Funny Girl

Katie got a new teddy bear for Christmas and it has become her favorite stuffed animal and her constant companion. Her previous favorite was a pink bunny. Tonight when she was getting ready for bed she told Jenni that, "If I'd never seen that bear, I could have loved this bunny forever." I could use all the prayers I can get to be ready to deal with this little angel when she's a teenager.

Christmas Time

Well, its that time of year again; finals are done, and I was blessed enough to pass everything, which is always a miracle to me. I work hard and try and do my part, but sometimes it feels like the only way I get through is by grace alone. We have been getting pelted with snow storms like the rest of the Western US, but managed to get enough of a break in the weather to get out and get Christmas shopping done. The kids should be excited.

So besides wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and peace and joy as your gifts we wish you to have, we wanted to post a few videos that we have been meaning to get on, but with our busy schedules, things seem to get pushed back a lot.

Happy 8th anniversary!

Wow I was scanning over and its been a year already since the last post about number 7! We just took the kids to Romano's Macaroni Grill and had dinner, and ran a couple of errands that we wanted to do while we were in Hillsboro. We bought wall-E and had fun watching that with the kids. Pretty low key day.
Jenni's stuff is already ordered but it won't be here until the 8th of December, so she doesn't know what she's getting yet.--Can't wait!

Catch up time

Wow we haven't posted for a LONG time, so here's some catchup info. Steve finished out his 21 point checkout just fine, despite his worries about not being able to do it, and went into the easiest semester we've ever seen at Pacific. He got all A's except for 1 B+ in his classes and spent more time golfing than studying over the summer. He also got to start seeing patients in the school clinic which was nice to be able to actually start.
Here's a picture at his white coat ceremony which was a welcome to clinic thing after they passed the preclinical checkout exam.

Katie graduated from preschool in May and had a cute program of songs they sang for the parents. She really loved preschool, but was excited to move on to kindergarten too.

During the summer off, we enrolled Katie in swimming lessons at the pool, which she really liked.

While Steve still had school this summer, Jenn and the kids kept busy by borrowing books and movies from the local library and discovered they had free checkouts for tickets to the Japanese garden and the children's museum in Portland, and also decided to buy a membership to the Portland Zoo. (there's a couple in there from the Rose Garden too.)

We took a little family day trip during the semester down to a place called Oddwater, which is an aquarium in a town called Newport. Apparently, it all got started as a holding tank for an injured orca back in the 90's and once it got well enough to release, they were left with this huge salt water tank and decided to revamp it into an aquarium. It was pretty neat. We got to touch Rays and miniature sharks, and see some pretty wierd stuff. The crowning moment of Oregonian ecoliberalism was made evident when some wacko asked one of the volunteers at a the sea anemone tank if he thought they and the starfish there were happy.

One the way back we stopped at Lincoln City and went to see a lighthouse. It was SO windy! we were getting pelted with little bits of sand and rock, but it was really cool.




























Ryan managed to fall and give himself is very first fat lip, and boy was it a doozy!
We celebrated the 4th with some friends at our house and grilled dinner. Then we lit of some small fireworks and rounded the night off going to Banks to watch a fireworks display, but actually saw better illegal fireworks being let off than the display, pretty funny. Ryan didn't like them and screamed most of the time.


Next was Katie's 5th birthday party, and we had friends come over and grilled again, had a water party for the kids, a pinata and gave Katie her first bycicle ever. She had a pretty good day.
Once school got out we headed to the Eardley Family Reunion at Park City. We took turns driving through the night, and wow, was that painful. We got there okay though. One of the activities was Lagoon, and both Katie and Ryan had the most fun on this little whale ride.






We also went to another Eardley family reunion there at Jenn's uncle Paul's house. We went swimming and Katie rocketed down the slide like a bullet!



We went for a tour around the conference center which was really cool. Neither of us had ever been inside until now. And, of course, we caught temple square the same day.












After the reunion we made it home to St. George and stayed with Steve's parents in their new house and had a Martin family reunion, helped Grandma Eardley decorate her new house, helped them move (which is where Kyle maimed Steve's finger) Steve golfed, washed windows, and shadowed different local optometrists, and just had a good time overall.


Once we got back, Steve has gone back to school, Katie has started Kindergarten, Ryan has started climbing and giving kisses, and Jenni and Steve have started working out to lose some weight. Jenni's also helping out her her visiting teacher by watching her daughter a couple times a week. Overall life is good and its nice to be in the process of finishing out this crazy ride through school.

Time flies

I can't believe how fast time goes by when you are too busy to stop and watch it much. We had a good break, but it seems now like it went by way too quickly. We had Jenni's mother and sister come up for a week after christmas, and we went to Vancouver, British Columbia on a wild hair for an overnighter. That was quite an interesting experience. Now school is getting in full swing, and our kids can't seem to stay well for more than a week or two inbetween bouts with some kind of bug. Ryan is getting more daring on pulling himself up on things and moving around; I think he will be walking within a month and a half, but who knows; when he's ready, he will. He managed to cut all 4 front teeth in at once too, so he hasn't entirely been his normal happy self of late. also Katie is back in preschool and loving it. she always tells us she did, "all kinds of stuff," when we ask her what she did at school that day. She thinks its neat that she gets to go to school just like dad does.
Jenni picked up another newspaper route on Saturday, but is quitting the one on Tuesday (thank heaven) and I am in school and trying to stay on top of it all. this is a very busy semester as, once its over, we will be going into the school's clinics to be seeing real patients. That still seems unreal to me, but I guess it will happen. I also am translating Spanish once a week in one of the clinics, so that has been a good experience to see the intern/patient interaction. Other than that, there's not much to tell. I just study and practice all day and night, and Jenn takes care of the family and does a good job. As much as I dislike the pressures of school, I would rather have to be a student forever than have to be a stay-at-home dad; sometimes I'm climbing the walls after just a couple of hours. maybe that explains why most of the women I know are a little nuts. (I mean that in the best way possible too.)