Little boys really are sweet

I was recently hanging out with a whole slew of other moms the other day and 6 of us were pregnant and the other 4 had just had a baby in the last four months. The most-pregnant one is having her second and it'll be her first boy. She went on and on about how she doesn't want any boys and wants all girls, because boys turn out to be tyrants and crazy, obnoxious kids...yaddayada. And I can't say that I don't agree with her to some degree, because I am in the Primary and see all those 7 & 8 yr old boys who are rambunctious. 

 However, I think most boys are still sweet, little mama's boys...at least mine is anyway

(he may not be so sweet when he's 8 and driving me nuts). 

Here is some proof.

Before I lay Luke down in his bed at night he nearly plows me over, hugging me so tight around the neck.

When Matt tries to give me a hug or kiss, Luke butts in and says, "Hey my hug! My kiss!"

If he can't find me in the house, I hear him saying, "where'd my mommy (or daddy) go?"

My favorite moment was when I was completely exhausted the other day and was I trying to get Luke to take a nap, so I could. He laid down next to me, on the same pillow of course. He looked at me and said out of no where, "I love you mom." 

I have been practicing doing indoor photos with my camera lately, with no flash, using natural lighting and Luke made the perfect little subject (at least for a few minutes).

And yes, I have brick inside my house. Makes for a great background right?

LOVE this boy. 

And, I must say, I won't be that disappointed if I am having another.

Boys are cute and funny little things.

Unwinding

Over the past few days (almost a week), we've been letting our heads unwind and are really starting to realize the fact that we are staying here for four more years. And the more I think about it the more I feel like this is where we are supposed to be-even if we really weren't planning on it. 

All of our free time the last few days has been spent learning about loans (boring) and hunting for a house in the area. We want to stay in the same little city and in the same ward (we love our ward!). 

It has been an emotional, exciting and stressful process dealing with all of this change so quickly. I think it will all work out just fine though. 

We saw this house the other day and loved it. We're viewing about 12 more houses, so we're definitely not settling on this one just yet by an means. We want to look at a whole variety of houses. I'm mainly posting this for my family's sake, since they all keep asking. 

We LOVE the exterior of this house, the kitchen, the huge back yard, location, all the open space and the potential that it has for updating a few things.  Here are just a few crummy pictures, my point & shoot was set on the smallest size when I took these, so they aren't great. 

The first thing I think of when I see some of these houses is what color I am going to paint each room as soon as we move in! I can't wait to paint wherever we move to.
I thought this was a funny picture. Luke was having a hay day running wild in this empty house.

I don't know why, but all these photos are stretched funny & I'm too lazy to fix them.
Here's us dreaming of having a backyard this big!

Again, we're definitely not set on this house by any means, but we just thought it was so charming, well most houses out here are.

I'm excited to see even more, hopefully we'll find a good one!

Oh and here is just a funny picture of Luke wearing my shoes. He loves to do this. Matt might not be very happy that I posted it, but I think it's funny! Hah.

Cleveland ROCKS!

Well, most people know by now, but for those of you who don't know....

we're staying in Cleveland!

It was a huge shocker to us, but we I quickly got over it and am actually really happy.

Matt matched at the Cleveland Clinic/Metro Health program. It's a really great program and ranked number 6 in the nation for gynecology, which is great. We made our rank list according to location mainly, because we knew Matt would get great training anywhere. If we hadn't spent the past 4 years here we would have ranked Cleveland probably in our top three, but we were just looking for a new adventure-outside of Cleveland. And from what we have heard today, it sounds like OB/Gyn was pretty darn competitive this year, especially in the west.

I have to say that today has been the weirdest day of our lives! We were completely shocked when we opened our letter. In fact we got out of there pretty quickly...because I was just a tad upset. :) Frosty and fries do wonders for me when I am sad! haha. After the frosty and after taking it all in for about an hour we decided to make some calls. Our family and friends seemed a little shocked, but overall very happy for us (and thankful we didn't match in Hawaii)-which was so nice to hear.

After we got over the fact that we're committed to Cleveland for the next four years, we starting noticing all the great things about it here. I think the winter just really got to me this year and made me feel super trunky to get out of here-as you could tell by several of my recent posts. 

