A Year for the Books

Hi y'all!!!  I've been a big slacker with blog post lately but between my broken computer screen and Daniel's itty bitty computer who's keys are so small I'm constantly misspelling words.... it takes a lot of time to muster up the patience to write. :) 
All is great here. I'm all healed physically (other than my nasty scar and some occasional aches and pains) and emotionally I'm doing well too. I've been dealing with a little bit of anxiety over some things but overall I'm doing well.
So this post is going back to the roots of this blog. I started this blog as a way to keep distant friends and family up to date, but more importantly to act as an online "memory book" for our little family . With that said, 2013 was a huge, just unbelievably huge, year for us..... so for memories sake, I'm going to go through a little review of everything 2013 held for us!

January/February 2013
* Daniel finished up interviews for residency and we worked together to make his final rank list. Then the waiting and waiting started...

Daniel's "oh crap I'm submitting my rank list" face

March 2013
* Match Day came! We found out that we'd soon be spending the next five years twelve hours away from family in Mobile, Alabama!

How we made the announcement to friends

How Daniels school did the revealing of where he matched

Family pictures done in South Alabama shirts for our change of address cards.

April 2013
* I lost my Mimi. Not my grandmother by birth but in my heart she was. She was the last grandparent I had so it was a rough loss and I think of her a lot

* Daniel and I ventured to Mobile in a three day spree to find a house. Found one, signed papers, had inspection done, and it was ours in record time!

Daniel's "oh crap we just bought a house" face.

May 2013
* We moved to Alabama!

* We watched via Internet as a record tornado weaved it's way in and out of our family's homes in Moore, Oklahoma. Only blocks from several family members houses. It was hours before we knew everyone was safe and sound. Being 12 hours away during such a traumatic event for your home town sure makes you feel helpless.

*

*Daniel graduated med school!  After lots of hard work he officially was able to sign M.D. after his name and became "Dr. Daddy"

June 2013
*We had a month off as a family so enjoyed exploring our new house and city.

 *We also found a church that we fell in love with and started calling our own. This church has been such a blessing of knowledge and relationships for us.

July 2012
* Daniel started his 80 hour work weeks as a resident. Tired.... but loving every minute of it.
* Dax and I started our own traditions...... like going out for donuts on holidays that daddy works

Fourth of July while daddy worked

* I started a new "job".  I was blessed to have a childcare job fall into my lap. I began watching a sweet little toddler girl in my own home, allowing me the opportunity to be at home and take care of things there, while also spending time with my little boy and doing a little bit of my teaching that I love.

* Daniel and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary!

The picture on the left was our first picture together 12 years ago... we were 14 years old

August 2013
* Daxton turned 3!! Daniel got his first week of vacation time at the end of the month so we went back to Oklahoma and celebrated Daxton's third birthday with a wonderful Super Why themed party!

September 2013
* Daniel started his first month of nights... .and looked like this most of the time...

 * After our year long battle with secondary infertility, we were able to conceive.  Only for that pregnancy to end up being ectopic. It ruptured and that started a very long 6 week process of recovery (There is a collection of 7 post referring back to that ordeal if you need more info). I feel so very thankful to be alive.... and thankful for that angel baby.

Added a tiny angel wing to my mothers necklace.

October 2013
* October went fast. I was busy recovering so didn't get out much.... but we did make time for Halloween of course :)

* I also took part in my first Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day in honor of our little angel baby.

November 2013
* We spent the holidays away from family, but with friends this year. We took full advantage of Skype

December 2013
* Our first Christmas in our own home.... 12 hours away from family. It was very different.... but we really enjoyed starting our own traditions..... like a Christmas Eve picnic in the living room while watching Christmas movies

Seriously.... what an insane year it's been for us. So many first and so many starts of something new. Here's to looking forward to what 2014 has in store for us.... and praying it's just a tad bit calmer :)

Medschool Romance

You know you're in med school when you get romantic lines like this from you significant other...

After griping about a procedure he did earlier in the day, Daniel tells me (while dreamily looking at my neck)...

