Prayers

Dalin has always liked to say his prayers. So every night we kneel beside his bed and say prayers and up until now he would just repeat what Dan or I said. But the last two nights I have paused after saying "I'm thankful for...." to see if he would fill in the blanks and much to my surprise he did. It takes all of my effort not to start laughing in the middle of his cute little heart-felt prayer. His list of things he's thankful for tonight included fries, trains, lights, books, James, James, Thomas, Percy (these are characters off of Thomas the Tank Engine and he has two Jameses so that's why he's thankful twice), Lightning McQueen (off of Cars), real trains, and real cars. When he's done listing off the things he's thankful for he says "name of Jesus Christ, Amen" and hops into bed. What a sweet little boy.

Medical School

So this post might be really boring, but I have to talk about it, even if it's just to a computer. I have been really stressed out this week because Dan came home with a packet about applying to medical school. I looked at it and immediately began to freak out, of course I don't tell Dan this because he has enough to deal with right now. He has to write essays(which in large part determine your acceptance into med-school) and a list of his top ten schools and get letters of recommendation and have lots of job shadow hours, patient care hours, volunteer hours, etc. This all has to be done by May along with studying for his regular classes and the MCAT, which he will be taking in June. Let me just tell you, it's a lot to take in. So for the last three days I've been researching medical schools. Let's just say if he doesn't get into the UofU then I'll poop my pants because I don't want to move to Illinois, West Virginia, or anywhere else outside of Utah. I've done it for a year and have decided that I really like Utah for multiple reasons and that's where I want to be. But I'll do what I have to do because the U is really hard to get into and out of 4,000 applicants they only accept 231. But Dan is really qualified and his chances have increased significantly because he's in the post-bacc program. The U strongly encourages post-bacc students to apply. The cost of 4 years of medical school is $150-200,000. Just for anyone who doesn't know, that's a chunk of money!! Repayment schedules give you 10 years to pay off that debt after graduation and the average monthly payment is $2300. This is why I'm stressing. But we've talked to 10 or more people about how they did it and how long it took them to pay it off and how hard it was and how they managed their families and how they manged to have their wives stay home with the kids and not have to work, etc. So we've done our homework and feel very confident that this is the right choice for us. Anyways our top three choices for medical school are University of Utah, University of Colorado Denver, and Oregon Health Sciences. No other schools in the west will allow out of state students to apply so Washington, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and all but one school in California are not even available options. That means that if Dan doesn't get into one of our three top choices then we're moving east. I'm not real excited about this thought, but you do what you have to do.

Cooking

Lately, Dalin has decided it's fun to cook for Braden. This usually occurs at mealtimes when Dalin gets down from the table and Braden is still eating. Dalin always finishes before Braden because Braden eats ridiculous amounts of food and Dalin eats like a little bird. So Dalin pulls over his kitchen, gets his pots out and asks Braden "what do you want to eat?" Then proceeds to cook the food and pile it on Braden's high chair. It's so funny. I usually have to throw all the "food" in the sink afterwards because it gets all sticky and nasty but the boys have tons of fun with it and I'm glad Dalin uses his christmas present.