12 Highlights of 2012

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a great time celebrating. For our New Years celebration, we had a deep frying party with some friends. We made sweet potato fries, jalapenos, cauliflower, mozzarella cheese sticks, won tons, and donuts. It was delicious and also the perfect way to start the new year by eating healthy. After a few plates of fried food, it's amazing how your desire for salad increases!

Since then we have been back to the daily grind of school and work, but I wanted to take a moment to look back on 2012 because it was an incredible year. Probably the most eventful year of our marriage so far. Here are my top 12 of 2012, in no particular order except for the last one. :)

12. Trip to New York City! See my last post for details, but we had an awesome time sightseeing in New York for the day over Ricardo's Christmas break. We are trying to reap the benefits of living in the northeast where everything is so close!

11. Living in Miami. We love Florida! It was so much fun to live so close to both of our families and enjoy the perks of the Sunshine State, including this trip to the Keys pictured below. We made such good friends in south Florida and are looking forward to a return visit hopefully soon!

10. Kylie's trip to Toronto. I got an all-expense paid vacation to this fun city for a school conference. It was wonderful! Toronto is a really neat city and Niagara Falls was a fun day trip as well. We got to compete in the national Physician Assistant challenge bowl competition and though we lost, it was a fun last hurrah before graduation.

9. Ricardo's trip to Chicago. He had a similar school conference in Chicago this November for the American Student Dental Association. He is now obsessed with Chicago and is looking forward to taking me back there.

8. Ricardo's trip to Brazil. Honestly, we have never traveled so much as we did this year. Ricardo got to go to Brazil with his dad for a 10 day vacation last March. It had been years since he'd been back there and he had a blast traveling and seeing his family.

7. Our move to Philly! In July we packed up and drove from Miami to Philadelphia, with just a few detours in Orlando, Jacksonville, and DC to see friends and family. We had a great few days in DC with my sister's family sightseeing and relaxing before school started.

6. Ricardo graduated with his Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences from Barry University. Unfortunately, with the timing of our fun-filled year we didn't get to actually attend his graduation, but he still deserves kudos for getting his master's degree in a year and getting into dental school! Here we are celebrating getting into Temple!

5. Three year wedding anniversary! It's hard to believe that three (now, almost 3.5) years have gone by since we were married. We had a fun anniversary and continue to enjoy married life together.

4. Ricardo started dental school at Temple University! He is loving school and is thrilled every day to be attending Temple in particular. School keeps him busy, but we're very blessed to be here!

3. I graduated from PA school. After 27 months of very long days and learning mountains of information I successfully completed my master's degree and graduated from Nova Southeastern University. It was such a fun time in my life and I'm grateful for all of the close friends I made, as well as my useful degree!

2. I got my first job as a PA and am working at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. I'm enjoying my job and slowly coming to grips with the fact that I'm not a student anymore and I actually make the decisions. I tend not to take pictures of myself while working, so you all will have to just imagine what it looks like.


1. We found out we are going to be parents! I have been getting a lot of flak for not posting this piece of news sooner, but here are a few pictures of our baby boy that will be born this May. We are excited/nervous/terrified/grateful to welcome a new person to our family and appreciate any and all advice!