Accepted!!!

This handsome man got accepted to medical school!!!

We are so thrilled and excited!  I am so so so proud of him. He has been working so hard for so long for this. We seriously can't stop thinking about it. So often, during the process of studying for the MCAT, getting in volunteer hours, shadowing doctors, studying for tests to get good grades, filling out medical school primary applications, then secondary applications, going to interviews, etc... the list could go on forever. But so often it has crossed both our minds, what if after writing countless essays, paying hundreds of dollars for applications fees, etc, all this hard work, time, and energy, to the point of pure exhaustion, and he doesn't get in to medical school this year? We have talked about that multiple times and just wondered and waited. 

Well, November 7 Rick got a very exciting phone call. The lady on the other line asked, "Is this Michael Stone?" Rick said, yes, of course. She then asked something like, "So are you ready to hear some good news?" And she then proceeded to tell him that he had been accepted to medical school at A.T. Still in Mesa Arizona!!!! 

I think that conversation will forever be etched into Rick's mind. What a huge happy feeling of excitement! He called me right after he found out and I couldn't contain my joy and excitement! 

Wow. We feel so blessed and are so excited for the adventures that medical school will bring us. 

I am so happy and proud of Rick and all his hard work. All along, he has not only been dedicated to school, work and preparing so well for medical school, but he has been an amazing father, and husband to Kimbri and I... and to baby Garrett who is still on his way! I am the luckiest to be able to call him my husband and my best friend.

I LOVE YOU, RICK!!!

"She-shuss"

Something adorable happened on Sunday. I have to post about it so that I can always look back and remember this sweet little moment.

After finishing the music part of the rehearsal for the Primary Program on Sunday, I went and found Rick and Kimbri so that I could take Kimbri for the last 15 minutes or so, so that Rick could attend class for the last little part. I took Kimbri back into the primary room just in case they decided to run through another song or something, since I'm the pianist. 

In the back corner of the room there was a little bridge with rope to help the little kids walk up and over it. Not sure what it's used for but each wooden slat that makes the bridge has words like, "kindness", "charity", "virtue", etc... 

Anyway, Kimbri was incredibly entertained by walking across the bridge, over and over and over. She was in the middle of one of her many trips across the bridge, when she got to the top, and looked up to see a big picture of Jesus hanging on the wall of the primary room. 

She stopped, pointed her chubby little finger at the picture, and said, "she-shuss" - which is her version of "Jesus". 

To be completely honest, I almost cried.

I've been showing her a little picture at home of Jesus and saying to her, as I show her the picture, "This is Jesus. Can you say Jesus?" 

Wow. I guess little kids do hear and pick up on things that we are trying to teach them. Even at such a young age. Seeing that she recognized Jesus in that picture and hearing her try to say his name was so touching to me. I bent down beside her and said, "Yes! That's Jesus! Good job, Kimbri." 

Seriously, Kimbri is such a joy in my life and she constantly reminds me of the most important things in life. No wonder we are supposed to become as little children. So perfect and Christ-like. 

I love you, Kimbri!

Halloween!

I feel like Halloween snuck up on me this year!  The Friday before Halloween Rick had to work so Kimbri and I went to Spanish Fork and participated in my parents ward Halloween party. We dressed Kimbri up as Piglet for that party. It was freezing outside! So the piglet costume was perfect because it was super soft and warm. 

Kimbri got a hold of the whole trick or treat thing pretty quick. She'd grab a piece of candy out of the bucket and put it in her candy bucket. And she kept wanting to stop and eat the candy in between each car at the 'trunk or treat'. Haha :) 

Olivia holding Kimbri.

We didn't end up getting to go to Josh and Diana's yearly Halloween party on the Monday before Halloween because Kimbri came down with the croup. Poor girl. :( I felt so bad for her. She just didn't feel good at all! 

By Wednesday, the actual Halloween, October 31, Kimbri was feeling quite a bit better but just not totally herself still. It was a super warm day! So we went ahead and dressed her up in her bunny costume. (I later found out via Facebook that her uncle Dawson was also a bunny...oh dear.) I think my little bunny is much more cute! Haha.  

Kimbri

Uncle Dawson

Anyway, we met my parents and siblings at the Provo mall to go trick or treating at all the different stores in the mall. Each store was passing out candy. It was definitely a very easy way for the kids to trick or treat! And again, Kimbri quickly remembered how to do the whole 'put candy in her bucket' thing. Olivia and Ezrie Pace were Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Dr. Seuss book. Enoch was a karate person. Xander was some sports player, I dont remember his name. I was Minnie Mouse (I just wore a black shirt and put my Minnie Mouse ears on that I got from Disney World), and Rick had his Batman shirt on, again -same as last year :) Yeah, we are so creative. Maybe next year we'll actually think up some better costume ideas, earlier than the day of. Ha. That's a big maybe. 

And here are some more pictures from Halloween this year:

Notice her cute little poofy bunny tail :)

And the famous buck tooth binky her Uncle Zach bought for her.

