Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Last Post

So this happened.....


It was pretty much the best thing ever. But such a change also means I have a new blog for the both of us.  It is www.franckumfamily.blogspot.com. It is a private blog so if you would like an invitation, please shoot me an email or leave a comment.

Signing off,
Kristen 

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Picture of the Month Club

I've always wanted to be a member of the cheese of the month club or the sausage of the month club, or maybe root beer of the month club. Well....this might be as close as I get. Since I don't seem to be doing too well with blogging, I thought I would at least leave a brief record of some of the highlights of the last six months.

JUNE: Seattle Rock N' Roll Half Marathon. Michelle and Anna came up from California and we had a great time. Dave, Michelle, and I ran the 13.1 mile course along Lake Washington, ending at Qwest Field.



JULY: Glacier National Park. I got to tag along with the Hill family on a leg of their cross-country trip. We camped at Two Medicine Lake and drove the Going to the Sun Road.


AUGUST: East Coast. Dave and I got to visit the Lincoln family in New Jersey, including a day in New York City.


SEPTEMBER: University of Washington. I started my second and hopefully final year of my Masters program. It can't be that hard to write a thesis, right?



OCTOBER: Happy Halloween! A costume for both squash lovers and math lovers alike: Pumpkin Pi.



Sunday, May 8, 2011

Dating Dave- as easy as ABC.

Well, I suppose that it is high time I blog about a certain young man in my life. Below is a list of random tidbits, fun facts, and amusing anecdotes all about me and my favorite guy.

Alaska Airlines sent Dave a voucher for a free plane ticket after he kindly attended to a fellow passenger who passed out in the aisle mid-flight. She was perfectly fine but the flight attendants were overcome with gratitude when Dave agreed to check her pulse. We are thinking of staging similar incidents on our future plane trips.

Briar Avenue is where we first met when we lived next door to each other while attending BYU six years ago. Go Cougars!


Cassette tapes are Dave's preferred method of leisure listening. Looking for an original Ace of Base cassette? Dave could check one out to you.

Dentistry is Dave's chosen profession. He works at two rural clinics, giving him lots of time to listen to audiobooks and stare at the back of logging trucks on his long commutes.

Espanol comes easy for Dave who served an LDS mission in Honduras. I am now teaching him the celestial language of German so he can impress the couple in his ward from Munich.

Fife, Washington is a tiny town almost exactly half way between our houses so on a few occasions we have met there at Fife's finest restaurant- The Warthog Barbecue Pit.

Game night at the Loft (aka my apartment) is where Dave and I reconnected. Unbeknownst to me, my roommate had met Dave the month before and invited him to come. Because of this, she likes to take credit for our relationship.

A Hootenanny is Dave's idea of a good party. He plays the piano, guitar, drums and even took violin lessons for a few months last year. I may even be inspired to break out my ukulele again.

Interest. Dave played this word in our Scrabble game tonight for a whopping 66 points. When we first started dating, he used to let me win. Now I know how good he really is.

Just kidding.

Kristen and Dave are engaged. Please see letter J.

Loveland, Colorado is lucky enough to be Dave's hometown as well as the home of the Valentine's Re-mailing Program.

Mount Rainier is just down the road from Dave's (well, a long way down the road) and has been a fun place to go for some adventures. Here we are snowshoeing a few months ago on Inspiration Point.


Ninety minutes is how long it takes me to drive from my home in Seattle to Dave's in Tumwater. He claims it only takes an hour but oddly, he is always a half an hour late getting here.

One hundred and fourteen dollar is the amount of money Dave's speeding ticket would have been earlier this week but the kind officer told him that he should use the money to take his girlfriend out to dinner instead. Score!

Papa Murphy's. This is Dave's favorite pizza. He has a regular Papa Murphy's but because they were starting to recognize him too often, he also has a backup Papa Murphy's. I teased him about that until I realized that I have a regular Jimmy John's and a backup Jimmy John's.

Quarrels are rare between but we do disagree on a few things including the appropriateness of ketchup on breakfast food and at what point one can begin wearing sandals. In case you are wondering, he is pro-ketchup and a warm weather only flip-flop wearer.

Red, raw hands is what Dave had after the Passover Dinner that I was in charge of last month because he spent almost two hours washing dishes when it was over. Oy vey!


Six months is how long we have been dating. A good reminder that I am long overdue for my teeth cleaning which is a little ironic, given how often I see a dentist.

