And Now, From Left Field....

*I'm officially 37 weeks and 2 days along.

*Zach and I only really started discussing names for this baby for the first time last night.

*Pretty sure this kid is going to rock "Baby Boy/Girl Klaassen" on it's birth certificate if we can't get our acts together.

*Naming a baby is a big deal/daunting task. They have this name for the rest of their lives... unless they're Phoebe from Friends and change it to Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock.

*Am I the only one who feels like they've conquered the world when they fit every last dish from dinner into the rubix cube they call a dishwasher?!?

*Pretty sure Zach looked at me funny last night when I hollered out "I AM VICTORIOUS!!" when I was done (true story).

*Zach is smart.

*Like really smart.

*Like, how did I end up with someone so scholarly when I HATED school, smart.

*We just got a copy of the Medical textbook that he wrote a chapter in (on Urology). No joke, a freaking chapter in a textbook.

*I had a project featured on a blog the other day.... does that put me on par with his brilliance?!? 

*Let's all pretend the answer to that question is a resounding "yes"...

*Aubrey is disturbingly in love with my belly. Even trying to get her friends to kiss and cuddle it. *awkward*

*She's SO excited for this baby and shouts it from the rooftops every time someone points out my belly...which now is all. the. time. 

*I think I might be the last person these days who doesn't know the gender of their baby before they give birth... or so everyone tells me with a bewildered look on their face, followed by the comment "how do you buy for the baby?!?" 

*It's called gender neutral colors people and a baby only really needs diapers and a sleeper. Not their ENTIRE wardrobe until they are 3 years of age.

*Zach's going to present again at the National Urological conference in Atlanta in May (see SMART)

*I was looking at the hotels that were sponsored by the conference and the hospital is going to get for him.... I'm. So. There. 

*All of the hours that Zach puts in paper writing and researching (which are A LOT) pay off eventually 

*At least that's what I tell myself when he's holed up in his office on a writing rampage....

Things Goin' Round My Head....

*I had no computer this weekend.... it was oddly nice.

*Zach had the weekend off

*in our world, that means he was working at home all weekend because he's crazy and had to prepare five presentations for this coming weekend.

*Yup, five. Over achieve much?!?

*Zach's too smart. Yeah, I said it.

*all that to say, he still spent tons of time with Aubrey and of course made time for the Super Bowl ;)

*oh, and he vacuumed for me....pretty sure I said "I do" all over again when he did that... it's the little things that make a marriage go round people!

*we're headed to a conference this coming weekend.... by "we" I mean Zach is and it's close enough that we get to tag along and benefit from the free hotel room :)

*it's at a Ritz Carlton a few hours from us

*um RITZ CARLTON....for free?!? I'm SO in!

*Zach being an aggressively smart, over achiever has it's benefits ;)

*I love my husband.

*only he would get us a 2 night stay at the Ritz when we're dirt poor!

*my "nesting" is in full force. 

*I'm hauling out all the gender neutral clothing we have for baby and washing it all.

*I'm ripping off all the cloth parts of the baby bouncers, mats, etc to wash them...

*not sure why, but I feel I need to get this all done today.

*it has really start to hit me, with all this contraction and dehydration drama I've had, that this baby can come at any time... and we're SO not prepared!

*names?! Nope.

*crib up? Nope.

*sewing projects I planned on getting done?! Not even close.

*time to get my butt in gear.

More Than Just Pictures....

I know that these are random pictures, but they mean A LOT to me....

These pictures are a big step in my marriage...

I know, I know...dramatic

BUT they are the first ever pictures where I randomly saw something that I wanted to photograph, on the way to our destination, and Zach TURNED the car AROUND... annnnnnd backtracked to let me get the shot!

He's not really a fan of stopping along the way... he'll stop for us to go to the bathroom, but only if there is a stop less than 1 mile off the highway.

You read that right, there are stipulations.

If the Starbucks that I'm wanting to stop at ends up being farther than that, my man is not pleased.

It has to be said, he'll do it (probably because he's dying for a coffee too), but he won't be happy about it. (I hope he's not sounding like an ogre, he's just a typical male who wants to just GET to the destination.)

But stopping for a picture, never.... until our trip to Charleston!

And I'm thinking it won't be the last time, since he could see the shock and excitement in my face

And I maaaaay have talked about it repeatedly during our trip!

It's the little things people.

Love him :) ....

And my pictures!

Just Because I Love Him....

How fabulous is this guy?!? 

He's not even posing, seriously. It's just his GQ nature.

Love that my man can rock a stroller with confidence and do it in style in a lavender sweater.

