Baller

I love this picture of 4 of the Rams starting players waiting to be announced... 21 is our girl.

We are having so much fun watching Lex play this year! She has a really wonderful team, they are all such good friends always encouraging and supporting eachother, I am just so proud of her!

Yesterday's game was like stealing candy from a baby... the final score was something like 38 - 8. Here is Lex shooting one of her foul shots. I love watching all of the players different styles for setting up their shot, no two seem to be alike.

GO RAMS!

Fashionista Extraordinaire!

You've got to love a kid with her own style! Work it Liv!

One course down!

Second year is coming along slowly but surely. We just finished our course over the cardiovascular system, 15 credit hours, and the largest single class we take over the first two years of medical school. I am so relieved to be done with it! Our focus for the next month will be the respiratory system, right now I am knee deep in the physiology of the lungs.... have I mentioned that I HATE physiology? Well I do, I appreciate it, but hate learning it...just when I thought I would never have to look at gas laws and partial pressures from physics...they're back...why do they torture me!

We just finished putting in our requests for our schedules for 3rd and 4th year clinical rotations. They do this in baby steps and do not give us very much information at a time. In our 3rd year we are required to do 4 weeks each of family medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry and ob/gyn, 8 weeks of surgery, 12 weeks of internal medicine and 12 weeks of electives. My sequence of rotations starts with 4 weeks of surgery (SCARED!) in June and my 4 week vacation will be in August for both years. I requested Buffalo as the area I would like to do my rotations in but they have not given us a full list of rotation sites yet. So what I do know is that whatever rotations are offered in Buffalo I should be able to get BUT I will not be able to do ALL my rotations there. They should have a list for us in a couple of weeks and then we go through a couple week process of bidding for those sites, then our school rotation committee finalizes them for us and it's done...or is it? I have heard that students occasionally get bumped from sites and that you have to scramble to find something on your own, but I have several months and several classes to keep my mind from worrying to much about it right now.

Cedar Point

We had originally planned on going to New York City over the Labor Day weekend, but that was before we realized Lex had her opening basketball tournament for the year. Liv was pretty disappointed because she had done a lot of research and she is definitely a girl that enjoys a vacation. After trying to come up with several ideas, we settled on Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Liv, Lex, and I packed up the car and left early on Monday morning. It's about a two hour drive from our house, and the weather looked a little "iffy", but it turned out to be a PERFECT day.

As the kids get older and our lives get busier, Ang and I are definitely realizing that the "quality" time spent with our girls is getting less and less. This was one of those trips that regardless of the cost or the damage to my stomach (15 roller coasters), it was PRICELESS. Lex and Liv were in rare form. They were great friends all day and Lex was even good about posing for pictures.

Cedar Point is located on a small island on Lake Erie. Every ride you go on you get a great view of the water. It is billed as the roller coaster capital of the world and it has three of the top ten, fastest and tallest roller coasters in the world. We ended up going on 14 roller coaster of every type and kind you could imagine, but there was one that we had to go on several times. The pictures below don't do it justice.

The ride is called "Top THRILL Dragster" and it is the second tallest and 2nd fastest roller coaster in the world. The ride begins at a start line and accelerates to 120 mph and then climbs 425 ft straight up in the air, before coming STRAIGHT down at a 120 mph. The entire ride takes 20 seconds. Liv at first refused to go on it, but me and Lex put a lot of pressure on her. As we stood in line I could see the fear on her face. When we sat down at the starting line, she told me she was TERRIFIED and wanted to get off. I wish I could have got a picture of her face. After the ride was over, she was so PROUD of herself she could not stop talking about it. She said she now dares to go on ANY ride.

If anyone likes fast roller coasters, this is by far the best amusement park I have ever been to. We had a great time and I think we will be going back there at least once a year. It is going to take that long for my stomach to settle down.

A Relaxing Weekend

Last weekend we had the start of competition soccer and this weekend we had the start of Middle School basketball. Lex wasn't sure whether she was going to be a starter, but her parents were pretty confident. It turns out that her parents were right, again, and she is the starting off-guard for the JS Wilson Rams. The season kicked off with a tournament held on Friday and Saturday. We lost our first game, because I think most of the girls were a little nervous. The 2nd game was against a team that beat/annihilated us several times last year . It was a pretty close game most of the way and kept us on the edge of our seats. It was one of the most entertaining basketball games I have EVER watched. Our star guard had 7 points, 3 steals and a couple of assists. We ended up taking 3rd place in the tournament and got a really nice plaque.

Since Liv had to spend Friday and Saturday watching basketball, I told her I would take her to play some miniature golf. If you have ever played mini-golf or anything else with Liv, you realize pretty quickly that she is very competitive just like her MOTHER. After beating her dad by 2 strokes in mini-golf, she came home and snuggled her sister, until they both fell asleep.

The dogs were feeling a little neglected, so today we decided to have a barbecue outside and play with them in the yard. Liv decided she wanted to play some croquet and as you can tell from the pictures, Bella and Baby had a fun time playing as well.

Tomorrow we are going to Cedar Point Amusement park in Ohio. It currently holds the world record for the most roller coasters (17), one of which, Top Thrill Dragster, is the world's second tallest and second fastest roller coaster. IF I survive, I will document that in another post.