Stayin' Busy

     Well it has been awhile since we have made a post, but to be honest nothing new or that exciting has happened until this last week.  The past three weeks have occurred as the following: Kali is just rockin' out to school with lots of studying and tests and Ryan finished up his Pediatrics rotation and loved it!  He was with a great doctor and learned tons.  If he had to go into a primary care position, he said he would rather do Peds instead of general family practice.  He did get to do a circumcision (poor lil' guy) and play with a lot of kids.
   
And for the good stuff:

1)  Ryan started his cardiology rotation and is loving it.  His doctor is an Interventional Cardiologist aka they do procedures where they go through your veins in your groins and clear plaque build up or put in stents and more fun stuff like that, less invasive that surgery.  He is loving the dress code this rotation, no shirt and tie for this guy....

2)  I have decided to follow in my husband's footsteps in school and made the Pharmacy Rho Chi Honor Society, Top 20% in my class.

Sometimes you just need a great friend to help you survive and keep you sane

3)  Ryan and I have a goal to try and make it to the temple once a month.  Usually we are pretty successful, but lately we have had different schedules so we didn't make it in August, but we were able to have a great Friday night date night to the Mesa Temple in September and celebrate with some Costa Vida sweet pork meals.  We probably over indulged, but who is counting calories, right??

One happy boy with his sweet pork burrito

4)  The weather has started to cool down a little bit, low 100's to mid 90's so that means I can finally study outside again without sweating to death while Ryan goes and plays a round of golf with the boys aka "studying".

5) I love running, biking, or anything outside and if anyone knows me I love a challenge.  I have ran a few races and have decided to step up my game and conquer the Full Marathon.  I need a challenge besides school.  I signed up for the Sedona Marathon on Feb. 2, 2013!  Super excited and ready for this challenge.  Training starts on Monday....wooohooo!  I did try to get Ryan to run it with me, but fortunately for him he planned to have some of the worst rotations two months before (OBGYN and Surgery (will be out of town)) so he couldn't really commit to it.  Oh well he will just be my running cheerleader (I always wanted my own cheerleader).

6)  We volunteered to help out with the American Diabetes Association Stop Diabetes Walk in downtown Phoenix.  I think I forgot to mention to Ryan that we had to be there at 5:30 am, so we had to leave by 5 am, which meant 4:30 am wake up time.  This is what I dealt with....

I was just trying to prepare him for when he is in Residency and is going to have to be functional on ZERO hours of sleep

7)  And last but not least, we enjoyed a beautiful weekend of General Conference!!!  It is always great to hear the leaders of our church speak.  We loved Elder Holland's talk and loved seeing all of the b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l fall colors around temple square!  We also enjoyed a great breakfast of blueberry and strawberry crepes.

We are getting so excited for the fall season to come around, which means Holidays are just around the corner and a couple of trips to IDAHO!!!

Playin' and Bakin'

     Well Fall Quarter has begun for me and its my last year of didactics! YAY!  Ryan has currently finished two Family Medicine Rotations.  He learned a lot about what he likes and doesn't like and has figured out he doesn't want to be a Family Practice doctor.  Currently he is in a Pediatrics rotation and is loving it.  I asked him what were some of the things he likes about Peds and he said, "I get to play with kids all day."  Well I guess that sums it up!  He also mentioned that he thinks every soon to be father should have to do a Peds rotation before they have kids so they know what the heck is going on!!!  That would be a perfect world if that happened.

     We have been pretty busy with school and completely different schedules going on in our house but we have been able to have some fun.  Ryan has taken me out to the driving range, trying to get me to like golf.  Pretty sure that sport is the most frustrating sport ever, especially if you played any kind of baseball/softball.  He just laughed at my frustration, but I started to figure it out at the end.

We had perfect weather, 99 degrees with cloud cover (thank you monsoon season).

     We started off our Labor day weekend, by watching the Arizona Cardinals vs Denver Broncos and eating right at the good ole Texas Roadhouse. We had some nose bleed seats, but in the Univ. of Phoenix Stadium, there really is no nose bleed seats, every seat has an awesome view and you can actually see the players!  It was a great way to get both of us ready for the football season.

     We also went to a friends house for a fun BBQ and I was in charge of some dessert, so I tried a new recipe for a triffle.  I am pretty sure you can never make a bad triffle and it was delicious.

Then we made some Almond Joy Cupcakes for our ward party, and seriously these were fantastic, not too rich and tasted just like the candy bar.  Put the coconut frosting on like this....

Then dip it in some chocolate and top with an almond

     Nothing too exciting has been going on with us, just the normal with school.  We are excited for this new year for us, we are getting one step closer to where we want to be.  

Beatin' the Heat

     It has been a pretty hot summer, but what really makes the Arizona summer intolerable is that it NEVER cools down at night!!!  For example in Idaho you may have a 90 degree day, but you at least cool down to like 60 degrees or so at night.  Not AZ, you are in the 100-110's plus during the day and then you get this at 10 o'clock at night.....Not FUN, miserable to be quite honest.

Summer is hard for the both of us because we are used to being active/outdoors all day long.  SO what do we do with this hot weather you might ask?

We still go running in the hills and road biking, we just pack a gallon of water with us, WHEREVER we go and we catch some pretty sunsets over the Phoenix Valley.

