Friday

What an interesting Friday it was yesterday. We had a few patients this morning for lab draws, and the rest of the day was just going to be catching up on paperwork, phone calls, etc. Basically uneventful.

All those things happened, but we also had several visitors. Two from families of patients who have passed recently, and one from a patient who is currently in remission. The first was the son of a patient who passed away on Tuesday. He just wanted to stop in and say hello and tell us stories about his dad and reminisce about when they came here almost weekly for several months. The second was the wife and sister-in-law of another patient who passed away about a month ago. This patient had come to our clinic for treatment for almost 2 years and hearing of his passing was hard for all of us here at the office.

The last visitor was a happy visit from a patient who finished treatment early in the summer and has since been in remission. It is so fun to see these patients come back and to see that they are recovering well. I love to hear the changes that have occurred since their last office appointment and that they are healthy and full of life. It is so encouraging and gives me hope.

It is so humbling to me when families of our patients come back after they have passed. It does not happen often, and usually it is from those who came often or for long stretches of time. Selfishly, it gives me closure, especially in those cases when the patient or family was one that I considered a little more special than the rest. Hearing these family members tell stories and reminisce reminds me why I do what I do. It reminds me that this earth is just a temporary home. It reminds me that in spite of myself, God can use me in ways that I do not even recognize in the lives of my patients and their families. It also helps me remember that finding a balance in how close I get to these patients and their family is important, but to not let it hinder the way God wants to use me.

What a great reminder today of many things, but mostly that God has a purpose for my life and to cherish those I love every day.

Color Me Rad

Last weekend Julie came to Texas and invited me to run with her and her friend Kerri in the color me rad 5k. I have never done anything like that so was pretty excited to give it a try. Basically you run 3 miles and at various points, people throw colored corn starch or spray paintball paint at you.
Here we are pre-race with our nice clean shirts:

me, Julie, Kerri's sister, Kerri's mom, and Kerri

 And here we all are afterwards!

\

 Basically, we were filthy, but it was so much fun! Me and Julie ran together and we were so proud of ourselves for running almost all of it. We estimated that we only walked about 10%!

At the end of the race they passed out extra packets of the colored corn starch and had a big "color bomb" to celebrate the race maybe? It was pretty crazy.

 It was a fun way to start the weekend, that's for sure! Then, as the cherry on top, Rachel and Emily met us for lunch at PTerry's and I got to squeeze on these 2 nuggets.

After lunch, I had a great nap and then me and Michael had a game night at Eric and Amber's house. Good times :). I vote that every Saturday should be this fun!

Winter Garden

It's been awhile since I wrote a garden update, so here it is! Michael cleaned out the beds from the spring/summer stuff and planted a strawberry bush, several types of lettuce, and carrots. Here's how it looks now:

The vegetables that we planted in the spring did pretty well. We had lots of tomatoes and peppers, and a few very small cantelopes. The cantelope/watermelon bed got pretty out of control but we managed to get a couple of melons that tasted kinda like a bit of a hybrid between the 2. So maybe putting them right next to each other wasn't the best idea?
We are letting the tomato and pepper plants finish out since they are still producing a little bit, and then will let that bed rest until springtime. I have high hopes for that strawberry plant so I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will have lots of yummy strawberries in a few months!!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I just love Christmas, so as soon as thanksgiving was over, I decorated my house....

You can't decorate without a cute supervisor :)

 Now to finish all my shopping!

Julie!

 The weekend before Thanksgiving, we went to Dallas for a wedding and to see our nieces who we had not seen in way way too long. I mean, look how big these girls are getting!

Anyways, the highlight of the wedding was when we got to hang out with Julie and Josh! In case you were wondering, we had a blast together as evidenced by the following pictures:

 So, hurry up and move back to Texas, ok? We miss you guys.

Giving Thanks

Every year for Thanksgiving, we go to my Uncle Charles' house in Temple. He has a huge house with like 150 acres of land so everyone can get together for tons of food, skeet shooting, and game playing. There are usually around 30ish people between family, college roommates who have out of town family, and my Uncle's residents who also have family out of town. Almost everyone from the family was there this year, we were only missing Cooper, Griffin, Collin and Jenn (all living out of state right now)

Girl cousins plus Amanda :)

 After lunch on Thursday, we loaded up in the trailer and went to the pasture for some skeet shooting. When we got out there, the cows didn't want to move, so Gracen herded them which was hilarious.

My Memaw, pretty much the cutest thing ever. and yes, she did shoot a gun

 Vincent was one of the best out there, and he even shot left handed! Michael of course was good, but I hit a big fat zero.

Amanda Becker (my cousin Chelsea's roommate) has been coming for the past 2 years since her family lives in Virginia. She is really fun and fits right in, and introduced us all to a game called Werewolf. Its super silly but lots of fun as you can see by this amazing picture of all the werewolves who participated in this year's game:)

Michael and I stayed all day and went home after the UT game Thursday night, but most everyone spends the night in Temple. We went back Friday morning and all the Uncles/Dads cooked a huge omelette breakfast with biscuits, sausage, and bacon on the side. Makes me hungry just remembering how good it was. Also, Aunt Nina gave a little mini-math class showing us how the prove the Pythagorean Theorem because she is just that awesome :). 

 Friday also included a long walk, or in Vincent's case, a golf cart drive.

After leaving Temple, we drove to Dallas to spend the rest of the weekend with Michael's family. His parents were in town, and Katie and Ryan had Braeden that weekend, so it was a lot of fun. Michael, Braeden and I played Super Mario on the Wii most of Saturday and almost beat the whole game.

