Catching up

Enjoying time with Laura... I think this one captures "us" well. :-)

Ok. It's finally time to jump back on the blog. I've really been wanting to do this for days but have been waiting for things like a spare minute and for Ricky to get me some pictures in a format I can use for blogging. (He likes taking pictures in .raw format so he can edit them, but I need them in jpg format for blogging.) So without further ado (I always wanted to say that), here are the highlights...



Granny is too much fun!


Susan and I on Christmas day.

Christmas. We so much enjoyed our time with family and friends at Christmas. We had an amazing Christmas eve dinner at Ricky's parents' house, enjoyed more time with Ricky's extended family on Christmas day and had a great time hanging out with my parents and sister. We enjoyed spending time with Chris and Susan at their house (and at my parents' house), and savored every minute with Kyle, Laura, and Abby as well. We didn't get to see everyone we would've liked to see, but we made the most of our hectic trip.


Abby in her baptismal gown and then in her "Monkey" hat that Ricky picked out.


Enjoying quality time with the godbaby. She's just as amazing as Laura says!

Traveling. Air transit was definitely an experience we'll never forget (but wish we could) this holiday season. If you thought we couldn't be any unluckier traveling on the way home than we were on the way out (see previous blog post), you were kind of incorrect. We were scheduled to fly out of Little Rock at 5pm on New Year's day. By 5pm, our flight was delayed until 6pm and at 6pm our flight was "pulled" due to faulty aircraft. There was another flight out of Little Rock that night, but we had less than .0001% chance of making the connection in Dallas to Portland, so we elected to rebook for the next day (early morning) and try again. On the 2nd when we arrived at the airport at 5:35 am for our 6:55 am flight, we saw that our flight was "delayed" until 1:30 pm. What?! Yep. It's true. They unknowingly rebooked us on a flight that was scheduled on the same faulty aircraft from the night before. Sigh. We ended up getting out of Little Rock on a 9:45 am flight (Yep, you counted correctly, 4 looooong hours in the early morning at the super exciting LRNA) and arriving in Portland about 2pm. Needless to say, I got to reschedule my internship interview again and am now planning that for this Friday.

Weekend. On Saturday, Ricky had to work a wrestling tournament all day, and I spent most of the morning cleaning and catching up on laundry. About 1pm, I headed out to run a few errands and about 4pm returned to quite a surprise. Cooper was sitting in the hallway surrounded by shiny chocolate candy wrappers looking quite proud of himself. Upon further inspection, I realized he found the stash of left over stocking candy (in a ziplock bag) in one of our suitcases (that I had planned to finish unpacking after errand running). Not only were there chocolate wrappers in the hallway but they were also in the living room and in the office (where the suitcase was). Cooper had consumed A LOT of chocolate (which can be toxic for dogs b/c they can't break down the theobromine and it affects the central nervous system, as well as the heart of the dog, throwing their system into panic which often manifests in the form of epileptic seizures). Chip, if you are wondering, slept through all of Cooper's chocolate consumption on the couch! Three hours and a trip to the emergency vet later, Cooper had vomiting induced, charcoal consumed (to get as much chocolate out of his system and neutralize any other), and sub-cutaneous fluid injection and was home feeling fine. We monitored him for "hyperactivity and trembling," which he commonly does both when not on chocolate. And worst of all, we weren't supposed to feed him until morning (he was starved and loooooves to eat). Sigh. Sunday went much smoother, but I obviously didn't feel rested by Monday.

Week 1. Well, I am officially ending "hump day" (aka Wednesday...middle of the week) of the first week of the quarter. My days have been really long and my dissertation is starting to go, so I'm tired but excited. I enjoy the "newness" of a fresh quarter of school but hate that it takes a couple of weeks to get into a routine, which makes me exhausted. Anyway, that's it for now. I'll fill in details related to school/work updates later. Pray that my interview on Friday goes well. I'm excited--the weather is supposed to be mid 40's and sunny! ;-)