I'm just proud to be his wife.

This Might Get A Little Heavy....

When I told Zach that I was in the midst of writing this post he looked at me and said, "um ok...I'm scared." Funny guy, no need to be scared :)

If you want to commit to reading this(I know you are hemming and hawing Marcy...it's a lot of words) I suggest you get a cup of coffee and bare with me ;)

Moving right along.....

So Zach's a doctor. Yup, a doctor. As in, girls always "dream" about marrying a doctor.

The movies always make it seem so desirable, that having "all that money" is all it takes to be happy with your man. They never get into the nitty-gritty. 

Being a doctor's wife is not the fairytale everyone thinks it is....

not to be confused with my marriage to Zach not being a fairytale...that is! The two are kinda separate... (ok, now I'm getting confused...I'm just going to keep writing and hope you stay with me on this!) 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, bitter or scary, but I wanna inject a little reality into peoples perception of the whole thing. 

Here's a little "Keepin' It Real" timeline for y'all...

First--four years of undergrad(usually there's some nice debt that comes with this)

Second--the MCAT...a big standardized test to see if you even qualify for Med School.

Third--the whole business of applying to Med School. 

This in and of itself is a stupidly hard process...coming from Canada, it was even harder(there is only one Med School in our Province and out-of-province schools are even harder to get into)

Fourth--comes med school (assuming you get in....factor in some possible rejections and waiting another year to apply again, it's what Zach went through)...it's a crazy time filled with classes, cadavers, sleepless nights, and long hours in the hospital(in the 3rd and 4th years) and ALL that is accompanied by some nice accumulating debt....oh and a butt-load of tests!

Zach attended an out of country Med School in the Caribbean, so that added a nice flare of you-have-to-leave-your-family-and-go-somewhere-in-which-you-know-no-one-and-it's-going-to-be-super-hard-and-expensive-to-travel-home-and-see-family-and-friends to the already crazy pressures.

He(I was there with him) did the first 2 years in Grenada and the second 2 in the USA.

Living in Grenada, was (If I'm being honest) one of the hardest things I've ever done...we've ever done.  If you go back to the early days of this blog, you can read all about our crazy adventures there. 

I truly believe it made us who we are and it was an essential part of gearing up for what was to come.

I DID meet amazing life-long friends and some of the first(and only) people who "get it"--as in the whole situation surrounding the married-to-a-doctor life, plus the lived-in-a-foreign-country AND the knew-them-"before"-it-all thing.

Fifth--The USMLE....I'm sure I missed two of these tests in the debacle above because Zach was onto writing his third by this point, ooops. The first two USMLE's (United States Medical Licensing Exams)  are 8 hours each....that's 8 straight hours of standardized test taking people. And the third one?? Well, that one was a whopping 16 hour test split into two consecutive days!

Stress much??

It has to be said (and I must brag on my husband a bit) he NAILED these tests. I mean KILLED them, as in he wowed people during the whole residency interview process with his fabulous scores! Made the whole months and months(and months and months....) of studying worth while!

And with Zach being a foreign grad, these test scores are an even bigger deal. 

He's a fish going against the current while trying to get a residency position (k, I made that sound really dramatic...but it kinda is.) 

Sixth-- The whole applying for a residency position. This was intermingled with step 6. So every place you actually get an interview at, you have to travel to. As in, fly, drive, etc. 

This part sucks the mulah right out of you. We drove to all the places with in a 8 hour radius, and Zach flew alone to the others. So there is the whole hotel fee, car rental if said hotel did not have a shuttle to the hospital and food, etc while gone. 

FUN.

Thank the Lord, Zach didn't have to fly to too many places. 

You apply to these positions in September and the whole interview process can span into February. Then there's the "Match"....I'm not even going to try and explain, give the details to the process of how they end up placing you in your Residency position...because quite frankly, I'm still a bit lost by the whole process!

The "Match" happens in January for Urology, and all other Medicine/Surgery/etc have the "Match" in March. 

You basically get an email at 9am on the day of and it tells you where to go....and then you cry A LOT and thank the Lord that you matched and have a placement...and a job for the next 5 plus years.

Zach matched in Urology (his DREAM job!!) and he didn't have the agonizing wait until March.

Seventh--there's residency(which is what Zach's in now)....when said debt cripples you and you have to live on minimal amounts of money and time with said doctor. 

The lack of money is one thing, at times it sucks, but we're so used to it now that it's not that big a deal most of the time.

It's the TIME people, the lack of time with a loved one because they work 90+ hours A WEEK and the rest is spent sleeping or reading papers/research/etc to keep up with their particular specialty(in Zach's case, Urology). It gets old, really old...and we're not even 6 months into residency. Awesome.

