Hey Ab!

Those were some seriously great pictures you posted of Emma yesterday!  Such a gorgeous little girl!  I can't believe how much bigger she looks already, it's unreal how fast she's growing!  I hope we get to see you guys again soon!

I'm hopeful this morning that my binge is over and my goal is to lose 1 - 2 lbs per week for the next 12 weeks, which will put me at Cabo/Ellen's wedding.  That's 12 - 24 lbs, which would be just wonderful.  I really need to commit myself and just do it because I'm really getting frustrated by the way I look and feel.  I want to be comfortable in my own skin again because that was pretty nice.  This weekend was tough, but we shouldn't have many more crazy weekends like this one for a while.  We drove 3 hours to St. Croix Falls on Saturday morning just to help Kayla unload a half full trailer, which only took like 20 minutes for Seth, Zach and I to do, and then drove the 3 hours back the same day.  Such a huge waste of a day.  Kayla didn't even bring all of her stuff with her and she was SO whiny!  She was even getting upset when we'd ask her where something goes, i.e. "Kayla, I have a box of books here, where would you like them?" "Ugh!  I don't know where things are supposed to go yet!"  Wtf?!  It's her damn apartment!  So we ended up just stacking things in random places and she can sort it out later.  Just be decisive and pick a spot when you've got the help.  Bob and Marilyn stayed the night there and we drove their van back to Marshfield to return the trailer to Uhaul and they came by our place on Sunday night to switch cars back (they had the Malibu).  Apparently, Bob bleached out Kayla's shower and Marilyn cleaned her gross oven and then the two of them cleaned out her storage area too... she's never going to grow up if mommy and daddy keep catering to her like this, doing all the "gross" jobs and stuff.  It's honestly getting to be kind of ridiculous.  And I feel absolutely terrible for Trista right now, which really requires a new paragraph...

So after your second year of medical school, you stake the STEP1 exam, which is a HUGE 8 hour exam based on everything you've learned in your first two years of med school... and some things they were supposed to teach you, but never got around to.  Literally everything is fair game and most of the questions are like brief clinical histories followed by a what does this person have? how would you treat it? kind of question... so very tough.  And very, very important because STEP1 scores essentially determine what kind of residency position you can get when you're done with your 3rd and 4th year med school rotations.  So Trista took that at the end of June after studying her ass off for it for months.  She got her scores last week and she did really, really great on it-- like several points higher than what's considered the minimum score for at least getting you an interview for any residency you want.  Zach was super proud of her and he told Seth and I and we were really excited for her, of course, but then when she went to tell Marilyn, she totally blew her off.  Like bad.  Trista said, "I got my test scores back" and Marilyn even asked first, "what test?"  Which is crazy because this has honestly been the entire focus of Trista's life for months now.  And then Trista told her the score she got and Marilyn just looked at her and then said, and I quote, "Kayla, you've got something on your eyelash, come here."  WTF?!  How can you not be excited for your own daughter?!  Trista was so upset, and I can totally understand why.  I felt terrible for her.  It's ridiculous that that same night I was talking to our mom on the phone and I mentioned Trista doing well and mom said, "Of course she did!  She's brilliant!  Tell her congratulations, that's great!"  How is our mom more excited for my sister-in-law than her own mother is?!  We are honestly really lucky that mom and dad have always been so supportive of us.  They're always excited about everything we do whether it's you having a baby or Tom quitting smoking-- they celebrate our achievements, no matter how big or small.  That's the kind of parent I want to be too, because watching the affect this has on Trista is really very sad.  She's doing so much and working so hard and to not have her parents be impressed just sucks.

Anyway, sorry for the debbie downer moment there!  Back to losing weight... I mean working...

Hope you had a nice weekend!  Love you!

Rachel