"But I would love to cut into your neck.... the anatomy would be so beautiful"

So romantic.

My TV Doctor

Today's Thursday!!! Which means I'm linking up with Medicine: A Love Story!!!  Today's question
is....

"Which fictional doctor is your significant other most like?"

I was super excited when I saw this question because while my husband hates them, I'm a super big sucker for doctor TV shows. So I quickly ran through my entire list of doctors from my ridiculously long list of doctor TV shows to come up with the perfect fit for my hubby....

but it was tougher than I thought. 

Then I went on to read this question out loud to myself in deep thought and from the other room I hear this response..

"McSteeeeeamy!" 

He doesn't think highly of himself or anything ;)

I couldn't narrow it down to just one.... so I have aspects of three different doctors that if somehow they had a love child... it would come out to be my husband.

Doctor #1. Dr. David Sawyer (The New Normal): 

 Before I start with the similarities, I start with the one major difference... Dr. Sawyer is obviously gay.... where my husband is obviously not. But other than that one minor factor (my husband is loooving me for this one I'm sure) they have quite a bit in common. Both are overthinkers (for sure), both love their family (definitely), both love football (maybe a little too much), and both love a nice adult beverage every now and then.

Doctor #2. Dr. Cooper Freedman (Private Practice): 

 Side note I am super super sad that Tuesday was the last episode and I may start the show over from the beginning on netflix. Alright so Dr. Cooper Freedman and my hubby..... both are extremely passionate about their job, both have huge hearts, both love their family and taking care of their family, and while both are serious when they need to be, they are also pretty goofy and funny as well.

And Doctor #3. Dr. Jackson Avery (Greys Anatomy): 

 First things first... they're both surgeons. Next they both hard working, driven, and eager and don't let what other think or say stand in the way of what they want to do. Both are competitive, confident, stubborn, and like to give the people around them a hard time. But the biggest comparison is.... drum roll..... their dreamy blue eyes, amazing smile,  and the size of crush this woman has on them (did that make up for the Dr. Sawyer comparison babe?)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

The title shows my secret love for David Bowie (don't judge)..... but it's so so fitting.

So since the last post (only a short month ago) our lives have been so busy, full of changes and new experiences. We'll start with the biggest change for us...

Shortly after my last post we made our decision public that I would be quitting my job teaching and start my new career as a stay at home mom. This was a decision that we had been talking about and planning for quite awhile. We knew that we would be questioned about our choice by some people, therefore didn't tell anyone until after I already had my notice in and the decision was made. Luckily most people have been very supportive... at least to our face. And that's all we're asking for. They don't have to like our decision (we don't expect for anyone other than us to see why this was so important for us) but we do want them to be supportive. It's the old saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"  :)  We know 110% that this is the absolute best thing for our family at this time. We are entering a new chapter in our life where Daniel is going to be traveling every.single.week. until after Christmas. He'll be home for January but will again be gone for the entire month of February. After that we'll be moving come May for residency. Because of all this, we decided that it was very, very important for Dax to have one, stable, consistent caregiver for him at all times. We loved his daycare but it was just that... a daycare. And anyone that knows anything about daycares knows that teachers are in and out of rooms all the time. There's very little consistency and during a time of so much change at our house that's the one thing he really needs. So for the sake of Daxton's maximal social and emotional development, the decision of me staying home was an easy one. Another big factor for us was being able to take advantage of any time we can get as a family. Daniel's schedule is crazy, rarely consistent, and will be even more crazy when he starts traveling. We wanted to be able to take advantage of any time we can get as a family. He has days off here and there, hours off here and there throughout the week. If I was working and Dax as at school, we would miss out on a lot of time with Daniel. When he starts traveling for interviews me and Dax will be able to go with him to some; getting some quality family time in and getting a chance to see places that we might actually call home in a few months.
Final point is this.... yeah, we are going to be on a tight budget for 8-9 months, and yeah, we'll have some extra loan money to pay back. But that means nothing to us. Our family's well being and health are significantly more important to us, and that's all that matters.

