The Johnsons

Time is flying by with this little girl. I swear yesterday we celebrated her 6 month birthday, and now shes almost 15 months old! I wanted to write down a few of the things shes been doing lately.

Her favorite words to say all day long are:

-Shoes. She has an odd obsession with shoes and feet in general. If she finds a pair of shoes lying around, the brings them to the owner and puts them on the owners feet. If you don't put them on right away, she throws a little tantrum until you do. And don't even think about taking them back off until shes out of eyes view! Needless to say, we try and be diligent about putting our shoes away and closing our bedroom door. She will do this all. day. long. Cracks me up.

-Yuck. She says yuck to everything! The trash can, dirt outside, dirt on her hands, her diapers, food she doesnt like, etc. So funny and she says it with such clarity! Yuck yuck yuck.

-Bathtub. This sounds more like "ba-dub". She loves the bath and gets so excited when its time to get in every night.

-Doggy. Sounds like "Dah-dee". This girls got a true love for animals! Not sure where she got that from. Even though she loves them..we will not be owning a dog ANYTIME soon/ever. :)

-She loves to make the sound (or try to) of cars if shes playing with anything that has wheels. I am not sure where she picked this up but its awesome.

She is just at such a fun age and I cannot believe how much she learns everyday. Love this little nugget.

Alot of people have been asking about Daniels future plans, so I thought this would be a good place to tell whats going on all at once.

Daniels in the process right now of interviewing for orthodontics programs. He applied in July and started hearing back in August for interviews, and now all interviews have been officially sent out. He has already been to a few, but still has several more to go. Right now, these the the schools he will be interviewing at (in no particular order).

1. UT-Houston
2. North Carolina
3. Montefiore (in New York)
4. Oklahoma
5. Nebraska
6. Indiana
7. UPenn
8. University of Pittsburgh
9. Temple University (Pennsylvania)
10. Columbia (New York)

He had 5 other interview offers, but had to say no to them because they overlapped with other schools he liked more. He wishes he could have gone to all 15, but our bank account is relieved he couldnt :) He turned down the following schools:

1. Virginia Commonweath University
2. University of CA-San Francisco
3. Colorado
4. New Jersey
5. ...to be edited later cause I cant remember! Ha :)

Basically, there's a 3/10 chance we will be moving to Pennsylvania, or a 1/5 chance we will be moving to New York. I'm really hoping for something else to work out because I don't necessarily want to live in either of those places!

Most orthodontics residency programs are part of the match system, like medical schools are. You go to the interviews and rank the schools you like best in order from 1 to however many interviews you have, and the schools do the same thing for the people that were interviewed. Most programs range from 4-6 residents per program each year. So basically, if you choose a school as your number 1 and they choose you as their top 6, you will match there. If you choose them as your number 1 but they choose you as their number 10, you will not match there unless several of their "top" applicants did not choose that particular school as their number one but matched somewhere else. Then you would get moved up the rank list and match with that program. I am not sure if this makes sense, but hopefully it helps some people understand that have been asking about it!

Right now our rank list is undecided, trying to keep an open mind for Daniels interviews. We do have our top choices in mind, but are open to whatever happens. We are just praying it all works out and anxiously await the day that we get the email telling us where we will be living for the next 2-3 years. We will find out at the end of November!

I feel like our lives have been a whirlwind the past few months. Here is a short summary of what we have been up to.

Daniel has a 3 week break in September for school, which is great and always much needed! This break we were quite the little travelers. We spent the first week of it here in Los Angeles, enjoying things like the beach and Disneyland with Ev. Then we made the drive up to Salt Lake to leave Evalyn with my parents while we explored NYC! New York has always been on my list of places I wanted to visit, and I knew it wouldn't be a fun place to go with a 1 year old. My parents had fun with E and we enjoyed sleeping in everyday :) Heres a few shots of our getaway.






