Bryndon on Break!!!

After many posts centered around our leading lady Avery, I thought it's time to write about Bryndon. I'm writing this as he is driving home from work/school (whatever it is), just starting a long break that will last through mid-January!!! 

He scheduled this year so that he'd have this long break over the holidays to be interviewing for Residencies. He has been offered 13 interviews so far! Here they are: Virginia, 2 in Denver, 2 at U of U, San Antonio, Rochester NY, Mayo Clinic, The Ohio State, Pittsburg, Boise ID, UC Irvine, and Stanford. He is going to turn down some of them that we're less interested in that offered dates for the interviews that conflict with others, but for most he'll be flying all over the country. $$$!

But it'll be good to check out the programs and the cities where we'll potentially be living for the next 4 years, starting this coming June/July. I can't believe Bryndon only has 4 months left (this spring) of Medical School! It has gone by fast and has been great most of the time. :) 

So for the next 2 months we'll be doing some of this:

And this:

*Please note that it is a great demonstration of confidence that I'm even posting this picture, trusting that those who see it will only laugh and not make fun of the terrifying ugliness we succeeded in producing (especially my pregnant self). We took this while in St. George this summer and after we took it I looked at the picture on the camera and laughed so hard I cried! One of our very best ugly pictures, not normally shared with others. :)

And for good measure, some of this:

Being Nice

Recently I've had a bunch of people do really nice things for me (or just BE nice to me), and I decided I must write about them, and hopefully will continue the tradition in the future (writing about them and DOING those types of things for others).

#1:

Bryndon went to The Ohio State University at the beginning of this week for his first Residency interview. The week before he left, he happened to get in touch with a young couple who lives there in Columbus, who knows my cousin. These people, who we have never met or talked to before last week, straight-up offered to let him stay with them, picked him up from the airport, fed him, invited over a guy from their ward who is currently a Resident there so they could talk about it, took him to the school for his interview the next morning, then took him back to the airport! Can you believe that? Strangers! And they treated him like a family member. I talked once to the husband on the phone before Bryn left to help figure out the details while he was at school, and after I thanked him profusely, he said, "That's what we do." Amen!

#2:

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment in Sugarhouse and I had to bring Avery with me for lack of a babysitter, which turned out just fine because she slept through most of the appt. First of all, all the dental assistants kept coming over to see her and once she had woken up, they wanted to hold her and keep her happy. The receptionist also offered to take her if she got fussy. That was nice (although not much of a chore because Avery is so darn LOVABLE!). But then when I was leaving, a man was coming in the door and saw that I was carrying her in her car seat and my purse, etc, so he said, "Oh, let me help you! You've got your hands full!" It wasn't SO out of the ordinary for someone to hold the door, but he said it so kindly and with such a warm smile that it actually made me really happy.

#3:

Last night I went to the grocery store to re-print some photos I had printed the other day, which had turned out really dark. The woman who helped me ended up spending at least a half hour with me as we went through all of my pictures, one by one (I had like 80 of them!), and she did the fancy fixing of the pictures to make them look better, etc. We realized that last time they had made some mistakes with printing the right pictures, so she ended up just re-printing ALL of them (after she had gone through and fixed all of them) for FREE! She only made me pay for the new 8 x 10 photo I had ordered. She was going to have me go through and trade the dark ones for the good ones she was replacing, but didn't even end up making me give those back. I grabbed some yummy grapes that were on sale while the photos were printing and decided to grab a candy bar for the woman because she had been so helpful and so nice about it. I don't say that to get credit for what I did-- I say it because I recognized that someone being nice to me made me want to be more nice to others (not just her), so that made me more determined to "pay it forward" (I haven't even seen that movie, but I get the idea).

All of these examples of kindness have done the same for me.

3 Halloweens Later

Bryndon and I were married in 2008. Three Halloweens later we have a darling little baby with us, which automatically makes this holiday much more fun! It'll be even more fun when we can take her trick-or-treating, but for now we can at least dress up all together.

The first dress-up occasion was a cute Halloween party Bryndon's sister Brittanie put on for all the grandkids/nieces/nephews in the Hatch family. Even Avery was invited and got a goody bag full of treats, toys and a new outfit that says "My First Halloween" with a big pumpkin on the back of her sleeper. We decided to go as UTES!!!

Here's our little smiling Ute:

We're just trying to bring her up to follow the truth... :)

The second gathering was the Med School's first Halloween party, which we got to with only 20 minutes left (hey, at least we went!). The food was catered and yummy! Can you guess what our trio went as? (Hint... check out the anchors on Bryndon's forearms.) Popeye, Olive Oyl and Sweet Pea (who I didn't even know about until last week).

Here's my full outfit, although nobody knew who I was dressed up as unless I was standing with my husband Popeye. (Same goes for our little Sweet Pea.)

I had to buy Avery a new outfit because she didn't even have one article of clothing that was red! Shame...

Here's a photo of the three of us with Bryndon in character:

The third Halloween was on the real Halloween, although sadly enough, Bryndon was on call that night. He did get off early, but had a bad headache so he just went home to sleep. After I had given out most of our candy and hung out for a while with Avery at our house, we went over to my parents' house and I helped pass out candy there as a WITCH!

Here's one with Avery in her pumpkin outfit (that you can see better from the back) with Dearie in her Mexican outfit.

And then we added Farmer Joe (Papa), who we forced to put on a costume. Then we watched The Illusionist, which was as "Halloweeny" as my mom and I wanted to watch (we don't like scary movies). It was a good time, although we missed Bryndon.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!