And a brief note for all the other changes taking place for us lately and keeping us super busy! Dax has started soccer!!! It's a once a week parent/child class for 40 minutes. It's adorable. An our little man is so strange. Most people get their kids involved in these activities to interact with other kids.... but Dax needs work interacting with adults. He clams up and just doesn't function if adults, particularly young female adults (think teens and early 20s) talk to him. So for the first several weeks we would spend about half of the class on the bench watching before he would decide it was safe to play. But last week we had a break through and he played the entire time! WOOOHOOO!

This is what the first several weeks looks like. If we weren't sitting on the bench we were standing at the edge of the field, Dax frozen like a statue and us trying to encourage him to play.

The class is precious. They do the regular soccer things like running, kicking balls, making goals. But they also do games to help them follow instructions, talk about colors, and learn teamwork.

And the final thing that has been keeping us busy is interview season! Daniel has submitted his application to over 40 General Surgery residency programs across the country. The past few weeks have been full of scheduling and planning for interview travels. He is doing really good and has had a lot of offers so far. Our calendar though isn't doing so well. It's crazy full with travel plans. Daniel will be traveling every.single.week. through the end of December for interviews, with the exception of the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas (but we'll be traveling to OKC then). So needless to say, we've been busy scheduling flights, hotels, mapping out trips, researching cities & schools. The next several months is going to be crazy that's for sure.

Well that's our crazy life full of changes. I'm going to leave you with some pics of some great family time we've got to have since I've started staying home. Enjoy.... they're pretty cute.

Time fishing at the lake...

A trip to Frontier City with family...

Visiting the Cowboy Hall of Fame with family...

A tea party with my niece...

Visiting Meemaw and Pawpaw.

LOVE

This house was full of love this year...  and for some reason I felt way more into Valentines day than I usually do.... maybe having two valentines makes it that much more exciting :) 

Dax fingerpainted the Valentines for his classroom and teachers.

Not only did he love doing it.... but they turned out super cute and didn't cost a thing!  I just cut the  paper in strips, folded them to be able the size of valentines, and wrote Happy Valentines Day inside. They were perfect. For his teachers we did some that were about the size of 5x7's and fixed up a little goody bag of treats.

Now here's how Valentine's Day morning looked at our house this year...

Daniel leaves the house at about 4:30 to head to the hospital each morning. I stayed up late the night before and got all these goodies ready and left this note...

The white teddy bear was from Dax (you could squeeze it's hand and it was a little kids voice saying "i love you soooo much" and making kiss sounds. adorable) and the rest was from me.  He also has a new messenger bag with his initials monogrammed on it on it's way as well (for overnight stays at the hospital).
The "i love you because" frame was an idea from pinterest!  I made my own version with a plain black frame I had at home and some scrapbook paper.  I wanted to make the frame a little cuter so I decided to get a little craft :)

Again, this was all just stuff I had at the house so that was super convenient. I had the stencil so I just sponged on some acrylic paint and here you have the finished product....

I'm really happy with how it turned out! It will be fun to keep around the house so we can write things on it to one another every now and then :) (ps if you haven't seen the pin on pinterest you just use a dry erase marker to write a message on it).

Daxton got the most adorable stuffed monkey and some new big boy forks and spoons for Valentines Day from mommy and daddy. I got surprise with roses and guirardelli chocolates... and the best part..... a morning of sleeping in and room service with Daniel in a couple weeks!  We've decided the thing we miss the most about not having kids is being able to sleep until noon on Saturdays together. Our little boy wakes up by 6 most mornings.... so in at least 18 months.... we have not slept past that.  Also in 18 months.... I have yet to leave Dax overnight. Crazy huh??  So to make that a little easier on both him and me, Daniel's parents will come to our house and spend the night with Dax there while we have our night getaway in downtown Tulsa. I'm pretty excited about it.... ok... maybe a lot excited about it (I mean sleeping in.....room service... what's not exciting?!)  It's the little things when you become a parent.... no need for expensive gifts and diamonds.... just a good nights sleep is all it takes to make this momma happy!

and the story goes from there...

