2005

Days 10 and 11?

I got a really cute Christmas card from one of my BFF's, Niki. Along with the Christmas card, she sent one of those letters to update everyone of what's been going on with her family. Or so I thought it was that, but then I read it and it was this:

And then a flood of memories came running back to me of Christmas 2005. And I remembered that along with that masterpiece, we took this:

And we actually sent it out to people...

I'm glad Travis still wanted to marry me after this

I agree with you Niki, we were pretty awesome. Sometimes I miss those days!

I think I caught it?

Day 9 and 10

Usually every Christmas I have an epiphany that brings me the Christmas spirit. This year has been different. I didn't have one exact experience that invited the spirit, I think there were many little things. But I was thinking about it last night, and I have definitely caught the Christmas spirit, I just can't tell you when or how.

Maybe it was when we made Christmas wassail for all of our neighbors?

Or maybe it was the first time Avery played in snow?

Or her first face plant in the snow?

Or maybe it was all the fun Christmas parties?

Hey it could be because my mom sent me this in the mail...

Or possibly taking Avery to see Santa?

and the fun maze they had leading up to Santa?

I can't really pinpoint which experience it was, but the Christmas spirit is alive and living in our household!

Hope Ya'll have a great week!

The pooper!

Days 7 & 8...so

It feels like Avery has grown up the past couple of months. Its kind of a bitter sweet thing, but she is out of the baby stage and is a full blown toddler. We went to church today and as I was driving home I honestly felt like I had just ran a marathon today. I found myself chasing her up the podium during the service, chasing her as she was heading to the boys bathroom and chasing her as she started playing the piano during Sunday school. I cannot express how BUSY this girl is! I kind of think she might be a boy?

These are a couple of things she is up too...

She loves sticking her hands in the toilet water, and has figured out how to open the lid

Sometimes she pretends she is a thug

She has a friend named Carmyn who could be her twin sister

She likes her mama (she told me)

Anytime you turn your back on her she WILL make a mess

She is learning how to feed herself

And she loves the buff

She is money!

Oops

Day 4,5 and 6

So maybe I bit off more than I can chew with this whole blogging everyday thing. I do have an excuse though. Travis is out of town and he took the lap top. It has all of our pictures on it. He was going to post some cute pictures of Avery, but dropped the ball as well. I have this slow, nasty, old desk top computer that I have been using, but I have zero patience, so that's why there haven't been blogs for the past 3 days. I'm sure nobody is really caring too much, but I feel like I committed to do something, and I failed.

So I will do a very vane and quick entry and Trav will be back tomorrow, so I can really get the things I want in there.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit, but I love Miley Cyrus

Something about Miley Cyrus just makes me like her. I love her music, I think she has an awesome personality ( like I know her personally :)), and her style is so flavorful! I kind of wish she was my friend in real life, that kind of sounds stockerish. She just seems so much more real than a lot of the other kid stars. I'm sure she is a skank, and has no morals in real life, but "Party in the USA" has rocked my world for months, and I'm still not tired of it, so I'm just going to keep on loving her.

The hot and sweaty match

Day 3

I had some technical difficulties for this day. I couldn't upload the cutest video of Avery, so that post will have to wait. Instead, I think I will give a brief (hopefully) synopsis on how the end of medical school works. We get this question all of the time, "what are you doing after you graduate?"

For people who have lots of anxieties (me), marrying a med student will definitely flare up those emotions. I never knew graduating and finding a residency program was such a big ordeal till now. Travis will graduate in May. Yes, he will technically be a doctor, but he will only be a resident. This means, crappy pay, crappy hours and the nurses get to walk all over him. He will be a resident for 3-4 years, fortunately, every year it gets better. His pay will go up, hours will go down and those nurses become less powerful..

He is in the process of interviewing for this beloved position. I will try to explain how getting a residency works. If you have been through this situation, or already understand it please don't call me on my BS, I'm explaining it the way I understand it. He has applied to several ER residency programs, and will interview at about 5 places. So far he's done the Tuscon interview, Joplin, MO, and now he's in Eerie, PA then heading to Madison Heights, Michigan and then in January will interview in the KC.

Instead of the typical interviewing and hiring, some wackos developed the "match program." So basically, after all the interviews are said and done, Travis will rank his favorite places. The places interviewing will also rank Travis and all those other med students. In February, all of this craziness goes into effect. Its kind of like a lottery, all the rankings will be entered into a magic computer system, and if by chance, the place you ranked the highest really likes you, and has ranked you high, you will match with that program and will be together for eternity (or just the 3-4 years.)

If for some reason, you aren't on the same page with those other programs, and you don't find a match, you aren't totally screwed. You have to scramble. Every program has a required amount of residencies to fill. If for some reason students don't pick their program then they also need to find students to fill it. So there are scrambling students and scrambling programs that will eventually find each other. Hearing the word "scramble" I just imagine a student at their computer finding out that they didn't match, and then start frantically waving their arms above their head going insane searching for a place. I've heard its not that horrible to scramble.

Another common question we get is, "where do you want to live." The honest answer for me is "I don't know." We for sure won't be back in Utah for awhile. I can't decide if I want to be safe and stay in the KC or if I'm the adventurous type and just pick up and start over? Both options are appealing and not so appealing.

Anyway, not the funnest post, but hopefully you learned something. This next year is going to be insane and exciting. If you have any questions, just Wikipedia it, those geniuses know everything!

Can't wait till February!

One Hot Turkey

Day 2

We are going all the way back to Thanksgiving for this one.

First of all... Coincidence or not

We booked our tickets to go to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. The next day Travis gets an email from the University of Arizona asking him to come for an interview for November 22ND, the exact date that we were already going to be in Arizona. Jigga what? Some may call it a coincidence but I call it destiny.

So we arrived in one piece. Flying with wiggly, no attention span Avery wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. But it wasn't that good either. I'll just say, its not the funnest thing in the world.

The cousin's got reacquainted real fast!

Look at the guilty looks on those stinky boys!

Avery loved this girl... I kind of did too.

Tam got in trouble (by Travis) for not wearing her bonnet.

We got to see Brayden's cute class play. "I is for Indian, we know them now by Native Americans." So PC... good job Brayden.

Then we got to eat in the cafeteria with Brayden. Of course we reminisced about the good old days of elementary school. I swear the cafeteria smells are the same.

Also, I think some of the upper classmen were making fun of what we were wearing. I'll cream them!

After that feast, we headed down to the preschool area and started on our second feast with Jack's class

So dang cute, I could eat 'em!

Their school was really fun. I do have to note that kids are gassy. Just walking down the halls, I could smell a plethora of toots from all the kids. If I was a teacher, I'd rip them all day long and just blame them on the kids.

A couple of days later, we made a real feast!

I promise my dad has a normal face... you wouldn't be able to tell in all of the pictures, but he really does.

Although breast milk tastes pretty good, I think Avery liked this year more than last year

I had to put this pic in so you all can see how awesome my brother in law is

Other honorable mentionable things we did were: watch Twilight, go see New Moon (can you tell who was running the show), swim in the freezing pools at the Marriott (we thought AZ was always warm), Turkey bowl, soccer games, parks, eating pie with Jon's huge family and of course all the family fun!

Thanks again for the nice trip. I think it is the Jolley's turn to come to the MO! We might not be here too much longer. More on that to come.

PS Trav's interview went really well.