A Much Needed Update

It's been a few months since our last post, so I thought I should probably give a quick update.

David has started his 4th year of medical school. He is thinking of going into internal medicine and then specializing in cardiology. Currently he is applying for residency. We should know by December where the Air Force wants to send him for training. In the mean time, he will stay busy with away rotations. He'll be in Dayton, OH, from the end of August to the end of September and then in San Antonio, TX, from the end of October to the end of November. The two hospitals he will be working at are two of the primary locations for Air Force residencies.

As for me, I decided biomedical engineering wasn't for me and stopped taking classes after the first term. From January until June I worked at a coffee shop. I learned a little about coffee and a lot about people.

In January, I was accepted to the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, OH. I will be pursuing a master's of aeronautical engineering. I found out in April that I was awarded a scholarship sponsored by the Department of Defense. The scholarship is called Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation or, more commonly, SMART. Yes, I have a SMART Scholarship. (I know, this lends itself to countless corny jokes....) The scholarship cover tuition, fees, books, and includes a monthly stipend. Now, this is a scholarship for service. That means that they pay for two years of school and then I have to work for the DoD for two years. My sponsor branch is the Air Force, Space and Missile Command, and my sponsor facility is the Los Angeles Air Force Base. They are best known for a small project called GPS.

I was in Monterey, CA, from Sunday to Wednesday at the orientation for my scholarship. Right, three days of orientation for a scholarship. They fully explained the program, the reason it was created, their expectations for us, and gave us time to network with other awardees, and allowed us to meet our mentors. This is a new scholarship (this was the fourth year of awards) but it has the potential to turn into a very competitive and well known award.

I think that about sums up the past few months. Here are pictures of Takoda and Shtiya during one of their calmer moments. They should be fully grown now since they are over one year old.

Takoda

Shtiya

Sundays

For the past three Sundays our day has gone as follows:

We go to church and Sunday school. Then we go home for a quick lunch before going to human, I mean puppy, training class. While we are there, they train us how to train the puppies. Needless to say, Takoda and Shtiya love going to training class. Everyone in the store (the class is at PetSmart) wants to know what type dogs they are and to give them lots of love and attention. Plus, they now know that there is a really good chance that several of these people will give them treats. After training class, we stop by SnoBiz for rewards. David gets a medium grape shaved ice, I get a small black cherry shaved ice, and the puppies split a small ice with water. Here are a couple of pictures from this past Sunday.

Puppy dog eyes.

The first time we went to SnoBiz, Takoda ended up getting the cup stuck on his head. And, like all good parents, we laughed as he spent about a minute learning how to get it off his head.

This past Sunday evening, David had some free time to spend playing one of Takoda's favorite games. Hopefully the video will work, because I think it's cute.

All in all, I'd say we have two happy dogs. Oh, by the way...Takoda is a Native American name meaning "friend of everyone" and Shtiya is an Eskimo name meaning "strength."

Now, if the most interesting thing that I can come up with to write about is our dogs, that means we are either boring people, or officially an old married couple.

Beginnings

So, we started this blog a month ago. As you can see, we're going to do an awesome job of posting regularly. Anyway, the big events of the past month:

-David finished his Internal Medicine clerkship and started his Surgical clerkship. He's just finished 3 weeks of thoracic surgery and starts vascular surgery tomorrow.

-Rachel started grad school for a master's in biomedical engineering. She's taking one class that is a review of all undergraduate biochemistry and molecular biology courses...great for someone who's never taken either.

-A new Sunday school class for newly married and engaged couples started at our church, Briarwood. We have started going to this class and have been blessed to meet many wonderful couples.

-And, the biggest news of all, our family doubled in size. We are now the proud parents of two adorable Alaskan Klee Kai's. What are Alaskan Klee Kai's, you ask? Well, these are our AKK's.

Our boy, Takoda.

Our little girl, Shtiya.

Our first family photo.

As you can tell, Alaskan Klee Kai's look a lot like huskies, but a lot smaller. They will grow to be about 15 inches tall and weigh about 15 pounds when they are adults. Right now they are 3 months old. Currently, Shtiya is napping on the couch and Takoda is sleeping upside down on his daddy's lap. These two are not the least bit spoiled....