To finish off my series on Daniel and I, I have a couple more special pictures to share...

While I was pregnant I was completing my last year at OU for Early Childhood Education and Daniel was completing his first year of medical school. It was a very, very busy and eventful year for us. We were both reaching a very big personal goal of ours while starting a brand new chapter in our lives as parents. One door was closing, while a million more were opening. Looking back I am so proud of both of us for remaining so dedicated and doing so well in school while having other big things on our mind (you know, like that little person growing inside of me). Without Daniel's love and strength and support there's no way I would have been able to do it. This picture was taken the day I graduated college, 6 months pregnant with our future little sooner <3 This little boy is 100% sooner born and bread.

And this my friends is our very first family picture. There are simply no words to express this moment. You can read my birth story here if you want to hear about this chapter of our lives. Who would have thought ten years ago, when we were only 14, that this is what the future had in store for us. Our story is far from being completed... but so far... I'd say we're on our way to our fairytale happy ending.

Happy three year anniversary love (yesterday). I love you more than words can express and I can't wait to see our what the next ten years has in store. 

Three years ago today, rehearsal was done, dinner with all the special people my life was over, and I was at my moms house with the best friends a girl could ask for trying to stay calm and rest up for the big day. That was nearly impossible, because I knew when I woke up in the morning I would be marrying the love of my life.

For our one year anniversary we went on a cruise with my brother and sister in law. It was the absolute funnest thing I had ever done! I had never been to the ocean before and neither of us had been on a cruise so this was a whole new, fun experience for us to share with each other. We ate way too much food, played BINGO with hundreds of other tourist, shopped, rode on a catamaran, snorkeled, laid by the pool, and watched the sun rise and fall together. It was 110% stress free and gave us time to really enjoy each others company before Daniel would start med school. We also knew that we would soon want to start a family so having a getaway like this was something we really wanted to do before then. It was the absolute best getaway possible.

A couple months after our cruise Daniel received his white coat and began his journey through medical school. Medical school was something that Daniel worked so hard for and seeing him start that journey was one of the proudest moments of my life.  This man surprises me everyday with how amazing he is and his love and compassion for people blows me away. He doesn't want to become a doctor because they make good money.... he wants to be a doctor so he can help the people who need it. If doctors got paid the same as teachers, there's no doubt in my mind that he would still do it. That is probably one of my favorite things about Daniel. How again did I get so lucky?

This picture is so, so special to me. This was taken Christmas Eve 2009, two nights before I found out I was pregnant. At this point we had been trying 6 months to conceive. I know that time is nothing compared to what many couples go through but it was still very hard for me. Month after month I "knew"  I was pregnant, but would end up being really disappointed each time. It was really, really tough. And this may be possible TMI, but we finally resorted to ovulation test in hopes that we would finally be able to start our family.  At the time this picture was taken I had a slight suspicion that I was pregnant simply because of the extreme exhaustion and headaches I was having... but tried hard not to get my hopes up again. Well the day after Christmas came and though I had originally wanted to wait a few more days before I took a test I just couldn't do it because this time something felt different. I woke up first thing in the morning, took a test... and waited patiently for what seemed like forever. When a faint line showed up I was ecstatic! I had planned out all these ways I wanted to tell Daniel but those all went out the window and I went and woke him up with the news. We were both really excited... but since the line was faint we wanted to make sure.... so I ended up taking two more test and sure enough they all had two lines. This was the day we had been waiting for and a day I will never forget. Our family of two was now a family of three.

Mr & Mrs

Day three... ready... set... go...

