chapter I, volume II

its real now. all those years of hearing the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" add up to this moment. and those endless games of M.A.S.H. when we'd anxiously wait to find out our future spouse/job/car/pet... bring us to this moment when james is offically starting his medical school career. today james had his first official day of medical school and though i've been a stay at home mom for eleven weeks now, it somehow feels more real today than it ever has. james is such a good medical student so far. he's in the other room studying his little heart out at this very moment. and though he's forgotten to take the lunch i've prepared for him every day since we got here... (do you think he's trying to hint something?)... i know that he's going to be the best student DMU has ever had! today is also the day that we finally got our computer all hooked up so that i can reunite myself with the rest of the world. don't be fooled however, iowa is a lot more hip-hop-happenen than you might believe. it has all the most necessary chain stores one might need in their day to day life. everything from babies r us to barnes and noble. we even have a Cheesecake Factory... which may be the total downfall to our so-called "budget". we've been much too busy - with james at orientation and me trying to find the carpet in our apartment beneath the piles of boxes - to take many pictures. but i will post some pics of our drive out here as well as a cute little video of scotti playing with his favorite toys. and just below this blog is a slideshow of scott in the past month. no pressure though, i understand i'm bogging you down with a lot of information. i'm just trying to catch up on the blog and clear my conscience. despite the fact that our stuff is piled to the roof of our car... scott's life was never in jeopardy. and a road trip wouldn't be a road trip if james didn't have his fresca, which thanks to his mom and sister amanda he had plenty to last him the whole 1,000 miles. here's some

The License Plate Game...
james was very determined to see as many license plates from different states as he could and i have to say he did pretty well. all in all he spotted license plates from 36 different states on our 1,000 mile drive along I-80. He was so proud of them that i just have to list them here in the blog:
alabama, arizona, arkansas, california, colorado, florida, hawaii, idaho, illinois, indiana, iowa, kansas, kentucky, maine, maryland, massachusettes, michigan, minnesota, mississippi, misouri, montana, nebraska, nevada, new york, north caroline, ohio, oregon, pennsylvania, south carolina, south dakota, tennessee, texas, utah, washington, wisconsin, wyoming
action footage of the trip:
my great aunt maxine was nice enough to let us stay with her one of the nights that we were traveling. she lives in olgalala nebraska and she showed us a good ol' midwestern time. here's a panoramic of downtown des moines. as you can probably tell... it's huge. james' school paid for us to go to the iowa cubs baseball game. scott was a bit tired and was cooperating even less than usual at holding his head up for a picture... hence my hand in the picture to prop it up for him. daddy and scotti watching the game. we're already true blue cub fans... even though they happened to be playing the salt lake bees that night. okay, i know i already have some older pictures of scott in this very towel, but everytime i give a bath i can't help but whip out the camera. he's so darn cute!

and last but definitely not least, a cute video of our little tyke. enjoy!