Match week, a 5k, a rodeo, and other news!

As anticipated, these past several weeks have been incredible! All ranges of emotions were felt by all! We have had our feelings of disappointment, frustration, stress, depression, sadness and anxiety. But we have also had excitement, happiness, love, peace, pride and accomplishment! Those are the moments that I definitely want to remember forever. However, those feelings would not have been nearly as great if we had not first felt the other feelings. Just like Alma the Younger and his experiences of pain from sin, and then feeling the joy from the atonement! We too have felt that joy and relief!

 

I always look forward to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo! We went our second year here and I have made every effort to go since then! They are so much fun and so Texas! I love pretending I'm a cowgirl for a day! My accent comes in real thick and I get excited for bucking steers and men in tight jeans! So, I was even more excited that we got to go to the rodeo this year when Alan Jackson was performing! I-Love-Alan-Jackson! I love his music! I love his morals! I love him! I counted the days down until I got to take Lydia and Hannah and got to dance to Itty Bitty with them! So, when the day finally came, it didn't matter to me that Lydia told me her stomach hurt at lunchtime. We were going. And there was nothing that would stop me! We all piled into the car and drove the hour and fifteen minutes to the Reliant Stadium to enjoy the rodeo. Lydia was so excited when we got there! There were so many rides she wanted to do! So, we let her start off with a few. As Lydia and I stood in line for our first ride, David felt the beginnings of it all. He had been carrying Hannah in the Ergo and Hannah, whose stomach apparently was hurting too, threw up all over him! Nice orange carrots!

Yuck! (Don't be decieved. He wasn't really as happy as he looks in the picture! And poor Hannah!)Some of our friends were there with us and helped him to get cleaned up a little while Lydia and I enjoyed the spinning dragons (I sure wasn't thinking when I said I'd go on a spinning ride with her! Those things make me sick!). Hannah acted a little bit woozy after that, but seemed to be more tired than anything. So, we decided to let Lydia be in the Cutest Show on Earth! And was it ever! I caught the best part of it all on video, but it's like 8 minutes long. So, you'll probably have to view it in my Picassa, unless I can get it to load to YouTube. But I couldn't get it to the other day. Anyhow, David got selected to be Punjab: The World's Strongest Man! And he was going to break his own record on stage by lifting a really heavy weight. Unfortunately, Punjab's training of fighting and eating monsters wasn't adequate enough. He couldn't lift it! The whole crowd was disappointed! But, suddenly the ring-master noticed a little girl in the audience dressed just like Punjab! Could this little girl lift the weight and save the day? You'll have to watch it to see! I can't watch it without crying! I'm such a sucker! But I was just so proud of Lydia for actually getting on stage in front of all those people and not freezing! I really didn't think that she'd be able to do it! Wow! I'm gonna cry just thinking about it again! Ack!

 

 

Anyhow, so that really was the Cutest Show on Earth! So, then Lydia got to go on the flying cars with David. And she and Hannah got to go through the farm to milk the cows, plant veggies, shear the sheep, collect eggs, and then sell all their products at the end for a yummy treat! They have done that part for the last few years and I love it every time! It's so cute!

So, that was the beginning of our time at the rodeo. Then it was time to go inside and see all the animals! As I was holding Lydia up to see the newborn calf, it all came out! Yep. She threw up all over! Luckily I was wearing a jacket that I could take off and she projectiled out and didn't get much on herself. But she obviously felt miserable! We spent the next half hour in the family bathroom getting cleaned up and trying to help her feel a little bit better. I was at a loss then. I felt so bad. She really had been telling the truth at lunch time! But she's such a difficult child to read! She says her stomach hurts, but then runs around playing. Which do you believe? I still don't know! Well, we took our last little bit of time at the Livestock Show just sitting around and letting the girls rest. David and I ate some dinner, but the girls weren't interested in anything.

But I still did not want to miss my concert! NOTHING was going to stop me! So, we made the LONG journey up to the TOP of the Reliant Stadium for the Rodeo and Concert. Our friends, the Wests, met us there and we enjoyed a little bit of time watching the bucking steers, bull riders, and muttons! We also tried (as much as we could) to keep Lydia and Hannah from getting their girls sick. we still weren't sure what they had, but we didn't want to take any chances. Lydia and Miyah still danced around to Alan Jackson singing. And Hannah threw up again during the concert. I enjoyed holding Lydia for some of the slow songs and singing in her ear. I wish I could say that the concert was as amazing as I had anticipated it to be. But, after a day of cleaning up throw up and trying to keep everyone around us from getting sick. And then my stomach was starting to feel a little woozy too. It wasn't. I went home incredibly disappointed. It was sad. We had all been so healthy for so long, and then when the Rodeo finally came, we all got sick. Lame.