Triathlons and half marathons are among Dave's hobbies. I'm excited that we get to run the Seattle Rock n' Roll half marathon together next month with my sister Michelle. I use the term "together" loosely as Dave is much faster than I am.

United States Postal Service gets more business thanks to Dave who believes in the lost art of letter writing and snail mail. This may be in part due to the fact that he doesn't have internet access at his apartment.

eVen before Dave and I met, our families had already made connections. His sister roomed with my cousin at Ricks and later played on the champion intramural basketball team with my brother and sister.

White Pass is a ski resort near Mount Rainier where I skied for the first time in over 10 years. Dave has been skiing much more recently which put us at very different skill levels. Luckily, we found a trail that split halfway down. He got to go on his black diamonds and I got to snowplow down "Easy Street." Win-win!


Xtreme Couponing has nothing on Dave. While we were at Office Depot yesterday, Dave found some pens he liked on clearance. When the cashier rang him up, his total was $.01. I think there was a glitch in the system somewhere but they gave it to him anyway. He is one lucky guy!

Yikes! Are you still reading this? Thanks for enduring to the end.

Zodiac signs are one of many things we have in common. Our December birthdays are only eight days apart. Well, eight days and three years.

Well, there you have it. Stay tuned for my next post where I will use the Croatian alphabet to describe life in graduate school.


Monday, February 14, 2011

Just saying...

Remember this blog post? I am happy to report that in the last few months, all of my socks have had mates. Happy Valentine's Day.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Kristen in Nicaragua

I was so lucky to have spent the last week in Nicaragua. We flew in and out of Managua but spend the majority of our time visiting rural cities. Our team was a group of nurses and we worked with this really great organization.


Seriously, how beautiful is this country? I loved seeing this view.


Part of the program is to train local health promoters to be able to provide some basic health care. Here I am at our vital signs station. I really enjoyed getting to know these people. They don't get paid for their work but they are totally committed to serving their community and trying to improve conditions.

Did I mention it was rainy season? We were outside a lot so I am glad I brought along an emergency poncho. I must have good taste because several of my colleagues had brought the same one.


So our work mostly focused on the children. We would measure and weight them to assess for malnutrition, check their blood for anemia, and send fecal samples to the lab to look for parasites. There was a treatment station for iron pills, deworming medication and a chance to see a physician. We saw over 400 children so we were busy. This little girl was so funny! We were at nap time at this point of the day and most of the kids were pretty cranky but this girl just slept through everything. We are checking her height in this picture and you can tell that she is still completely zonked. Next we took her over to check her blood. When we pricked her finger, she just opened her eyes and gave us an offended look and then went back to sleep. I was actually a little worried at this point that her blood sugar was really low or something but her mother assured us that this is how she always sleeps and sure enough, a little while later, she was awake...and crying.



Some of the places we went to were so rural that we couldn't drive to them. It was actually quite fun to load up a couple of horses with supplies and then hike to some little village on top of a mountain. And the views were amazing! Here is our group with a Nicaraguan medical student and health promoter during one of our hikes.

It was a great trip. I learned a lot about public health by being there. Which is good because I had to miss a week of classes to go. Unfortunately, none of what I learned will be on my biostatistics midterm tomorrow. Meh. As my dad says, don't let school get in the way of your education. :)

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

First Day of School


Okay, so this isn't exactly how I looked going to my first day of school but it is certainly how I felt. Like a little girl in pigtails and glasses, intoxicated by the smell of a new trapper-keeper. The first morning of classes has always been exciting for me. I remember those days growing up and how I would carefully layout my persona-defining outfit and new school supplies. Mom would take my picture in front of whichever bush was flowering at the time and off I would go.

This year, starting at an unknown campus, meant familiarizing myself with the bus routes and painstakingly studying the floor plan of the health science building which continues to baffle me. But despite sleeping through my alarm, I made my bus and found the classroom with two minutes to spare. I took a deep breath, opened the door...and the massive classroom was completely empty! This was seriously like a bad dream. Had they moved the classroom and I missed the memo? It took ten terrifying minutes with my email and course syllabus before I came to the comforting yet embarrassing realization that this class didn't start until Thursday. Well, it was a good dry run.

Go Huskies!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

We pause from our regular blogging...

...to bring you a special announcement. For the next few weeks, you can follow my temporary blog here about my time in India.