Happy List for a Monday

Hi there! I hope your weekend was as great as ours was. You can read about my weekend here if you wish.

I saw this fun linky party that was a happy list for Monday. I thought it would be the perfect way to start my week.

+ Waking up to the cool crisp autumn air
+ Mom, Megs and Lainey are coming to visit us tomorrow
+ Pretty trees that line our street
+ Leggings and boots
+ Finally figuring out some med school planning
+ Staying up late to watch The Voice
+ Still not having to turn on our heat
+ Halloween decorations
+ Getting to go visit home again next week
+ Deciding we need a car in Chicago
+ Surprise checks that come in the mail
+ Cider smelling candles
+ Left overs from dinner

I can't believe it's already October. Where has this year gone. I am super excited it's finally fall but also freaking out (just a bit) about the upcoming winter. I've heard it's brutal here and I'm making all the needed preparations...aka buying a huge thick puffy coat.

 First....I am in love with my city right now! Seriously so beautiful!

 Second....can't wait for these three to get out here! Girls trip!!!!

The White Coat

northwestern founders day ceremony was held on friday

aka spencers white coat

this was a special ceremony for all incoming m1's (first year med students).  it was when they received their white coats. after years of prep and applications and planning it was so nice to jus sit and watch. we were finally here. a day we have talked about for what seems like a life time. he may not be a dr. yet but this was the first big step forward. now, with his white coat he can go into the hospitals. help dr.s and treat patients. i loved looking at my cute man in his coat.

please excuse the heads in front of me....i was pretty far away and didn't want to stand up.

welcome to northwestern medical school. interesting fact...northwestern was the very first medical school to have clinical work included in the education. before northwestern med students just took science classes and called it go. they were dr.'s before even seeing the inside of a hospital. boy am i glad things have changed.

spencers mom flew out for the event. it was so wonderful having her with us. thanks to her spencer is here today. she and his dad put so much time, effort and money towards spencer and his education. thank you for getting my man to this place in life!

of course we had to run outside and get a picture in front of the water. we may not be in cali but chicago has great waterfront. thank you waterfront! boy does my man look cute in that coat!

the classic three. i have a feeling these three will be inseparable during the next four years. how grateful we both are for friends this early on. 

and the wives. boy do i need to grow a foot or two. how grateful i am for these girls. they are already my best friends here. girls nights are going to be in high demand with our boys studying late into the night.

in four short years a little md will be next to that name.

we finished taking pictures and headed over to a reception held in the med students honor. it was fun to see the sea of white coats, meet some of spencers friends and see what life as a med student will be like. we spent the rest of the weekend playing with mom!

so proud of my mr. med school

The newest Chicago Residents

The Barfuss family is officially in Chicago and loving it. Finally starting med school feels so great. Spencer officially started on Wednesday night with a welcome bbq. Orientation started on Thursday and continues till August 20th. It's been a whirlwind of events these past couple of weeks. We are finally settled in our new place. Met a few friends. And explored our new city. I still feel like there is so much to see and do (because lets be honest there is).

Real life hit on Friday when I had to go back to work and Spence was in class all day. He even had homework this weekend. The reality of being a wife to a med student hit me hard. To the point where I was in tears. Yes, I'll admit that. But I am trying to be strong these next couple of weeks. Give myself time to get use to the schedule and demand on my husband.

Some other things we are adjusting to....
1. Not having a car. It saves us money but is oh so hard to get used to. Hopefully in a month it will be no big deal.
2. New shopping experiences. AKA groceries. They dont' sell all our favorite brands here. Some of them yes but a biggie...bread. Not our favorite bread. So we bought 3 different brands to see what one we like the best.
3. Humidity. AKA my hair is a flat mess by the end of the day.

We're slowing still figuring everything out. I have found my favorite shopping streets, clothing stores, and restaurants. There is the cutest little street right by our house that I am dying to ride my bike down...but if only it will stop raining.

Here are a few pictures of my mr.'s first days of school.

First causal day. Check out that awesome bag...oh wait you can't see it. His new "medical professional" fossil bag. We are both in love with it. He looks so grownup wearing it. 

First professional day. I am so excited for him to start wearing stuff like this everyday. Doesn't he look great! So proud of my mr.  (sorry for the garbage in the hall, I'm still going through all our stuff).

we're saying goodbye

well this weekend has been a whirlwind of events
we are in the middle of our move....finally!
we spent the weekend packing up, saying goodbye, eating way to much (because thats what you do when you say goodbye), and just enjoying our last few moments in utah.

the beginning of the summer we decided to make a list of all things "utah" we wanted to do before we left. to be honest i think we did 1 of those things. but it's okay because instead we spent time with family and friends. and in the end thats the most important.

so now here we are. days away from being chicago residents. we load up the truck tonight and spence takes off tomorrow. his sweet dad and uncle are driving him out. they are letting me have a little bit more family time in jackson hole.