Enoch as a mummy and Kimbri as a witch.

Tired and ready to go home. Still feeling a little sick.

Even more tired....

And there she goes... totally asleep within seconds
of being in the car. 

Rick about to carve our pumpkin to make
our yearly "Dinner in a Pumpkin" dinner.

We Had a Yard Sale

Wow. It was a very busy morning. Or I could probably better say a very busy last few days!  My mom has been "fall cleaning" and was in the de-junking mode so it got me into the whole idea too. She brought me all my old bins and tubs that have been sitting up in the attic storage area with all my old stuff in it. She also brought tons of boxes of things that she no longer wanted and was just going to give to DI. She said that if we wanted to do a yard sale with all of it we could. So we did. I went through all my old bins and all of the boxes of boy clothes that my mom gave us throughout the past week and made two huge piles of 'yard sale stuff'. We finally got most all of it out of our house this morning.

We got up 6:45 am. I don't remember the last time I got up that early. I usually sleep as long as Kimbri lets me. Olivia spent the night and brought stuff that she wanted to get rid of too. So we all got up and finished making signs to put up. Then we started taking everything from inside out to our front lawn and setting up. 

It was a long process and it seemed that people came in waves. One moment there would be a handful of people there and then there would be a long pause with nobody. But it was fun to chat and just hang out. Jessica came over and brought a few things to add to the yard sale too. And she brought her cute little dog that she just got on Tuesday! 

All along there were workers in our driveway digging up piles and piles of dirt to fix a water line leak. Ugh. I'm very grateful that problem has now been fixed! I bet our water bill is going to be through the roof this month because it's taken so long for our landlords to get it fixed. Oh well. What can ya do?

I also decided to make cookies while we were just sitting around, in between people coming and going. 

Overall, it was a pretty okay turn out. I told myself that if we made at least a tank of gas worth of money that it would be worth it. And I think we made it. After a while of nobody coming we loaded most everything up that didn't sell into Jessica's truck and she hauled it to DI for us. A huge thank you to her! 

What a day. Our water is finally back on so now I guess I should go do dishes or something. Or probably clean our house. It looks like a tornado came rolling through it just from getting ready for the sale and having boxes piled here and there, etc... Oh, but I hear Kimbri waking up from her nap. So I'll go snuggle with her instead :)

Croup

Yes. That is right. Our poor little Kimbri got the croup again. Where did she pick it up? I have not one blasted idea! But I feel so bad for her. She had it before several months ago but now has it again. The doctor said that the fall season is the most common time to get it :( 

The last time she got the croup they asked us if we'd rather give her an oral medicine or a steroid shot to treat the croup. We chose the oral because she had never had a problem with eating or swallowing anything at that point in her life. We had given her children's medicine before and she loved it! But you would know that she wanted NOTHING to do with the oral medicine that treats the croup! It took both Rick and I to make her swallow it. The instant it would hit her tongue would be the instant she would try to spit it out. 

So..... anyway, this time around we opted for the shot. One shot and it would all be over. However, this shot must have been a bad one because she cried way worse than when she just gets immunizations. She cried while I put her pants back on, as we checked out of the office and all the way down the elevator and out to the car. I felt so bad for her. I guess it didn't help that she had, had a rough night the night before, being up coughing and wheezing and plus it was nap time, so she was double tired. Actually, she was probably triple tired. Or more. 

When we got home, Rick had just gotten home from class and met us in the driveway and carried Kimbri in the house. She fell right to sleep on Daddy's shoulder! She took a little nap but woke up not too long after still wheezing and struggling to breath. Poor girl. 

We snuggled and watched Charlotte's Web. I thought that might be a fun movie for her since it has so many animals in it! And not to mention Charlotte, the spider!! Kimbri is so in to spiders right now with it being Halloween and all. Any time we go to my parents house she gets excited when she sees the big, fake spider hanging from the chandelier above the kitchen table. So Kimbri pretty much loved every time the movie showed Charlotte the spider :)

Well, I think the shot kicked in because last night Kimbri had a much better night! She slept 12 hours straight, woke up and had a bottle and went back to sleep for about 40 more minutes. When she woke up this morning she seemed a lot happier and better rested. However, the runny nose that had only been slightly runny has turned into a VERY runny nose that we had to constantly wipe all day. So now her nose is a bit red. But hopefully things will continue to look up and she'll be back to her healthy self soon! 

Our Second Apartment

We have absolutely loved living in this fun little house! In our previous apartment, because it was a basement there were only very tiny, skinny windows that hardly let any light in. On one side of the house there was a trailer that was parked right next to the window, blocking the sunlight from shining in. And on the other side of the house was a driveway and then another house right next to us, so we only got a few moments of sunlight before the neighboring house blocked the sun.

