I love this Girl!

I have been needing to make a blog post for quit some time now and let everybody know how things are going. Here it is.

Med school is going good. I finished my first quarter a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. I am really enjoying everything that we are learning. But!!! That's not what you want to hear about, is it?

After I moved down here I was talking with one of my friends, Allison Richardson. We have known each other for close to 5 years from Rexburg and my friend Brett knows her too. They are related or something. So, while I was talking to her she told me that she was moving down here to Arizona and I was pretty excited to say the least. She called me up as soon as she got out here and we set up a night to go on a date (we were both a little nervous to call it a date just yet). I was pretty nervous and couldn't decide what to do and ended up planning about four dates and couldn't decide. She came over to my house and I finally had to pick one. We went to dinner and played banana grams on the table at the restaraunt, ice skating (in Arizona, you may think it is unlikely, but it's true), and played some more board games with my roomate and his date. I had so much fun! I couldn't get over how much fun I had with Allison and how good I felt with her. Even in Idaho when we were there together I can remember once (right before she was leaving for BYU-Hawaii) that I could marry a girl like Allison Richardson, I was right out side the Manwaring Center.

It took a couple more weeks to finally get put together and I love being around this girl. I have had no reservations and things felt right, So I proposed to her!

I took her to a favorite park of ours and had a picnic all planned. We had talked a little bit about getting married and I don't know how serious she thought I was, and I didn't really, really know what she thought about it yet. I had a special ring picked out and she had no idea I had it. I have never seen anyone so surprised and excited, which melted my heart! (I felt the exact same way even though I knew it was going to happening)

This is down by another one of "our" spots at the Tempe Town Lake park

This is where I proposed to her. We were both so happy and giggly. The ducks that were there were so ecxited they were laughing too.

Aaaahhhhhh, there she is!

Over thanksgiving break in new mexico when we went to visit Steve and Izzy in her family

I havn't written a blog entry for quiet a while, sorry. So to start with, I think you should know that I am eating a chocolate chip cookie.

A lot has happened for me in the past couple of months. After getting accepted to Podiatry School I started training for the Dam Marathon. I feel like doing things like a marathon help with setting goals and working to acheive longer range goals. The marathon was on June 12th and when I was finished, it was one of the greatest feelings of accomplishment that I have ever felt. It was a unique feeling where you can't feel your legs that well, unless you stop moving, then all you can feel is pain, pain and success. It really was awesome tho, and all I could think about after running for a few weeks was how could I get faster and when will I be able to run another.

I had a job at the hospital in Rexburg stocking supply rooms and recieving inventory, but it wasn't long before the recesion hit there and they had to lay off some of the newer personell there (me). The 5 months I worked there were pretty cool for me tho, since I am preparing to work in the medical feild I was really interested in all of the different supplies we stocked and it was a good job for a while.

I played a few shows in rexburg in the beginning of the summer that were really fun. It's always a great time getting together with some guys and playing music together. Music is a great way to make good friends and I have met lots of poeple by playing guitar. So it is a good excuse for me to spend money on it, I am investing in friendship....not selfishly dropping ### amount on a new amp. (maybe a little bit of both)

I moved back to my parent's house for a while and got my job back at the ranch landscaping. I work up there in Victor for four days a week and live in Shelley the rest. I grew a beard for a while too. I liked the beard, it wasn't too itchy either. But it's gone now.

The landscaping job went on until the boys came up to the ranch and that is when I take two weeks off of work to mentor for the boys. This year I really feel like I learned from the spirit while I was there. I could also see more than ever the growth in the boys, in their transition from boyhood to manhood. We always have a lot of fun, but I could see some maturity and spiritual strength in them this year. I probably saw it this year because of experience, but I am sure the boys always grow that much anyways. One thing at the boys ranch that was really funny this year was the 100 club. I started it one day when the theme for the day was dedication. So I talked them into doing 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups everyday for the rest of the ranch. It was so funny to see them having to do all 100 right before they went to bed (which also backfired on me and made them stay up an extra 17 hours!!!). Then they learned to not procrastinate so much and at random times you would see one boy start to do some push-ups in the middle of the day, and then four others would follow suit. You would walk into a room and five boys would be doing sit-ups or push-ups. haha!

