FIRST DAY OF MEDICAL SCHOOL! :)

Wow. Did today really happen? Wow. It feels great to be doing something you have dreamed about and worked so hard for the last 6+ years! It felt very surreal just to be sitting in the lecture hall this morning at Des Moines University... I had to keep pinching myself! Today started off with three nice/easy lectures of Biochemistry. In the second lecture they wheeled in "Steve" our life-like manican, who was unresponsive at the time. He had real stats and was progressively getting worse as the lecture wore on. He even had "sweet" smelling breath - how cool is that! He was having some acid/base issue and we had to figure it out. Talk about a clinical spin on biochem :) I had already deemed him as having diabetic ketoacidosis (which ended up correct!) I did not let my first patient die. Yippee! To say the least, I am loving medical school!
Orientation was last week, and we both felt very welcomed. DMU has such a great community and wonderful people. We will be very busy over the next 2 years, but it is so nice to know that we will be surrounded by people (professors, faculty, classmates) who really care about us. We have met 3 people that graduated from Stillwater HS as well 4 people who graduated from Olaf - what a small world and that does not include either of us!
John and I have gotten into a routine here in Des Moines and I love it! We have gone to the wonderful Farmer's Market twice now, went to a Cubs game, ate at Dos Rios - we are slowly becoming Iowans. We have found a lovely LCMS Church in Urbandale (suburb of DM) called Gloria Dei. Dad - you would be proud! It has an alter, candles, a huge cross, and we say the Apostles Creed ;-) We also go on walks every day (about 2.2 miles) around our quaint neighborhood of Windsor Heights. Many students live right across the street from DMU, and we are about 3 miles away, but I really like. It is so nice to come home and be "removed" from school (even if it is only for 45 mins :) Every Tuesday night we walk to Hyvee (yes the grocery store) and get $3.99 dinner of chinese food - it is good! It is our weekly date! Other than that, we cook all of our meals! John is quite the chef - I am more of the preparer, but we do make an awesome team. We have gotten to know two other students who are in our class that live in the same apartment complex as us. They are really nice and we hang out with them quite often. One of them is Meredith's (one of my best friends and roommate from Olaf) cousin! Again, small world!
On a much sadder note, I would like to take a moment to reflect on life in general. Just 3 days ago I was contacted with some awful news. One of my friends from elementary school was killed in motorcycle accident in Hastings. His name was Jake Benesh and he was 22. (check out this article online: http://www.twincities.com/ci_15706401?source=most_viewed&nclick_check=1) Now, I did not stay close friends with him through college or even High School, but I really wish I had. He was such an awesome person. A wonderful servant of the Lord. He always had a smile on his face and was one of the most upbeat and optimistic people I know. I would regularly check his facebook as he usually had a great, uplifting verse as his status. He will really be missed. Hearing this terrible news threw me aback. He was now the second person to pass away from my small elementary school class at Withrow (our class size was about 27). I will never forget the time we were on a VAA school soccer team together in like 2nd grade. He was goalie and I was out on the field. Someone tried to kick the ball into the net, but Jake saved it and was going to kick it away from the goal. Well, I was standing in front of him just watching him. I probably should have moved, but I didn't and the ball came right at me and as a reflex I kicked. Yes. I kicked it right into the goal. Our goal. We were on the same team. I was so embarrassed! (even though it was my first and only goal of the season!) Jake was so nice about it! Even at a young age he knew what to say to try and make me feel better. I will never forget that moment. I never told him this, but Thanks Jake for not making me feel bad, but instead trying to uplift me. Also, I remember when your mom came to our first grade class and taught us how to use chopsticks! We practiced with M&Ms. I thought you were so cool! I am going to miss you and that awesome smile of yours! I am so sad I will be unable to attend his funeral. I know Jake would not want any of us to be sad, but to rejoice now that he is in Heaven. I know he is in Heaven and that is so comforting to me, so I will try to keep a smile on my face even with the sad news.
I would like to mention that I love married life! We have been married for 51 days now, and yesterday we celebrated 1 since our engagement (again, met with severe storms in DM. 6 inches of rain!) John is so much fun; we have had so many good times. We really do make a great team in all that we do. I miss both of my families dearly but we will see them at the White Coat Ceremony on Aug. 28th - I can't wait! I definitely miss all of my friends from home and Olaf too! Really. Come visit :)
Well, I think my adrenaline for the day is running out, and I must get some sleep because tomorrow is another day of school (yay!) and John is already sleeping. Thanks for reading all of this rambling nonsense, but I find it very therapeutic! More to come later as our adventure continues! I hope everyone had a great day! How could you not?! It was 8-9-10. I love things like that! Also, Happy Birthday to my dear aunt Sally! :)

