April...Oh look I'm almost an entire year behind!

     April was by far the busiest month but favorite! I've nearly forgotten the many small painful tasks you have to do to get ready to move your family across country. Find & arrange the cheapest way to move everything, arrange storage on the other end, post everything I didn't want to haul online and answer a thousand e-mails, you know, that sort of thing. Luckily that's all a blur compared to the massive amounts of fun we had! So here's the quick rundown with a few stories...

  5th Match Day, The day we found out where we’d be doing our residency. I can’t remember exactly how it went but match may have been Friday the 6th and a friend surprised us on the 5th when he called early that morning and told us he knew where he was going! He said he “hacked” the system and we should hurry and get on. It was so nice because we were getting nervous for the “big day” and then it happened before we expected it so we didn’t even have time to get anymore nervous. After we made sure it was okay to look early we got on and it said KANSAS CITY!! We screamed together, ran a few circles and hugged jumping up and down, just like the movies. That was a good day. Before interviews everyone said we’d get a really good feeling about where we were ranked and pretty much know where we were going. We had no idea. We honestly were happy to go to any of the places we ranked. We really thought there was no way we were going to KC and we weren’t even going to rank them #1. We bit the bullet and just ranked it how we wanted it and Luckily the Lord had the best plan and we matched with our #1 choice! Best news we had in a long time!

  10th-16th Jason & Mikelle flew in for a visit on their way down south for their summer job. We packed in lots of snorkeling, beach fun, the boys went night fishing and of course a Keys trip to show them all of our favorite things!

  13th We attended Mike's Senior banquet and celebrated their upcoming graduation with his classmates. I loved this night! Mike, the handsome love of my life worked so hard for such a long time and this was the night we got to party! The festivities took place at the top of a fancy hotel in this cute little circle room with floor to ceiling windows with a beach & city view. So amazing! I knew everyone would be in cute cocktail dresses and I didn't want to wear the typical "church dress," so I was on the hunt forever! I found a million dresses that were just a little too short or a little too low...please someone tell me a secret place you know about with fun, modest cocktail dresses! Needless to say, after buying and returning about 15 dresses I found a cheap one that worked and it was so fun to get all dressed up. Haha, it wasn't really that dressed up, I just never do it so it felt exciting! So this fancy circle room slowly rotated the entire night. It was great, every time I'd leave to go to the restroom or outside on the balcony I'd come back and our table was gone! It was so confusing. I can't imagine what it would feel like after a few drinks. There was a fancy dinner and dessert with an open bar. My friend said she was drinking a Shirley Temple so I made my way to the bar and asked the lady for a non-alcoholic Shirley Temple! I should have figured by the name but seriously, how would I know, I've never ordered a "drink" before. The lady gave me the most interesting look and with a little attitude said, honey, a Shirley Temple is non-alcoholic! I got a good laugh at myself & I'm sure the bar lady didn't know what to think! We seriously had no idea what we were doing but we danced the night away! Mike’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth, I’m sweating like crazy and we just kept moving. At one point we did the wobble, which at that time had no idea how to do it, we just pretended. After we went to sit down for a break our friend said, you just did the wobble!! White people don’t wobble!! Who knew? We had so much fun together that we didn’t care what we looked like. The pictures from this night will say it all. Laugh it up. One of Mike's classmates (who totally had a crush on him) grabbed his tie and pulled him real close and wanted to dance. Yikes! It was great fun watching his face! I knew she had had a few too many drinks and the truth was all coming out! She poured her heart out about what a great guy Mike is...Don't worry sweetie, I know! That's why I married him! (: Ahh, just a great night all around. I love watching Mike dance. We both go a little crazy but we don't do it very often, (more like never) so we enjoy ourselves!

  17th This night was the undercover concert, you know, the tickets we won to see a surprise singer. Yay, Sara Evans. It was free and we spent a fun night with great friends!

  19th-21st Mike & I spent a kid free weekend in the Keys with our favorite fishing buddy, Cliff!  We went out Friday evening as soon as we arrived and to both of our surprise, Mike got seasick! I was pulling in fish left and right (also to our surprise) I look over and Mike is green. Poor guy. We wanted to put him out of his misery so we only stayed out a short time, but in that time I ended up with 2 bluefish, 2 yellowtail and 8 grunt, which is a trash fish but hey I was still catching them! Ok, so Mike may have been sea sick and unable to fish but I still out fished him. WooHoo! Cliff is the BEST fishing friend EVER. He drives the boat, chums the water and does his best to keep my reeling in fish non-stop. So nice, right!?
 

  25th-29th The Steel family flew into town for the BIG day and a little pre game celebration! After they arrived we packed the car and headed for the Keys! Bright and early the next morning we went deep sea fishing (Fishing guide was Billy Delph. That is very important information I never want to forget. And if you ever go fishing in the Keys, they are a MUST. I will use them every time I go back!) Mom caught her dream fish, a 48lb Sailfish! The fight was beautiful! He opened his sail and jumped, dove & flipped. I thought he'd eventually pull mom overboard she was getting so exhausted. The pictures are priceless. I don’t think her smile could get any bigger!! Mike & Dad both had sailfish on but before we knew what had happened, their lines had crossed and they both got off. It's still pretty amazing to have hooked 3 sailfish! It was a beautiful day, we saw a hammerhead shark and a sea turtle. We caught Sail fish, Mutton snapper, Barracuda and Bonita. We successfully fished until the guide finally asked how much of it we wanted to eat! We didn't really have a way to get all that fish back to Kansas so we called it quits. On the drive home we stopped by a local Ma& Pop Grill, Bubalou’s and had them cook up our fresh fish. So tasty! Best fishing trip ever! We spent Friday at our beach, played in the pool and just relaxed.

