The first ten years...

It took a while, but I've finally managed to complete a picture time line of our first ten years together.  It's been fun reminiscing about the life that we've lived.  I am so grateful that God has joined Buzz and I together.  I truly live a life that is above and beyond everything that I had ever hoped for.  My husband is my best friend.  We've grown up together and supported one another through all the twists and turns that our lives have taken.  The best part of celebrating our first decade is looking forward to loving each other for the remainder of the years that God gives us.

So... after much time waiting, it was finally Buzz and I who stood together at the altar.  At some point leading up to the wedding we stopped caring as much about the details of the day and were just eager to get on with our lives as a married couple.  On the day of our wedding, my hair was a disaster (I still want to strangle the lady that did it - and I'm not a violent person), I was stuck in a hot dressing room for what felt like hours while Buzz frantically tried to finish setting up the tables for the reception, the photographer's camera broke... really I could go on and on about what didn't go right.  But the most important part of that day happened beautifully, just as perfectly as I'd always imagined.  I stood before our friends and family with the man of my dreams where we pledged our love to each other and were joined in marriage before God.  When I think of the wonder of those few moments, all of the other mishaps of the day fade into insignificance.

Here we are driving away after the ceremony.  We were unbelievably happy to be on our way!

After our honeymoon to the northern California coast, we drove our truck (which didn't have air conditioning) for three days to get back to Tulsa.  Once there we moved into our new apartment, got our few boxes out of storage, and unpacked our wedding gifts (amusing side note:  Buzz thought that it would be funny to register for toilet paper at Target.  Guess what we got from nearly everyone who came to our wedding?  We literally didn't have to buy toilet paper for the first year of our marriage!).  We both found jobs at the same hospital.  I worked as a nurse technician, and Buzz as a patient transporter.  The summer went by quickly and we returned to school in the fall.

The next spring Buzz graduated with a degree in Pastoral Christian Ministries with an emphasis in missions.  His parents and brother came out and we had a great time celebrating his accomplishment.  Later that summer we decided that we would like a second bedroom for guests and moved into a new apartment.  Buzz started a full time job with an orthopedic hospital, also in patient transport, but with this job he got to valet park cars as well.

A year later it was my turn to graduate with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing.  We enlisted the help of my parents when they came for my graduation to help us load up a u-haul and move us back to Reno.  Here we are just before leaving for my pinning, a traditional ceremony that graduating nurses participate in.  It was a bigger deal to me than graduation itself.

Once in Reno, we both got jobs fairly quickly.  I started working on an orthopedic unit doing 12 hour night shifts three times a week, Buzz started working as a surgical orderly doing 4 ten hour night shifts a week.  It's funny now to look back on that time when we were both working and before we had kids and remember how carefree we were.  If we wanted to buy something, we did.  If we wanted to go somewhere, we went.  We paid off a large amount of student loans and had little vision beyond where we would travel next.  Buzz even bought a jet ski for our many weekends spent at Donner Lake.

Some time around our third anniversary, we started to feel discontent with the lack of direction of our lives.  Buzz had been working with the youth at our church and had been struggling with not being allowed to lead the kids in ways and directions that he felt were important.  For years he had planned on applying to graduate school and yet could never bring himself to mail in the application.

One hot, lazy day at the lake with his family, Buzz' brother began to ask him about whether he would ever consider going back and applying to medical school.  Buzz had started out his first year of college as a pre-med student and had changed his major when he transferred to ORU.  Here is a picture taken during this conversation.  Such an ordinary picture... but I will never forget how that conversation changed the course of our lives.

Here's where Buzz asked me what I thought about the whole thing... I know, adorable, huh?

Over the next few weeks I could tell that Buzz' discontent was increasing.  He wasn't himself, he didn't have a passion for the things he was doing with the church.  He did, however, talk with much excitement about the things that he saw and the patients that he met at the hospital.  After many long heart-to-heart's, Buzz and I made the decision for him to go back to school to finish pre-requisites for medicine.  It would take him a year and a half of course work before he could even apply to medical school.

