Mr. Romney

after working with medicare/medicaid at the loretto hospital, seeing chicago's past two governors go to jail and watching the national debt grow, i know that the united states' government needs a "change we can believe in" and i know that this change is not obama. rich and i both think mitt romney would be a great change. he is an amazing and accomplished person who has so much to offer. rich has followed romney since he ran for president in 2008, and he has followed him even more this year. i have followed rich's lead and become a romney fan as well. in fact, we went to a rally for mitt in michigan...hence the pictures below. notice that we are on stage with romney? random, i know. rich had been talking with some campaign guy, and this guy put us on stage in front of the cameras. YIKES! i was definitely not expecting to be on national news, and i don't think rich was either. it made me realize (again) that i do not love bright lights on me! :) thank goodness romney doesn't mind. despite the crazy paparazzi, we got to talk with mitt for a little bit which was awesome. we also got pics and video with romney for free. score! :) romney would be such a great president. we really hope that he gets elected. go mr. romney!

mitt and rich. i found this pic on the wall street journal website!




this was a cute moment. mitt's wife was introducing him, and after a short story, she apologized for taking up too much time. to this remark, romney said, "i could listen to you all day". it was pretty dang cute.

Febuary 14th=Flowers, Chocolate and a Toothbrush!

valentines day is such a great holiday because it is all about lovin'. ;)
rich showed me some love and got me a gorgeous bouquet of spring flowers (see above picture) and some amazing dark chocolates for valentines day. he also gave me an electric toothbrush! how awesome is that? what a great dentist husband. rich is a great gift giver. however funny it may seem, i actually needed some toothbrush help. true story: i have worn out my enamel on some of my teeth because.....i brush too hard!? FAIL. BIG FAIL. i can't win, but thankfully i have rich to take care of me. xoxo. i love RMW.

Hanna's Shower

hanna atkinson, my awesome friend/wife of a dental student, was prego, so i threw her a shower. with the help of erin and kristin, it turned out super cute and fun. those two girls are amazing! they are so creative and organized. i wanna be them. oh and hanna was actually having contractions during the shower! she ended up having the baby the next day! what a party girl! :) next time i will not plan a shower so close to delivery.


the two creative genius' girls




go hot mama!

Merry Christmas!

this christmas was happy but sad. we were sad because we could not go to utah for christmas as we had planned, but we were happy because i got a job! :) i am now a nurse at the loretto hospital in chicago! i work on the med-surg/telemetry floor. i am very grateful for my job, but i only got a few days off, so we were unable to fly to utah. luckily, we were able to drive to mn for a few days. seeing my family was great, but we missed seeing rich's family too and feel bad that we have not been able to spend a christmas there since we got married. there will be no way to stop us next christmas...even if we have to walk there! merry christmas everyone!

puma got a new shirt for christmas. it says, "meet me under the mistle toe". puma is my first dog, so i may not know what i am talking about, but i am pretty sure she is the cutest, most adorable, most sweet, most fun and most friendly dog out there. merry 1st christmas puma! :)

Thanks for Thanksgiving!

rich and i were super lucky to get to go to MN for thanksgiving. thanksgiving is such a great holiday. the woodwards (friends that are like family), my grandma, aunt shirley and the carolans (friends that are like family) came over for the weekend. with this combination of people...it was obviously a blast. we played all day and all night! :) i am so thankful for thanksgiving!

here are all the kidlets acting like zombies in the basement.

abe, rich and mike having a straight up dance off competition. watching them do this was probably the best 3 minutes of the whole weekend. it was cray cray cool!

puma lovin' rich on the ride home.

what is thanksgiving without a way too competitive game of risk? no comment...

i am so thankful for my husband, family and friends. i feel so blessed.

Festival of Lights in Chicago

i LOVE christmas and christmas lights!!! our friends, trevor and melissa, rich and i all went to chicago for the festival of lights. it is when all the christmas lights on the magnificent mile get lit. the festival had concerts and activities during the day, and then at night they had a big parade, and then they lit the lights. gothem city is pretty sweet. it was a super fun trip. we switched cameras with melissa and trevor to see who could get the best pictures of the other couple. i think they did a pretty good job...i hope they like the ones we took. oh and we went into chicago by metra. rich loves public transportation because of his time in germany, and so do i! while we were on the metra, there was a whole bunch of german people all talking and rich eavesdropped the whole ride home. he got pretty excited about being on a train and about hearing german. he might've preferred that to seeing mickey mouse, but maybe not. we will definitely go to the festival again next year! oh but we may look up the train schedule before hand because....we ended up missing the 9:00pm train, and the next train out wasn't until like 11pm, so we all hung out at grand station. it was pretty funny but annoying too. i took pics of us all laying on the floor and posted them below. if christmas wasn't so close, we might've been more annoyed. santa clause is coming to town, so who cares! :)

Happy Birthday To Janelle

i turned 25! i still feel like i am 16 sometimes, but then i see high school kids and realize that i hopefully look and hopefully act older than most teenagers. probably a good thing. i had a great birthday. i love that we have made so many amazing friends here in illinois. i had a birthday dinner at chilis and then ice cream cake (yummy!) and games at my place. it was so much fun because i have such fun people in my life.

rich also took me out on a short birthday adventure for my actual birthday. normally rich is not the biggest fan of shopping, but for my birthday, he took me to the mall and became a shopping champion. it was too cute. i don't think he checked any scores/news/facebook/messages on his phone once, and i have never seen him bring me so many clothes to try on. it almost seemed like shopping with me was his dream come true... ;) despite the fun, the shopping trip did not last too long because rich had tests the next day and had also made dinner reservations at an indian restaurant, so we left without maxing out all our credit cards. it was a great birthday! i love "growing up" with rich. :)