School's OUT

WELCOME SUMMERTIME!

I, Brad have officially finished the Spring Semester of school for this year. It was officially the toughest semester of my life.  My brain has grown two sizes bigger.  It was such a scary/hard semester I was beginning to worry that the world would come to an end a little early this year.  I think that there were at least 8-10 weeks where I would leave for school at 5:45am and not get home till 9:30pm, not seeing our little boys one bit every single day except for Wednesdays and Sundays.  I grew to miss my family and my family sure missed me.  Isaac even started to treat me like a grandparent he loved and missed me so much!  Amy has definitely been sharing the burden, although I've been tortured with brain killers Amy's been tortured with being a single mother at home with 2 and sometimes 3 crazy little boys.  We're all so glad this semester is now only a dark memory in our past.

And so now it's summer time and we can party! Right?  Well... we partied friday and saturday, but on Sunday morning Brad picked up Isaac and tossed him into the air for fun.  He regretted it the moment Isaac came back down, as he felt his back stabbing with pain.  He fell to the ground and found out that moving was no longer part of his free agency.  They all went to church anyways, Brad hoping that he'd  start to feel better after half an hour. But now it's Monday night and he's still unable to sit up straight without being in pain.  So part of me wants to say, "oh drat! how unlucky we are to have our only free time ruined." but another wiser part of me says, "oh goodness we are so lucky to have this debilitating injury during the only time of the year where it won't affect school."

But anyways we're sure hoping that my back pain will heal by Saturday cause that's when we have our hotels booked for San Antonio and Six Flags!  Either way we're totally going even if it means Amy has to push all three of us boys around in strollers.

Besides this little mishap where Brad gets to learn about the joint pain that he's already studied in school, life is pretty great!  We've been in Houston for about 2 years now can you believe it? That's a whole mission long! We only have one more mission left to serve before we can once again move forward in life.  We can't wait to graduate, set up a practice and start paying back our student loans and start paying taxes! Whahoo!  But even though it's been a tuff two years I think that deep down we're loving it. We love our ward, we actually feel sad that we missed church kinda like we walked out of a good movie. Yes our ward is that cool.  And we love our cheap little house and we love our two boys and we love the suspense of the incoming hurricane season where 4 out of 5 Houstonians predict that we'll get a hurricane this year. Oh for FUN!

The moral of the story is that even though life is tuff and hard, life is beautiful and even though it's full of thorns and stress and health problems, well hey at least it's suspenseful, and slightly interesting. You can't complain much as long as you live in America that's for sure.  We feel just so blessed with every day. It's wonderful to be able to see my family again. I hope I don't have to spend any more semesters away from them as much as this past semester. The boys are growing up so fast. By this time next month Luke will certainly be walking. Oh and guess what? We finally have a tooth!  One has finally erupted out of the bottom of his mouth. Actually more like one and a half! You can totally see the one next to it is breaking through! 

The last month or so...

Since we haven't posted many pictures lately, I found just a couple to stick up. I guess I've been filming videos more then taking pictures, so I compiled some the the recent videos together for your viewing pleasure.

Luke is still toothless and all gums, maybe he'll make it to his 1st birthday with no teeth? Guess we'll see!

I like to take pictures of my kids sleeping- they are just so peaceful and beautiful.

Although Luke had obviously been drooling.... :)
And here is a sample of my everyday life.

Easter Egg Hunt

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, so there you have it: :) Sorry it's a little long, but I figured the fam back in Utah would enjoy the unedited version. -edited to add- I guess the reason the movie is so long is actually because I totally messed it up. You see a few parts twice. Just fast forward a bit :)-

Busy Brad

Easter Saturday: Brad and Amy went to Choir practice and the choir director had transposed some music especially for Brad to sing. It was a solo. She had lowered it by 3 full steps so that the high notes were only C's above the Bass Clef. Although Brad may talk like a tenor, he sings bass best. This solo turned out to be pretty much the most challenging and scariest thing he's ever done in his life. The last time he'd done something this scary was back in March of 2004 when his trainer told him to convince this strange man he'd never met to let them teach the gospel to his wife... and do it all in spanish without any help. Well that was 8 years ago so hopefully this stresses the amount of stress Brad went through in singing.

