December 2010 Part 1

I flew out to Utah on December 4th with the kids. LONGEST PLANE RIDE EVER! Wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't have bodily functions that were out of control the entire day. I think we made 8 or 9 trips to the bathroom on the plane alone. I was so glad to fall into the loving arms of my parents when we got off of that plane.

We spend pretty much the entire month in Springville with my family, while Kenny was out traveling around the midwest interviewing for residency programs.

We had lots of time to catch up with my immediate and extended family. But the most fun was having the cousins around each other to play. Nolan is the oldest and only boy at this point, and then Audrey, Maggie and Mckenna were all born just a couple months apart. It was crazy at times, but we loved every minute of it.

Playing Spies with Uncle Lance

The girls had a pie eating contest

Getting that wind-blown look from the Discovery Gateway

Audrey rediscovered binky usage. I love that hers is upside down.

Maggie is showing her the correct binky positioning.

We got to play in Aunt Merle's basement full of wonderous toys!

Took the kids to their first visit to Temple Square. Where we helped reunite a little lost boy with his parents, lost Audrey's boot, and then found it again in the parking lot by our car.

Papa & Nolan played with the interactive Temple thingy for quite a while.

And all of the girls couldn't stop pointing at the pretty lights and the castle...in between mini meltdowns.

We made a countdown for Kenny to get there.

When he finally did we all loaded up and drove to the cabin to spend our Christmas weekend.

There were 8 adults, 4 kids, and all of the Christmas we could handle! That was a LOT of trips on the snowmobiles this time!!

Both Nolan and Kenny couldn't get enough speed and powder.

On Christmas Eve we had a tree to decorate! Here's Maggie and Uncle Jason

Nolan being SO careful.

Audrey getting a little boost from Papa.

An even BIGGER one from Dad!

Then we opened our Christmas PJ's

Posed for some pictures...

Makenna, Audrey & Maggie

Handsome Nolan

Me and the Hubs

Jason & Alannah and Mom & Dad Whittaker

Then waited to see if Santa would come...and of course he did!!

Where to start??

OK here is my marathon update the blog session from clear back in December. I promised myself that I would at least have the blog totally up to date before Match Day...so I've got less than 36 hours to get this done. Yikes. In my defense we have had a lot going on since we finally returned to Milwaukee after being out West for two months. I know we spent a lot of time at night researching residency programs, areas, and coming up with our rank list. It seem like lots of other stuff was going on and frankly at night when we weren't looking up stuff pertaining to our future, we've been tuning out the world watching our favorite shows together like "Psyche" and "Modern Family". Thank Heaven for those two shows.

Now on to photo overload!

Note: This is mostly for our Mothers, Fathers, and Grandparents who always say they can't get enough pictures-for the rest of you, hey it's at least giving you something to look at while you kill time!

Holiday Family Portraits

We had our formal family portraits taken the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and we're pretty happy with the results. It's frustrating to me though that I can usually get a nice smile out of Audrey when it's me behind the camera, but whenever we take her to Picture People it's hit or miss. We've got one with a big smile from her, and a sneer from Nolan, and one with a nice smile from Nolan and a dazed look on Drey. Oh well! They are done and they will be nice to have for the time that we will all be spending apart. The Christmas song "Merry Christmas Darling" by Karen Carpenter will definitely be playing over and over in my head this year!

November...not a big picture month

Here are a few pictures that we've taken this month. There aren't many, it's tough to compete with all of the fun of Halloween & Grandma's visit!

So here are a few random ones to document the month as best we can.

We've been waking up to jack-hammers and backhoes for most of the month since they are replacing the gas lines to each house along our neighborhood. Won't be missing that when they're finally done!

As Audrey's hair continues to get longer, we are experimenting with new hair styles and tricks-she's pretty receptive to it too!

Nolan realized that he didn't have a scarf, so we whipped one up quickly one night. A green one for him, and a burgundy shawl for Audrey. So glad I had some extra fleece kicking around.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at John & Karisa McAllister's house-a big thank you to them for hosting. They are always so organized and prepared-everything was beautiful and the company was outstanding. My kids never want to come home after playing at Benson's house-can't blame them-it's one of the most welcoming homes you'll ever be in...oh yeah and they've got some fun toys too!

