Match Week Celebrations!

After a long year and a second round of residency match cycle, we finally made it to match week 2016! Praise the Lord the news was much better this time! We found out that Monday that Owen matched into a Family Medicine residency, though we did not find out where until Friday, since that's how the match process works. We decided that Monday was really the big celebration for us, since just having a position was what was most important, so we went out for a really fancy dinner at Juban's in Baton Rouge. Owen had talked about making that our match celebration dinner since the year before! We got the hallelujah crab and it was awesome! It was such a nice evening together, we dressed up, even had drinks and dessert with our crab, it was great. Owen also surprised me with a beautiful new necklace, to celebrate and thank me for my support through this whole process, it was such a sweet gesture. I am so proud of all that he has accomplished and we feel so blessed that he is in a great residency!

That Friday of match week we found out that he matched into the Rural FM program in Bogalusa, Louisiana!! We were so excited to be staying in Louisiana and less than 2 hours from Baton Rouge! We celebrated with Clint, Paula, Barron, and Allison by having a crawfish dinner at the house. Here's some pictures from our celebrations! Thank you to all our family and friends who have supported us along this crazy journey! SO happy to share this great news with you!

Crawfish boil to celebrate staying in Louisiana!

With our Hallelujah crab at Juban's

Beautiful black pearl necklace Owen gave me

Mardi Gras

Since we live in Louisiana (at this time wasn't sure if we would be here for more than just the year) I of course wanted to see Mardi Gras. Fortunately my good friend Meg let me tag along with her, some friends, and her cousin to do the whole Mardi Gras thing, but in a more family friendly, safe, fun way (not rowdy or inappropriate). The weather was perfect for it. It really was a lot of fun and most of Mardi Gras is not what people think of, that's only select parades in select areas. I hope to make it back again, since we are in Louisiana for a few more years! Now to make some crafts with all my beads!

End of the first night, those beads are heavy! Absolutely nothing inappropriate was done for these beads!

Beautiful day for round 2!

Time to get crafting!

Races

So I realize I have been terrible about updating the blog this year. I'm going to do a couple quick posts with picture highlights of 2016. I will attempt to keep it updated more often, though really life is settling into a routine and there's not as much to post about these days. I will try to get pictures up at the very least, especially for those who do not use Facebook.

First post will highlight some of the races we did in early 2016. Owen did his first Marathon and I did my first Half Marathon! I also did a 10k the following month, and a 5k after that. Owen did a mountain bike race!

Getting our Marathon outfits together!

Pre-race

1:53 Half Marathon finish time

4:13 Marathon finish time

Immediately after Owen finished, he was barely able to stand

A little while later, to show off our Tri-Sport jersey!

Post Half with my dear friend Jackie!

Our t-shirt and medals!

One lap of Owen's mountain bike race

Mardi Gras Mambo 10K (official time was around 53min)

Post race beers with Meg!