     But what we really like to do to beat the heat is take ROAD TRIPS!  Our first fun road trip this summer was up to Jerome, AZ.  It is an old, haunted, copper mining town and is SO MUCH FUN!  I love little towns with so much history.  They have tons of fun shops all around the small town.  A factoid about Jerome is it is literally built into the mountain side at a 30 degree angle.  They have great food, entertaining people to watch, and I loved the old Victorian houses that are HUGE, like 4 stories tall!  Best part of all we were out of the heat.

This is the old Jerome Grand Hotel where people still stay and is supposedly haunted

We went to a kaleidoscope store that was SWEET!  First thing they told us is they do not have a "break it, you buy it rule" so I let Ryan go into the store haha jk but this place had some crazy, expensive, and sweet kaleidoscopes.

Best part about small towns is they always have the best "Hole in the Wall" restaurants that are amazing!  Did our chance of having a heart attack increase after we ate? Sure did but we loved every bit of it!

     Next road trip....SAN DIEGO!  With it only being 6 hours away, I am a little sad to say it has taken us 2 years to go, but I am sure we will make up for lost time in these next 2 years.  I am in love with their weather and how active Californians are.  We saw road bikers EVERYWHERE, speeding by us on their bike feeling the ocean breeze.  Lets just say we have a plan to take our bikes there in the the next 2 years and put some miles on them next to the ocean.  Tons of people run on the beach and I loved seeing that.  Plus the weather is AMAZING and the ocean is so fun too. We spent Saturday at the beach and did a bunch of relaxing, "pleasure" reading, well Ryan did a lot of that while I "People Watched" and enjoyed some beautiful sunsets....

Our Big Blue Friend

Sunday we were good children, went to church, and then took a little road trip to this beauty....

     After the temple we went to historic downtown San Diego and visited the Mormon Battalion building.  It is opened on sundays and they have a bunch of missionaries working there.  It is the cutest little place and they do a video tour of the Mormon Battalion's story.  I would totally recommend it, it is catered to all ages and is a fun family activity for a Sunday.

We over ate at some delicious restaurants and had some great seafood.  I think I could handle 4-5 years of residency by the ocean....why not?  We will be coming back to visit you San Diego!

One More Celebration for July

     I am pretty sure looking back this whole month of July has just been one big celebration.  We started off going to Idaho for 10 days and that within itself is a celebration with all the delicious food consumed and family, the 4th of July, Ryan's national board scores for MD and DO, Ryan's 27th birthday, and now.....Our 2 Year Anniversary on July 23rd!!!!!  Needless to say on July 31 will be another celebration of our 2 year mark for moving/living in Arizona.  It is so crazy to see how fast time flies by.  It is pretty crazy to think that for pretty much the first 10 years of our marriage will be all consumed with graduate school for the both of us and residency, haha we joke about not knowing if we are going to be able to make it when we are finally done with school/residency, since that is all we know and have gone through together.

     Marriage is truly an amazing thing.  Everyone always tells your how "hard it is" but to be honest when you marry your best friend and both people are willing to put their spouse before themselves...marriage is just plain awesome.  Neither of us would take back any of our dating experiences and the things we learned from them, but when pondering over these last 2 years, I think of how much more fun and better life is with your best friend and why I didn't find them sooner?  As everyone says, "There is a time and season for everything."

     Ryan and I came upon this quote floating around on the internet and pretty sure it describes us to the T.  "I love being married. It's so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life."  Life is great and life is fun!

     We decided to celebrate the day, thanks to Ryan's preceptor for the idea, of Cheesecake Factory and then The Dark Knight Rises.  It was such a fun night and so fun to have it just be us with no school (no school does not mean no medical talk).

     I think one of my favorite things to look back on is to see how much you grow and change in the past year due to your spouse.  Ryan has definitely helped me achieve better qualities and has made me a more understanding person.  I unfortunately have rubbed off some of my competitiveness to him so now EVERYTHING is a competition.  But some of the best counsel given to us before the big decision to seal the deal was "Marriage should make you a better person".  Pretty sure that has stayed with me everyday and I am thankful for that counsel given to us.

One Year Older & Wiser Too!

     Happy Birthday Ryan!  This lucky guy turned 27.  I probably could have given him any age to celebrate, Ryan is not very good at remembering how old he is, but that is probably one of the least of his worries right now.  Unfortunately with getting older, comes more responsibilities and less time to celebrate the whole 24 hours.  He had to be at the clinic at 7 am and then didn't get back til 7 pm.  So we celebrated for 3 hours, woohooo!  Ryan has used golf as an out with his school buddies to relax from the stress of studying when they all have time, so I decided to do a golf theme for him.  Thanks to pinterest, I got some different ideas and made my own version of a golf cake...I didn't have the "grass" tip but I think it turned out okay.

At least he was happy/surprised about the cake

Opening up some presents, he got some new golf shoes, golf shorts, golf shirt, and some new shirts.

Ryan has been craving Olive Garden ever since he saw the commercial about 2 for $25 deal, so we hit that up for dinner, it was so good!

After dinner we came home, I sang to Ryan and we had some cake.

It was a fun, relaxing night.  Happy Birthday Ryan, you are the greatest!!!!  Love Ya