The next day we all were sick. David got it too. And we were all homebound for an entire week. It really lasted that long! Poor Hannah had diarrhea for 9 days!!! Hers definitely lasted the longest. But we all felt pretty miserable for a while. We're pretty sure that we got it from a cute baby that I now babysit 2-3 days each week. He had been sick the week before and we all thought he was better when he came back to our house. However, with how long the sickness lasted in our home, I'm pretty sure he wasn't 100% yet and it got passed on. It's okay. We still love you Taylor Bum!

As I mentioned on my blog, shortly after I had Hannah, I wanted to run a 5k. So, for the past several months I have been doing a couch to 5k program and had signed up for the San Jacinto 5k. Unfortunately, that 5k took place just a week after we all got sick. So, with my muscles all weak, I did my best to get ready that last week. I don't think I ran as well as I would have if I hadn't lost a week and a half of training and muscle deterioration. But, I did it! I ran my first 5k and David ran his first in a long time! It was a great monumental day for the both of us! Our plan was for David to push the girls in the double jogger for the first half and then I would push the 2nd half. But, David got ahead of me and decided to just push the whole way! So, he didn't really stick with me during most of the months of training, was is pretty poor shape, but he completely beat me! Lame. I try not to dwell on it. But it was a little disheartening. However, I did win a really pretty bluebonnet picture in the raffle. So maybe that makes up for it :).

The rest of the day was spent at the museum in the San Jacinto Monument and the Battleship Texas. It was really fun! Lydia especially loved pretending to shoot all the guns on the ship. I'll admit I got pretty nervous touring the ship down on the engine levels! The catwalks are so narrow down there and Lydia didn't want to hold our hands the whole time. So, I had good reason, right? The ship was really neat and seemed to go on for forever! We really enjoyed it! And David can tell me more about Texas history than I can tell him now! That's what I get for not reading all the plaques in the museum! Way to go David!

So, as you can see, we have been pretty busy this last little while. But it sure did help calm my nerves in anticipation of Match Week! Let me explain some of this for those of you who are unfamiliar and also for my future records (because I know I won't remember it all). Applying and getting into a residency program doesn't work like any other job. You have to "match" into a program. So, the first step is applying for programs. Then interviewing in those that like your application. We interviewed at 11 programs: UTMB, UT Houston, El Paso (Texas Tech), Corpus Christi (Driscoll), Temple (Scott & White), Oklahoma City (OU), Memphis (also UT), Louisville (Kosair, I think), Milwaulkee (I don't remember that program name), Orlando (Winnie Palmer), and Albuquerque (I can't remember that one either). David also got offered an interview in Edmond, North Carolina. But they didn't offer that until the end of interview season and we decided that we had enough other places that we would rather go to and that we didn't need to fly out there. We were able to go to most of the interviews as a family on a couple of road trips. It was a lot of fun to be involved with all of that! And I got to know several of the areas while David interviewed, which helped me be involved in the next step: Ranking.

You have to "rank" all of the places that you interview, 1 to whatever in order of where you would most like to go. In our case this was 11. But, any place that you include in your rank list, you agree that you WILL go to no matter what. So, if you interview somewhere, but really don't want to go there, then you shouldn't even rank it. We chose to rank all of ours because any of them was better than not even getting a residency. Many things played into how we ranked things: location, salary (yes, we finally will get an income!), vacation time, things to do in the area, how family friendly it is, hours, cost of living, etc, etc, etc. I honestly can't remember our complete rank list. But it went mostly like this: Temple, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Memphis, Milwaulkee, Albuquerque, El Paso, Louisville, UTMB, Corpus Christi and Houston. Interestingly enough, we were seriously considering Corpus more. David LOVED the program there. However, the city seemed pretty scary and I wasn't so sure about it. So, we wanted to go back to take a second look and see if it was a city that we could be happy in (at least for 3 years). And, conveniently, most of the pediatrics programs will pay for hotel if you want to come back to look. So David contacted the program and got a not so great response. His Step 2 scores were a little less than competitive and so in their words, we didn't have a very probable chance of going there. Ouch! That hurt! You see, each of the programs also puts together a rank list of everybody that they interview. Then a computer takes all of the lists and "matches" everybody to a program according to the best possible scenario. Since we weren't able to make our second visit to Corpus and after talking with a friend who lived in Corpus for a while we decided that we really didn't want to take the chance of it not being a good place for our family. (It really was that bad when we visited!) So it got booted to the bottom of our list.