Shortly after Buzz paid to enroll in classes and notified his work that he would be significantly cutting his hours, we found out that we were expecting our first baby.  I realized around 2am that a baby was likely on the way and we drove to Walmart right then and there to buy a test.  Sure enough, I was right.  Here we are around 3am that same night:

Funny thing about Sparkle's name... we disagreed on the spelling all the way up until I was on the table getting a c-section and Buzz couldn't do anything but give me my way.  As a result, all of our shower pictures have her name wrong.  She gives us a hard time every time she sees them.

We bought our first house in the fall of 2003 and Sparkle was born in March of 2004.  I love this picture of her and Buzz when she is just a couple of hours old.

Here's one that speaks to the reality of having a family while still in school: Buzz studying for a physics exam while holding our newborn in his lap.  We hadn't even left the hospital yet.  In fact, he went to school and took his test before picking us up at the hospital later that afternoon to take us home.  I wonder if we realized how much of a reality this sort of thing would become for our family.

From day one Sparkle transformed our lives.  We were in awe of this sweet little creature that God had blessed us with.  She was an easy baby and slept most of the day and night.  I continued to work nights and Sparkle was easy going enough to just lay by me while I slept for a few hours to recover from my shifts.  Can I tell you how much I miss those days?  Sweet, sweet sleep...

She traveled well too and we took her everywhere with us.  The pace of our lives didn't really slow much.  Here she is at her first baseball game:

(Buzz had shaved his head for a road trip with his brother.  For the record, not my favorite look.)
Here we are six months later when Buzz' hair had grown back and I was once again sleeping through the night. Much better!

The University of Nevada medical school accepts it's applicants in a rolling fashion.  They send out acceptance letters first in January, then again in February and March.  It stronger the applicant you are, the earlier you get your letter.  We hoped and prayed that we would get an acceptance letter in January.  On the day after the letters went out, we waited eagerly for a knock at the door from the mailman (the letters came certified).  At one point I couldn't stand it any longer and went to check the mailbox to see if the mail had come.  It had and my heart sank.  When I pulled out the pile, however, there was a 'sorry we missed you' slip from the post office stating that we could pick up our letter the next day.  We put aside our frustration with the fact that the mail man was too cold to actually walk to our door to ring the bell and set out in our car to find him.  A few blocks away from our house, he handed us the letter that we were hoping we would get:  Buzz had been accepted into the class of 2009!

Here's our family later that spring at Sparkle's first birthday party.  Buzz was in the process of finishing prerequisites for school that fall and we were enjoying the time that our family had together before beginning a new and challenging chapter in our lives.

In June, a day before we were to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, we were thrown a curve ball.  Buzz had applied to the University of Utah for medical school, but had been put on the waiting list.  I grabbed the mail on my way to work and there was a large packet with a big red U in the top left corner.  I ran inside and told Buzz, "This doesn't look like a 'thanks very much, but we're not interested any more' type of letter."  He opened it and sure enough, a spot had opened up and was being offered to Buzz.  We spent our entire night away on our anniversary discussing it and decided to go for it.  The school was larger than Nevada's and more reputable as well.  Also, and this was the kicker for us, there were no requirements for away rotations.  If he had stayed in Nevada, he would have had to spend a large portion of his third year and two additional one month rotations during his fourth year away from home.  We made the decision, broke the news to our families, and put our house on the market.  It sold in nine days. Ah, the glory days of real estate!  Wasn't it cute?

And here are Sparkle and Buzz proudly displaying their new school pride:

Sparkle was 16 months old when we moved to Utah.  We moved in with Buzz' sister and her family for a few months until we figured out where we wanted to buy our house.  Here we are just a week after we moved.  I do so miss those mountains!