 

  28th GRADUATION!! I can't believe this day finally came. Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine. Class of 2012. Congrats to the new Dr. Andersen! Graduation was the typical boring graduation routine, but awesome all at the same time. Solely for the fact it meant we were FINISHED. It was a little rainy if I remember right but a great Miami day! Dr. Southerland played the bagpipes, that’s probably what I’ll remember most about the ceremony. Haha. We had lots of support from friends and family. Sid & Tiiu came up from the Keys and our families flew in from Kansas and California. So nice! After the ceremony we ventured to the creature beach and found lots of conch shells and other crazy creatures. My mom was dying to find a shell so we had to grant her that request. But of course we didn’t take any of those crazy creatures home because it’s a federal offense and we wouldn’t want that on our records now would we!? Steal a conch shell…Some people must be heartless (: We enjoyed my families last night in Miami by playing paddleball on a cute little sand bar/island & watched the sunset. A proper exit if I do say so myself. It really was a perfect day.
 
  

27th-May 4th Kes & Ruth came in town for the BIG day and some Post game celebrating! Can you guess where we went??? They Keys! My favorite part of this Keys trip was Monday night Mike, Kes and Kade were enjoying some late night fishing. Kes sat down on the back porch to relax and set his pole on the ground by his feet. Next thing I know, Kes has caught a fish but the fish took off with the pole! Hilarious actually. Mike doesn’t have very many nice things but it just so happened that this was his nicest rod & reel. Darn the luck. Kes was feeling really bad but not bad enough to dive in after it. (: It was pitch black and as much as I love the ocean there wasn’t a chance I was going in there either. After laughing and talking about it all night we decided we wouldn’t see that pole again and chalked it up to a funny story that we’d never forget. The next morning Kade was fishing & caught a line…Hmmm…So this time we Mike dared jump in and check it out. I was on the paddleboard and Mike was snorkeling. We followed line forEVER. This line had moss and all sorts of junk growing on it so we figured it had been there for a looong time. We pulled and pulled. Found another line stuck the to first line and wouldn’t you know, Mike’s pole! We died laughing. Kes felt SO much better and Kade was pretty proud of his accomplishment. That poor fish must have swam and swam until he wrapped himself up so badly he eventually broke the line. Quite miraculous honestly. That’s some serious luck. Kes snorkeled while we were on the hunt. He didn’t believe that we see lots of large lobsters so he had to find out himself. He found one alright, he grabbed onto his front tentacle/feeler thing and wasn’t going to lose that fight so of course he comes up with the tentacle but no lobster! The poor critter! Kes always makes me laugh uncontrollably. Later that day we visited a touch tank/museum. Walked the streets of Key West for one of the last times for a while (don’t think I won’t make it back there). Enjoyed chocolate covered Key lime pie on a stick and photographed every inch of that place. Ahhh, the Keys. Sadly, we didn’t get to deep sea fish because we were rained out. So we headed back to Miami and packed up!
 

 We picked up the truck Thursday night and had it loaded and ready to go within a few hours thanks to the help of Mike’s parents. Friday morning Mike’s parents flew home and we spent our final day saying goodbyes and tying off loose ends. Its hard to say goodbye to paradise. We stocked up on key lime pie, coconuts, sand and miracle berries from Aunt Joan and Uncle Dru. Saturday morning we hit the road. KANSAS CITY HERE WE COME!! We decided to haul the car on the back of the truck and drive together. So glad we did because it was so much fun being together and I didn’t have to feel so nervous about Mike falling asleep at the wheel. You think I’m joking. We love a road trip so off we go 1,863.98 miles or 29 hrs and 24 minutes.
           And there set our Florida sun….

 

  MAY We arrived in Lee’s Summit Missouri on Monday the 7th. We spent all Tuesday looking at houses & compiling lists for the realtor. Wednesday & Thursday was spent with the realtor. By Friday we made an offer on a house we thought we’d love and headed for Garden City. The house was in pretty bad shape but we were up for the challenge. It had so much potential. We offered as little as we could because we knew we needed lots for the fixing part. Tuesday the bank countered back and we countered back again. By Thursday we heard back from the bank but decided we didn’t want it anymore. Funny how that works. They were trying to run their game and we totally lost interest. We felt really good about it though. So back to Lee’s Summit we go to look again. By Friday we made an offer on a house we loved and the rest is history. They were quick- they wanted to sell. We were excited- we wanted a house! The first house we ever looked at Kade said, “I want this one”! When we asked him why he said “because it has a backyard”! We reassured him we’d get him a backyard. This house has a backyard and trees to climb! Home sweet home.