After the boys ranch I got all packed up and I headed down to Arizona, which brings me to this cookie at my Aunt Julie's house in Mesa. I start school next week and I am really excited to finally find out what the next 4 years of my life will be like. I kind of know, but mostly don't and the anticipation has been th worst part. Kind of like waiting before your mission after you have your mission call.

Stay tuned for the next bit in my life....it may be a while for something interesting besides studying to happen.

Here is Brett and I at the end of the marathon, great game.

Monikar time; steady, strong.

This deer just walked up to us when we got up to do a morning hike at the upper pallisades lake. It was funny, he came really close.

"The beast rises up on top of Matt's car.....and pees off the side!" Nathan said. He just got done peeing off my car.

Up waterfall canyon, see if you can find Daniel and an upside down pine tree.

A flower that looks like the fourth of July.

Upper pallisades lake

The boys on the hike. We found t-shirts at a gas station for a dollar with dopey pictures of cats and dogs on them that said stuff like, "I love my Tabby." It was pretty awesome.

Brent and I did quiet a bit of climbing this summer too.

Here is my family up on Table Mountain right before I left to go to Arizona. The guy you might not recognixe in the orange is my sister's boyfriend, Klint. He is a great guy.

Hello again,

I don't have any pictures to post for this post.....well, maybe I will throw some in on the end.

I have graduated from BYU-Idaho in the past few weeks, this time it was real. Last time it was a fake graduation and I walked and did all that but the next semester I still had to finish my degree....it worked though.

I set a goal to run a marathon and I am training to run the Dam marathon in June. Training for it is simply a measure of my tenacity right now. The running makes me so tired and it takes time, which I have a lot of lately anyways. It is a rewarding feeling after those long runs, it's a feeling of accomplishment.

I am preparing to go to medical school and working. I used to have a job at the hospital but had to look for other options because of budget cuts and I was the lowest ranking in seniority, so......story as old as time. Boy meets job and things are going well, job get's anxious about money and what it's friends will say, doesn't break it off completely but offers boy part/side work time, boy leaves. Good news though, I am headed back up to the ranch in Victor to work for the summer. It is a great job if I can get an allergy med that will stop my face from rebelling against the trees.

I went to California to meet up for the first anual/semi-anual/bianual/trianual (?) friendly reunion. We are not sure how often it would conveign so I added all those titles. My college roomates Tyson, Tyler, and Brett and their families all came. I remembered that, "oh yeah, we are huge geeks." and then I marveled that those geeks got married. There is hope for me yet. We went to the beaches, San Diego Zoo, Balboa park, the bay and had a lot of good foods, conversations and laughs.

Other than that my life has been semi-uneventful and things are going well. Graduation feels funny. I am growing a beard while I am still living in Rexburg for the next couple of days (maybe weeks, but we'll see). Most of the time people don't say much but every once in a while you can tell someone I am talking to is thinking, "oh, he should shave....THE HONOR CODE!" Let's put it this way, I am still living curfew (because what is worth doing anytime after midnight??? after 9:00 even! but i still stay out later than that).

I am getting really excited for AZ......AZ!!!

Podiatrist!

So a few weeks ago, I found out that I got accepted to go to Midwestern University in Glendale Arizona. I was really releived to find out. It was a uniquely fortunate experience I think. First of all, I got a letter from Midwestern in late November to invite me to an interveiw.

