White Coat Ceremony

August 13th was John's White Coat Ceremony. It is actually a pretty big deal in Med School--the next big thing like this will be his graduation...in a few years. :) It is a ceremony where the older students put the white coat on the new students signifying that they are now official medical school students. John had to go early to get pictures taken and things, so I ended up driving over with Kelsie Peterson, who happens to live in our complex, is LDS, just came from BYU and whose husband is in John's med school class. It is nice to have someone to hang out with who is in my same situation! Anyway, I thought the white coat ceremony would be kind of boring (like graduation) but it was actually really interesting. The faculty speaker was chosen by the second year students and she was really good. Then there were 5 student speakers from 2-4 year. They were all really interesting and funny, especially the last one. He kept telling the 1st years how they could become a handsome, funny and amazing second year like he is. :) (Side note to that-the speaker was talking about being a intimidated 21 year-old first year, which means now he is 22....and John and I are old! There are a few other things that John has encountered with his classmates that remind us that we aren't at BYU anymore!) It was really a cool experience and got everyone excited to be in medical school (or wives or families of people in medical school) and for what is coming!

John with some other LDS guys in his class

All of the first year med students

Us with Mitch and Kelsie

Our Condo

We really like our condo, especially now that we have some furniture and decorations up! It took a little while to figure out how to get it to all work together, but now it seems like everything works together pretty well.

Our family room is African style...for a while we weren't sure, but after finding an 'African section' in Hobby Lobby, we knew it was meant to be. The statue of the African lady with a pot on her head may seem authentic, but it just might have been made in China....or some Asian country. But the rest of the African stuff is real, and John says the flowers look African too. (Not really, but they match our candles!) Add a picture of a palm tree with Africa written across the front and our theme is complete.

The kitchen has cool granite-tile countertops and travertine backsplash, so it really didn't need much decoration. Although the refrigerator and dishwasher are probably 20 years old and starting to look like it...

Our bathroom was painted blue by the previous owners and with the tan tiles it looked like a beach to me. We got some sea turtles (that came all the way from Santa Barbara), a finger-painted tile from Puerto Vallarta and a few palm tree accessories and we were good to go.

There is not much to say about our bedroom. It is blue, which hopefully will change soon (as soon as we can go pick out some paint) and it has been pretty much neglected since no one really sees it and we don't want to put anything on the walls until we paint.

Our second bedroom houses our bikes (which we still need to take for a ride on the cool bike paths here) and a lot of extra stuff. I did finally put stuff away (except for the bikes) so we could have some friends stay in there on a blow up mattress for a few nights.

That is pretty much it about our condo, except for outside. We haven't taken any pictures, but all around the complex it is green with tons of different plants-including banana trees. There are tiny lizards running around all the time, sometimes you are afraid you will accidentally step on them. And then there are the pools, which are super nice to cool off in-and even a hot tub (a HOT one) in case I am too wimpy to get in the pool even when the temperature is above 90.

Pretty much we love where we live and we are super close to the Medical Center, only 10 minutes by bus!

Wicked!

Our first adventure in Houston (after packing of course) was going to Wicked! I looked for Broadway shows in Houston as soon as I knew we were moving and it happened to be on right when we were coming. So we figured we would go for our anniversary. We went out to The Olive Garden then drove downtown, and it started to pour! It was so hard we could barely see out the front even though we had the windshield wipers going as fast as they could. So walking to the theater I got my feet a little wet--even though the walkways were all covered. : ) That was our first big Houston rain experience. It will start pouring out of nowhere for 20 mins and then it will completely go away and sometimes get sunny again. It is crazy! Anyway, Wicked was amazing! The cast was awesome, and I thought this Glinda was even more ditzy and "blond" than the first time I saw it--which of course made it better! : ) John even loved it. He kept saying how great it was, and all I could say was "I told you so." ;) So over all it was a great night!

Moving to Texas

So we moved to Houston the end of July. We packed on the 19th (our 2nd anniversary) and then drove for two days. After we left the city, Arizona and New Mexico were pretty boring. A whole lot of dirt. : ) But once we started to get into Texas it slowly got greener and greener and flatter and flatter. There were mountains, which then became hills, which became small mounds and then nothing. But the greenery was cool. For a while as we were driving on the side of the road it looked like long stretches of nicely mown grass...but it didn't make sense to have someone mowing miles and miles of grass...finely we realized it was some sort of plant that just grows really close to the ground. We also started to pass a lot of little streams, or as they call them in Texas "bayous." We were excited to be getting somewhere new. Also, we noted the increasing humidity. Everyone had warned us repeatedly of the stifling heat and humidity, that we would not be able to handle. Luckily, its not as hot in Texas as in Arizona, and despite the humidity we have survived. : )