June 2009

Time sure does zoom by. I don't know if that is a characteristic of residency or getting older.

Anyhow, enough whining. The updates... let's see...

Well, the first and most obvious thing to have occurred since the last update was that Kristen and I got married!

After a busy morning getting dressed for the girls and a morning searching for an open gunrange for the boys, we had a lovely ceremony and mass at St.Gerard Majella in Port Jeff Station.

The event went off without a hitch. It was a beautiful spring day in Long Island, after a week of blizzards. There are even some lovely snow piles in some of our wedding pictures.

Here is a picture of everyone... the winner for greatest distance traveled was my cousin Shou-Mei from Taiwan!

The reception was awesome. There was a ridiculous amount of food, plenty of booze, and a whole bunch of maniacs running amok on the dance floor. The way a wedding reception should be.

Here is Uncle George breaking it down as usual.

Kristen and I then immediately flew out that night for Roatan, Honduras where we spent a week of intense vacation. We dove three times daily for a week straight, seeing the most amazing sea creatures. We went on a shark dive, a dolphin swim, two night dives, and logged about 13 other dives as well. We saw a bunch of groupers, starfishes, a sea horse, spotted eagle rays, parrotfish, angel fish, baracuda, reef sharks, and a whole bunch more.

Since then, we have been extremely delinquent in getting out our thank you cards... Be assured that they are on their way soon.

The third year residents are graduation currently, advancing us into our final year of residency. The future is still a bit foggy. I think I want to pursue a teaching position, which would place me at one of a handful of Air Force Family Medicine residency programs. Kristen is still debating wheter she wants to continue on for a fellowship which would entail 3 more years of training.

2008

This year has gone by fast! The biggest indicator of this is that I have been tearing off pages on my desk top calendar by weeks at a time. Kris and I are still doing well. Since this is the first time I am using this thingy, I will go backwards and hit only the fun highlights.

We have been wedding planning for the past several months for the big day on March 7- yes, on my birthday. Maybe that way I won't forget the anniversary! (Though, I have been known to forget my birthday, so I don't know if that ploy will work.) Also in preparation for the honeymoon, we have gotten certified in open water scuba through a local outfit called scuba world; the final certification dives were done at this cool place in southern Illinois called Mermet Springs- it is a flooded limestone quarry that has a number of platforms and planes/boats/helicopters/ambulances/busses/etc sunken on the bottom. It was at the end of October, so that was pretty chilly!

Over the summer, we just kept on working. I believe this was the first time we didin't have a summer break at all. :-( We hung out around town and explored various local sites like the butterfly house and went to the Japanese festival at the Botanical Gardens. And we made peach pies from peaches we picked at Eckert's.

In the spring time, we went on a cruise to the carribean! We went to Cozumel, went snorkeling and kayaking there, then went to Progresso where we took a bus ride to Chichen-Itza. This trip was what inspired us to get scuba certified.

Also in April, the Belanos came out to visit. We went to see the Budweiser Brewery while it was still owned by Budweiser and of course we went to see the arch and had breakfast at Eckerts.

In January, we took a trip to Pere Marquette to go Bald Eagle Spotting. The eagles from all round the country come to winter in western Illinois on the shores of the Mississippi river, so we went down to see them in action. It was pretty much awesome!! And I think that takes us back to 2007!