Can they get any sillier than this?

All Cozy

Last night Adam was studying at the kitchen table and I was cooking something in the kitchen. Adam whispers to me to look into the living room and this is what I saw:

It seems like all last week the girls were at each others' throats about everything. It was so good to see them acting like they love each other again, cuddling up at opposite ends of the couch, looking at movie covers. They are so cute.

Notice the dresses they are wearing. My Grandma-T made them for my sister, Lauren, and I when we were almost exactly Adalin and Kira's ages. I just love those old-fashioned dresses and think it is strange that after so many years, my own girls are wearing the very same ones my sister and I wore when we were little girls.

She can do it!

Adalin finally can write her name on her own! We have been practicing a lot with letters and their sounds lately. She has almost always asked for help with the writing aspect though, but one day last week she just told me she could do it and she did! Go Adalin!

It's Official, Kind Of

For years Adam has known that he wants to be a doctor. As a boy, he thought about it frequently. He has always known that the job he has someday needs to be one where he will be making others' lives better. So, 5 years ago he picked a major at BYU that would point him in the direction of medical school. He succeeded. It was a stressful time in our lives, trying to get into a medical school. We know a lot of people who couldn't, and Adam's MCAT scores and GPA weren't spectacular. We doubted, but we persevered. He got into 2 schools, the first in WV, which we put a $2,000 deposit down at to save him a seat for the fall of 2004. He got accepted to KCOM, so we changed our minds, ate that money (which was all of our savings) and moved to MO.

I am happy to say that we are done with the first 2 years of medical school. It was the most challenging 2 years of my life. If people think that they work hard in graduate school, Adam worked harder than you. (I don't know if that is absolutely true, but it very well possibly could be.)

But there was always the question of specialty. What is all of this for? I would ask myself often, wondering exactly how our lives would pan out and what Adam's work was really going to give him in return someday. How is he going to help people? Obviously, he is going to be a doctor.

To the general population that is enough of an explanation for 9 years of additional training after a bachelor's degree. Being engulfed in the medical community, I wanted the specifics. Doctor didn't cut it, I wanted to know what exactly our goal was. How many years will residency be? Where are we going to apply for residency? How many months of the year will you be gone next year out-rotating? Will we have to worry about paying off a quarter-million in student loans off ourselves? Big questions. A big answer came.

Adam is on a Psych rotation this month and has had some free time. In fact, he had 4 days off his first week on the rotation. We have friends in our church who are 4th year Ortho residents (notice, only the husband is a doctor, but the wife has been through just as much, so I refer to them both as residents) and he has been talking a lot to Adam about his profession. He set everything up for Adam to go to the OR and see some operations for himself.

No, a bolt of lightning didn't hit him. He didn't fall in absolute love with the surgeries. In fact, he was a little confused watching a scope-knee surgery for the first time. But it interested him, a lot.

He went back that whole week and has been in the OR meeting people and observing surgeries, scrubbing -in on some, and learning during his hours off ever since. This is such a big decision that we have made it a matter of fasting and prayer. As usual, a lightning bolt didn't strike from the heavens nor did he feel an overwhelming tingling sensation every time he saw a surgery. It was (as I observed it) a still, small voice whispering to him that he will love this. That it will be everything he hoped for in being a doctor. That was his answer.

So, Ortho it is. Granted, he still may change his mind. Honestly, I don't think that will happen. Since we started rotations in September, I just knew that this would be his choice, our choice. It really is the perfect field for him, despite the stereotypes about orthopedic surgeons that are, in his case, not true (but in many others they are.) The ortho stereotypes are actually the only things that he doesn't like about the profession.

What made him decide:
Honestly, it was by process of elimination! He didn't want to do:
Radiology: there is hardly patient-interaction.
Internal Medicine: too many problems he can't fix.
Pediatrics: he has kids of his own, would get burned out with kids.
OB/GYN: No thanks.
Family Practice: This is still a possibility, but he decided against it (for now) b/c he really doesn't like dealing with prescribing drugs to people that 1. don't need them, 2. won't ever get better, 3. refuse to change their lifestyle. He does like the continuity of care that family practice would provide. He lives his brothers practice in rural ID. We will apply to a few FP programs in the event that we can't get an ortho spot.
ER: wacky hours, he NEEDS sleep, is a crank without it!

Needless to say, I am so happy! I am happy that Adam found his niche and happy to know that our fight has not been in vain. The decision finally made actually makes me feel more optimistic about this journey of ours. I know where to look for our own, personal light at the end of so many distant tunnels. So I say to Adam:

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." ~Henry David Thoreau

Some Fall Pictures

Before church this past Sunday I took a few pics of the girls.

Aren't they pretty?

Enjoy.

Halloween 2008 - The Skunk and the Monkey

Both girls really loved trick-or-treating this year. Year after year Adalin loves holidays and traditions like this even more. It is obviously because she is getting older and can grasp the reasoning behind things like this. She ran from house to house yelling "trick-or-treat!" with the other kids and had a blast. Kira was so cute too. We carried her between houses but once she saw some people on their porch or another house, she said, "Down!" for us to put her down and she walked up to the house and said, "trick-a-treat." It was cute. She always said, "tank-you" after they gave her a treat. We had tons of fun!

Gleaning the Soybean Field

We have a soybean field behind our house. A few times this fall we took a little "hike" through the field to scope out the woods on the far side. Adalin loved collecting the soybeans that had slipped through the cracks of the combine. I was reminded of Ruth and Naomi of the Old Testament when they gleaned the fields of Boaz. I always wondered how much crop was actually left over for the poor to glean. There was quite a bit of soybean pods left out there! When we got home Adalin love opening the pods and placing the beans inside in a cup. Sorry to say, we just threw them away. They were really hard and I didn't really know what I could even do with raw soybeans. It was fun anyway!