I am still sore from playing with Hannah and Abby, but I'm glad we went!

playing with Uncle Michael

We ended up leaving Oreo in Dallas because Katie and Ryan decided to adopt him! yay! Pretty much a win-win since Michael wanted to keep him, but I didn't, so this way, he is still in the family. :)

Man we sure have great families, not sure how we got to be so blessed, but I am beyond thankful!!

ASL 101

Finished the first semester! I can now carry on a very short, very slow ASL conversation; I know 6 chapters worth of vocabulary; I can finger-spell; and I know my numbers. Not bad for 10 weeks. The next class starts in January, so I gotta keep practicing!

A New Rug

I got this beauty in the mail last night, and I am so excited about it! I know, I know, its pretty dorky that I get giddy about silly things like new rugs. 

But let me just tell you why I like this rug so much: its smaller so it makes the kitchen seem bigger, its (obviously) way prettier, it goes really well with my color scheme, and it only cost $43 thanks to an awesome online sale!

As a comparison, here's the previous rug:

The new one is 1000% better right??!!

Craft Fair

A few weeks ago, I did a craft fair with my friend Christine. I sewed like a fiend for several weeks leading up to it because I decided it would be fun to procrastinate and kept telling myself "oh I have plenty of time" Yeah, probably not the best idea, but I got it done!

Even though it was quite a bit of work, I really enjoyed hanging out with Christine all the time and getting to know her better. Neither one of us sold a ton of stuff, which could have been for a lot of reasons (for example, the tx/ou game and austin city limit music festival was the same day). But since we had a great time and did sell some of the things we made, I considered it a success :).

Here's what our booth looked like!

The set up was actually really easy thanks to some great pre-planning :). We did a "mock set up" a few days before the show to decide what looked best and where things fit. All the table accessories were great goodwill finds.
We both sold kinda random things. She made bibs, burpies, onesies, changing mats, journals and bows. I made bibs, burpies, travel cases to hold diapers and wipes, toilet-paper holders (to decorate your bathroom), door silencers (good for nurseries and kids rooms), and travel towels to hold toiletries. Here's a few close-up pictures!

We both wold like to try this again together, so hopefully sometime soon we will be able to. We tried to get into a christmas fair in roundrock for this weekend, but the organizer people were kinda jerky. Or maybe I'll get real motivated sometime soon and open an etsy shop to help sell what I have leftover (but don't hold your breath) If nothing else, at least I have lots of great gifts to give people! :)

Organization Kick-Off

The time has come. I am going to officially organize my entire house. Just the thought of everything being cleaned out and in order makes a type A person like me ridiculously excited!! (yes, I know I'm a dork) Obviously organizing my entire house is going to take  a lot of time and some $$, so don't expect a weekly update on my progress. I am thinking of a goal of 1 year for this project, but could be shorter depending on how crazy I get?? Hopefully, as I organize and deep clean different areas of my house, I will be able to get ideas and the desire to do more decorating and painting and other fun aesthetic updates to our house. :) Right now, I am working on a game plan for my first victim, the kitchen and pantry. Boy do I have my work cut out for me there!

I of course am suuuper impatient when I get what I believe is a "great idea" so I decided that I really needed to organize something that day. This was when Emily was here, so we made a wal-mart run for a shoe organizer and some command hooks and I organized the cabinet under the kitchen sink. In my excitement, I totally forgot to take pictures of what it looked like before, but just take my word for the fact that it was gross. Basically, you couldn't see any pipes and I had to clean who knows what off the bottom of the cabinet when I took everything out-gross gross gross! Needless to say, it now looks sooo much better, plus I only spent $10 on supplies!!

Weekend Fun

I got my wisdom teeth taken out on Friday. I had all 4 still and they were all completely grown in.I didn't get them out sooner because 1. I didn't even have any in my head until college and 2. because I am lazy. Finally I got them out, and boy have I been sore. The second day was probably the worst pain-wise, but as of today I still can't open my jaw all the way or chew totally normal yet. Oh well, at least they are gone!

This weekend was still a very fun weekend despite the mouth pain! My friend Emily and her baby Garrett came from San Antonio to spend a long weekend with us since her husband was out of town. It was nice to have her here because I just love her, and she is pretty low key so I didn't feel bad taking a nap every day and sleeping late :).

We actually did all kinds of fun things this weekend. Friday night, we had taco soup from the crockpot and she brought her fun kitchen aid attachment to make homemade ice cream :). Rachel, Paul and little Lucy also came over for dinner. On Saturday, we both slept late, played with Garrett, and checked out a craft fair that was close by. It was pretty crowded and I was sore, so we didn't stay long. After naptime (for everyone), we did some project planning and broke out the sewing machines. Sunday was a repeat of the sewing, napping, and talking. Plus we found an amazing online rug sale and both ordered rugs for our houses :). I was able to finish my Christmas tree skirt (that I showed in the previous post) and she worked on a super cute embroidered pillow and place mats for a friend. We also tried making some Christmas ornaments. I took off from work monday afternoon and she helped me figure out how I am going to get started on my major re-organization of the house. I am pretty excited about getting my house organized! I'm gonna start in the pantry and kitchen and do a little minor decorating at the same time; should be a lot of fun.

Here's some pictures from the weekend!

Kirsten took care of my all day on Friday so she got to play with Garrett too!

Sweet Bernoulli 

Lucy Bug!

Garrett loving on Gaius

Emily cooked us dinners like this every night!!

our ornaments

I hope they come back soon!