Enough said, here are the positive things about staying:

• We're going to buy a house! Yippee!
• We won't be a one car family! Yay for me again! 
• We'll be close to Meg & Dave (in DC).
• Doug & Katie (Matt's bro & wife) might move to NY!
• And close to other friends all over the East. 
• We have a great network of friends, that we didn't want to leave behind-and now we don't have to!
• We have a great ward, we don't want to move out of. 
• We know and are comfortable with the area here. 
• We love all the seasons of the year (except winter of course!) here. 
• I'll have plenty of help after our baby comes from friends, since Matt will be extremely busy for pretty much the rest of the time here. I am so thankful for this one!
• We don't have to move across country & start everything all over again.
• This will give my family more chances to come to Cleveland (no more excuses you guys!)...haha.

That's all I can think of now, but I feel like this is where we are suppose to be. 

So, I guess this is what I get for trashing on Cleveland the past few months, but we're happy anyway!

Trying to pass the time

Only one day to go...almost 24 hours exactly. 

I've done a really good job at not getting toooo excited or nervous for the Match. Now that it's tomorrow, I feel that I can finally get REALLY excited (and nervous). It's like Match Eve (it feels like Christmas in March).

Luke and I have been trying to pass the time today and yesterday. 

Here are just a few of the things we've done.

Luke LOVES to help. He is always usually a good helper. He loves to help in the kitchen especially. "I wanna help mom do dishes. I wanna help mom do dinner." It's been good and bad. The good part is it gives him something to do (and me more to do). He always wants to wear an apron, which has nicely taken place of the bib that he refuses to wear. So,  I decided to make him his own and he LOVES it.
Here he is sporting his new turtle apron.

He's a goof ball. 

His newest favorite thing to do is color with markers! I normally wouldn't let him color with them, but I've come up with a good way to contain him in one spot and not make too much of a mess. 

I rolled out a big roll of paper (it's actually scotch packing paper, butcher can be expensive), on our little "pub" table in our kitchen. I buckle him in his chair that hooks on to the table. Put an old shirt on him and let him go at it. He loved it...and so did I.

And then he learned how to do this...this is the part where it got a tad messy. They were washable...and most of it came off.

We also use crayons, colored pencils and I'll give him some stickers to stick on the paper. It's a great activity for him and not a big mess for me. Although, he'd rather stick all the stickers on his face and forehead than on the paper. 

We've also gone on plenty of walks, enjoy this spring weather, played outside, gone to the library and anything we can think of doing (without having a car) to pass the time. 

Oh, and my new favorite thing with this boy is that his attention span has finally expanded! We have a basket of wooden puzzles and he'll sit in his room and do puzzles for 30 minutes at least. And his gma Clark has spoiled him with tons of quiet books from her trips to Cambodia and Loas, now he'll finally sit down and do them all quietly for like 30 more minutes! It's perfect for me to take a shower and get ready for the day!

Watching this boy learn and grow is so much fun (and makes me really baby hungry, because he's just not a baby anymore!)

Oh and one more thing...

From the sleepy diaries of Luke:

I had to sneak the camera behind the door and get this picture...since you can tell he fell asleep, yet again, on the floor, but this time behind the door. Funny kid.

Did we match?

YES!

What a relief. 

Match Week!

Yahooooo,we finally made it! We have been waiting a LONG time for this week to come. The anticipation is worse than Christmas when your 8, it's worse than being pregnant or in labor and waiting for your baby to come and it's worse than waiting for your trip to Disneyland to just get here already, when you were 10 and have been counting down for it for a year! 

There is nothing I can compare it to!

So, we're really hoping that this week brings us some good news!

The first big event we've been looking forward to happens Monday. Monday is the so-called "Did You Match Day?" At 12 o'clock noon we should get an email telling us Yes or No on if you matched....please, please, please say yes!

And then on Thursday is the "Where Did You Match Day?"

We will all meet together at the med school at 11:45am for a luncheon. Every senior medical student in the US meets at the same time at their school. Apparently at 12 o'clock noon they give everyone their letter and everyone opens it up at the same time and finds out where they are going (it's like a mass missionary letter opening). Everyone eats together, celebrates together or cries together....we'll see how the day will play out.

According to my awesome Ob/Gyn Dr. Reider, who also graduated from Case Med, he said the day is absolutely insane. He said they had a big table set up with all the letters, a big ribbon in front of it, they cut the ribbon and everyone goes wild, fighting to get their letters. He said the news is there and it's this huge event.
Hopefully ours will be better organized than that!

