Caketown, Throwdowns, and the White Rabbit

This week was my week to teach preschool. Monday I taught the kids all about life in the city, since I'm the teacher with the most street cred. (Though Rachael gets automatic scrappiness points for being Canadian.) After my lesson, I had each of them draw a picture of a city they would like to live in.
Here is Harrison's:

He called it "Caketown." "Caketown has a big, huge piece of cake in the middle of town that everyone can eat whenever they want," he explained. I hope Caketown is a short commute to Salt Lake City.

During our drawing time I had to break up a pretty serious disagreement between Rylee and Sophie over whose arabesque was the best (of all time). Normally I would put my money on Rylee in a throwdown with a Dyreng Twin, but something in Sophie's eyes told me she was playing for keeps on this one. So Rylee got served and the dance off is scheduled for sometime next week.

As the kids were getting ready to leave, we discovered that the white rabbit (featured in the slideshow on my last post) was still in our yard. The kids requested carrots to feed the bunny. The girls chased the poor animal all over the yard with their carrots raised like little warrior princesses. Meanwhile, Harrison yelled like a lady, ran up a tree, and threw his carrot across the yard (no doubt assuming that the vicious monster would jump up and catch it between it's teeth).

On Wednesday I taught them all about camping. Jeff got a good chuckle out of that one.


(Pictured above: Rylee, Harrison, Sophie, and Syrena.)

We haven't seen the white rabbit for the past couple of days, so I'm assuming he's halfway to Caketown by now.

Everybody Party!

We've been celebrating The Match and Easter all weekend. We went out with friends Thursday night and spent Friday afternoon at the old Durham Bulls baseball field with Jeff's classmates. Saturday we enjoyed an Easter egg hunt and dyeing eggs.

We're a bit overwhelmed about moving across the country in a couple of months. If anyone knows anything useful about moving, let us know.

This weekend definitely called for a slideshow!

Game, Set, Match!

Jeff will be doing his residency at Washington University in St. Louis, MO! We're really excited to become Cardinals fans and eat toasted ravioli! For his intern year, he'll be at the new Intermountain Hospital in Salt Lake City, UT. We're thrilled to learn to ski and build parade floats! The plan is to move to Utah in May so I guess I'd better get packing.

Here's a video of Jeff opening his letter. Harrison's disappointment about the match is due to the fact that he wanted to move to Virginia to be near his cousin, Adam. Once we told him he could build a snowman in Utah, he changed his tune.

The Madness Continues

Here's how much my crazy kids love bandaids:

The Madness Begins

March Madness will take over our house tomorrow. I wasn't familiar with The Madness before I got married. (Things you forget to ask.) I thought I understood what it meant to be a sports fan. I remembered my dad being really into sports. In actuality, he usually just turned the game on and took a nap.

Jeff and I got married in February so I was introduced to The Madness early on. I got used to the idea that if someone was playing a game, we would be watching it. I could have paraded around the house wearing nothing but a smile, and it wouldn't have made a difference. I realized I couldn't beat The Madness, so I gave into it. I filled out my brackets on Selection Sunday and followed each game hoping my randomly chosen favorite team (Marquette) would go all the way. When they lost in the Final Four I actually felt a wave of sadness. (I believe I sent Jeff out to get me a milkshake.) That's when I knew I was infected.


I'd like to use this space to encourage those of you who aren't familiar with conference champions and sweet sixteens and Marquette to go to your local newspaper or to Yahoo! Sports Monday morning and fill out your NCAA Championship brackets. It makes those Creighton vs. Villanova games much more interesting. And be sure to stick around for the "One Shining Moment" tournament montage. If you don't cry a little, then you're dead inside.

What is this "Match Day" you speak of?

Some of you may have noticed the Match Day countdown at the bottom of the page. I tried to move it to the top of the page, but no dice. Match Day is the day we find out where Jeff will be doing his internship and residency. It's pretty much all we've thought about for the past few weeks and a day we've been waiting for since he started medical school. For those of you who aren't familiar with how the matching process works, it goes something like this:

Step 1: In September Jeff made a list of all the places he wanted to apply to. This is the only part of the process we had any control over, so we took it very seriously. Any state from North Dakota down to Texas was ruled out. I'm allergic to those states. In total, he applied to about 30 places.

Step 2: Jeff was asked to interview at many of the places he applied to. The interview is like a first date. He has to act really interested, because it may be his only chance. From November through the beginning of February Jeff traveled to different hospitals about once a week for interviews. No expenses paid.

Step 3: After finishing his interviews, Jeff then had to submit a Rank List of all of the programs. He put the prettiest programs at the top of the list and the uggos at the bottom.

Step 4a: The hospital programs create their own rank list.
Step 4b: If hospitals wanted to rank Jeff high on their list, they gave him a call. Or sent him a note in history class that said, "I like you, do you like me? Check yes or no."

Step 5: A big computer in the sky finds everyone their perfect match. I'm pretty sure it's the same people who work at eHarmony.com.

Step 6: On March 20 Jeff will open his match letter and make one of these faces:



And then we will know where we'll be spending the next six years. Jeff doesn't want me to tell anyone his first choices (In case he doesn't get them. He doesn't need your pity!), but he has allowed me to share his top five IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:
For internship:
Salt Lake City, Newport News, Roanoke, and Charlotte.
For Radiology Residency:
Seattle, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Salt Lake City, Durham.

Seven Bum Kitchen

My sisters and I are starting a food blog together! We're calling it "Seven Bum Kitchen." My mom always referred to small kitchens as "One bum kitchens." Since there are seven of us contributing to it, it's a seven bum--oh, nevermind. Jokes just aren't funny when you have to explain them. Take a look at it sometime: http://sevenbumkitchen.blogspot.com/