Why is it so hard......

to go to school when this little guy is at the window!!!!

I'm so grateful for this opportunity to be with him 24/7! I'll admit that sometimes I can get tired, but I love him! My time as a stay home dad is running out. I'll miss it.

I'm also sooo VERY proud of my wife and all her hard work. I am glad that she is doing her internship. If you think about it... being a new mom and finishing her Bachelors in Science (BS) degree was tough, but she did it! Way to go baby! I love you forever!

Dental School Journey

Who knew that applying to dental school would be so expensive, time consuming, stressful and expensive, did I mention that already! Well it is!!!! So far I've spent $4500-$5000 in this entire process. This includes applications fees, prep course for the DAT, registration for the DAT, flights, car rental, applications fee, etc, etc, etc. I'm super glad is almost over....almost...

I applied to 11 schools, got interviewed at 7 and got accepted into all of them. When applying I was considered a Utah resident (Utah doesn't have a dental school). That means that it doesn't matter where I go I'll be paying out state tuition which is usually $20,000 more per year . People made fun of me for applying to Baylor and Houston since they don't take a lot of people out of state. In fact, Houston only took 2 out of state students last year and Baylor only 5. I thought it was worth the change since tuition + living expenses is so much less for both schools, and it was only $170 more to apply.

Here is a list of the dental schools I interviewed at and the TOTAL cost for 4 years.

1) Baylor $165,776 (incl. scholarship for $50000, because I'll be paying in state)

2) Houston $233,044

3) Iowa $247,336 (includes a $60000 scholarship)

4) Oklahoma $360,000

5) Louisville $319,304

6) Maryland $372,856

7) Nova $389,376

I don't know why I keep going back and forward between Baylor and Houston!! I really like Houston and their new building, everything is going to be new!! I really liked the atmosphere there and how friendly students and faculty were. It is though $67,268 more expensive than Baylor.

Baylor is an amazing school as well, the only thing that bothers me a little is that they do all their LAB work (pretty much all of it), and that is really time consuming. I don't know if it's worth it to do all your lab work since dentist always send everything(crowns, bridges, etc) to a lab. Having Emily and Luke is a huge blessing to me, and I want to make sure I have enough time for them.

Seriously I don't know!!! It really boils to do I want to pay $67,268 for someone to do my lab work so that I can spend more time with family, or do I suck it up and endure 2 years of brutal lab work (That's why their labs are open 24/7 for no reason). Also the facilities are going to be way nicer at Houston. Baylor does all their lab work in the basement (no windows), Houston does them on the 3rd floor (with windows!) in their NEW building.

Wherever we end up going, I just want to say that I'm grateful to my Heavenly Father for this blessing, my wife for her support and my little Luke for the inspiration, motivation he gives me.

I really don't know where to go, I will sure appreciate your comments about the schools, the city, whatever you know about Dallas or Houston.

School web sites.

http://www.db.uth.tmc.edu/ (Houston)

http://bcd.tamhsc.edu/ (Baylor in Dallas)

Cookie dough .... Anyone?

I can totally blame it on our oven! LOL

I am not a good baker at all! I mean how hard can it be to follow a 'simple' recipe, right? I have experience following recipes since I've taken Organic chemistry lab, but these cookies were something else!

I tried to make delicious chocolate chip cookies for Emily for Valentine's day and they just didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. Burned on the bottom and gooey inside!

Anyway.... I'll keep trying.

From right to left: 1st batch, 2nd batch, etc

deliciously uncooked! These cookies are great for milk shakes!

Luke and I visited Emily at work with flower and balloons. I tied the balloons to his wrist, it was so cute (sorry no picture on that). Afterwards We went to Tucanos for Emily's birthday. We ate so good. I love their fried bananas!

My little man

Next project: cheese cake

Interesting things about Luke.

1)He is not afraid of using the big toilet. He has gone number 2 twice this last week.

2)When he wakes up from a nap he sticks his fingers in his mouth, so I usually tell him "No en la boca" which means "not in your mouth". I thought he understood what I meant but he proved me wrong. The other day he had one of Emily's shoes in his mouth and of course I told him "no en la boca", he dropped the shoe and stuck his fingers in his mouth!! So I put it to the test and said again "no en la boca" and each time he will smile and stick his fingers in his mouth.

3) He is a little monkey. He can climb on everything!!! Nothing is safe on top of the table anymore. Is there such a thing as baby proof for chairs? Anyway.. he knows how to pull the chair out and climb on it to use the laptop! (I have a video on this, but I'm not planning to spent an hour uploading a 20 second video here)

4) He is really good at eating on his own. He wouldn't have it any other way.

It is so annoying to upload pictures... it takes for ever!!! I even resized them all! Why is the blog so slow???

Trial and error! ; )

"Learning doesn't happen from failure itself but rather from analyzing the failure, making a change, and then trying again."

Potty training is going great! We've had too many accidents to even keep track (he's only 13 months) but I'm happy to say that all of them have been on the kitchen floor. I usually use chairs to block the entry to the carpet area (living room, stairs, etc). Luke thinks we are playing some sort of game where he is constantly trying to escape (with his butt naked I might add...) to the carpet area. I guess he doesn't like to pee on the floor because he slips and can't get back up. I am proud to announce that he has recognized when he needs to pee and doesn't feel like slipping on his own pee ; (. He's told me twice so far when he needs to pee. He started stomping his foot like crazy so I placed him on the potty and he went! You should've seen how happy I was and how intrigued Luke seemed to be. I praised him soooo much! Ohhh he is such a good little boy. I've also noticed that he doesn't really care if he has a diaper on so he won't tell me. Since I have to memorize tons of new words each week for anatomy it's hard to always keep an eye on him. I usually have him without a diaper the entire morning, while I'm preparing breakfast, doing dishes ( we don't have a dish washer so it takes for ever), and Luke is either eating, coloring or trying to escape.

As I was writing this post he was without a diaper and I noticed he was pushing! So I placed him on the potty and he went number 2 for the FIRST time!!!!! I am thrilled.

Here are some pictures, enjoy!

Being a little bit shy

Giving us his best rear view

Coloring

Coloring again

Just went number 2!

I'm trying to potty train him because all of my siblings and including myself were potty trained before 18 months, so I know it is doable. We'll see how it goes.

Next post...Emma's birthday!

Happy 50th Birthday Gramma!

Luke is QUITE the artist, don't you think???

Happy Birthday Ma! We love you so so much. We dedicate this post to you and your love and all that makes you, "you"!
We love your laugh.
We love your smile.
We love your sense of humor!
We love your style.
We love your need for new pictures!

We love your cooking skills.

We love your love!

We love your dedication to us.

We love your grace.

We love your spontaneity.

and here are some extra random pictures that I accidentally uploaded and decided to leve on because I know you love pictures of Luke!