Dr. Leiter

Back in May Patrick graduated from Medical College of Wisconsin!  We are so proud of him and his accomplishments.  Honestly, I can't believe how fast medical school went by.  It was a crazy week of fun, graduation festivities, packing, and moving. We were so sad to say goodbye to our good friends who had become like family to us.

Natalie attended a K4 program in Milwaukee last year and loved her teacher Ms. Jones.  Natalie was so sad to say goodbye to her teacher. She was so excited though because her last day of school she got to go on a field trip and ride a school bus, she had been wanting to all year long.

Later that afternoon, was Patrick's hooding ceremony in preparation for graduation the next day.  

That night was senior dinner and both mine and Patrick's parents were able to attend with us to celebrate his graduation.  My sweet sister Jessica stayed home with the kids so we could all go.

Some of our friends after the dinner, we sure miss FFN (Family Fun Night).  We would get together and play games while the kids all ran around together, some great late nights of Hand and Foot (which I'm pretty sure Patrick and I are the ultimate champions of :) ).

The morning of graduation we went down to the medical school to take pictures before the festivities.

This is what happens to kids after they survive a long graduation ceremony.

After graduation we went out to a late dinner, which was delicious, but the kids were definitely tired as evidenced by the next picture of Natalie asleep, if you look closely you can tell she is curled up in Kelsie's car seat.

This is for you Jessica!

My sister has been bugging me to update my blog forever, so this is for her!  We are getting settled here is California and have been loving it, but still miss Wisconsin, especially on the 4th of July!

This is the girls reading this morning, I love moments like this, too bad they are not always this cute!


Fourth of July parade the girls and I went to, Patrick was on call, Becca was so funny, she kept asking me to take a smile.  It took me a minute to realize she meant a picture, and that when we take pictures we always say smile.

Dr. Leiter's first day of residency!

We went to St. George midJune to celebrate my mom's birthday, we planned a surprise party for her and actually pulled off a surprise.  We also got to go boating that weekend and had lots of fun with the whole family together.

Becca and Kelsie enjoyed naps of the boat and Natalie got fearless and loved tubing and swimming and cliff jumping, but I can't find the pictures of Natalie.

My brother Adam is an awesome wakeboarder!

I have a lot more updates to do, graduation, moving, our new house etc.  Patrick is working a lot now, so hopefully more updates!

Kelsie Sue Leiter

Here are some pictures of our new arrival. Kelsie Sue Leiter was born on March 30 at 2:12 pm. She weighed 8 lb 12 oz and was 21 1/2 inches long. The labor was fast and uneventful, which is how we like it. Kelsie is a very good, calm baby who is a much loved addition to our family.

California Here We Come!

That song has been sung a lot around our house the last couple of days. Last Friday we found out that we matched in Loma Linda, California for our Anesthesia residency. We are so excited to be moving to sunny California and for the opportunity to be closer to family. On a side note, we will be about an hour from the beach and Disneyland and love visitors!

Our life has been a little crazy this past week, with matching and finding out where we are going to live. We will also be adding a 3rd girl to our family in the next few weeks, or days, depending on what she wants to do--any name suggestions are definitely welcome!

Hopefully I will be better about keeping up the blog and you will see pictures of our new little girls soon.

Nauvoo

Here is a quick picture update of our trip to Nauvoo. Aside from our near death experience where we almost hit a deer on our way into town we had an amazing trip and the girls were amazing the whole time and really had fun. Natalie asked if we could come again and stay for 5 days next time.

Longest Post Ever--More to come!

These last few months have beens super busy as we have enjoyed the great weather and savored every monment before winter hits. These pictures are just from out camera from the last few months. In the next few days (hopefully) I will post Halloween and pictures from my mom's trip. This is the only picture I have of my mom's trip on my camera, we mostly used hers, I have the pictures that I will post later. The girls had so much fun with my mom and so did I it was a great trip.

Natalie and Rebecca in their matching dresses from Grandma Leiter, we never got a picture together, but you get the idea.

Random Sunday picture- I think this is from when Rebecca turned 6 months old. So cute. She weighed 12 lbs. 13 oz. and was 26 1/2 inches long. She gained weight, but is still a runt.

Enjoying her highchair, Natalie is always so nice to bring her lots of toys.

I caughted Natalie one day unrolling a roll of toilet paper so I asked why on earth she was doing that and told her to stop. She said, "Mom, I just want to know how long it is." So the next day for out FHE activity we unrolled a roll of toilet paper and played with it, I don't know who had more fun, Natalie or Patrick.

Patrick got off early one day and we were able to go on a fun family hike to see the fall leaves. Natalie loved finding walking sticks.

She finally made it to the top, she was so done about halfway to the observation tower, but she still had fun.

Rebecca's first ride in the hiking pack, she did great and even took a nap for about half of the hike. She kept leaning to one side though, but smiled and talked when she was awake.

Dad and his girls loving the outdoors.

Also at the beginning of October we got to go to Barthel's Fruit Farm twice, once with preschool and once with our family. With preschool we got to pick both pumpkins and apples, but when we took Patrick back just a few days later, the apples were all picked, we were bummed. We even stopped on the way home to buy apples so we could make apple pie.

Here are the pictures from the preschool adventure.

Natalie wanted a huge pumpkin and successfully found a giant one.

After pumpkin picking it was off to the apples. The girls had so much fun picking apples here they are putting them in the bag and admiring them.

Enjoying the shade from the apple trees, cute sisters.

I didn't end up with a picture of the preschool girls, but here is a picture of the next group of kids, they are all so cute.

Before we went out to the farm again, Patrick and I ran an 8 k together, it was a fun race and even though I trained I only beat Patrick by 3 minutes, it was a fun race to run, hopefully we will do it again next year. Picture taken by Natalie.

After getting the girls we headed off to the pumpkin patch again. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun exploring the pumpkins and finding the best one to bring home. The sun was too bright for Natalie, but a cute picture of the girls.

Rebecca loved being on Patrick's shoulders, and they looked so cute.

Another favorite activity in the fall is raking leaves and playing in them of course, it has been so warm that Natalie actually didn't freeze while playing in them.

Sisterly tourture, Becca was not so thrilled with the leave picture idea.

Becca has recently discovered dolls and will talk to them like they are real, it is so cute to watch her do it.

We had been shopping and I checked out then looked down and saw that Becca was asleep like this, sound asleep.