Here we are at Buzz' white coat ceremony at the start of medical school.  Such an exciting day!  Our plans had changed so quickly and our move had been such a blur that I remember feeling like I needed to pinch myself over and over again to believe that we lived in Utah and that med school had become a reality for our family.

We closed on our second home in October and found time to unpack boxes between Buzz' classes and my work schedule.  I was once again working nights, but this time in the float pool at the children's hospital.

While Buzz' classes were demanding, we had the wonderful benefit of a traditional M-F school schedule and calendar for the first two years.  We traveled a little and had a fair amount of free time to spend together. Here are some pictures of us from our first year of medical school:

I'm not going to lie to you.  Our first year in Utah was difficult for me.  It was hard to meet people with common beliefs and interests.  Buzz had a good social network at school, but I didn't have much to go on.  In addition to a lack of social contact, we had been trying to have another baby for a year with no success.  Looking back over our ten years of marriage, this time was, for me, the hardest by far.  

To shake me out of my funk, Buzz decided to drag me up a mountain and throw me back down again.  Not really.  But the hike was more that I had bargained for, that's for sure!  We started our hike several hours later than is recommended and had to move quickly to make it back down by nightfall.  We made it to the top, 7.5 miles one way and an elevation gain of around 4400 feet.  That was tough work, but paled in comparison with our journey down.  And can I just say that I never thought I had a fear of heights until I was standing at the summit of Mt. Timpanogos with the wind gusting around and my legs so exhausted from our assent that I didn't feel like I could stand up straight?  Here we are at the top:

One of us enjoyed the afternoon more than the other!

We were told that sliding down the glacier was the most fun part of the hike and that kids do it all the time.  I have since read that the vast majority of injuries that occur on the mountain happen while doing just that.  I can attest to the painfulness of the route.  Here I am before I lost most of the feeling in my fingertips for a full two weeks from clawing at the snow and ice in order to avoid sliding into a giant pile of boulders that were in my path.

By the time we reached the bottom of the glacier, I was bleeding from several places.  Buzz was grinning ear to ear... until he saw my blood and tears, then he very solemnly pledged that he would never make me summit another mountain with him again.  He's kept his word.  Not that there are any mountains to summit here in the Midwest, but still.

At any rate, my fall down the mountain seemed to do the trick and we found out that we were expecting Sunny later that month.  I was very, very sick when I was pregnant with her and lost over 10 percent of my body weight.  Not surprisingly, I didn't take many photos during this time.  We did manage to send out a Christmas card that year with our sweet girl holding an ultrasound picture of her sister.

I started having regular contractions somewhere around 24 weeks while on a night shift at work.  There had been a finding on ultrasound that made our doctor feel he needed to be extra cautious to protect against early labor, so I was placed on modified bed rest and was unable to work the remainder of my pregnancy.  Here we are at the zoo once I had reached 36 weeks and was released to normal activity again.

Sunny joined our family in May of 2007.  Buzz was sick and had taken a large amount of cold medicine to try to get some sleep before a big exam the next morning.  My parents called and said that they were coming whether or not the baby was on the way because I sounded just miserable (the little stinker wouldn't come out, after all that time on modified bed rest!).  We moved Buzz' desk up two flights of stairs so that he could study while our post-baby visitors were in town, then went to bed.  I started contracting almost as soon as I laid down.  After an hour of staring at the clock and listening to Buzz snore, my water broke.  Poor Buzz.  Sunny was born at 7:15 am and he was supposed to start his exam at 8.  He got hold of someone at the school and was given permission to take the exam a little late.  He kissed his newest little girl and left to take his test just an hour after she was born (just in case you were wondering, it was his lowest test grade ever).  What was that I said earlier about being in school while having a family?

Later that day our friend brought Sparkle to the hospital and our family of four was together for the first time.  Sparkle adored her little sister!  We thought she was pretty wonderful too.