So Daniel grew up an OU fan and I an OSU fan (if you aren't from around here those are the two major universities in Oklahoma  and are huge rivals). In high school it was always fun on game day to watch and see who's team would win and then that person would rub in in the others face for an entire year, until the next game. Well when I started going to OU this boy quickly converted me into a die hard Sooner fan. For 4 years of our lives we spent every Saturday together during football season. We would walk to the stadium (about a 20 minute walk) four hours before the game started, sit in line for 2 hours to make sure we would get good seats, run to those seats once the gate opened with the rest of the sooner "cattle" running to stake their claim, and then would sit there in the elements (either 100 degree sunshine or 30 degree windchill) for two hours until the game started (if you've never been to an OU game in the student section it really is an event you MUST experience once... it's awesome). We would then stand for the entire game, about 4 hours, and yell and scream and high five as we watched our team win. It was always so much fun and I feel completed our college experience. It's another thing that will be really fun to tell our grand kids about one day.  OU football became such a big part of our lives that we actually decorated Dax's room in it.... complete with a mobile that sings Boomer Sooner :)

My family absolutely adores Daniel. He really is everything that I would hope my future daughter, cousins, and nieces find in a man and I think that's why my family loves him so much. My family loves going on trips together so because of that Daniel and I have had a lot of opportunities to go places together. One of my absolute favorite places to go is Crested Butte, Colorado. I've been there twice and have told Daniel that I would move there the day he says "go". This picture was taken on a family trip there where us and about 15 other family members rented a ski in/ski out condo and spent 5 days soaking up CB. It was so much fun getting to experience such a beautiful place with Daniel... and also a lot of fun watching each other bite it pretty hard a couple... okay maybe a lot, of times.

And then there was this. No doubt the second best day of my life, next to the day Dax was born. This was the day I married my best friend and showed all of our family and friends an outward expression of the love we had inside for the last 7 years.  It was absolutely perfect and everything I had hoped it would be. I always hear people talk about things they would have changed about their wedding.... but I can't think of one. I remember the doors to the chapel opening and seeing Daniel for the first time, and from there it's a blur until this exact moment in the picture. This was immediately after the preacher announced us husband and wife and was one of the happiest moments.ever. I remember looking around and seeing everyone that we love just as happy as us and feeling so lucky to share that moment with them. This picture is also really special to me because I feel like it really captures the feelings that we were both having at that very moment. Again, best.day.of.my.life.

A Growing Love

Well here's day two of my anniversary series for me and my hubby....

For our junior and senior year of high school Daniel went to Oklahoma School of Science and Math. During this time he would live in the dorms at that school and we would only see each other on weekends (if that) and could only talk for about an hour or so each night... usually over AIM. The first year of this was a rough adjustment for us and we ended up separating for about six months, the only time in the past 10 years we have been apart. Despite that time being the hardest, longest, toughest six months of my life, I think we can both look back now and attribute who we are and the strength of our relationship now to those six months being apart. Needless to say, after those six months we both new we didn't want to spend another day away from each other for the rest of our lives.

Senior year was great. Though we still only got to see each other on the weekends and occasionally throughout the week when I would bring him McDonalds for dinner, our relationship was better than ever. When he could, he would go to DCHS football games with me and I would go to events at his school with him. We went to each others prom and went to youth group together every Sunday at church. Summers were spent at the lake with my family, at church camp, or just hanging around at each others houses. Our youth group was just awesome and there's no doubt in my mind that our time there and at our AMAZING summer camp (Dayspring) played a huge role in the success of our relationship.

After graduation we decided to both attend the University of Oklahoma where we would spend the next five years together. Our freshman year we both lived in the dorms with awesome roommates and had the best experience I could wish for. Some of my favorite memories of college were late night runs to Burger King in the dorms and walking to and from the library late at night with sushi, coffee and other random snacks and studying in the private rooms with our friends Jacob and Shirlene. Daniel taught me a study ethic that I was not taught in high school and without him there by my side there is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't have made it through college. He helped me and pushed me and always had confidence in me when I didn't. Daniel joined a fraternity and I joined a sorority that were both small and community service oriented and allowed us to have our own separate thing that we both loved and were passionate about, yet gave us chances to form memories together as well (this picture is from one of my sorority formal). College was an awesome experience and sharing all of those memories and the enormous amounts of growth that happened there with my love is irreplaceable. I think it will be so much fun to be able to tell our kids and grand kids someday about our times together in college... and I look forward to that so much!