And hopefully I'll have some good news to report this week!!!

So these pictures don't really have anything to do with this post, but no one likes a post without pictures.

This was just us before medical school started....

Before we were married....

And probably before we even knew each other...

I take it back, that was me while we were dating via the web cam, while I was at Utah State.

And this was Matt while he was on a trip to Mexico to see his brother play soccer for BYU (I think), with his parents, right before he graduated from BYU.

Look how far we've come!

Three years of bliss.

Today we celebrate our 3 year wedding anniversary!

I absolutely LOVED our wedding day. Even though it started too early and was very busy, it was the best day of my life and I would love to re-live it over and over again (not sure that Matt would though). I must get this from my mom, but I love to just look at our wedding pictures and watch our wedding video. 

I do wish I could have done a few little tidbits differently, but overall our day was perfect. I only have a few "digital" copies of our wedding photos (which are really just scanned on our scanner, because my photog charged like 40 bucks per original!). Since they are scanned they are not great copies, but I love them anyway.

I thought I'd post a few of my favorites, not in any order really. And since I've never documented the story on here, I wanted to do that too. It might get lengthy, so go ahead, just look at the pictures! 

Plus, it'll probably get all mushy.

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Since Matt was in Cleveland in school, we only had the chance to get married over his spring break, he flew home on Wednesday. Thursday morning I went through the temple to get my endowments out. That night, it's kind of funny, but we hadn't gotten Matt a wedding ring yet, so we ran all over the place trying to find one for him. Luckily we got one about 8pm that night. After that, he and I drove up to Salt Lake City to meet our families, where we were all staying over night in a hotel.

On March 9th, mine and my sister-in-law, Angi's day started out sometime around 5am-ish (Thanks again Ang!). About 6:30am, Matt and I and our parents walked over to the temple. It was a beautiful and sunny morning. I remember walking through the streets with big buildings and the sun had just come up not long before and was shining on all of the buildings. 

We got to the temple, got checked in and did all our paperwork and everything. Then Matt went one way and I went the other way with my mom. We got to the "princess's prep room" and I got all ready for the sealing. I remember the sweet little temple workers told me that they were having 50 brides go through that day, which was about average. That explained why we got stuck with the 7:40am sealing session. 

Shortly after, they lead me to Matt where he was waiting in the celestial room. We were able to sit and wait in there while our family and everyone arrived. It was such a huge, beautiful room (sadly, we haven't been back to the SLC temple other than just for weddings). I was so nervous up until this point, but this gave us a chance to just talk. I remember feeling so peaceful and happy.

After a few minutes, they came and got us. We met Matt's grandpa Hess in the hallway. The rest of our guests were already waiting for us in the sealing room. Grandpa Hess had to have been about 92 years old or something close to that. He got special permission to seal us (because he use to be a sealer). We were so happy and grateful that he was able to do the sealing for us. He did a beautiful job, even though I only remember bits and pieces of it, because I was so nervous. 

When we entered the sealing room, I felt my face go cherry red, because all eyes were on us of course. We sat down and I remember squeezing Matt's hand so tight my knuckles were white, mainly because I was just so nervous, excited and not sure what to expect of the whole ceremony. 

Grandpa Hess gave us some great advice and told us a sweet story about him and his wife. He and his wife loved music and he told us a phrase from a song they used, I guess as a theme in their marriage, "Are the stars out tonight, I don't know if it's cloudy or bright. I only have eyes for you."

Matt and I knelt at the alter and I knew our whole family and some friends were behind me and in front of me. Our mother's were to my left and both of our dad's were at my right. Grandpa Hess stood to my right. As I mentioned before, I remember bits and pieces of the ceremony, but I mainly remember holding Matt's hands across the alter and just staring into his eyes. It was as if everyone in the room disappeared. I was overcome with so much joy, tears filled my eyes. Matt reached in his pocket and handed me a tissue. I knew I had just made the most important decision of my life.

After the ceremony, we hugged each person that came and I'll never forget what Grandpa Clark said to Matt, being the proud grandfather he was. He said in a very loud (irreverent way) "Hey, you're going to be an MD!" Remember, he was about 106 at the time and was also an MD. That was about all he said, it was pretty funny.

