Day 1: Come Sail Away

Our cruise vacation started Friday night at 10:30pm as we boarded our red eye flight to JFK airport in New York where we would catch our 8am flight to Miami. I've never taken a red eye flight before and I'd probably have to think really hard about it before we did it again, but at the time it was our best option to make it across the continental US in time for the cruise departure, without incurring the extra cost of a hotel room. The late night flight, paired with the time change made for a very long travel day. Nevertheless, we made it on the ship with no problems and may have taken the opportunity to catch up on a few Zzz's, after we checked out the lunch buffet.

It was a cloudy day as we waved good bye to Miami and set sail for the Caribbean. But that didn't dampen the spirits aboard the ship as soon the deck was busy with people doing the electric slide and the Cupid shuffle, and every five minutes some server was trying to offer us an alcoholic beverage. I guess there's a reason Carnival's called "The Fun Ship."


Once we were given the all clear that our room was ready we escaped the noise of the party for the serenity of our balcony and watched the ocean roll by in peace.

That night we met our dinning table. I have to admit I was a bit nervous to find out who we were assigned to eat with. Would they be nice? Would we have anything in common to talk about or would we sit there in awkward silence? Would we they think we were cool? It was high school all over again. We ended up sitting with one other couple, Steve and Jill from Long Island, who were about our age and had been dating for about 9 months. Over the course of the week, we ended up seeing them quite a bit on and off the ship.

April What?

Well May is quickly drawing to and end, but wait, what happened to April? If you're going by our blog...apparently... April didn't exist. Or at least not much that was fun/news/picture worthy happened, May however will be much different. Nate finished up his last rotation as a med student and is now a dedicated house husband until he starts his residency in June. During the month and a half that he has off we are trying to get in as much fun stuff as we can before I give him over to Scottsdale Healthcare and become a residency widow. Our big adventure was our Caribbean cruise extravaganza aboard the Carnival Liberty. During our week long cruise we visited the Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, and Puerto Rico. Since we got back, and after the world finally stopped moving (5 days later) I've been trying to get all our pictures ready to post. Without further adieu, I'm starting a series of posts on our days aboard the Carnival Liberty.

What's in a name?

It came to my attention after my last post that every cool car has to have a name, and then I realized that I forgot to mention the RAV's name. Names are important (just ask any parent), so we batted around a number of ideas and hopefully came up with a good one. Since the car is blue we thought that would be a good place to start.

Given Avatar's recently popularity we considered Na'vi...but it sounded to similar to Nuvi our Garmin GPS.

So what about Smurfette? Cute and fun, maybe good for a mini cooper but it didn't quite fit. The RAV isn't prissy car and Smurfette just seemed too delicate and flighty.





The RAV is fast, strong, sleek and pretty. So with that in mind we came up with Mystique. What do you think? Do you see a resemblance? Never mind the fact that the character Mystique is a villain, the car doesn't fit in that respect (despite what some people may say about Toyota these days). I think the name fits the RAV pretty well, and apparently we're going with a Marvel theme in our house as Nate has taken to calling the Saturn the Silver Surfer.

Farewell

This last week Nate said good bye to an old friend. The two of them had a lot of good years together and he was always reliable until he recently left Nate stranded on his way home. With that we decided that it was time to let the old friend go, and so we said good bye to the '98 Malibu with it's 153,000 miles.

Appropriately it was a rainy day when Nate cleaned out his car to get it ready to turn in.

The next day we came home with a shiny new 2010 Toyota RAV4 V6. We've been looking at this car for almost a year and it was finally the right time. So far we love our new friend and have already broken her in with a trip to the Superstition Mountains. We look forward to having a lot of adventures with her down the road.

Game-Set-Match

About six months ago we started on a journey. A journey that would decide the next three years of our life and the next step in Nate's career. It was the journey to get into a residency program. We looked at all our options here in the Valley, and thoughtfully considered other possibilities elsewhere that might be good for our family. There were a few trips for Nate to go to interviews, and numerous dinners where we played the schmooze game, a game which I've never particularly enjoyed.

Then came the time for decisions. After much pondering and discussion, Nate set his list of preferred programs and then we waited as it was out of our hands. We counted down the days and we waited for the day when we would find out where he would match. Today the waiting finally paid off. Today we found out that Nate will be part of the 2013 class at the Scottsdale Healthcare Family Medicine Residency Program. HIS #1 CHOICE!!!

We're so excited that he's going to be at Scottsdale, and so relieved to finally know where we'll be for the next three years and know it means we don't have to move. I find it funny how both of us have come full circle in our jobs. After 3.5 years I'm back working for my old boss and he's back working at Scottsdale Healthcare where he used to work as a health unit coordinator.

I think this calls for a celebration.

Hello March

From the looks of things, I'm turning into one of THOSE kinds of blog posters. The kind that go weeks without a peep. Well the good news behind my radio silence is it's because I GOT A JOB. Yep I'm a bonafide working woman again. Even though currently it is still "part time" I've been busier lately then I was at my full time job, thus the blog has become slightly neglected. Sorry. It's amazing how much you can find to do when you're not tethered to a computer 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I'm both excited and sometimes a bit nervous about the new job. It will a melding of both of my past two jobs with also new layers of responsibility and knowledge areas that I know very little about. Agricultural land use, say what?! Running a small office? Whew, this is going to be interesting.

It is also going to be interesting to work with one of my old bosses again. Doug was one of my first bosses out of college, and now after several years and much discussion, our paths have finally crossed again. While I've been anticipating this opportunity for a couple years, it's amazing how all the pieces have coalesced right when we needed them to. I think someone out there just may be looking after us.

That's really the biggest development February had to offer which is alright because the next few months will have enough changes to come.

Puppy Love and Light Bulbs

I've always said that the funnest part of teaching Sunbeams was the fact that we could continue to wath our little nursery kids grow and their personalities develop. Well we now have a little Romeo on our hands. A few weeks ago I noticed one little boy, we'll call him E, being very midful of one of the girls in our class. He sat next to her and throughout the lesson he had his arm across the back of her chair. She hasn't been back to class since then, but our little Romeo surfaced again this week, putting his attention on another girl in class. During sharing time we noticed E stroking the girl's hair, then he sat next to her in class and put his arm around her and stuck close to her side during our walk. He was so gentle, so kind and so protective. I had to chuckle at the glimpse of this little man in a 3 year old form. He'll be a real catch some day.

One of our challenges is getting our kids to sing, especially when the whole primary is learning a song that they have never heard before. To reinforce music leader's teaching in sharing time, Nate had the idea that we would play a recording of the song during the first few minutes of class while they ate their snacks. As the music played on little girl commented how they were singing the same song next door. She then looked over at the table, and you could almost see the mental gears working and then a light bulb moment... "hey, it's coming from there," as she pointed to the small speakers.