Congratulations, Doc!

It actually happened. After almost 4 years of constant school, Jeremy finally graduated from Palmer! Sometimes it seemed like it would never come, then suddenly, it was here. Jeremy, Katy and I flew out of Mesa on Wednesday before graduation. Katy did pretty well on the plane. It was so refreshing to have two parents and one child instead of 2 parents: 3 children. (or 1 parent: 3 children like in September...) We got in at like 8 that night, Iowa-time, and still had to drive from Peoria to Davenport. Our wonderful friends, the Frandsens, let us live in their house while we were there (and are STILL hosting Jeremy; hopefully we can pay them back someday for how much he has lived with them since we "moved...").

When we left, I never thought we would miss Iowa, but driving back across the Mississippi I got a little teary-eyed. It was our home for longer than we've lived anywhere else, and we had two children there. I know my way around there so well. (Second only to the "home" where we grew up) Especially right now when we don't have a home of our own and our life has been so uncertain in some ways, I miss the little life we had in Davenport: especially the people and our wonderful house! It was nice to go back and visit, and I welcomed the not-too-cold-but-snowy weather after the 80º+ afternoons (in February!) we'd been having in Arizona.

We got to see lots of good friends, play games, eat at some of our favorite restaurants, be relatively free (with only 1 small child!), finally see the main clinic (in my case), and of course attend graduation.  Jeremy's there in the middle front of the picture below.

It has not been an easy road, but we are so proud of Jeremy for earning his D.C. degree! He is still in Iowa for now, reviewing for and taking his last set of National Boards. We are excited to have him home soon. Hopefully never to go away for more than a week at a time again!! There are a few more hurdles to get over before he can get licensed sometime this summer, but he is very excited to start his own NUCCA practice somewhere down in th Gilbert area. And the rest of us are excited to live together as a family again and eventually have some actual income. We are very ready to get on with our life!

Returning to AZ

Since Jeremy had to stay in Iowa, Katy and I got to travel home alone. I was mostly pretty blessed, and she was as good as an 8-month old could be as we drove 1.5 hrs to the airport, turned in the rental car, boarded our flight at about 8 p.m., deplaned at about 8:45 due to a bit of surface damage that maintenance had to check and sign-off on, (did I mention they had all gone home for the night already?) re-boarded a little after 10, finally left around 10:45, arrived in Mesa about 1:30 am (that's 2:30 am central time), got all our stuff out to parking and found our car, then drove about 30 minutes to my brother, Phil's house, where we spent the night. Then Katy was up at 6:45. Needless to say, I wasd pretty tired the next day, but very grateful that nothing else went wrong! Katy even slept the first 2/3 of the way to Pima. She wasn't very impressed with that last stretch, but we made it! Quite the little adventure... We have been sick a lottle bit in the last week since we got back, but otherwise things are going well and we're just enjoying family and looking forward to Daddy coming home!