I got online and signed up really fast to find out when the interview dates were. I was interviewing at two different school, DMU (Iowa) and OCPM (Ohio) the 7th and 9th of december....respectively. My options for interview dates were the 10th or the 17th. AZ was my first option so I decided finally to reschedule my interview in Ohio and interview in AZ the 10th, or so I thought. I don't know if it was my clumsy fingers or the over excitement to get invited there (because the night i got invited to interview I was really excited) to interview that made me not think straight, but I mistakenly clicked the 17th....not the 10th. Regardless of what I did, I thought I scheduled the 10th and I even bought plane tickets the same night to Arizona for the 10th. I went along in life not thinking too much about it, went down to the interview with a friend who was interviewing on the same day and we walked into the admissions building and talked to the lady there and told her our names. Nate, my friend, had a name tag sitting there for him and there were a few others but none of them said Matt Cline, Shelley ID...I was patient and thinking, oh this was their mistake, it will be fixed in like 2 minutes when she realizes what has happened. But I told her my name and information and she got onto the computer and told me, "your interview is for the 17th, you are not supposed to be here until next week..." I was mortified, stupified, horrified by the thought that I showed up to one of, possibly the most influential inerviews of my life on the wrong day! She said that she would just add me to the schedule and not to worry about it. Well, to make a short story long, I worried about it. I went into the next room and drank about five of their free grape juices from their admissions fridge and who knows how many individually wrapped candies.

I sat there thinking to myself how best to play this hand of cards that I messed up with a poorly placed episode of absent mindedness. It was all I could think about and I decided to not act like I had done anything wrong. Treat it like it was not anyone's fault, not mine, not the school's, and for sure I was not going to bring it up to anyone. That would be the kiss of death. I didn't know if the admission's council knew that I had done it, but I am pretty sure that they had to of known. They were probably reading all of the other student's applications and the secretary comes in and throws down my application on the table and says something like, "here's another one from an idiot that doesn't know how to comb his hair or read a calander." In my imagination she was kind of critical. They had to know I came the wrong day, but like I said, I was NOT going to bring it up.

So the interview came and went. I felt good about it and the school. As the day came up that they met together to make the decisions about the students that interviewed the week before I sent emails to all of the professors that interviewed me and told them thank you and probably a few other things to make myself look gracious and worthy of a seat in their program. I mentioned how I read the entire packet given to me and listed as many things that I liked about the facilities, faculty, student body, and atmosphere that I expereinced at their school. Then the next day I was informed that I was put on their waiting list. Those are some of the most crushing words I have ever read in my life. I was also wait listed at the school in Iowa. I obviously worried about my application, was it my grades? was it my interview? was it because I was an idiot and came the wrong day? But I made a plan to immediatley begin to find more people to send letters of recommendation out to them and shadow more podiatrists to show this school that I was still serious about becoming a podiatrist. So I did, I set up a time to meet with a podiatrist in Rexburg, I emailed a podiatrist I know in Boise, I talked to two professors at school to have them write letters for me, and I prayed a lot.

Almost an entire month to the day had passed and I was getting ready to leave for my rescheduled interview in Ohio (not really the school I wanted to go to, but still a great program). It was a Monday and I was packing to leave for Ohio that night and fly out the next morning. While I was packing I tried to distract myself for a bit by checking my email and inbetween some homework assignment emails from my teachers was an email from a Dr. Thoms in AZ and I was not expecting what I read. I had to read it twice or three times to realize that this is how the best news I have heard in reaching any goal in my life so far would come, silently in an email with the subject heading of

Acceptance to Arizona Podiatric Medicine Program

and said;

Matthew,

Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the Arizona Podiatric Medicine Program for the Class of 2014. We had another committee meeting today, and the committee re-evaluated your application and is now offering an acceptance. I hope you will consider attending AZPod.

You will be receiving an official letter in the mail within the next week. Within the next few days, you can access information concerning the matriculation agreement and deposit information from our internet site. If you go to www.midwestern.eduthere is a link ‘mwunet’, which will then take you to your logon page.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email or phone me. Again, Congratulations!

Look forward to hearing from you,

Dr Thoms

SO I could hardly process what had happened at that point but finally was able to think about what was going on and I accepted online immediately, sent a thank you email that simply read, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, this is terrific news! and then I cancelled my flight to Ohio. I had got into the school I wanted so why spend the time and money to go to Ohio. Although I almost just used the tickets anyway to go to Cleveland and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Hi folks, I have finally got my podiatry school applications all in. Well mostly, except the letters of recommendation. I have them, they are just not sent. I am kinda nervous...and I am broke. If I get an interview I will spend all of my money to get there and starve while there but be dressed in a suit and a good hair cut.

