graduation season continues

Remember how I'm in the midst of graduation season? My littlest sister-in-law finished up her undergrad degree a few weeks ago, and Jake is completing his medical residency at the end of June. We attended his department's annual graduation dinner on Friday. Many people assume that this transition is nothing but exciting. In reality, it's extremely bittersweet and pretty surreal. Becoming a doctor is a long journey. We've been fortunate to have a great support network of family and friends in Milwaukee but many friends are moving on for fellowships and jobs and we're losing the built-in social structure that comes with residency. As such, I'm not really sure what this next stage of life is going to look like.

Anyway, with that being said, both sets of parents were able to attend the dinner, which was really nice. I do have some pictures of the event itself, but I'm sharing our family pictures here today.

Is it still graduation season for anyone else right now?

big happenings

Many of you already know that for the past few months Jake has been in the process of interviewing for his first post-medical residency job. We are extremely (there really isn't an appropriate word here) excited to announce that this month he signed a contract for a hospital in the area. This means that we can finally start planning for, you know, the rest of our lives. It will probably take a couple more years for that to sink in fully haha.

Past, present, and future: med school, residency, and job (although they're arranged in the opposite order here because I was trying to get the pens to balance in such a way that you could see the writing).

 He'll start this new position in July 2015. It means the world to me that so many people have already been so supportive of this upcoming transition.

Have there been any big happenings your way lately?

Milwaukee

Jake and I found out yesterday that he matched to MCW in Milwaukee for his intern year and residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation.  We'll be moving out there in June.  Milwaukee was his first choice for both intern and residency.  We're super excited to be moving to one of our favorite cities.  I could probably write a whole book about all of the things that I love about Milwaukee and/or am looking forward to in Milwaukee, but I chose a few to share with you (for now...I'm sure I will continue to share lots of other Milwaukee things in the future).

Milwaukee doesn't have an amazing skyline, but I love the look of almost any downtown.

The Milwaukee Art Museum.  The inside is pretty cool, too, but it's worth going to just for the outside.  It's right by the lake, too.  We're very excited about being close to Lake Michigan again.

The Wisconsin State Fair is held in Milwaukee.  We've been to the Iowa State Fair twice since we've been out here and will definitely be hitting the Wisconsin State Fair.

The Milwaukee County Zoo.  We love visiting zoos and have been to zoos in a handful of different cities.

And of course, art festivals!  Milwaukee is the home of about a million different summer festivals, included a lot of art festivals like the Milwaukee Art Museum Lakefront Festival of Arts.  Currently I'm not signed up for any art festivals because I didn't know where we would be living after this spring.  Now that I do now, I can start scouting for the summer/fall!