Pseudo-Graduation

here are pictures from my pseudo-graduation. the school makes us all walk in may for the official cap and gown ceremony which was very nice. however, we actually go back to school for another semester and have our true graduation which we call the"white coat" ceremony august 11th. it was nice to see everyone but we actually still had one more week of our last rotation and 2 exams that week...needless to say we weren't as joyful as a lot of the other grads.

our pet

so it's been a while since we've blogged and i thought i would introduce all of you to "LEIF" leif is an iguana from the florida keys. mike brought him back from when he worked at YMCA this past summer in the keys. he's not very cuddly but mike enjoys his presence...and i tolerate it :) iguanas do get pretty big so i'm really looking forward to that. he's probably about 16-18 inches in length including his long tail.

Anniversary trip

here we are all dressed up to go for our fancy anniversary dinner at the culinary institute of new england which is the resort we stayed in for our anniversary. we rarely dress up for anything so we took lots of silly pictures. we had a great time getting away from our busy lives and just having fun together.

here are a few pics of us snoboarding in the gorgeous mountains of VT.
we went to smuggler's notch one day and to jay peak the other day.

Weekend getaway to VT

Since we stayed at a culinary resort, the theme was obviously around food. The room numbers were engraved on little cutting boards and had little whisks on them ...how fun!

Here is our orange room! it was cute and very bright.

here we are in front of our fire place in our room. it was so nice to come back from snowboarding and be able to warm up in fornt of the fire.

For our anniversary were able to get away and go snowboarding in VT. Here are some pictures from the back of our resort. We stayed at the "Inn at Essex" which is a gorgeous resort but also a culinary institute so the food was amazing. They offered cooking classes which would have been fun but we opted to go snowboarding since we rarely have time to do that. The first day we went snowshoeing, which was a first time experience for both of us, and we had a great time and also witnessed this amazing sunset as we hiked through the woods.

Our 4th Anniversary

When I came home form work, there was this beautiful fruit basket creation and 2 dozen gorgeous yellow roses waiting for me from my husband of four years! How crazy is it that we've been married for 4 years already?! We then had a special dinner at home. I made some of Mike's favorite polish foods that we usually only eat once a year at christmas at my parents' house. We had barszcz (polish beet soup) with uszka (dumpling with mushroom filling) and salatka (polish potato salad).

caroline thoughts

i'm just sitting thinking about life and such...it's sunday and i'm up early to see if i can get some work done on paper #2. by the way GOD blessed the beegeezies out of me on my last paper which i was really stressing over and i got a wonderful grade. GOD has just been so faithful to me through my whole PA education....it's so awesome to truly see His hand at work in your life. i did some studying and cleaning yesterday and michael put some shelves up in the attic and did some organizing up there...it looks pretty awesome and will be a great space saver. mike's been applying to numerous jobs so please be praying for God to open and close the right doors and just guide Him to the job best suited for mike to serve and utilize his gifts as well as feel satisfaction and enjoyment in his work. i'm also feeling pretty burnt out and i go to OB/GYN rotation starting next week so i might have crazy hours. mike and i will be married 4 years coming up here next month so that's pretty exciting. ok, well hope everyone has a great weekend!

saturday morning

so it's sat morning and mike is still sleeping...i get up early and he loves to sleep in. thoughts are just running through my mind about "the plan." i graduate in august and i'm not sure what God has in store for us next. do we stay here? move back to FL? or move somehwere new all together? i guess i would like to ask for prayer regarding what the future holds and also about jobs for both me and mike. pray for ministry opportunities as well.
so i'm just enjoying the peace of the morning.....mike is going to church to help with maintenance and cleaning stuff and i unfortunately have to go to the library and work on my paper which is due in 3 weeks and is the the biggest pain in my bum. pray about that too. ok, well hope everyone has a great weekend.

an update

hi friends and family,
i'm currently in my transplant surgery rotation and just finished cardiothoracic surgery 2 weeks ago. time is flying by and i only have 2 more rotations after this one. i can't wait because we get a little break in may!!!! things are good...mike is working and still applying for a variety of jobs that might be a little more rewarding for him. i'm just busy with school. it's been very cold here in CT but without much snow. we'rehoping for a little snow so we can maybe go snowboarding one of these weekends. not much else is new. we're really enjoying our church and have met some great people there. we go to life group on mondays and mike has guys night on thursdays. we miss everyone and love hearing from all of you!

smith family and friends at christmas

celebrating christmas

we celebrated christmas multiple times this year. we celebrated with phill, tomi, hampton (tomi's brother) and krystal first. we had a wonderful christmas breakfast and gift exchange with them. phill unfortunately had to work that evening.