He passed!!

While Kate, Sawyer and I were in Utah hanging out with my family, Ryan was up in Idaho at his mom's studying for his big board certification test. After 2 long weeks of being without Daddy we were so excited when he came back to us and announced he had passed his test!! (Don't you love immediately graded tests?) We celebrated at Winger's, his favorite Utah restaurant. Way to go Ryan! We are so proud of you and can't wait for you to get to work and start making us money. Just kidding. Only not really. Wahoo!!

Graduation day!

We are so proud of our Daddy! After 2 1/2 years of intense studying and long hours at the hospital he finally graduated with his Masters in Nurse Anesthesia from Baylor College of Medicine! It was a special day and we were lucky to have his mom here to celebrate with us. The kids loved Daddy's "dress" but weren't crazy about the 1 1/2 hours of pomp and circumstance.

I brought my old lens that I don't use much for the zoom capabilities but it was yucky. So unfortunately I only have yucky pictures of the big day! The good news is that we get a free picture of the "big moment"! Phew.

When it was over we celebrated with some Texas BBQ at Goode Co. Yum!

Congrats Daddy! We are so proud of you! but it was a long day...

Our long lost Daddy

Monday Ryan surprised us when he walked in the door at 4:00! Since starting clincal, our lives have really changed. He was always busy before but he could usually work it out so he was home at 6:00 for dinner and putting the kids to bed. Since starting clincal he has been on in hospital, overnight call 3 times already. He is at the hospital a lot. He went 3 days without seeing his kids last week. And when he actually is home, he is studying and getting ready for the next day. He got us all excited about a free morning on Saturday and then he went swimming with us for an hour and then we came back and he studied.
Anyways, we don't see our Daddy. So when he got home early we decided to celebrate for a trip down to Pearland to try out Gringos. It was quite yummy, and the kids loved the free ice cream.



Sawyer loved his so much that he wouldn't let go of it. It got so melty and he wasn't eating it anymore, but if you tried to take it away from him he would scream. Needless to say, we were both a mess!

Finally we stole his melted ice cream cone away from him and gave him a fresh cone without ice cream. He was pretty mad but once we were in the car he started nibbling away. I couldn't resist taking a picture.


And then he decided to give me a few cheese facesKate didn't want to be left outIt was a great way to spend Family Home Evening. On the way home in the car we sang a few songs and then talked about making good choices instead of bad choices since today Kate chose to spray Sawyer in the face with Windex.
We miss our Daddy but we're very proud of him!

Our *pretend* New York City adventure

Now that Kate has taken to pretending non-stop, I think I got the *pretending* bug and today we pretended we were in NYC.....where a good portion of myself still thinks we should be going to school.
Here are some of our adventures in *the city*

First we left our *two story walk up* and headed to the train.

Kate with her *metro card*


she was really excited to ride the train

Then we met Daddy at *Columbia* for lunch.

Walked over to the *Bethesda Fountain* and Sawyer practiced his standing/walking skills
Watched a pigeon eat a chip
Went to Mommy's Dr appt on the 18th floor and got to ride a really fast elevator. Then we looked out the window and Kate counted all the taxis or "orange cars"....we got to 6.
Then we rode the train back home.We arrived home quite exhausted.

I still think it would be fun to explore NYC with my two kids. But for now we'll just have to settle for pretending every once in a while....

Family Day

today began with a super hard, want to throw up afterwards, awesome kickboxing class. but, it kicked my butt. keep that in mind throughout this post....

after I got home from the gym, Ryan said it was BCM family day today and we had kinda forgot and he was wondering if I wanted to go. we hadn't RSVPed, we didn't really know about parking...but then we decided it would be fun to show Kate where daddy goes to school. for added fun, we decided to ride the metro down there. the second we got in the car it started to sprinkle. we got halfway down the road when I realized I had forgotten my camera (and this post wouldn't be nearly as exciting without pictures) so I had ryan go back and get it. he parked in front of the garage and before turning off the car and taking the keys, he unrolled the front two windows to let us breath. I was like "hey, not so far! its starting to rain!!" so we rolled them 3/4 of the way up and he ran upstairs. within seconds it started to POUR!!! ryan's side of the car was getting soaked but I (cleverly) got my umbrella out and stuck it out the little slit in the window and blocked my side with it. he got back in, turned the car in and I (not so cleverly) went to roll the window down a little and instead rolled it up with my hand in it. and I had NO reaction time left. I just sat there, confused, saying "ryan, roll the window down!!! ROLL IT DOWN!!!" he did and kate started to cry from the panic in my voice (I think thats so sweet and so sad when she does that) and I started to cry from pain and a couple minutes later ryan was like "you closed your hand in the window?" ummm.....yes. how could you miss that?!?! I had this weird 3 mm purple indent on the top of my hand that later turned into a really soft, red bump. can you see it?

so anyways, we start driving, camera in tow, to the metero park and ride lot. we got there and it was POURING. we loaded the kiddos into the stroller and hustled over to the train. kate LOVED it, and it made me think about living in new york. I was telling her all about what it would have been like to live there. and then we got to our stop and it was POURING HARDER!!!

we decided to brave it and ran all the way there. well, ryan ran all the way there with the stroller. I had an umbrella and REALLY tired legs so I was less inclined to run.

we got there just in time for the lunch, but we heard that we had't missed much. it was a lot of speakers and stuff. so we ate and then walked around and saw daddy's school. it was fun seeing the place he spends all his time!!

daddy teaching kate all about cell something-or-other in one of his study rooms
soaking wet daddy and kate enjoying the view

kate teaching us Sawyer looking cute and me looking so proud of myself for taking a picture of us

after we left the school and we were walking towards the metro and talking about how nice and cool it was now that it had stopped raining and ryan decided we should go to the zoo. the BCM family day bug must have bit him because he decided to study later and play with us!! we'll take it!! here are some fun pictures from our quick trip to the zoo.

baby elephant

komodo dragon


look at that big belly!!!

2 monkeys

the obligatory picture of sawyer hanging out in his stroller
hook 'em (a little texas pride) ....actually, they aren't really longhorns, they are some african animal that looked like one

riding the funny carosel. it had all sorts of animals like penguins and sea lions and javalinas and wart hogs and a funny little armadillo. kate is riding the panda in honor of the olympics.

so then we walked back from the zoo to the metro and by this time I was dead. DEAD. that kickboxing really kicked my rear. I love it, I even love being sore, but not this much!!! but it really was a fun day and we were soaking up every minute of our daddy time!! I'm just hoping I can walk tomorrow!