Campbell's First Beach Trip

Sunday the three of us went to Panama City Beach to a friends beach house for a couple days. The pictures of Campbell are real cute, but unfortunately I won't have the camera to post pictures until Saturday. Stay tuned.

Home Sweet New Home

Since finding out Katie, Campbell, and I will be in Birmingham for at least the next three years we were anxious to get a place to live nailed down. So this past Wednesday we all went up to Auburn, then Thursday Katie and I left Campbell with Katie's mom Pam and went to look at houses in Birmingham with a realtor. We saw a lot of good stuff, some bad, but went back up on Friday to look more specifically at a starter home-type neighborhood. We wanted something newer, in our price range, and not too far from the hospitals at which I'll be working . . . which is a lot to ask in Birmingham.

But on Friday we loved a lot of the houses in that neighborhood and the Lord was gracious to us and drew us to one in particular. We made an offer on Saturday and after multiple counteroffers came to an agreement Sunday afternoon for what we feel is a very fair price. Katie and I are very excited about this house. It not too far from the hospitals and has all the things we've (Katie) always wanted: hardwood floors, double vanity and seperate tub and shower in the master bath, a good backyard for Bailey (which I will need to fence in), great kitchen, and three bedrooms so we will have an extra room for ALL of our friends from Mobile to come and visit!! And they better . . .

New Pictures of Campbell

Okay, here are a bunch of pictures without the usual boring text. Enjoy!

The Envelope Please . . .

...and the winner is, Baptist Health System, Birmingham, Alabama! That was my first choice so I am pretty happy. For the first time in my life I have a real job. Or at least a job that you have to have more than a high school education to get. Now comes the task of looking for a house in Birmingham. And not just a house, but a house in our price range, which is pretty low. Thanks for everyones prayers and encouragement about Match Day, and especially to our friends in Mobile who were torn between rooting for me to get my first choice and not wanting us to leave Mobile. I appreciate your objectivity.

Here are some photos from Match Day including my beautiful wife and daughter! Campbell looks really cute in her dress. I promise from now on more posts will be about Campbell and with more pictures too. Thats all anybody really wants to see anyway.

Beware The Ides of March . . .

William Shakespeare must have, at some point, been a fourth year medical student. As you may not be aware, March 15th is what, for me and tens of thousands of other fourth year medical students across the country, is known as Match Day. This is the day that the National Residency Match Program releases the results of where everyone will be doing their residency training. To sum up how it works, we as applicants apply and interview at various programs from about November to January. At the end of February we the applicants rank the programs we applied to from 1 down to however many you applied. The programs also rank all the kids that applied from whom they want the most on down. These rank lists go into a computer and through some algorithm and/or gorrilla math it spits out matches of students and programs. Obviously if you are a more competitive applicant, the likelihood of you getting your first choice is higher. If you're a big slacker, you might get your last choice or even not rank at all. If you do rank, you are contractually bound to fulfill that committment to wherever you matched.

Anyway, for me this is all revealed one week from tomorrow at a mini-ceremony for our class. Pray that I will readily accept wherever God has placed me. Hopefully my first choice, but God seems to like to do his own thing, so I kind of won't be surprised if its not. Either way, for fourth years, beware the Ides of March.