Here we are about about a week after Sunny was born.  Isn't Utah a beautiful place?  I never would have guessed before we moved there.  Most of my experience with the state had been driving through the salt flats.

Later that summer we spent some time at Buzz' parent's cabin at Donner Lake.  It was much needed family time before Buzz started his most difficult year of school that August.

Even though Buzz was working hard, our family still managed to enjoy many of the great things that Utah has to offer.  Here are several pictures from that year that show many of the fun activities we did and beautiful places we were fortunate enough to visit.  At an RSL game:

Our favorite mountain kid spot, Cascade Springs:

At Thanksgiving Point:

Can't remember the name of this hike, but it's trail head was 8 minutes from our house:

Big Cottonwood Canyon:

Cecret Lake:

And another along the trail to Cecret Lake:

(Thanks for indulging me.  I had forgotten how much I miss the mountains until I started looking through photos to write this post!)

That fall Buzz applied for residency positions and we spent two weeks in November traveling the Midwest so that he could interview.  If you ever happen to find yourself in St. Louis and you have kids who are at least eight years old, you should visit the City Museum.  I have no idea why someone at Wash U's program told Buzz that I should take my 4 and 1 year old there.  I have never been so afraid that I was going to lose one of my children!  They go down into tunnels under the floor and up into the ceiling and you can't figure out where they are going to come out.  Here they are in the one spot in the place I felt okay with them playing.  Even then I was grossed out by the number of germs I was sure they were picking up from the balls:

Buzz had loved the program in Kansas City where he had done a month long rotation that summer and we decided that if the program liked him too, we would move our family to the Midwest for residency.  For the rest of that winter and spring we spent as much time with our friends and doing things that we would miss as we could.  Here we are on a carriage ride downtown on Christmas Eve:

And here's Buzz and Sparkle's final ski trip before we moved:

In January we found out that our family was going to grow again: our third baby would be arriving in September.  I never would have planned a cross country move while pregnant, or to have a baby during intern year, but once again God knew better than we did.  We love little Sevvy so much and couldn't imagine our lives without her!

In March we found out that Buzz had matched to the program that he wanted in Kansas City!  Here's our family at the Match Day breakfast that the medical school hosted.  Sparkle was just as excited as we were!

In the midst of packing up our house and with it under contract, we decided to take a trip to Disney Land since we would be much farther away once we moved.  I have never seen Sparkle so happy!  Sunny liked it too, but would have done better with a few naps.

Later that month, Buzz graduated.  It was another pinch myself type of experience for me.  I could not have been more proud of my wonderful husband!  I thought that I'd cry, but I was too busy grinning from ear to ear... and wrangling my children.

Just a couple of days later, our friends came over to our house for the final time to help us load our biggest moving truck ever.  It was a 'you pack it, they drive it' sort of thing and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a move in their future!

My need to 'nest' came in handy when unpacking all of our boxes and making our new house our home.  Within a few weeks we had unpacked every box and found homes for everything that we had brought with us.

Here's a picture of our family taken just after Buzz started residency...

...and here's the more realistic version:

In September we welcomed sweet Sevvy into our family.  She came a couple weeks early and Buzz had to miss one of his call shifts when she came, but we were so thankful that his program worked with him to give him time off.  Sevvy is an easy going baby, and is adored by all.  We are so thankful for her sweet, chubby, smiling face!

And finally, here we are just a short time ago at Sunny's third birthday party.  A month before this picture was taken we found out that we were expecting another baby, due to join our family in late December.  It's crazy to me to see how much our family has grown and how big my babies are getting!

So... that's it!  I guess you could say that the theme of our first ten years has been having babies and getting schooled.  As for the next ten years?  Buzz will finish residency in two years and hopes to practice in the area we currently live.  I am looking forward to feeling settled and raising up our kids to be every bit as wonderful as we know them to be!  We look forward to discovering God's will for our family and loving each other every step along the way.