Sky Mountain Ranch

The first two weeks of August I spent my time up in Victor Idaho as a mentor for the Boy's Ranch that is up there. It is always so good to be there. I feel like it is a spiritual catalyst and it really hehelps me to put my life and other things into perspective.

The boys up there this time were great and I heard so many many funny things from them. I wish I could hang out with those kids more but the two weeks is over and I think their parents would ththink badly of an adult asking if he could come pick up their kids to hang out...and they'd be justified.

Up at the ranch we do many things to help in the process of growing and learning. A lot of that is in the work that the boys do up there. We cook all of the meals ourselves, which is a big job to feed 40 people. Each bunk house takes turns doing the meals and then another bunk house will take their turn cleaning up after the meals. It is great to learn how to cook some too. Then there are animals up there for us to take care of. The Goats need milked, "but what for" you may ask and I have the same question. I guess just to milk them, we throw it to the pigs usually and they love it. Then there are also lots of other jobs on a ranch that need done. My favorite one to do was move the irrigation pipe. I moved pipe for four summers growing up and I love telling those boys war stories of when I used to move pipe. The pipe I moved were bigger, the lines were longer, the flies not only bit us but they kicked us too, the days were hotter, the bike ride to the feild was miles and miles....that sort of thing. I don't think they believe half of what I say, but I don't blame them.

There is a place in the valley that sells huckelberry milk shakes and a big part of being a mentor is constantly being nagged about going down to get a shake and equally denying their requests. The shop is called the emporium, but we call it the Implorium, cause they are forever asking to go down and waste their money. We give in every once in a while and it is fun, but dang those milk shakes are expensive. I don't even like the huckelberry shakes. I always get the banana milk shake and then I go to the front of the store and grab a reese's peanut butter cup and take it back to the milk shake counter and tell them, "smash this bad boy up there, would ya?" And they do, and I love it.

My favorite part of the two weeks is the backpack trip. This time I got to go to the palisades lakes. They are really pretty at sunset and sunrise.

Then at the end of camp all of the bunk house groups built an animal. The animals turned out looking really awesome actually. I was really stoked at how awesome they looked. But they were thrown together super fast, like one night and I am not sure that the moose my group built stood through it's entire first night. Oh well, I got some good pictures while it lasted.

One of the most important things we do up there is the spiritual connections we help the boys make. We look for lessons in nature where we can learn from it's example and the boys teach each other. The boys always have such good insights and thoughts to teach, it is great.

To Portland for Chris's Baptism

My little sister Lisa at the scenic overlook on the way to Portland.

Lisa knows how to party, just give her some strawberries.

A new friend we made at the scenic overlook, he was not very good at posing and this is probably the third time we made him sit right there and I finally got the picture that stole his SOUL!

All the family that came for Chris's Baptism.  All my family and then Mike's parents Rolf and Pam.

Mine Mom and mine sister.

Father and Son.

We went bowling for Chris's Birthday, you can't really see his smaller shoes but he is in there along with Sarah, Lisa, and Dad.

Soccer ball cake, my favorite!

My Sister has a guy that is in her ward that served in the same mission as my dad and he had a yearbook thing that my Dad's picture was in.  He liked it.  It was pretty cool.  It was lucky for my Dad to even have made it because the night before we left he got ultra sick from some food poisoning and was in a real bad way.  We are all so lucky he got to make it and that he didn't puke in the car either.

My Mom and Dad's first grandson to be baptized, they real happy.

All in all it was a really fun trip, I slept most of the way back from Portland, pretty much all of the drive through Oregon and a bunch of Idaho.  We also stopped at Hagerman where my Dad grew up and saw some of his family, I didn't get photos there though.  Then we went to an old fish hatchery.  I will get a video of that on here soon.