1000.

That's how many miles I've gone on foot in the last year!

I know it's silly... and no one else cares... but it's a goal I've had for a LONG time and I'm really proud of myself for reaching it (especially through moving, falling, first trimester sickness, etc. etc.)

In case you haven't figured it out, I am AVID about keeping track of my exercise. It gives me a way to challenge myself to push harder, do better. Who better to compete against than myself? I'm always here, and I can always push myself a little further. That's why I love running. I'm the one I have to beat.

So last year when I actually ran the whole year long and got in 775 miles, I knew it was only a matter of time before the day would come when I could look back and see that I'd done 1000 miles in the previous year.

That day was Sunday. And, I must say, it felt pretty stinkin' good.

Not all of it was running. Maybe 200-250 miles were on the elliptical or walking. Still, 1000 miles is 1000 miles. And of that I am proud.

Of course I can't just stop there. I'm not so naive as to think that I'm going to be breaking any records anytime soon considering I've got a baby coming in five short months. But hopefully I can maintain my 1000 mile status for a few months at least. And post baby... who knows... maybe a marathon???

BARR.

That's how I've been remembering everything I want to post about. I've been meaning to update for like, oh, 3 weeks now. I'm an awful blogger.

B - Well, the most obvious exciting news is that we're having a BABY in January!!! Feel free to read more about Baby Yates in our Baby Blog (linked on the side). This is the primary reason that I have posted very very little this summer. Keeping baby a secret was sooo hard!

Of course, the other reason I haven't posted much is that being pregnant made it basically impossible for me to cook for about 6 weeks - aka NO new recipes.

My morning sickness has finally abated, but now that it's over, I realize that I was actually pretty miserable. The whole time I had it, I kept saying, "well, I don't feel great, but I'm not too bad."

Yeah, now that I feel normal again, I can safely say that it was pretty bad. I just forgot what normal felt like. LoL. BUT it wasn't so bad I wouldn't do it again.

And, while Eric felt awful for me, HE loved the fact that we ate out about 5 times a week (primarily pizza -- baby's food of choice. I think we know whose child this is!!)


A - Our 4th Anniversary was two weeks ago!! It's hard to believe it's already been four years since our cute little wedding.

We've gone from two college kids to almost-parents. Eric's an almost-doctor. We've moved across the country. Gotten our first house. Gone on crazy vacations. It's been a really hard, but a really fun four years. It amazes me to see what different people we are now and how we've grown together and managed to become even closer and more grounded. 

I love this awesome guy more and more every day, and I'm more proud to be his wife than I can say!! 

R - You may think pregnancy has stopped my running, but think again!! I'm as slow as Christmas, but so far I've managed to keep up approximately 3 miles/day on average this summer. Trust me, when you're fatigued, nauseated and grouchy, that's an accomplishment!! 

So far I've gone about 660 miles this year. Not too shabby. AND, if I can keep up this 3 miles a day thing until August 20, I will have gone 1000 miles in the last year. I know, there are plenty of marathon runners who do that in like two months. Still, for a girl who started out doing NOTHING three years ago, I'd say 1000 miles a year is pretty darn good. :-) 

R - The last R is for Residency. That's right, in just a few short months, Eric will officially be Dr. Yates, MD. Woohoo!! Then we will be off on a new journey through his Internal Medicine residency. From now until March, however, we get to play the whole application game again. Here's a timeline for how all of this fun stuff works:

September - Eric submits his application that he's been working on for months. He's applying to 15-20 different programs, from Massachusetts to Colorado. (Thankfully this is WAY less time consuming and expensive than when he was applying to medical school)!

November-December - Interviews! Hopefully he'll get several interviews at different programs. He'll drive or fly to visit the hospitals and talk with the faculty he'd be working with. If he gets some interviews in November, we're hoping I can go with him so I can check out housing, etc. too. 

January - Rank List! Really we have until the beginning of February to do this, but since our sweet little baby is coming toward the end of January, I'm thinking we better have it done early! Basically, after interviewing, Eric ranks the programs according to how much he likes them. If there's one he interviews at that he definitely does NOT want to go to, he can choose not to rank it. So that's nice. Anything we put on the rank list is fair game for a residency match though! 

Monday, March 11 - Eric will get a nice email saying whether or not he matched. You see, Eric and every other 4th year medical student in the world will have turned in these rank lists, and so have the programs that interviewed them. All the information gets entered into some huge computer with some amazing algorithms that spit out where each person is going to go. The unfortunate thing is that, every now and then, there are more applicants than spots, or people apply to too many good programs that don't rank them very high. Scary! So those people find out Monday they are NOT matched and have to call programs all over the country to try and find a spot in any specialty that will take them. If they don't, they have to take a year off or do research for a year until Match day rolls around again. We are, of course, praying this does NOT happen to us!!

Friday, March 15 - Match Day! For anyone who doesn't know, Match Day is THE culmination of medical school. Every 4th year in every school across the US gathers with their classmates at noon EST, and in unison, every matched student opens an envelope that tells them where they will be spending the next 3-7 years of their life. It's really pretty cool. But I guarantee you we will NOT be able to sleep the night before!! 

Monday, May 20 - Graduation. After Match Day, everything's pretty much downhill. Eric takes a capstone course, we get a few weeks to go find a place to live, etc. And then graduation weekend comes. 

May still seems like a LONG way away, and there's so much happening between now and then. Still, it's crazy that SO many changes will be taking place in such a short amount of time!! For now, I am really just trying to enjoy, well, NOW. Being pregnant. Spending time with our friends here. Living in our cute little house. Enjoying our wonderful church fellowship. Winston-Salem is as much a home as anywhere else I've lived, and I plan on savoring our time here as much as I possibly can!!