I passed

I never thought the day would come, but I passed my Medical Boards, and being that I live in a small town in Kansas, you know the news paper has to say something about it. Check out this link:
http://www.dailyu.com/newsdetail.asp?article_id=4209

6 weeks to go

Almost, almost, almost there.... With 6 weeks to go, here are some pictures of me on our deck sticking out my belly for the camera!

Baby Shower #3 - Friends

The great thing is, that in Junction City, I have girlfriends that are pregnant and going through the same thing as me at the same time. In fact, they are my patients too! So that makes it extra special. The photo above is all the gals that came to my shower and the photo below is of my friend Savina who is due 10 days before me - and I get the honor of delivering her baby. As my shirt says "Baby's make the belly go round".

Baby Shower #2 - Work Shower

I guess when you spend you're time working and being social in different circles, you get many baby showers.... here are pictures from my baby shower from work! The gals sure treat me so well.

Mom's Visit

It may look like any large lizzard, and coming from Arizona lizzards shouldn't scare me, but when it's running around your front room it's a squirmy thing to catch. On Saturday when mom came to visit, she went down to get ready and shower, she saw this bugger run across the floor. She and Robert spent some "quality" time chasing it around our basement and finally got it in this box while I stood at the stairs and could hardly contain my laughter as my mom would scream each time the lizzard ran. GET THE LIZZARD!
And then right before mom left, we took a picture of her holding her future grandson in my belly! It was nice to have my mom here to visit right before I become a mom!

Boots and Chap and Cowboy Hats

Robert and I went to the Hospital Foundation Dinner called "Boots, Chaps, and Cowboys Hats". They served Angus beef from the Angus farm in town to be enjoyed with funny-money gambling and dancing. Yee-Haw!

Lakers

It must be playoff time... my husband even wore his Laker's tie to church and then quickly put on this outfit to watch the Lakers in the playoff game today. GO LAKERS! What will I do when I have two boys running around in Lakers-only clothing?

Baby Shower #1

The residents at KU in my Family Medicine Department threw us a "Jack and Jill" Baby Shower. Sure it was fun getting some gifts, but it was more fun just hanging out with everyone from the residency and seeing friends! Here are some pictures. And, yes, my belly has grown.

The entire group.
Robert and I.

Baby Stuff

Look at my new shirt! My mom sent it to me. It's a beautiful day here... around 80, which is great for March in Kansas. Below you will see a picture of Robert putting together the stroller/jogger we got for the baby - so cute!

The Belly Has Arrived

I guess at 6 months pregnant I can celebrate the fact that I went to bed without a belly and wokd up with this belly shown here in the pictures! This is my actual first day of needing maternity clothes. Anyway, we just thought we'd share.

Ultrasound

I finally scanned in the pictures from our 3D ultrasound. As you can probably see from the first picture, our baby (like most others) has feet, and then the second picture is a profile picture - which I love, and the last picture is a 3D picture so you can see what baby Diaz looks like now at 22 weeks! Just thought we'd share!

Baby Robert

Hi Here is a picture of Baby Robert, it's a bit fuzzy but he is there. We found out today that our baby is a boy, we initially wanted to keep it a surprise but after a few complications earlier this week we had to go to a specialist and we decided to find out. 

Like I said these pics are not as clear, but the ones we got from the specialist are very good in 4D unfortunately we only got hard copies so until we get a scanner you will have to settle for the ones that were taken at the hopital where Kristi works.

Happily Pregnant

"So happy together..."
Now that I've gotten over the flu and the first trimester puking - I'm much happier. And see below, the bump starts....

Christmas in Utah

For Christmas thru New Years we went to Utah and visited Robert's familiy. First, there was a TON of snow falling the entire time we were there. The picture above is of the mountains right outside Cheryl's house. We celebrated Christmas at Cheryl and Josh's and then New Years at Robert's parent's new place.
I know, I look a little pale, but remember, I was still in my first trimester and puking all the time!

