Denial

Hearts are breaking all over the country for this little guy. :(

http://www.cure4jack.org

Joe & Laura's Visit!

Wow, I am way past due with my blogging. Sorry about that, work has been ridiculously busy! And we were busy entertaining last week! Joe & Laura drove down from Kansas to visit for a few days. (Joe is Tom's best friend from home, who now lives in Kansas with his wife Laura). We had a blast and are so glad that they were able to come and spend some time with us! We hung out and relaxed a lot, but also did a lot of fun stuff. We went to the zoo, to a winery, and to an awesome kick-a** dualing piano bar, among other Birmingham area attractions. It was really great to spend time with them, although I don't think the chinchillas have been the same since they left! They miss you Joe! Below are a few pics.

Can I just say that I LOVE dualing piano bars? We went to one in New Orlean's when I was there a few years ago for a national physical therapy conference and it was like love at first sight!....or song :) They didn't have any in Philly :( But they did have just a regular piano bar (with only one piano) and we had a blast the one time we went to it. Anyways they are tons of fun, but everyone usually tends to get nice and rowdy at them, so if you're looking for a quiet evening then it might not be your cup of tea.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Hope everyone had a great St. Patty's Day! I know we did! We started out at a friend's place for green eggs & ham. And contrary to how the green eggs looked, they tasted quite yummy. Then a bunch of us hit up our place for an extended session of carbombs. (Irish Carbombs = a shot of half bailey's and half jameson dumped into a 3/4 pint of guiness and chug). They're quite yummy, but can knock you off your rocker if you're not careful ;) I think everyone had a good time at our place, except for the three people who got sick before 10 pm. Around midnightish we finally went out to a bar, but we were all so tired and hungry that we left and went downtown to this Mediterranean Food place called Al's that's open 24 hours and serves the greasiest yummiest food. We got stopped at a checkpoint too, but of course we had a DD so no worries there. And of course we had some green beer at our place. We found this package store that sold green beer by the gallon :) Here's a few pics!

The Gang

Tommy & Me

A bunch of us around the beer pong table. When we eventually buy a house we are going to have to build in a separate room for beer pong/flip cup!

The BMC. (Brian, Doug, & Tom are in a club we like to call "The Big Man Crew"

Sorry if some of the pics don't show up. I think blogger is having some issues!

Springtime???

By the way it's been like mid 70's down here for the past week and a half! Today it reached 80 degrees! I'm a little worried because if this is what it's like in March I don't even want to THINK about what it's going to be like in June & July!

Red Nose Ball II & Quad rugby

We had a blast last night at the Red Nose Ball! (See last post if you don't know what I'm talking about). They must have raised so much money for Camp Smile-A-Mile. They had 50 items for the live auction! And they had a puppy there that they were auctioning off! It was so cute! A labrador retriever (if it was a border collie, Tom and I would probably be in significant debt right now!) Having the puppy there was such a smart move on their part. They were carrying it around during the silent auction and brought it up on stage during the live auction. Guess how much it went for????? $9,000!!!!!!!!!! Nine thousand dollars! Can you believe it?! I'm sure they raised an easy $100,000 for the camp between the two auctions. It was really amazing. Here's a picture of me and Tommy with our red noses on before dinner :)

We also stopped by The Lakeshore Foundation yesterday to watch some quad rugby. It was really cool! Most of the people who were playing had a spinal cord injury, but there was this one guy who was a quadruple amputee and he was awesome! One of the other guys who works (and plays) at Lakeshore came to talk to us at our PT/OT retreat this spring. He also happens to be a quad amputee and he starred in the movie Murderball. I keep hearing about this movie...I'd recommend it to you but I haven't even seen it myself yet! They showed parts of it at the SCI conference in Atlanta last week. Tom and I really just need to rent it!

I've blogged a lot this week! Maybe I should take a break to let everyone get caught up :)

Red Nose Ball

So Tom and I get to go to a "Ball" tonight! It's awesome because (well, it's awesome for a number of reasons) but mainly because it benefits Camp-Smile-A-Mile which is the children's oncology camp here in Alabama. One of the local children's oncology non-profit organizations bought 2 corporate tables and gave the tickets to some people at Children's to pass out. Since I work primarily with the onco pt's the child life specialist asked me if Tom and I would like to go. Also, we get to go for free, and tickets are $200 EACH!!! We're so excited! Basically it's going to be like the Children's Hospital Gala that we got to go to back in November. There will be a silent auction (I'm going to try my hardest not to bid on anything, but they have some really good stuff and sometimes you can get things for really cheap!) and there will be dinner and a band and a live auction after dinner (DEFINITELY won't be bidding on anything during the live auction!) Anyways I feel like the poor girl that gets to go to the ball because I have one nice black dress (that I bought at a discount store for like $10 or $20) from like 5 years ago that I have to wear to every event! Haha. OK I have to go paint my nails and get ready for the ball...... :)

Kickball!!

That's right, Tom and I are playing on a kickball team! We're playing through UAB Intramurals. We're not sure if I'm really "allowed" to play because I don't really have any affiliation with UAB except through Tom, but I am able to use their gym b/c I live with Tom (a UAB student) so I get a campus card, and that is all I need to play intramurals apparently. Anyways, we were supposed to have our first pre-season game last night, but the other team forfeited so we just scrimmaged ourselves. It was really fun! Although I have this huge welt on my shin just above my ankle from kicking the ball! I even have a bruise already! Hopefully it will heal by next week! Birmingham also has a kickball team that gets together the first Sunday of every month...I think there is a 2 beer limit....but I could just be making that up :) Anyways it's supposed to be 72 degrees here today! Not that I would know since I'm cooped up in the hospital all day ;P But I'm hoping to go for a run outside after work today....I'm very much looking forward to daylight savings time so it will be light out longer and easier to run outside after work. Although I must say I will miss that hour of sleep that I will be losing this weekend!


P.S. Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad from March 4th!!

Coffee table

I love Ikea so much! We got our new coffee table! Yay! (Pic below). I was very good and fought temptation and didn't buy a lot of stuff that looks-really-cool-but-I-don't-really-need. Anyways the coffee table is cool b/c it spreads apart and has an insert that you can put in the middle to make it longer....which works perfect for entertaining or when we have tons of food on it for football games :) On the downside we now really want to buy the matching tv stand because my current one is a $25 one from wal-mart from about 6 years ago.

I had a really good time at my SCI course in Atlanta. The Sheperd Center in Atlanta is who sponsored the course. They are a regional catastrophic care center and see a ton of patients with spinal and/or brain injuries. Anyways I learned a lot, from how to pop a wheelie to go up a curb (VERY difficult, might I add), to all of the newest research at the cellular level in regards to spinal cord injury. Tom came out Friday night and we went out to dinner at Maggiano's with some of my co-workers and then we went to Rock Bottom Brewery for a few drinks. It was SO GREAT...we felt like we were in Philly again with Maggiano's and Rock Bottom! Luxuries like that don't exist in Birmingham ;)

Today I made another instant favorite for dinner. Pizza meatloaf. I got the recipe out of a recipe book that our church put together a few years ago. Do you sense a theme in all of my cooking (stromboli, manicotti, pizza meatloaf......)? I made some parsley potatoes too but they weren't that good.

My brother and his dog might be coming to visit this week! I hope Haliegh and the chinchillas get along!! She'll definitely want to play with them! Also my new goal is to update more than once/week....we'll see how that goes!