Reunions and get togethers

The rest of July was filled with reunions and get togethers. The weekend after the Fourth of July Amy and I headed up to my cabin for the Schantzen Family Reunion. We had a great time catching up with everyone and relaxing outside. A lot of basketball, croquet, and fishing was done over these three days. We even had a huge wiffle ball game on my Uncle Mark's birthday. It is fitting that it was his birthday because he nailed the wiffle ball into some pine trees out in left field and had a game winning walk off grand slam! After the reunion was over, Amy and I headed back to Iowa (yeah I drove 8 hours straight) to finish making our apart into a home. We stayed in Iowa from until the following Monday when we drove up around Cross Lake, MN where we would be staying in a cabin by a golf course with Amy's family. The week was filled with golf and cribbage games! I played two 18 hole rounds at Golden Eagle Golf Course (Amy played 1), we rented a pontoon boat and a jet ski one day, and we had lots of fun. When our stay in Cross Lake was over on Friday morning all of us drove over to my cabin in Dent, MN. We went out that night to The Little Otter Supper Club and participated in the meat raffle. We won 9 ribeye steaks and 3 pounds of bacon!! Both our families decided to donate all of this meat to the poor medical students (jackpot!). On Saturday I accompanied the girls into to town while the other guys went fishing. While the ladies looked at quilts, furniture, and knick knacks in the shops, I sat outside on a bench and read my book. I would have loved to go fishing, but I think Amy was happy a decided to tag along with them. When we got back to the cabin we were surprised to see that the rest of the guys had started getting a fish fry ready! While we were gone they had gone out and caught 18 huge sunfish (I'm told my dad Mike caught most of the fish but I cannot comment on the validity of these claims). No matter who caught the fish they were still delicious! We left the cabin on Sunday morning for the long drive home, and after what seemed like forever, we finally arrived home in Iowa.

The Move

On June 30th Amy and I made the drive down to Windsor Heights, IA (it is basically a suburb of Des Moines). Upon entering our new apartment we were excited to see that our brand new king size bed (finally I will have some space when we sleep together) and our bedroom furniture had been delivered and were set up perfectly. The landlord even had a bag of chips, a container of salsa, and two pop cans for us to indulge in while we unpacked the trailer. I spent the rest of the day unloading the trailer and putting together all of the target furniture that we bought. I never expected Target furniture to look so nice! Check out the picks to see what I'm talking about. I finished putting the furniture together around midnight, and then went to bed.




The next day both of our parents came down to help us move the rest of our stuff in. Our huge sectional from Costco fit perfectly in the living room! The rest of the boxes we found spots for and then began the long and arduous process of unpacking all of our things. Luckily, we had breaks for meals during this time. For lunch all of us went to Dos Rios which is a Mexican restaurant in the Court Ave. district of Des Moines. The margaritas were fantastic!! They even had homemade guacamole that they made right in front of you. The food was amazing and needless to say we will be coming back to this place many a time over the next few months. After lunch we went back and continued to unpack. For dinner we went to the Texas Roadhouse and enjoyed some big steaks. Amy's parents stayed the night at our new place and continued to help us unpack. The next morning Amy's parents left and we were left to fend for ourselves now that we were on our own in the real world. Yikes!!

Honeymoon final days

The reason the honeymoon posts stopped was because we did not do much the last few days....because we we were in a tropical storm!!! It wasn't that bad, just a little wind and it rained pretty much off and on all day. So we spent a lot of time in our room reading and watching the bachelorette (yes Amy forced me to watch it and now I am hooked). It was disappointing to not be able to lay out in the sun but we still had a lot of fun. We made it back to Minnesota safely, and just two days after coming back we left for Iowa!!