And then last Sunday Brad gave a 35 minute sacrament meeting talk. He loved the topic (super powers) aka Spiritual Gifts, and the congregation loved the talk too. Like for serious, Brad made sure that nobody fell asleep the WHOLE TIME. After sacrament meeting he taught the teenagers in Sunday school which he also feels like it was a success and then in Priesthood Brad was challenged to play chubby bunnies. After only shoving 5 Peeps into his mouth he started to gag and quickly spit them out and lost the contest before he puked. So through and through it was quite the busy Sunday (not to mention an hour of after church choir practice and 2 hours of Home Teaching.)

And then on Monday Final Exams begin.

I (Brad) have often complained about how difficult school is to you. Well. 1st year 1st semester was very very difficult. It was the first time that I had ever taken 21 credit hours. I barely made it out of that alive. The 1st year 2nd semester was the same difficulty, and so naturally that means that I felt like it was easier! I had become accustomed to the difficulty. Then I hit 2nd year 1st semester and became acquainted with Pharmacology. For those of you who may consider Optometry school to being inferior to Medical school, I'll have you know that in our curriculum at the University of Houston, we attack Pharmacology so heavily that we're able to cover 2 semesters of medical school pharmacology in this single semester. It's so intense that I studied just this class for an average of 3 hours a day... neglecting my other classes and I barely made a C in the class.

Now we're finishing up 2nd year 2nd semester. The half way point. The semester that finally attacks pathology of the eye now that I've got a strong base of physiology and pathology and pharmacology of the whole body. And this semester has kicked my butt. Namely 3 reasons. 1 Ocular Pharm is a class equally as hard as last years Pharmacology. Add to that Ocular Pathology where I learn to Dx Tx and Rx. (diagnose, treat and prescribe) This class is equal in difficulty to pharm so that makes this semester a double whammy. And then on top of it all I'm working in clinic pretending I'm a doctor once a week with an attending (supervising doctor) who picks at my mistakes and freaks out on me whenever she OD's on coffee.

Needless to say I'm excited for this semester of heck to be finished. Curtis and Marcies wedding was beautiful and wonderful and worth every second but it kinda affected a test I took right after getting home... got a bad grade and I'm currently failing by 1% my Ocular Pathology class. Now to be very humble, I actually know more about ocular pathology than the majority of my class mates but I tested worse then most all of them.

So here we are with Finals week just beginning today. And I know I've complained before... trying to recruit a little pity my way... but if there was ever a time for you all to add me to one of your prayers, now might be the best time to do so. If I don't improve my grade in Ocular Path, and if I don't pass my Ocular Pharm finals then there's no doubt about it, We'll be living in Houston for and entire Extra year, putting us back until 2015. We really really do NOT like the sound of that and so please pass along some of your little miracles our way and we'd really appreciate it.

And yes, if I pass this semester, it's all down hill (besides the dreaded National Board Exam) but at least that exam won't hold me back a year!! And if I pass these classes then we are gonna Celebrate like crazy!!

Love yall

-Brad

Marcie Married Curtis!

Here's the top 10 random pictures from the last half of our Utah trip!

Now I'd like to go off topic and tell a story I once heard a long time ago...

