Update!

Wow, this past week was a busy one!!!

It started off with our niece Aubrey's blessing last Sunday. It was so good to see the fam and and celebrate Aubrey's special day!

Isn't she ADORABLE!?!

Jake, Carter and Aubrey. I love this picture!!!

Tammie and Jeff with Alan and Susan and Aubrey.

I love this picture just due to the fact that Jake conveniently-accidentally placed the string from the camera right between Susan and Aubrey!

On Tuesday we closed on our townhome...so as of last Wednesday we are officially HOME OWNERS!!! The sad part about it is that we didn't even get to go inside until Saturday night because the next few days were so busy!

This is a picture of what the outside of our townhome looks like. We're super excited to FINALLY be done paying RENT!!!

Last Thursday and Friday were my local anesthesia and dental hygiene board exams. Talk about 2 of the most stressful days ever. I found out that I passed my 2 local anesthesia boards on Thursday...Jake was a great patient and was a great sport to let me poke him 3 times!

Friday (my dental hygiene board) went well, hopefully well enough to pass, but I won't get the results for another 4 weeks!!! The wait is complete torture! I'm just glad that my patient showed up on time and qualified, and he didn't have a cold sore! What a relief to have that all over with.

We finally were able to go inside our new townhome on Saturday night. We are working on getting a paint color picked out and getting the show on the road with the few repairs we need to do and the cleaning!!!

Of course, yesterday was mother's day so we need to give a big shout out to our moms! We have the best moms in the world!!!! I don't know how we got so lucky, but I have a LOT to live up to from their great examples. We just want all 3 of you to know how much we love you and appreciate everything you have done for us and continue to do for us on a daily basis. You guys are the greatest!!! WE LOVE YOU!

GRADUATION!!!!

On Friday May 1st I graduated from Weber State University with my Bachelors of Science degree in Dental Hygiene!!! It was a great day!

To make the day even better, we found out that our whole class passed the national written dental hygiene exam! What a relief! I'm still waiting for my score to come in the mail, but all I wanted was to pass so this was some great news! Unfortunately, we still have 3 more boards to go this Thursday and Friday! I'm scared out of my mind, but I tried to push that out of my head and just enjoy graduation.

CLASS OF '09!

Myself with Prof. McConaughy, Prof. Alexander, and Prof. Bossenberger. I was so blessed to have such great faculty to learn from and look up to. These guys are awesome! Below is one of my other professors, Prof. Hansen. They dedicate so much time in our behalf!

Chelsea, Emily, Prof. Hansen and me.

I made so many great friends while in the program. This will probably be the only thing I miss about school. I just hope I can keep in touch with them. It was good to have someone to vent to about the frustrations about school (I'm sure Jake was also grateful I had some other people to vent to give him a break!)

Mindy, Me and Chelsea.

These two were my partners that I worked with on my BS thesis. We researched what health care professionals along the Wasatch Front were telling women of child-bearing age about the importance of getting to the dentist to help them have a healthy pregnancy.

Camille and I are also able to work together at Pediatric Dentistry.

I was so grateful for all the support from my loved ones! They helped make it a special day for me! I know they had to make some sacrifices to be there with me, and I want them to know that I really appreciate that!

My grandpa came all the way from Preston ID!

This is the only pict. I got with my step dad Woody...what a shame!

Jeff and Tammie even brought their cute family to cheer me on! Jeff will be graduating in 2 weeks from the University of Utah Law program. Congrats Jeff on all your hard work!

Jake, Me, my dad, and my step-mom Linda.



Me, my Dad, and my little sis Kylie.

Me and my cute mom!

Jake's parents were in St. George for some business meetings and weren't able to make it. I wanted to thank them for all their love and support as well!

Afterwards we went to the Pizza Factory for some yummy food and celebration!

Last of all I have to give a big shout out to Jake. He has been the biggest support to me of all through all of this. He is so amazing. He has put up with sooo much. School has caused me a lot of stress over the past 2 years and he's stuck with me and helped me get through it. I owe so much of where I am today to him. I love him with all of my heart and want him to know how grateful I am for everything he does for me. I'm so lucky to have him in my life. He has even volunteered to be my patient for my local anesthesia exam...what a great husband! (ok, so maybe he didn't volunteer to let me give him shots, but he did agree to do it!!!)

Jake and I at my graduation banquet at the Timbermine.

Thanks again to EVERYONE for supporting me in my goals! I'm so LUCKY to be surrounded by such AMAZING family and friends!

One of a Kind

I saw this website on my friend Shannon's blog and figured I would try it out (EVERYBODY needs a break from work and studying...right?!)
Here is the website to try it out for yourself: http://howmanyofme.com
I don't have time to mess with it and the darn HTML stuff is giving me grief so I'm not making a link so you can just type the address in...sorry!

Well, Here are the results:

Kristin

There are 151,624 people in the U.S. with the first name Kristin.
Statistically the 397th most popular first name.
More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Kristin are female.

Balls
There are 1,960 people in the U.S. with the last name Balls.
Statistically the 15605th most popular last name.


Kristin Balls

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Kristin Balls.

I always knew I was one of a kind....but here's some cold hard proof for ya!