We returned back to Utah late on a Saturday night, and then early Sunday morning we left to go up to Idaho. Daniels family has a cabin up there in Island Park, and we had been talking with our good friends here in LA about making a trip up there for the past 3 years. We finally did and it was a blast. Sadly it was too cold to do much on the water, but it was a nice quiet relaxing vacation! We played tons of games and made good food, went up to West Yellowstone for a day, and the boys were crazy enough to jump in the freezing water. I was determined to get the picture below, and I might have made them jump in 4 times before I got the shot I wanted :)



We spent a few days in Utah before heading back home to Los Angeles. Its always so fun to see family. We are lucky enough to have most of my family and half of Daniels family up there. We were able to be there for my new niece Claires blessing day, and Halie and Ryan were there too! It was a fun but busy 3 weeks. Since we got home, life has been nuts. But thats for another post :)

Yesterday we celebrated Evalyns birthday--one day early. Sunday birthdays are never fun! So we pretended it was on Saturday. I had been planning her party for a while now, and although she wont remember it at all, I will, and I wanted it to be special. I chose a bumblebee theme cause I didnt think it was too cheesy, and I am sure I will have my fair share of princess themed parties in the future! We only had a few close friends and family come, which is exactly what I wanted. We wish more family lived by us and could have been here! Here is the party in pictures :)

I have been the worst blogger ever for the past few months. It seems like everytime I have the chance to blog and Evalyn is sleeping, I would rather do dishes, mop the floor, or other things I can't do when Ev is awake. Today I reallllly wanted to take a nap while she is napping, but I decided to do this instead. 10 points for me!

Life has been good in the Johnson home. Daniel got home from being at military officer basic training for a month on July 3rd and it seems like our lives have been super busy ever since. As of last night, Daniel is done applying to orthodontic residency programs. What a long, expensive, and annoying process that was! It has been about 3 weeks of working on applications every night. We are sooo happy its over and done with and cant wait for interviews to begin! Once Daniel goes to whatever interviews he gets, he will rank the schools in the order that he liked them, they will rank him, and it is a computer matching system that ends up deciding where we get to go. We are hoping/crossing our fingers and toes/praying/throwing coins into wishing wells that we get to go back to Houston for a few years, or Dallas, or Oklahoma. We will just be happy to be accepted anywhere though! There are thousands of applicants for on average about 5 spots per orthodontic program. It's insanely competitive. So proud of D for getting this far! The rest is pretty much out of our hands.

My little girl will be ONE YEAR OLD on Sunday. How in the world. This year has FLOWN by! I hope they start to slow down. It makes me so sad that shes getting so big. It's so fun to see her grow and learn new things, but I am not ready for a toddler! Where did my little, quiet, sweet girl go? She has been replaced by a loud, dramatic, curious and spunky almost-one-year-old! Love her to pieces. I just want her to stay little forever. Any tips on how to make that happen?

Lately Ev and I have enjoyed the lovely weather LA has to offer. Lots of runs, swimming, and strolling around different stores outside. She is days away from walking on her own and I am sooo not ready for that. Except I am ready for her to be off the floor. Something about crawling around on these 20 year old carpets--no matter how many times I vacuum--still grosses me out.

I am super behind on her baby posts, but those are for me more than anyone else anyway. A few things we have to look forward to in the next several months:

1. Going to Utah to meet my new niece!!! Dont know when this is happening yet, but hopefully sooner than later. They get big so quick I need to soak her and the rest of my nieces in.
2. Going to Utah/Idaho in October for Alex's wedding! Most likely just me and E, since Daniel will have interviews (we hope).
3. Running the Ragnar in Vegas in November. What? Yeah, my friend sucked me in. I know, I think I'm stupid too.
4. FALL! Im ready for any and all things pumpkin. My fave time of year for sure, followed by my least fave. And the parentals are coming to my neck of the woods for Turkey Day this year. Anyone else who needs to visit before we leave is welcome!


Shoutout to my bff SUMMER MARIE cause today is her birthday! And shes having a baby soon. Known eachother since we were like 3--Where does the time go?? Lately this question has been really buggin if you cant tell. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVE! love you so much.