And don't get me started on a month straight of night shifts....

It's a long road before any real money is made and you feel as though you are swimming in a sea of debt.

Basically, it's a lot of long hours, missing big "moments" in life, an always exhausted husband, crazy debt....the list goes on. Essentially, this makes me kind of a single parent for a good portion of the time.

All that being said(did I sound like a Debbie Downer or what?!?) it's Zach's passion and he LOVES it!

I can't even begin to say that his excitement for his job everyday (even through all the grogginess) is infectious! God has SO placed him in the right spot and placed me to take this journey right along side him....we started dating his first year of undergrad, I was still in the 12th grade...scandalous ;)

We know this is where he is...WE are... supposed to be, but that doesn't stop it from being hard... A LOT of the time.

I look back on all he's gone through, we've gone through, and I'm so grateful because like I said before, it's ALL shaped us into the people we are today. 

We trust God so much more than ever before, it's what happens when your life takes a "Where Are We Off To Next" turn every few years. God's just keeping us on our toes ;)

Zach's job comes with crazy responsibilities, dealing with death often and here in the States, there's the lovely possibility of being sued, good times. 

You have to understand, I grew up in a smallish town in Western Canada (both Zach and I did, he lived in the town next to mine) and I never in my WILDEST dreams ever thought that I'd live anywhere else....ever. I thought I'd marry a farmer (seriously) and live out my days in Abbotsford.  

To think that one day I'd be married to a man who was a doctor and living in Georgia, let alone New Jersey and Grenada before that??? Unfathomable. 

God knows so much better than we do what we need. 

The life experience we've gained from living in these places, the friends we've made...I can't imagine that not having happened!

We had a chip on our shoulders when Zach didn't get into Med School in Canada, I'm not going to lie. He had all the right stuff and for some reason didn't get in...

But now we GET it, this way was SO much better, harder, but better! 

God knew the reason and boy was he right.

I Just Have to Say....

...how hot is my husband?!?

Seriously?!

Love him....especially when he has 2 days off in a row!

Aubrey's pretty darn cute too.

More pictures to come from his time off...but you'll have to be patient, I've got me some editing to do....

On My Mind....

I've been struggling, lately, with what my purpose in life is, I guess I'm kinda wondering what I was created for. My first answer was/is always a wife and mom. But when the day to day gets to me, I tend to think that it can't be enough and start to feel there must be something else.
I try and change my hobbies into what my purpose is, I must be here to sew, take pictures, etc.
I had a chat with someone recently who put things into perspective for me a little. I call her my "almost friend" (go ahead and laugh) because I've only met her once and chatted on the phone with her a few times since. I feel like we could be friends eventually, but I'm not about to throw myself at her and call her my bff, know what I'm saying?! Also, I have no friends here in Augusta yet (sad I know) and when you speak to another adult in person you automatically could think they're your BEST friend...so give me a break, I'm couped up with a three year old all day!
ANYWAY, my "almost friend" is in the same situation as me...almost creepily so; little kids at home, stay at home mom, husband is a surgical resident, said husband is totally into paper writing and research(just like mine) and she's a Christian.
She said that just as her husband was called to be a surgeon, she was called to be his wife.

{picture by Amy Rehbein Photography}

And that sentence has been looping in my head ever since.
I guess that's how I feel about Zach, and why I have made all the "sacrifices" (I put that in quotes because I don't really see them as such, but others might) I have for him.
I'm called to be Zach's wife. Be his helper and do the mundane daily tasks so he doesn't have to. Pray for him while he's at work, and try and be a positive person when he comes home from a 15 hour day....and his 21st day working...IN A ROW (no joke, he's in a stretch right now of 26 days straight with no days off). And being positive and happy is hard after he's been gone so long and so often, let me tell you!
But now-a-days it's not PC to say that your purpose on earth is to be a helper to your husband. You get strange looks and many shakes of the head.
I often hear, "how do you do it?!?" (I am NOT trying to toot my own horn here) and the answer is usually, I just do. But there is more to it than that.
I do it with God's help.
God's the reason I can do it, not to mention the fact that Zach is an amazing guy and is super grateful for everything I do in a day...even if it ends up being nothing. Having a husband who is so supportive of his wife staying home and loves that I take care of Aubrey and the household things, makes a world of difference. AND it makes me want to do more for him. He's an amazing father and husband and that makes it all worth while...even when he's been gone for days on end!