So, then comes the infamous "match week". Once all the lists are in and the "match" has been completed, it is all still kept secret. Until Match Week! On the first day of Match week everybody gets an email. This email either confirms that you did indeed match (but doesn't tell you where) or will give you the worst possible news, that you didn't match. Yep, that can and does happen. If it does then you are put into the SOAP which takes all the programs from any specialty that didn't fill and then you get to apply and try to get into one of them. Lucky for us, we got an email that said, "Congratulations! You matched!" HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF!!! After getting such a rotten response from Corpus, I WAS NERVOUS!!! To celebrate this first step of exciting news, the school had a "formal" dinner and we got to listen to a banker try to sell us his mortgage company, I mean teach us about buying versus renting a home. Not the most fun of evenings. But the food was yummy.

The next several days of match week are meant to "calm everyone's nerves" in anticipation of where they will be going. So, as expected, everything contained lots of alcohol and people getting drunk. But some of it really was fun. Tuesday was at a bar, so we didn't go to that one. But Wednesday was at Main Event and we all went for some fun bowling. Thursday was a dinner cruise on the Paddle boat at Moody Gardens. We got a babysitter for the evening and enjoyed some time on the water without the kids. It was very pretty and it was nice to get away before the long awaited Match day!

Then comes Friday, March 15th. Match Day! The day when all your dreams come true! Or the day where you leave crying and dreading the next several years of your life. Hopefully the former! The ceremony started with lots of peppy music and the faculty throwing cozies and t-shirts (it felt like a pep rally!). Then we got a quick speech. And, finally! They started giving out the envelopes! They called out each name one by one and people went up to get their envelope and brought it back to open with their families and friends. There were over 200 students and somehow us and all of our friends were in the last 1/3 of the envelopes! Luckily they decided to put the names called on a screen, otherwise we wouldn't have known when they called David's! His was the first of all our friends. I was ready to rip into that envelope faster than he was! I was so scared of what I would see! I was expecting at least our 7th or 8th choice. Finally we got the letter opened and we saw "Scott and White" written. I couldn't think. Was it real? David shouted "We're going to Temple!" and then it suddenly was! We were going to Temple, Texas! Our very first pick!!! Words can't even describe the emotions I felt at that moment! Joy, Pride, Relief, Excitement! There was hugs all around and lots of kissing (well, amongst me and my little family!). Wow! Everything after that was kinda a blur. Our friends finally got their letters too and there was more congratulations and hugging. Our friends, Kara and Winslet Cox and Jacklyn and Christopher Sirianni are also going to Temple! Hooray!

 

Yes, those were our real faces as we read the letter. Thanks, Stormie, for capturing that moment!

 

Can you tell how excited I am?

 

Some of our wonderful friends showing off their letters. John is staying at UTMB in Pediatrics and Jason is going to Houston for a year for his Prelim. and then will be going to Denver in Radiology. Congrats you guys! We're so excited for you!

That night we celebrated with our good friends, the Hobbs and Wests, by going out to dinner at Gringos and playing mini golf. We love our friends and are sure going to miss them! But we are super excited that the Wests will be in Dallas and have offered to watch our kids anytime we want to go to the temple there!!! Hooray! We won't have to say good bye to them after all!

And then came Saturday! Senior Prom! Yep! Apparently Prom isn't only for highschoolers! I got a nice dress (not quite a prom one, but nicer than I would wear to church) and had my friend, Whitney, do my hair. Lydia and I also painted our nails all pretty! It was fun getting all dressed up! Some friends came over to watch the girls and we were off to our date! Even though dancing to the weird prom music with a bunch of drunk people is kinda awkward, it was still really fun! And made me want to take a dance class even more! Thanks for being such a wonderful and handsome date, David!

Now our life has completely transitioned. We are in house buying mode. Yes, we have decided to buy a home! Wow! I'm so excited! We are working on getting our loan and we have our realtor! In fact we get to go this weekend to start looking! We'll go up on Friday and come back Saturday evening. But I am so excited to see this place that I am already in LOVE with and felt so strongly that we needed to move to! I'll tell more about it after I see it and can put more of my thoughts into words. But, for now, we are ready for our new adventure! Well, once David officially graduates from Medical School. But that is just a few months away!