I met back up with my mom and Angi who got me all primed back up. I won't forget a girl who was getting ready right next to me, wearing the exact same wedding dress. Nor will I forget the dirty look she gave me because of it....kind of funny. I also won't forget standing in the hall in my terribly high-high-hills, tripping on my huge dress and a very old, small temple worker lady caught me as I fell over. I thought I may have killed her. And the last thing I won't forget, because Matt won't let me forget it, is that he (and everyone else) had to wait for like 30 minutes for me to come out.

This is one of my absolute favorite pictures.

Here are just a few of the detail pictures.

My mother is an amazing cake decorator and did it professionally for years. She quit doing it some time ago, but thankfully did ours. I LOVED it and still love looking at pictures of it. If there was one detail of the wedding that turned out perfectly, this was it.

Thanks mom, you're amazing!

I also loved our flowers, especially the limes! 

After having pictures around the temple, in what turned out to be a perfect and warm early March morning, we all met over at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to have our wedding luncheon. I only remember that our main course was chicken parmesan (what I ordered on our first date, ironically), but again, I was feeling pretty nervous all day I couldn't even eat much of it.

Here is just another random assortment of wedding day photos (sorry about all the kissing!).

 

This is when we came out of the temple. Again, I am not a fan of having the spotlight. What do you do when you come out of the temple and everyone is screaming, snapping pictures and cheering for you??? You kiss. This must have been the instant we came out, because all I remember was feeling dumb, so I just grabbed Matt and kissed him!

After all the fun morning/early afternoon festivities. We went to get my hair and makeup touched up again and then headed to the reception center. A great thing about your own wedding is that you don't have to do a whole lot of behind-the-scenes work.

We had our reception in Salem, near the pond. And this bridge just so happened to be the exact place that Matt proposed to me (3 months prior).

And my good ole friends will hate me for this one, but these are my young, lovely bridesmaids. I put them in charge of their dresses and they absolutely hated what they came up with. I don't think they turned out so bad, in the picture at least. Thanks for being a good sport girls.

After our wedding, we headed to southern California for a short honeymoon to see Wicked in Hollywood, hit up Disneyland (and I said I would never be "one of those people" who go to D-land on their honeymoon...hah) and veg in San Diego. Four short days later we returned home, spent the day doing the whole thing over again for his sister who got married. In between her wedding festivities, we packed up our ABF truck. The next day we flew to dreary, cold Cleveland to start our new life together. It was crazy, scary and a bit insane the first few months (what was I thinking?!!! CLEVELAND!!!). But, we have loved being together, have had so many great adventures and created so many wonderful memories that I wouldn't trade for anything. 

Thank you for being an absolute prince to me Matt. You treat me better than anyone ever could. You are wonderful and I love you so much! 

Happy Anniversary!

A beautiful side of Cleveland

Last Friday, Matt had the day off and since we didn't get a spring break this year, we decided we'd at least do something fun since we'd be having a four day weekend. 

The sun has been out for like 4-5 days straight! It's amazing! The weather has been in the 40's and even though its still a tad cold, we're loving it.

We headed through downtown Cleveland and visited the Great Lakes Science Center. It was fun. Luke loved the kids play area and Matt liked the science stuff. I found some stuff interesting (I'm not big on science), but had a lot of fun just being together.

The museum is right on Lake Erie and believe it or not, but we've never seen it in the winter. It was the weirdest thing to see it frozen over! I felt like I was looking at the salt flats in Utah or something. It just blew my mind for some reason, but it was SO pretty!

Above is pretty much what you get of downtown. People always expect that Cleveland has this huge downtown, and really it doesn't, but its nice anyway.

First I have to say that I didn't even make the sky more blue through CS4, I just changed my camera to landscape setting. It definitely does look a little unnatural, but I like it!

We just thought it was funny to see The Good Time III. After we got married, my work had a party on it. It's basically a booze cruise. Matt and I were probably the only ones not drunk, and the only ones noticing the disgusting, murky, trash-filled canal we "cruised" through. We still had a "good time."

After we left the museum, Matt had a good idea of stopping off at the lake again, away from the city. I am so glad he did. I love these pictures!

 

 

 This is a good side of Cleveland, I don't want to forget.