so now i'm off to pack up our track. here are a few of our recent goodbyes!

 saying goodbye to mzy after 7 years. it was a hard goodbye

 don't mind my hunch back ...no idea what i was doing
saying goodbye to my roommates. sure love these girls. we missed megs though!

 saying goodbye to meh (best friend) but it's only goodbye for like a few weeks.


goodbyes are hard but how grateful i am for facetime, email, and unlimited mobile to mobile minutes.

next time i'm blogging i'll be in beautiful jackson hole...and the time after that i'll be in chicago (my new home)

Med School Journey: The Barfuss Family

our med school journey started way back in 2010. even before we were mr. and mrs.

i knew spence wanted to go to med school.  by the time we were engaged he had 1 class left to take. i pushed him to take the mcat that summer so we would be entering fall of 2012. as much as i pushed spencer didn't feel he was ready to take the mcat. considering we were getting married that summer he also felt that applications would be too stressful. he was right.

i was worried about him having a "break year". which is basically one year between undergrad and post-grad. he assured me he would be alright. so it was decided. he would take the mcat spring of 2011 and apply that summer.

we didn't wait that long to start the process though. after lots of research we found we needed to track his hours. service/work/leadership/research etc...so we started a google doc and started tracking. it was long and stressful but we were able to sit down and really remember all that he had done. we also compared what spencers activities looked like to the requirements of the university of utah. we were told that if he reached what they were requiring we'd be more than good to go. so we compared that to spence and got to work.

he started extra volunteer hours that fall. also did a lot of dr. shadowing. another thing we took care of in the fall was his letters of recommendation. it's never to early to request those. byu where spence went to school has a great pre-med program that allows for people to turn letters into them. they keep them all until the application opens and then at that point they will import them to the amcas letter program. (easy peasy).

i'll go more into this later...

fast forward. spence took a great mcat prep course and really did awesome on the test. (again the prep-course was the bomb.com). we started working on his application may of 2011 and turned it in early july 2011. we applied to about 30 md schools, 6 texas schools and 3 do schools.

started in late july he got requests for secondaries. at that point we narrowed our list to 25 md schools and 3 texas schools. spence decided that do wasn't the route he wanted to take so we veto'd those secondaries. interviews started in the fall. spence got invited for 10 interviews. lucky some of the longer trips we could bundle to save money. he decided to go to 8 of the interviews. a little more than average but we felt like it was worth it. finally in december we got our first acceptance. northwestern university in chicago. we were beyond thrilled.

1 acceptance, 1 rejection and 6 waitlists later here we are. we decided that northwestern was above 4 of the schools that waitlisted him. so we nicely dropped ourselves from those lists. so that leads us to now....still accepted and planning on northwestern but still on 2 waitlists.

we are still holding out hope that one of these two schools will come through. mainly because of $$ and location. northwestern is an incredible school and we're excited for chicago so if we don't hear good news from these other two schools we're still really excited.

so 3 years ago this time we had just started planning for where we are now. honestly we're still waiting and planning. we've decided to go full force on our own (no military though we considered it) and no government aid. these were both very personal decisions. i will continue to work full time and we'll see where we go from here.

we've learned a lot along the way and i'm excited to share a bit of what we've learned. for now here are a few sights...

fyi sites:
university of utah med school requirements
amc prep for med school site (awesome!)
student doc (great of a good overview)

the b. family update

insta weekend for the barfuss family:

we are doing just great. trying to enjoy our last little while around family and friends. we spent the weekend together. which is our favorite thing to do. the mr. got me flowers, my favorite ones to be exact. isn't he the best. 

we spent a lot of time driving this weekend. first up to "the valley" for a little family birthday party. halfway through dinner, spence was kidnapped by his cute little cousin (who is 3). she decided he needed to learn some dance skills (thinks little l for helping my main man out). you can't really tell but i caught them in the middle of "first position". loved it. 

second we spent sunday driving back and forth to church and families houses to celebrate fathers day. how grateful i am to have both of our families so close. i'm sure going to miss that when we move.

our weekend was also spent talking about med school. it seems like that is our favorite topic (or the most pressing). right now our plan is still chicago. we're excited but still aren't 100% set on that. spence is currently sitting on a few waitlists that we're hoping for. 

this whole waiting process is hard. i big part of me wants to just cash it in and say chicago is where we're going for sure. i'm so ready to find a place to live and really start planning. but then a part of me wants to keep hoping we'll hear something from one of these other schools. it's a hard waiting game. anyone else dealing with the joy of waitlists?

we are apartment hunting. we've decided we need to do at least that. so for right now we're searching but still hoping. it's hard...northwestern is an incredible school. but lets be honest...it's dang expensive. do we pass up incredible for money? haha that's what we're still trying to figure out. 

so there you have it. the barfuss family is alive and well. enjoying the summer and also enjoying the stress of a new situation! i'm so excited for change but at the same time want time to stand still. how perfect life is right now!!!