The day after Thanksgiving we decided to start the day by making Christmas cookies, and proceeded to use up what sprinkles we had left in the pantry-which were mostly full before beginning this endeavor.

Please ignore the binky in Drey's mouth. She found it in her baby toy box and was attached to it all morning-she hasn't taken a binky since she was 7 months so don't report me to the dentist!

So that about sums up the highlights of November. Now on to the craziness, fun and excitement of December and January!!

"Invitation to Interview"

Never before in my life have those words meant so much to myself or Kenny.

The month of November has been a blur. For several reasons. We've been busy with our day to day activities, the days are getting shorter and we had a Thanksgiving holiday to celebrate. But possibly the biggest reason: we've been trying to schedule Kenny's residency interviews as they come in and prepare for what the next two months will bring. This is craziness. To all of our friends who have already gone through the gauntlet of email checking obsession, interview scheduling and rescheduling, appropriate apparel shopping, travel arrangement making and program information gathering...YOU NEVER SAID IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS!! Don't get us wrong-these are some excellent problems to be having and we are grateful for every last one of them, but WOWEE. Today we said goodbye to Kenny as he headed off for the next 4 days with 5 interviews to do, hoping that he'll be home Friday night so we'll get a few hours together before the kids and I board a plane and fly to Utah for the rest of the month on Saturday. I'm so glad that he suggested months ago that we spend the time with our parents in December and January because heaven knows we're not going to be seeing a lot of him. Funny that they call these interview months "vacation months" in Med school-because I'm pretty sure they are going to be some of his most exhausting ones! On a side note, as I read through this I hope I don't come off as being boastful about our 'situation'. When you're in the thick of interview season it does feel kind of taboo to talk about how many interviews you are getting etc. But you know, we've worked and sacrificed for the past 3.5 years to get to this point and I guess in a way we just want to enjoy the chaos and hope that in the end we'll match with the best program and location that we have ranked. We definitely are hoping that for all of our friends here in the same situation! Here's to interview season...good luck to us all! May all of the $$$ that we are spending come back to us somehow in the end!

Halloween weekend

To make the Halloween holiday even better my Mom made a trip out to play with us for the Halloween weekend. YAY! Thank heavens for good deals on airfare, and her willingness to come spend the weekend going from activity to activity-it was definitely packed with fun!

To start it off, every year we have a Halloween dinner with some friends. It used to be a murder mystery dinner, and as more kids have been added to the picture it became pretty tricky to keep the mystery going while we had children interrupting every few minutes. So we have changed it to be a dress up dinner with spooky food and dessert. Some day we'll go back-but for now it's perfect.

This year we had Mummy meatloaf, bruised potatoes, and slimy green beans. I think I may have used too much purple for the potatoes-that's a pretty vibrant bruise.

Todd, Jessica, Malia, and Halie Pitts

Karisa, Benson & Cole McAllister-John was MIA at the hospital

My bewitching Mom and the ugly witch of the Midwest-I think I got too carried away with the green makeup & eyebrow powder!! Yikes.

Next up was the Branch party with the cupcake walk, pin the spider on the web and black-out trick-or-treating downstairs complete with glow sticks and bumping into each other. It was great.

The Branch Halloween Party-they made their own trick-or-treat bags-very cute. Nolan did his "all bine mine self".

The family portrait...probably won't be on the Christmas cards this year.

The weekend was quite a whirlwind of activities and it was great to have my Mom here to enjoy the time together. We did have some down time where we just stayed home and played. We all loved having the extra attention-funny how Mom's can do that.

Nolan and Grama Whittaker invented a new game called Trick-or-treat-hide-n-seek which he was eager to play at any moment. One hides the candy, the other finds it. Thank goodness we had such a huge supply of candy by the end of the weekend so this game could go on for extended amounts of time!

MCW Trick-or-Treat

Every year Kenny's med school hosts a Trick-or-Treat for the student and resident families. It is not to be missed. From 3pm-5pm the offices shut down for normal business operations, and each department decorates and dresses up and offers some seriously good candy, crackers, crafts, or stickers. There was even a couple of baskets of fresh apples and whole packages of M&Ms etc. It's nice and warm and well organized. We will truly miss this part of our Milwaukee fall celebrations if we end up not staying here for residency.