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.