The happy Madson family! Santa treated us all very well!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we went to Yuma, AZ and visited with my family. We stayed for 5 days. My family hosted a mini family reunion and we had fun reconnecting with everyone that came.

Watch out - Robert has a knife!!!

Yup, it turned blue

We realize that this is a little corny - ok, a lot corny to have to look at the stick that I peed on to see that we were pregnant - but here it is! It's a life changing stick. We're 4 months along already and look forward to July when we can say hello to little Diaz!

My New Yob!!!

No that is not my Halloween costume that is what I wear to work every day. I (Robert) recently got a job at Fort Riley, as I mentioned before that's the army base that is right next to the Junction. I am perform an essential duty in the the training process that our troops go through when they prepare to get deployed and go to Iraq and Afghanistan.  So you are probably asking yourself what is my job? Well, I get to play soldier every day. More especifially I get to play an Iraqi soldier. We basically go out on mission with the different teams preparing to deploy and act as Iraqi (or Afghani) soldiers who are out with the Americans on joint missions. If you didn't know what the army is doing now there is helping train the local armies on how to be soldiers. So they need people like to act as Iraqi and we get to lear a little of the language and pretend we dont speak english.  

There are also other people who get to dress up as civilians and they "live" in these faux Iraqi villages built out in the middle of nowhere in Fort Riley. So we go out to these villages in our Humvees and play out different scenarios, like getting shot at by insurgents hiding in a village, IED's exploding in the middle of the town, looking for information hidden in some one's house, or dealing with mobs protesting. So there it is in a nutshell that's my new job

Living with a Doctora

Now that we live in The Junction Kristi has taken on more responsabilities. While she was at KUMED she was just a 1st year resident, she was at the bottom of the food chain. Here at the Junction things are different, she is not just a second year resident, she is treated almost like a peer by the other doctors. She has had more hands on experience and better learning opportunities, and ever since people at church figured out she is a physician many of the church memebers have switched over to her to be their primary care physician. Everyone here has been very nice and they are all very thankful she is here. She has become a celebrity as well, they even published an article on her on the local news paper which was picked up by the paper in Yuma, where Kristi is from, and they decided to do an article on her as well.  Another great thing is that when she is on call it actually mean that she is on call, she gets to come home and take questions from nurses and other docs about patients over the phone and go in only if needed. The best one thus far happened a week or so ago when I overheard her take a call from nurse who had a question to which Kristi replied "is it fishy or cottage-cheesy" ...............don't really want to know what they were talking about.

My Turn

So up to now Kristi has been the official web logger of The Diaz Family, well now is my turn so buckle your seat belt and join me a long for te ride. Since we moved to Kansas life has been pretty interesting, especially since we have moved to Junction City or as I affectionately call it The Junction aka The Middle of Nowhere (See picture above).

The Junction is a small town of 18,000 and right next to it is an army base, Fort Riley. This makes for an interesting dynamic between civilians and members of the Army and their families. Thankfully Fort Riley helps The Junction by adding to its population and bringing jobs for the masses. The Junction is a tiny town with barely enough of the amenities We have grown used to, in fact the biggest shopping center in town is Wal-Mart. 

This is a picture of our beautiful Wal-Mart, you know you live in a small town when you go out on a date with your wife and after dinner you decide to go to Wal-Mart to see "whats new". I am glad to say that Kristi and I have done our best to contribute to the economy by spending our hard earned dollars, well her hard earned dollars, there. I am quite fond of Wal-Mart though, they have a lot of goodies there, and as the locals say "if you can't find it at Wal-Mart it doesn't exist".........at least not in The Junction.

Kansas

These are pictures from Kansas near Junction City. Believe it or not, it's quite beautiful here. The above picture is from Milford Lake. It's huge lake with beautiful sites.
Wild grass grows taller than Robert. We were hiking up a hill in between Junction City and Manhattan, KS.
Yup, we live in the sticks, but old work items make cool picture objects.
I bet you didn't know I am terribly ALLERGIC to these beautiful Sunflowers! They are killing me!