 So, that's what's been on my mind lately. And to be honest? Once I started to think that way, the daily tasks that usually make me want to scream, have become a little easier. And the smile on my face is not forced. With God's help I'll make it through the rest of the 4 and a half years of residency and many years of working to come....and so will Zach ;)

High On Life....

 We were wishing it would happen and it did....

Zach has the long weekend OFF!!! Seriously, 3 whole days off!! What to do, what to do?!? I think we should fly somewhere...seriously, it's that rare!  

I'm thinking a trip to Atlanta for the day is in order...

We have lived here almost 3 months and have yet to visit...we'll see. 

No matter what happens, it'll be amazing!

Thank you Lord! We needed this!

A Little Bit of Progress....

And by little, I mean little. I have my quilt all laid out in the spots I want, but I keep going in and changing things. So I decided to let it sit for a while longer, let it percolate a bit. And no, it's not because I'm not in the mood to sew it. Ok, maybe I'm not in the mood to sew it. BUT in my defence, it's really hot up in our office and when I get super hot, I feel sick... not a good thing when you live in Georgia. Because it's hot here....really hot here. Figured I'd remind you, just in case you forgot because I sure haven't ;)

I'm really loving how offensively bright these fabrics are though, they make me smile....even if I still feel nauseous under that smile. Ahhh the joys of pregnancy. My goal is to get it done before the baby comes...I figure a deadline of March is something I can handle, but at the pace I'm going?? Not gonna happen. I'm just praying that all this nausea stops at 12 weeks, but that's this Monday, so I'm not going to hold my breath!

In other news, I found the latest home of "the mask" the other day. I give Zach some serious bonus points for creativity on this one, it's just clever! Have I ever mentioned I love this guy?? Because I do. (that was for you Marcy)

You Know You're In Grenada When

Well...I just finished studying for my Pathology exam tomorrow and I figured this was a good time to make my blog debut before I get into Microbiology studying. Since the blog is The Adventures of Zach and Jen, I figured Zach should make a post. Yes, this is Zach, not Jen... and I just referred to myself in third person. While we've been in Grenada we've noticed a few things are different in comparison to home...you've all seen those emails titled "You know you're from Saskatchewan when..." or "You know you're a Menno when..." Let me introduce the "Top 10 You Know You're in Grenada When...":

10. It's "cooling off a bit" when the temperature hits 35C

9. The price of a shot of rum at home is the same as the whole bottle

8. The food court at the local mall is a top 3 choice for places to eat on date night.

7. You are routinely chased by the police station's pet goat on your daily run...

6. One day you decide to fight back, you turn around and chase the same goat...screaming

5. You go into the grocery store on March 25th and realize an expiry date of March 17th is "not bad"

4. The teller at that same grocery store looks like she has "bitter beer face" when you put your groceries on the conveyer belt

3. You don't need a lawnmower when the neighborhood cow is hungry

2. The punishment for wearing camouflage is the same as being in possession of porn

1. A police officer in his cruiser is knockin' back a cold Carib beer

Ladies and Gentlemen...We have reached a new level...

Wow, it has been a while since I last wrote. Funny how not much can happen in your life, but you still are too busy to do simple little things like update a blog. Or maybe it is because not much is going on in my life that I haven't written, I'm going to go with that one, better than just sounding plain old lazy.
Well, Zach is now in ultimate over drive. I always wonder how he could possibly get any busier, and then he does. He has just been given a paper to write by Monday (which will be published) and that means researching it and writing it in that time. This is on top of all his other studying, not to mention the fact that he has convinced himself that he has been afflicted with Meningitis...don't ask. Apparently this is something that happens to people who are on the road to becoming doctors, they read about a disease/virus/ailment and think that they have contracted it. The ultimate in hypochondriacism. He has coined a new term for this, MSH, which stands for Medical Student Hypochondriacism. He has also started to diagnose others (he's sharing the love) and apparently I have a mild case of passive-aggressive disorder (don't know how to take that, but to tell you the truth...I think he is right). He might as well be a doctor already for all the diagnosing he is doing. It doesn't help that every time he talks to one of his friends back home they tell him their problems (real or not) and ask him, calling him doctor of course, to tell them what is wrong with them. He usually tells them something made up to satisfy them and get a laugh.
So this crazy weekend is progressing at break-neck speed and Zach has, of course, deemed certain things unnecessary, namely sleep. He got to bed, I repeat GOT to bed, at 7 this morning, proceeded to have one and a half hours of sleep and woke up to continue writing. This is what I have to deal with, crazy med student and all his baggage. And you all think that it is fun and games in Grenada, well I'm here to tell you that it is not!