October

I can't believe how fast time is flying right now.  It feels like we were in Seattle visiting Dusty's family a few weeks ago but its been almost two months!  I need another vacation soon because I am going to go crazy if time doesn't slow down.

Last week Dusty took me on a lunch date to a cute little restaurant called In Dochine. It is on the west side of the University of Utah. I loved eating there, they marked everything that was gluten free so I was able to order without having to talk to the manager, cook or a million other people about having Celiac Disease. The food was delicious and reasonably priced. I was able to eat my leftovers for a few more meals at work, which is always nice :)

The cute little restaurant

Dusty loves his Pho. 

After eating it he told me that when we move back to Seattle 

he wants to start a restaurant chain called: 

The Great Pho King Restaurant

My food tasted super good!

On Sunday we celebrated Rebekah's (my little sister) 17th birthday. We went down to my parents house for dinner and then later had a party for her. It was lots of fun. I let my niece Alaina play with my IPhone. She took lots of pictures of herself as she wandered around the living room. 

Rebekah and Alaina

Rebekah and I waiting for everyone to show up for her party

Alaina was showing my mom her 'toy' and took a picture

Wandering around the living room

more wandering...

Happy 17th Birthday Rebekah!!

It was a pretty good weekend for us. We enjoyed visiting my family and going out to lunch. Next week Dusty is taking a little vacation to Washington D.C. with Randy so hopefully he takes lots of pictures so that I have something to blog about :)

State Fair and a New Job :)

The last few weeks have been packed! Randy got me (Mindy) a job at our local Costco and I have been constantly exhausted since I started. It is wonderful to have a job to fill my spare time, especially because the hospital changed Dusty from part-time to full-time this week, but I was not physically prepared to work for 8 hours a day. I was super excited for my first day and made Dusty take a picture. I should have had him take another one when I got home but, I don't think I want anyone seeing how sweaty and tired I was.

The day after I started work Dusty and I went to the State Fair. I LOVE the State Fair and Dusty tolerates my love and will go with me. We got to see my Aunt Michelle and Uncle Phil because my cousin Gavin was showing a sheep and heifer in the animal competition. My Grandma and Grandpa McClain were also there to support Gavin so we got to see them as well. Its nice to see my family without having to drive for an hour or so to get there. Here are some highlights of our State Fair trip:

Dusty and his foot-long hot dog

A corn dog as long as my head!

No State Fair trip is finished until we get our customized graffiti art t-shirts from our favorite gangsters. Dusty decided to get a Seattle Super Sonic's t-shirt (last year he got a Seattle Seahawks's shirt) and I opted for a cute and cuddly Care Bear. 

The barrel caption tells the truth, we had bushels of fun at the State Fair!

The following Sunday while Dusty was doing a 12hr shift at the hospital (his last one!) I tried to make dinner while doing my homework. I totally burned the bacon that I was cooking and I was pretty close to starting a grease fire! I had to lay on the floor of our apartment for an hour because the smoke was so thick. Our apartment smelled like bacon grease for three days after the incident. I am pretty ashamed of my bacon burn:

Later in the week, after the bacon incident Dusty took me to the park on my day off and we played on the playground and threw the football. Dusty is working on teaching me how to throw a perfect spiral in case one day he dies in a freak accident. He says that our children all need to know how to do it, and if he isn't there to teach them then I will have to do it. I try to tell him that I don't need to learn and that it is impossible for him to die before me but he insists that I still need to learn. 

Our picture at the park <3

Recent Happenings

The last few months have been busy! Here are some pictures of our new apartment that Dusty mentioned in his last post:

the view from the front door

the living room

the kitchen

the guest bedroom

our bedroom

the bathroom

the bathroom continued. 

At first I (Mindy) really, really, REALLY didn't like our apartment, but the longer we live her the more I am ok with it.  The man who lived here before us was a P.I.G. and didn't clean when he moved out, so when we moved in we had to clean it all up.  But, we love being downtown because we can walk to lots of great places. The other night while walking to Whole Foods for dinner we found a hidden garden in the middle of a block. We also found a great pool to get a pass to this summer, so that Dusty could finally get some sun after working in a library for a few years. The poor man still had to use tons of sunscreen at the end of the summer or else he fried so fast I swear you could hear his skin crackle. 

At the end of the summer (or the first week of school in my case) Randy and Susie invited us up for the best vacation ever! Here are some highlights of our trip: 

making Dusty's birthday dinner

(we had carne asada)

look at how big mr. Cole is now!