Jacob
There are 252,707 people in the U.S. with the first name Jacob.
Statistically the 259th most popular first name.
More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Jacob are male.
Names similar to Jacob:
Jake
Jay


Jacob Balls
There are 2 people in the U.S. named Jacob Balls.

We make up quite the original couple!

Last exam!

I took my last ever college exam today!!!! It's so crazy!!! Now I'm just waiting for my 3 licensing boards to roll around May 7-8....and THOSE are the big ones!!! I'm still waiting to hear if I passed the national written dental hygiene board exam, so hopefully when it comes in the mail in the next week and a half I'll have good news to report about that! It's all winding down so quickly! Graduation is May 1st. However, it won't completely feel official until I know I passed all my boards 4-6 weeks after I take them! I HATE waiting for the results!!!

Conference Weekend!!!

Unfortunately on Saturday Jake and I had to work like usual. We did make it in time to make it to Logan so Jake could could go with his brothers and dad to the priesthood session. While they were enjoying that and their tradition at La Beus afterward, us girls headed to Cafe Sabor for some dinner! We also had treats afterward and Susan and Kathy helped my little sister, Kylie,and I to make some bracelets with their beads!

We had so much fun with the fam this weekend. Sunday was filled with Susan's yummy blueberry frenchtoast, lots of good conference talks and Jake's grandpa's birthday party.

These two are little buddies and I just love to watch them play together! Carter forgot his hat at home so Jake made sure he found one for him that used to be one of his favorites. I think this picture is stinkin' cute!

We also got to see our cute niece Aubrey. She is now a month old and I can't believe how big she is growing!!!

We are so grateful for our family. We are really lucky that we have so much support and love shown to us from everyone on our family. You guys are the best....we love you!

Thank heavens for weekends....If only they could be longer!!!

We've had a fun weekend!

Friday night we got together with our friends Nate and Karly. We treated ourselves to some Costa Vida and watched the movie "Bolt." Jake was a little disappointed about the movie when he found out Bolt didn't really have super powers, but now he wants a puppy even more! It was definitely a cute show.

Saturday night we got together with our friends Jeremy and Stacy to play Walleyball. If you've never heard of it, it's volleyball in a raquetball court, which mean you can play off all the walls. We had loads of fun.

The Walley"Balls"

VS.

Team 2

And the WINNER is......

NOT team 2!!!

We killed them in 3 games!!! Ok, maybe they were really close, but we still came out on top!

Afterwards we went to the Yogurt Stop in Bountiful for a yummy treat! We had never been there, but you choose your flavor of frozen yogurt and then add any toppings you want (my favorite was the fresh raspberries and strawberries)! The only downside is that they charge you by the ounce so you have to watch yourself that you don't get too out of control in loading it up!

We are soooo lucky to have such great friends! Thanks to the Foulgers and Larsens for helping us break up the long week of work and school.

This past week was pretty crazy busy. Jake has been slammed with homework. I took my national dental hygiene board exam on Tuesday. It wasn't very long...only 8 hours and 350 questions!!!! It was miserable and hard...I actually think I'm barely recovering from it! I won't find out for 6 weeks if I passed. I just pray I did because I never want to take a test that long ever again!

We also have some exciting news. We have signed on a townhome here in south ogden. Now we just have to make sure the financing all goes through! Hopefully we wont' have any problems with it. If all goes well, we will be closing on May 5th!!!! We are super excited!

To finish off, I have a little story to sum up our week:

Saturday night after getting home and crawling into bed late we kneeled to say our prayers. We made it through our couple prayer, but unfortunately we must have been way too exhausted to make it through our personal prayers. We both woke up about 45 minutes later still on our knees....the last thing either of us remembered was starting our prayer. The worst part about it was when we started moving to lay down, our legs and feet from our knees down hurt so bad from the lack of blood flow that we almost didn't make it back to sleep. It was bad enough we never want to do that again!!! We learned our lesson to never fall asleep when you are praying! Hopefully we will be forgiven. We obviously need to start getting to bed a little bit earlier!

Hopefully this next week will bring some productive days and some early bedtimes!

Catch up!

It's been a while since we've posted because we have been CRAZY busy! School has been running our lives. I have my written national dental hygiene board coming up this Tuesday. I've been studying every spare second I've had since this semester started (it seriously feels like it!) and I STILL don't feel prepared! Since they can ask anything from my freshman year of college I have just come ot accept the fact that there are going to be things I don't know. It's been pretty overwhelming to study for it, and I CANNOT wait until Tuesday night! Then I can move on and start focusing on studying for my local anesthesia written board, which is in May!

Luckily we did have a few days of spring break to enjoy up in Logan. We love going back to Cache Valley and being with our family up there.

My old roommate, Shelly, got married so it was fun to get together with Kelsey and her to catch up a little bit! Congrats Shelly and Jens!

We took our nephew Carter up to Logan with us to give his parents some time to adjust to having the new baby! He is so much fun....we just love him! I absolutely love this picture so I had to post it!

The other stressful thing that has been going on (besides school) is that we are on the search for a town home to purchase. We've found one that we really like here in South Ogden...so the journey begins! Hopefully with all that is going on I can keep my stress level to a minimum considering the circumstances! Thank heavens I have Jake to help me chill out!