March 15-21

This week was finally the long-awaited national board exams. On Monday, Lezlie and I decided to briefly review and then treat ourselves to a manicure and pedicure to relax before the test. Tuesday and Wednesday I took the board exam with four sessions, 8:30-12 and 1:30-5 each day. The test was hard, but I think I passed (won’t find out until May) and it’s finally over. We celebrated what was left of Spring Break by meeting our friends from UNI, Jeff & Amy Muller and Mike & Maria Anderson in Las Vegas for a mini-vacation! It was all of our first times in Vegas, and we managed to fit a lot of fun into four days. We played blackjack, went to a dinner show, relaxed by the pool, ate at a buffet, got margaritas and took lots of pictures! We had a ton of fun and even managed to meet up with our friends Shane & Shaybree Goshon who were nearby in Arizona and came into Vegas for the night on Friday. While the Mullers and Andersons left Sunday morning to head back to Iowa, Nick and I didn’t leave until 11 pm on Sunday, so we had the day to ourselves to have some last minute fun.

March 8-14

Because national board exams for optometry are next week, I didn’t have any classes this week. Instead, Lezlie Jones and I went to the main library on campus every day (where we saw many other optometry students) and studied for 7-9 hours. We took a break for lunch (usually junk food), and managed to survive with coffee, diet Pepsi and candy to get us through. I tried to relax a little bit each night, but with the test coming up fast, it’s pretty stressful. A great surprise was getting a care package with study supplies and snacks in the mail from my parents. While I was studying, Nick found us a place to live in Miami and it seems great! We will be living in Miami November 2010-May 2011, and I can’t wait. We have a one bedroom apartment for a whopping $1085 per month! Miami certainly will be more expensive to live, but it should be an adventure. Since I was busy, Nick went to Illinois with his boss to help him repair a rental property he owns on Sunday, and I think he had a good time.

March 1-7

This week I really started to feel the pressure of the upcoming board exams in two weeks. But unfortunately I still had to deal with regular schoolwork, including two tests. Needless to say this week was full of studying. I was excited to get a fancy new coffee-maker, a single cup Keurig brewer this week. The coffee will definitely help me with the studying! Another exciting purchase was a new pair of flip-flops on sale for $5. It was finally warm enough to wear them as I went to the library to study. Despite my stress level, the dogs managed to find plenty of time to relax and nap on their regular schedule.

Catching up...

I haven't been very good about keeping up on our blog, but starting January 1st I have been keeping a sort of scrapbooking journal where I write our events of the week and add pictures too. I'm going to go back and upload those pages here so you can keep up with Nick and I that way. You should be able to click on the images to see them larger and I will copy the journaling here as well. Hope you enjoy!

All the supplies used to make the digital scrapbook pages are from ScrapGirls.com. If you want specific information about them, just let me know.