Once upon a time there was a cute little family of four, quite like the little family that Amy and I have today. Two parents and two kids. But the family in today's story didn't have two boys, instead they had one boy and one girl. Then one day they decided to have another baby. Why? you ask. Well it's true that they already had one of each kind of children already, but they wanted something more. They wanted a 3rd baby that would be silly, and crazy, and lovable. This new edition to the family finally came and it turned out to be another boy! He was a very cute baldy blonde baby just like his older brother was. As he grew bigger, he became a chubby wubby baby also following in the steps of his older brother. He turned 1,2,3 4 5 6 7 8 years old! And all the way he looked and acted just like his older brother! His mommy and daddy asked themselves, "why oh why did we have this baby? he's exactly the same in every way as his older brother." Then one day, the older brother left the country for 2 years, and the little baby boy was now a teenager himself. Suddenly something changed! He didn't have his big brother to copy anymore. He had a choice now, to become anything he wanted! Or he could just simply start to try to copy his older sister instead... which he did. The younger brother grew out his hair. This was a very silly and crazy thing to do. He looked like a girl! but he soon found out that this hair made him very lovable. All the girls in town fell in love and it was at that moment that the younger brother did something his older brother never had done before. He dated girls.

This younger-brother-clone finally found himself and gained his own identity. Soon the older brother came home and found out that this young brother had changed. Although he admitted that this new brother was pretty cool, he really missed having his own "mini-me." And so the older brother made a plan to re-clone his younger brother. He invited him to play the trumpet in his rock band, the same rock band that had been playing together since he was the age of his little brother. At first, it began to work.... show after show the little brother became more and more like his older brother! But then the younger brother realized what was happening and so he wacked his older brother in the face with his trumpet during a show. It cut open the older brothers face and scarred him for life. Now, thought the little brother, everyone will tell us apart because I have a pretty face and my brother has a scar under his right eye.

And that's how it was for many long years.

Older brother got married and moved to Texas and became a cowboy.

For sure now younger brother would never again be like his older brother.

More years past... until one day...

Younger brother met a beautiful girl. This was no regular girl... she changed younger brother! She married him and turned him into a cowboy on the wedding day.

And thats how our story ends, with them once again becoming married-cowboy-clones again. Of course, the older brother did fill up their wedding car with balloons and he painted their windows in the hopes that they'd get in a car crash and cause the younger brother to get a scar under his right eye as well. As for this last plan we'll have to wait and see after they get back from their honeymoon and attempt to drive that car of theirs...

THE END

Ok now on an entirely different topic... my brother Curtis got married! We LOVE Marcie and incase you don't know her, after you watch this video you'll understand why she's PERFECT for Curtis. She really brings out the awesome in Curtis!

Seeing Curtis and Marcie go thru the temple and be sealed certainly made the trip worth it. Of course there were sacrifices in getting us there, plus Utah visits have never been good on our children, Isaac has forgotten how to be potty trained and perfect innocent Luke, I can't believe it, but he's actually for the first time in his life become a whiney little one who now fights us when we dress him and he fights us when we put him to sleep. :-( He's NEVER been like this. Our little angel baby-cakes is turning into a normal baby. Oh well... I can still say that the trip to Utah was worth it. We're so glad to see 3 sets of our wonderful grandparent and are so happy that they are healthy and happy. It was good to see everyone that we love! And once again, we love you Curtis and Marcie congratulations!!!!

We

Curtis wedding trip so far:

So we're here in SLC for a few days here. Visiting both sides of the family and then got a fancy beautiful wedding finale on Saturday! Here's some random pics of...

Grandma Larson helping Isaac taking his shoes off...

Amy's amazing unforgettable invaluable Betos Breakfast Burrito! Yum! That's the BEST GREASE ever dripping out of the bottom!

Gotta enjoy ever last drop. There's no Betos in Houston.

Luke playing in front of Auntie Christelle. Surprise, you made it on our blog!!!

Grandpa Rhone created a choo choo train out of magnets... But then Brad used the remaining magnets to build a realistic train engine and Isaac loved it so much he kissed it!

Oh wow, the udells have a new bathroom! Yay! we're posting this picture so that everyone from out of state can appreciate all the hard work!

Luke at Udells house... trying his best to pull down their curtains

But this is the greatest moment of our trip so far. Oh my oh me oh my. Betos rolled tacos just can't be beat. Ohhhhhhh gurgllllleee drooooll.... Soooo Gooooood.

Luke's new favorite activity