Lucky Lady

Believe it or not, it has been 100 days since Sam and I got married! Time continues to fly: we've moved to a new city, started school, started a new job, bought a puppy... I can't imagine what we will have seen and done in a year!

These 100 days have shown me that I am truly blessed. Sam is my best friend and he understands me far more than I often give him credit for. In our premarital counseling, Mike said something that has turned out to be so true... one of the best things Sam can do for me is protect me from myself. Sam has really shown that to me. Over the past five years he has learned my tendencies and knows how best to protect me from the unhealthy decisions I often make. I have truly found a partner to walk through life and that is something to cherish!

Not only am I blessed to have an awesome husband that loves me and takes care of me, but I'm a lucky lady because my husband is pretty darn cool! I'll take this opportunity to brag!

Firstly, if Physical Therapy were to ever not work out, Sam is an excellent brick layer! Haha! Let me explain: Our house is fairly old and I guess one of it's semi-adorable idiosyncrasies is that it has "flower beds" all around the perimeter of the house. The problem with this cute idea is that our house is surrounded my some of the tallest pine trees in the world and our house gets about an hour of direct sunlight on two sides. The second problem is that we have really long overhangings, so not only were the beds receiving zero light, but they also received no water. At some point, someone planted several azaleas, which were understandably sad and pathetic; picture those small, twisted trees from the desert. So one weekend Sam and I decided to transplant them and see if we could save them. The result left a bed of weeds and bugs, neither of which did I want to keep. So Sam decided to match what was already an odd theme around the house and fill it in with bricks. I doubted this project, but I've learned to leave him to it, because he won't stop until he is satisfied. He scouted the whole yard and uncovered a few dozen bricks. He copied the patterns in the other beds, and in the end we have a neat bed of bricks! : ) But truly, it's much better than before, and Sam discovered a new talent!

Another possibility for Sam if PT ever falls through would be the pizza business. Honestly, he is AMAZING! Everyone who tastes his pizza says that it's fantastic. When we were back home, my mom would always ask if Sam was coming over because she wanted homemade pizza for dinner. It is delicious! And the best part: he makes half for me exactly how I like it!

Now you may be thinking that Sam's Physical Therapy dreams are dim as I find all these other opportunities for him. Thankfully, that is far from the truth! Sam will not need his brick laying skills nor his pizza making abilities any time soon. Despite the difficulties he experienced getting into PT school, Sam is doing AWESOME in the MCG PT program! He's completed one course, Human Anatomy, with an A!!! And he even made the highest grade in the class on a Research test! Pretty sweet!

So in culmination, I am one lucky lady! 100 days have been a dream come true, and I'm looking forward to hundreds and hundreds more!

Wild 4th of July Weekend

What a weekend! I know I'm a little slow in getting the details up of our wacky July 4th, but I've been so busy (you'll understand why shortly).

Luckily Sam's program gave all the PT's an extra long holiday: he had a test on Wednesday but he didn't have to be back on till today, the next Thursday. Sam and I had been planning on spending the whole week home visiting family; however, I recently acquired a full time job, so my trip was cut short. Last Thursday Sam left for home and I was to follow suit Friday after I got home from work. And this is where the trouble begins. I had previously contacted the vet about getting a mild sedative for our cat Everest.

She really hates car rides, and it's a very unpleasant trip to make alone. The vet prescribed a little pill... Everest hates pills. I came home from work in a desperate hurry to get on the road. I scooped Everest up and grabbed the ominous pill. She fought immediately, twisting and scratching. It's nearly impossible to get her to swallow a pill, she bites you, and unless you really get it down her throat, she just spits it back out. But on I fought. She bit the pill in half at one point, and I was fairly sure that she swallowed one piece, so I just had to get half the pill down, and we could get on the road. All in all, it was about a 15 minute process. Thinking at the very least the pill had dissolved in her mouth, I jumped off the bed with my bleeding finger to bandage myself and call Sam. While on the phone with him, I saw my baby jump off the bed... she fell. Now my sweet Everest isn't the most graceful cat in the world, but she doesn't just fall over. I watched her stand up, but could see that she was really wobbly. I told Sam that I thought something was wrong and I wanted to call the vet. By the time I hung up with him and called the vet (thank God for 24 hour vets) my baby had completely lost mobility in her legs! She was just lying on the floor trying to pull herself towards me with her front paws, but she couldn't stand at all. I told the receptionist what had happened and she set to come in immediately. Of course I'm already thinking that I might not make it, and she may die! Ughhh! It was awful! She was practically paralyzed! I ended up staying at the vet for about an hour where they ran tests and monitored her. In the end they decided that she had an "adverse reaction" to the sedative, but that it would wear off over the next 10-12 hours!!! Well I was a mess, so my momma and Sam decided that they would drive to Augusta to come stay with me that night because I was so afraid of what might happen. I took my baby home and watched her detox for the next 3 hours. By the time Sam and momma got to Augusta, she was able to walk, but was very wobbly and fell over every few steps. It was one of the scariest nights ever! Thankfully by the next morning she was almost fully recovered! Obviously, I decided that there would be no pill for this trip home and we all set out for Gainesville for the official start of my long weekend!

Before the aforementioned insanity, Sam had gotten to Gainesville on Thursday, and he had gone into his old work at ProTherapy to visit with friends. While there he learned that one of his coworkers had a litter of Weimaraner puppies for sale. Sam sent me a picture... too cute! I knew Sam had really wanted a dog for a long time, so we added plans to go look at the puppies to our weekend. We spent a good part of Saturday at Sam's house laying out by the pool and enjoying the cooler weather! That evening, my mom and Stuart came over to enjoy dinner with Sam's family and we had a great time! Sunday we made plans to see the puppies. Sam and I had already talked and decided that if Sam really wanted one, that now was as good of time as any, and we have a great place. So obviously... we ended up with a puppy by the end of the day. We made plans for Sam to pick up our little boy on Tuesday when he came home.

I headed out Monday afternoon with Everest in tow to get the house ready for our new addition. Sam worked at ProTherapy Tuesday to make some extra money and then picked up our little puppy after work and headed home to me! By 10 o'clock our entire family was under one roof for the first time! Meet Sterling: He was 8 weeks old on Tuesday, and he loves his daddy to death! He's not so sure about his sister yet, as she regularly smacks him in the nose, but we are definitely one happy family.

In addition to our little puppy, our families were incredibly generous to us while we were home. My momma worked on a beautiful dried flower arrangement for our dining room. She has a great eye for this, and I always love what she comes up with. Dried flowers are kind of pricey, but the look so much nicer than silk. It turned out great! I probably need to trim some of the grass, but it looks beautiful and added a great deal of color to our dull little dining room corner.

Sam's momma was also very thoughtful! She knows how much Sam loves to grill and decided to get us an early birthday present. Sam grilled yummy hamburgers last night and is currently working on pork chops tonight. He loves it! I am pretty thrilled myself because on top of having a happy husband and tasty dinner, there are less dishes!!! Thanks Genie!

As you can see we had a fun-filled weekend that started out full of insanity and ended the same way! Now we just have to argue over who gets up in the middle of the night! But we couldn't be happier to have everyone healthy and back under one roof!