Graduation!!

On Feb. 6 Andy completed his very last day of clinicals. Graduation wasn't scheduled until Feb. 24, so he had a couple of weeks to finish studying for his Board Certification exam that would need to be taken after graduation. His goal was to take it as soon as he possibly could.

In the middle of February some of my family came to visit for a couple of days. Andy spent most of his time studying, but he did manage to take off a few hours to go watch the sunset at the beach with us one night.

On Feb. 24 Andy graduated! Woot woot! This has been such a long and stressful road! He had to speak at graduation since he was the class President, and he did a great job. I tried to take a video of it with my camera, but it kept shutting off every 45-50 seconds, so I have the whole speech minus some gaps of 10-20 seconds when I had to turn it back on and restart the recording.

Andy's Dad, step-mom, and sister arrived on the day my family all left, and then his mom and his brother Pat flew in the next day. Andy always claims I'm not good at keeping secrets, but I have known Pat was coming since early-November, and when he arrived Andy still had NO IDEA he was coming. It was a fun surprise! I even managed to get Pat a ticket to graduation AND help Kylee put on a wonderful (and believable) "I don't want to go to the airport" performance when Andy suddenly decided to go with us to pick up his "mom" and I knew there wouldn't be room in the car since Pat was coming too -- and Andy still had no clue. Boom.

After graduation, the school has to notify the Board people that everyone has officially graduated, and then it takes them 1-2 days to send you a number that you can then use to register to take your test. Andy got his number on Monday afternoon, and the plan was to take Boards on Wednesday or Thursday. However, on Monday evening when he was looking at the time slots available, there was either Tuesday at 2pm in Ft. Myers (30 minutes away), or later in the week in Port Charlotte (2+ hours away). He really wanted to get it over with but wasn't sure if he was quite ready for Tuesday. He agonized over it, and finally decided to just do it. 

They get 3 hours to take the test, so he had from 2pm-5pm to do it. I had a video meeting with some of my co-workers from 3-5pm, so I knew he was probably going to be finishing while I was in my meeting. I told him he HAD to text me, either way. Pass or fail, I had to know. (I was sure he would pass, but you just never know!) At 3:26pm he sent me this:

I'm not going to lie, there were some tears shed! My poor co-workers had to have a little moment with me while I lost it for a second. You really don't realize how much stress it is until it suddenly ISN'T. It's been sooooo nice to have him home and not studying for the last few weeks. I really didn't realize how good it would feel. It's the best! I'm so proud of him!

As a side note, he is apparently famous now as "the guy who passed Boards super fast". We were at the beach with some of our friends the other day, and some of the people from the Feb. 2020 graduating class were there, and somebody said something, and then the other guys were like, "Wait...this is the guy who passed Boards before the ink on his diploma was even dry?!" Like everyone has heard about it. So strange. But that's our claim to fame right there, I guess! I'm just glad it's over!

Our Future Home in New Mexico

This post might come as a surprise to some people. You might be thinking "wait - I thought you were moving to Nebraska?!". It's a long story. Looong story. It made for another REALLY long month. January was nearly as stressul and long as September was for us, but all things happen for a reason, and to give you the short version: the weekend when we were supposed to be house hunting in North Platte, Nebraska, we bought this soon-to-be-started spec home in Carlsbad, New Mexico instead. We'll be living and working there after graduation, and we feel like it is where we're meant to be for now.

The first picture is from the front of our lot, the second picture is from the back. The lots are really narrow, but deep. The scheduled completion is 6/1, and at that time this .20 acre lot will contain a 4 bedroom home with 3 car garage with a cinderblock red fence all the way around. We're very excited to monitor the progress from here in Florida! We have friends who live in the same neighborhood already, so they'll be sending us pictures and videos of our home as it moves along.

Andy will [hopefully] find a temporary place to stay and begin work in mid-to-late April, and the kids and I will most likely stay here in Naples until our house is ready. The rental market in Carlsbad is out. of. control. We're wait-listed on a couple of different apartment complexes, but there's a new complex being built and even it is already all booked up before it's even finished...so it's not likely we'll get something, especially to only rent for 3 months.

Now we just need to find a way to make time move quickly! Since we were originally scheduled to depart Florida over Spring Break and now we're here for another 10-12 weeks...we're up for anything! Visitors...ideas of places to visit nearby...

Here's what our lot looked like when we were there in the end of January:

Here are some photos the builder posted for us on 2/21 after the foundation was poured and the framing was started:

Here are some photos from 3/4/2018 when the electrical, plumbing, windows, and bathtubs were in progress:

I'm looking forward to our next update, since I think they're doing drywall this week. Yay! It doesn't feel real yet...but we're getting there!

Colby can finally walk!

Ever since Colby was born people (including us) have compared him to Skyler. He looks like Skyler, he's huge like Skyler was, his head is big...etc. He's basically mini-Skyler, except with brownish-grey eyes instead of blue. Along those lines, he's about the same with his development as well. Our girls both crawled and walked really early. Skyler didn't crawl until 10 months or walk until 15. Colby is the same. It's so strange to think about how genetics works. Both our girls were similar, and both our boys are similar.

Anyway, he's about 14.5 months old and he has finally started figuring out how to walk more than a step or two at a time. In the last week or two he's gotten pretty good. I'd say he still crawls about 60-70% of the time, but he's definitely making more of an effort to get up and walk, which is progress! And yes, he LOVES to brush his teeth!

Happy Birthday - Kylee turns 10!!

It's crazy how fast time flies. It's hard to believe that it has already been 10 years since we became parents for the first time. Our tiny bald baby girl has grown into such a smart and beautiful young lady!

As a side note - I just noticed that the shoes you see reflecting in the edge of this photo are the tennis shoes I STILL WEAR. Yikes. Maybe that's a little sad, and it's time to buy some new shoes!

Kylee picked out a funfetti cake mix and the blue frosting that comes with the fish sprinkles, and then we made it look fun and colorful. I feel like my cake making has slacked in recent years - but she didn't want anything more fancy. She just wanted a rectangle cake with blue icing and fish sprinkles, so she was really happy with how it turned out.

Christmas!

I've been telling Andy for weeks that I didn't think Skyler needed the training wheels on his bike anymore because when he rides it they're usually not even touching the ground. So on Christmas Eve after church Andy took them off and we went out to teach him to ride it. He struggled a little bit on the sidewalk - maybe because it's too narrow? - but then we took him to the fire station parking lot behind our house and he caught on really fast!

On Christmas day the kids woke up around 7am and we opened presents. We were really lucky because Andy was originally scheduled to be at the hospital for the 7am-3pm shift, which means he would've left around 5:30am, but then he got switched to 3pm-11pm.

We weren't able to make our annual Christmas trip to the beach since Andy had to be at the hospital, but we spent the day playing with all our new toys and games.

I'm always the worst at taking pictures on Christmas! These are all I got!