Randy is my favorite father-in-law (and my only one)

eating birthday dessert <3

we went to visit Klane and Amy at their club house on Lake Washington. this is a video of Dusty jumping of the 20m platform. I was the official video taker. after one jump in the water I was done for the entire day. Washington sun does not dry you as fast at Utah sun does and I was freezing!!

a candid family shot after our day at the lake

olive garden to celebrate my good grades. yes, its true, I get better grades than Dusty :)

a lovely night of family bowling where Cole whooped up on everyone and I think I barely got a 70. 

Every trip to Washington just gets better and better. Dusty loves visiting and Washington feels more like home to me every time we go. If I had to pick between Washington and Utah, despite the weak sun, I think I would pick Washington every time. 

A Little Late I Think

Back to the blog (about 6 months and 20 days after we last posted).  Sorry about that, I really don't mean to be so dang lazy, but sometimes I just can't help myself. Starting in January was my very last semester as an undergraduate student. I took 3 econ classes, a history class, and a portuguese lit class to finish off school. Financial Econ was a blast and helped me understand the things that people ask me about when I tell them that I studied economics. Its kind of funny, but sometimes I think that they get economics mixed up with finance. Economics focuses more on what people do because of money or while interacting with money, whereas Finance focuses more on money markets, investments and other ways of making the money that we interact with. :) My Health Econ class was basically a semester of preparation for the discussion that is bound to arise when I tell med school interviewers that I majored in economics and they ask me "so what do you think about the whole healthcare situation right now?", to which I can now answer "I think the whole thing is a joke," and go on to explain my newfound cynicism tied to the ability of governments to plan health care. Its not that they can't help, just that they are too blind to do anything that would actually make a difference, or it would lose them votes, or whatever excuse the local politician has in his pocket. I guess I should also mention that we as an Economics breed have special loathing for politicians as a whole.
Moving on from that deviation, I managed to graduate, and get a job in Salt Lake City at Primary Children's Hospital while I apply to medical schools. Mindy (as Melinda now calls herself) is taking her classes in Salt Lake City, and we moved up to SLC in order to 1) not live in Provo and 2) not have to drive an hour to work and class. Our apartment is old, but I like it, and its slowly (slowly) growing on Mindy as well.
We hope to take a vacation at some point this summer, but don't really know when or where. For now, we just entertain ourselves with Netflix and walks to wherever our fancy guides us. Since my paragraphs are very quickly getting shorter, we will just move on to some pictures that we have taken in the past few months since January.

Melinda in our giant Target bag for some reason or another

Tyson (recently married to Kelsey) deciding if he could actually use

 the "Emergency Throne" if he had to

Sharing our love of Pho with others

We went and saw Lady Gaga in Feb. :)

Jake's first trip to La Casita # Uno

Rose Bowl 2011

For Christmas I decided to give Dusty tickets to see the Rose Bowl because he wined for weeks last year because he didn't get to go.  So this year I bought him tickets really early (like in September) because they were cheep then and that way we could have time to plan out our whole vacation.  We tried to visit all of Dusty's relatives that live in California and also go to Disneyland.  On Christmas day we decided that we were sick of the Utah Weather and we called Grammy and Papa asking them if we could come a day early and they said sure!  So, we packed up all of our Christmas decorations and left at 6 a.m. on December 26 for California.   We weren't sure what to expect when we got there but it was mostly sunshine and a wonderful vacation.  We both thought that we were going to die when we had to come back to Utah but this is probably our last winter here and we are excited for that.  Here are a few highlights of our first Christmas and our trip:

We opened presents Christmas Eve with my family

This is us looking lovely on Christmas Morning around 10 a.m

  Post-Rose Bowl

This is the view from our seats in the 21st row in the middle of the Wisconsin section

 Dusty being smiley at the end score, we were really sick of the Wisconsin fans at the end and were happy that TCU won!

   At Grammy and Papa's before the game

 Autotopia at Disney Land :)

We found a cute little western style all you can eat lunch at Disneyland and LOVED it!

And that is our trip in a nutshell.  We loved every minute of it and hope that we can steal away to California soon!!

BYU Football

Its sad but true, we watched our last live BYU football game for a while last night.  Its weird to think of all of the changes that are about to happen in our lives.  We've planned out my schedule so that I can graduate next December and Dusty will be graduating this upcoming April.  Its going to be interesting to see how this chapter ends and where the next will pick up.  

It was super cold last night, thank you grammy and papa for the blanket!

The best football friends we could ever ask for Billy, Kelsey and Tyson-baby

The blanket almost makes a heart around Steve and Dusty

Billy and Steve sharing ice cream

Aren't we cute :)

We were so blessed to have Katie with us for the BYU vs UW game.  Dusty is such a good sport and still smiling even though his team lost

Jake did not want to get a sunburn at the game and sat on the bar while everyone walked past him.

We had such a good season with our friends, we can't wait to post basketball pictures!!