a mouth full of metal

brace face- metal mouth- tinsel teeth- tin grin...  no matter how your say it, the emotional pain could never be worse than the physical pain!  i'm honestly not much of a complainer so let me just have my moment here.  this has been just awful.  my mouth no longer belongs to me.  i have become a prisoner to these torture tools and have been forced to survive off of sustenance that is equivalent to baby food....  i just keep telling myself that it will all be worth it in the end, right???
of course it will!  you know that song you sing in first grade at christmas with your toothless, spiting grin- yeah, that's the one... all i want for christmas is my two front teeth.  i for sure sang loud and proud, that is until those two front teeth came in and one was crooked as could be.  santa you can take those crooked teeth back because I DON'T WANT 'EM {or so i thought back then}.  and growing up with 8 kids in my family there wasn't extra money for things like braces...  i was grateful for food on the table and clothes on my back.  straight teeth would just have to be saved for my dreams.
wouldn't you know though, that with all those kids, one of them was bound to become a dentist!  dave the dentist, making the world a better place one smile at a time!  thanks to dave's hard work for 10ish years of school and now 8ish years of practice this lady will have the smile she's dreamed of for the last 17 years.  
until then i'll stick to my baby food and milk shakes.

 

spring break

Hey its Jon, i'm back again due to a rare spot of a relative lull in busyness.  Being as the last time I got to throw in a quick edition of jon's true 'forever is just the beginning' stories was Christmas, you can tell how often I have a chance to get on here and share my side of our story. 

Spring break - a magical time of the semester that is for fun and irresponsibility, unless of course you are in grad school!  I usually spend my time recovering from a lack of sleep and high stress levels, including preparing for the next length of studies.  Having gone to BYU-Idaho with shorter semesters to allow for three full school tracks to allow more students I never really got to experience the whole unforgettable, head to warm climates, hang out with friends, crazy stereotypical spring break during undergrad.  I must say though that Ashlee has made my spring breaks even better than one could imagine, and we didn't even have to leave the state of Michigan! 

My first week long spring break was at law school, and I was dating a great girl named Ashlee.  She was from Traverse City but had been all over the state of Michigan so she decided that on spring break she would give me a tour of the state (and show me all the places she lived and her past). 

We went to Grand Rapids (where she went to GVSU for undergrad) with her sister Lara, went to the public museum, rode on the merry-go-round, ate delicious food, saw where she worked at Ferris Coffee and Nuts, and hung out with her friend Katie! 

Later that week I took her to 'little italy' as I cooked her a couple pasta dishes and put up pictures of New York's 'little italy' on the wall - it was fun.  Someday I hope to take her to the real 'little italy'. 

Our last fun trip that first spring break was to Ann Arbor where Ashlee went to University of Michigan School of Social Work for her masters!  She showed me the law school - a building that was so old it reminded me of a castle - almost like something from Harry Potter.  Then she showed me the school of social work.  It was cool to she where she went for her masters degree.  Finally, we went to a little middle eastern restaurant to get some delicious lentil soup and talk. 

 

 

It was such a great spring break and great last day of spring break and also the first time we told each other that we love each other!  We have since had two more spring breaks!  This last spring break we went out to Grand Rapids to the museum again and to hang out with Katie.  This year however Ashlee has her wonderful dream job so she has little precious free time which we had to use to get dental work done and visit family up north so we didn't get to continue our spring break tradition.  So, I thought I would post a blog about the great memories of last spring break. 

 

Thanks Ashlee for making my spring breaks so special and unforgettable!  I really love you!