Ricardo & Kylie

Wow, I am so behind on blogging! The last few months have been busy, as always, but also fun! In February Ricardo went to Boston for his last conference for ASDA as the district trustee. He had mixed feelings about it, but he's still involved with ASDA on a subcommittee and he hasn't had to travel since February so that's been a nice change. In March we went to DC to visit my sister and Russell's cousins before they welcome a new baby in a few weeks! Ricardo's parents also came to visit in March/April and that was great, as always. Russell started using a lot more Portuguese words after that, which is really exciting. It's really cool to see him understand that there can be two words for the same thing. Ricardo took his last big round of finals in April! This summer he has just a few classes and after that he will just be working in the clinic for the rest of his dental school career. 1 year left! So exciting/surreal to be on the home stretch. He is doing grea...

January has been a busy month! We were so lucky to have my mom here to help us out with everything we had going on! After getting back from Chicago we had a week to finish preparations for Ricardo's ASDA district meeting-a meeting with the surrounding 5 dental schools which happens once a year. My mom helped so much with all the last minute stuff there was to do-we couldn't have survived without her! The meeting went great. Proud wife moment: despite having snow the night before which caused a few speakers to cancel and one to miss his flight, there was a record turnout of students-more than twice the amount that came last year. Ricardo did a great job rearranging the changes in the schedule and everything went really well.  His speech:   Raffling off prizes : The students from Temple: By popular demand Russell attended the evening social event. He enjoyed being the center of attention as always. My mom left Saturday and Ricardo's dad came ...

Ricardo has been doing a lot of traveling throughout dental school due to his involvement with ASDA (American Student Dental Association). Most of his trips have been to Chicago because the headquarters is there and he has become obsessed with this city. We decided we should probably cash in some of my southwest points and take advantage of a cheap Chicago trip while we have the chance. My mom was visiting the northeast for a few weeks in January and that happened to coincide with one of his trips, so we left Russell with Grandma and his cousins in DC for the weekend and flew to Chicago! The association always puts up the students in a hotel just off Michigan Avenue and it was so fun to stay there. We walked basically everywhere we went and the weather was even in the 40s-amazing for Chicago in January! We came early on Friday to do some sightseeing together before Ricardo's friends came in town. We visited the famous Bean sculpture at Millennium Park and enjoyed watching som...

We had a great Christmas! It was so much fun to experience everything through Russell's eyes. Remarkably, he has not touched our tree the whole time we've had it up, which is what I was most worried about. He loves when we turn on the lights though and starts shouting "tree! tree!". I think he'll be sad when we take it down soon. He also loves seeing the Christmas lights outside and always says "Wow wow wow" whenever he sees lights on someone's house. We were excited to put up a few lights outside for the first time ever. We felt very festive this year. Ricardo finished school on Dec 23 and it was so nice to have him home and free from studying! We were kind of glad we didn't travel anywhere and got a chance to just relax and regroup for the new year. Russell is loving having Mom and Dad's attention too. On Christmas Eve we had a brunch with some friends from church, which was fun and delicious. We made cinnamon rolls and saved some ex...

Ricardo's mom came to visit last week and it was truly lifesaving to have her here. I was working a bunch of days in a row and Ricardo was studying for finals so it was really nice to have another person around to take care of Russell. She also went above and beyond and cooked and cleaned and helped me throw a baby shower in the midst of all the craziness. In Portuguese, Grandma is called VoVo and that was an easy name for Russell to pick up on. He loved having her here and is still asking for her now that she's gone. She ended up being in town for Ricardo's birthday and we went out to dinner at a Brazilian restaurant with some of Ricardo's Brazilian friends. Ricardo had a great birthday, it was probably one of his favorite ones yet. Best group picture-ha. Russell was eyeing down the cake the whole time.