 It was especially hard when I had just delivered Kimbri and was home all day long. Being home all day long with a newborn was so fun and I loved cuddling and holding baby Kimbri but it's crazy how not seeing the sun really starts to affect you. I would go a couple of days without even seeing the sun. It felt as if I was living in a dark little rabbit hole. Anyway, so moving to our new place was so incredible! We immediately had tons of big windows and taller ceilings. In our last place Rick had to make sure and walk around the ceiling lights otherwise he would walk right into them and bonk his head! 

So, this fun house it where we live now. It's located on 640 N 300 E Provo, Utah. We love it!

We have lived here just over one year and it feels so much like home. Our home.

This is the front room. It's what you see when you first
walk in the front door to your left.

Our piano!

The other half of the front room/dining room. This is what
you see immediately to the right when you walk in the
front door. Notice the front door to the right of the picture.

The kitchen is just beyond the front room.

The other side of the kitchen.

One side of our bedroom.

The other side plus the closet.

Kimbri's room! So much pink:) Along with
the crib that I slept in and the changing
table that my dad made for my mom many
years ago!

The bathroom.

Before moving here we attended the married student ward. But after moving we decided to start attending the family ward. I think it was a great decision! It was fun to be in a ward with variety. Don't get me wrong, the married student ward was really fun and everybody was kind of in the same situation in life, either just married or have only been married for a couple years. There were always several pregnant women and always tons of women who had just had a baby. We could all relate to one another because we were mostly all students, married, working, etc...

But after moving, going to a family ward just felt right. We got called to speak like the second Sunday we were there! The week after giving our talks we were called in to get callings to teach the 14-15 year old Sunday School class. Maybe it was because I had mentioned in my talk that we were both the oldest of pretty large families? I don't know. But either way it was a fun calling. It was so fun to teach together, Rick and I. And of course Kimbri was a hit with all the teenage girls that were in our class:)

Just a couple of months ago, after just feeling like I had started to really get to know people in our ward,  the stake made some huge changes in our stake boundaries! They decided to create a whole new ward. And you would know, we were part of the whole 2 blocks that they took from our old ward and put in our new ward. So there are only a handful of families that are actually still in the same ward, because the block we live on has a ton of single student housing, and a church, so there's not many families that live on our block and the block across the street. They took people from three different wards and created a new ward, the Provo Peak 9th Ward. So here we are, getting used to a new ward and new callings but it's great! Rick is the 11-year-old Scout leader and I am the Primary pianist. 

We are loving living here! We will most likely be living here until probably next summer, maybe til June-ish? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It depends on where Rick gets in to medical school. So we'll see where we end up moving to next summer! 

Our First Apartment

I've been wanting to do a post about the two places we've lived since being married so that we can look back and see pictures of the places we lived as newlyweds. I think it's always so fun to look back and reminisce about life and the good times we've enjoyed together. 

So this post will be about our first little basement apartment on 465 E 200 N in Provo, Utah.

We lived below Haley and Cole Christensen, our landlords. Because we were to get married after school already had started, it was very difficult to find married housing that would be available starting in September. So we knew that we would probably have to pay extra to reserve a place.

After looking at the apartment we decided to go for it! And since we would have to rent it before actually moving in, we decided to have a little adventure and paint the kitchen. We originally had thought that we would be living there for the whole 3 years until Rick's graduation, but obviously that didn't happen. But it was a fun little adventure anyway and we had fun working on our first little apartment together. Here are some pictures of what our apartment, specifically the kitchen, looked like before, and then after.

We lived in the basement of this house.
Our entrance was on the left side just off the driveway.

Starting to take off the wallpaper.

Our bedroom.

Bathroom

Bedroom #2 - we used it for storage.

Another pic of toom #2

Stairwell and entry to apartment.

Front, living room area.

Hallway to kitchen and bedrooms.

Olivia helped us take the wallpaper off.

She also helped us repaint the cupboards!

Here is the kitchen after it was all done! The repainted white cupboards looked way better especially against the red walls. And even the ugly green counters sort of matched...or not. But it worked! 

A wedding gift we hung up in our kitchen. 

Front room / Front door

Bathroom.

Wedding gifts on our front room wall.

Painting that Rick's cousin did for us.

This apartment, though it ended up having a ton of unforeseen issues that about drove me crazy at times, it was a great little apartment that we lived in for just over the first year of our marriage. We made plenty of great and fun memories here and it will always hold a place in my heart as our first home that Rick and I had together. And we even brought our first baby home to this apartment. 

After discovering some serious mold issues in the carpet, and having the landlords 'fix' it, and then having the mold come back, we really wanted to move. The moldy, musky smell had become unbearable and I for sure didn't want a newborn baby breathing in yucky, moldy and musky air! And when a baby starts crawling, nobody wants them to be crawling on mold-infested carpet! 

So I immediately started browsing the internet, specifically Craigslist, to try and find a better but still affordable place to live. And that's when we found the house that we are living in now. Within about 2 weeks or less of finding our new apartment where we would be living, we packed, still had school, tests, Rick and I both still worked and we were still adjusting to life as parents of a newborn! It was a crazy hard semester with all that happened but it was so worth the move and we love where we are living now! My next post will be about our new place that we are living in now.