Well, in Texas, it’s more of an ice day. Our office closed today so I get the whole day off, but Jonathan has to go in at 1200. I got out this morning and thought there was no way for me to get my car out of our garage without sliding off the driveway, it was nothing but ice. Luckily my boss called and said, stay home, have a fun snow day! None of our patients would show up anyway. I’ve been up for a while and have already taken a shower, got dressed, fixed my hair, make up and all that entails. I just looked down and it’s only 830!! I feel like it should be like 1200 or 100, I may have to take a nap. Of course, I couldn’t go without taking some pictures of our “snow day”, so here are some of the photos I took:
The hubs truck this morning..a little iced over!
Our flower bed which needs a face lift this spring.
Our backyard
Hopefully ya’ll didn’t have to get out this morning, so stay home, enjoy your “snow day” and stay warm!
The hubs and I joined the Landry Center at Baylor last week because we both want to get back into shape/lose weight. We get a killer discount to the because I’m an employee of Baylor so we took advantage of it. After not being able to do pretty much of anything for the last 8 months after breaking my back, I was ready to start working out again. Granted, I still can’t lift weights yet, I am able to do cardio and swim!. I have always wanted to do swimming as a means of exercise, just never had a pool to. We swam for the first time on Saturday and boy was I tired. It also showed me how out of shape I am!!! Geeze, one length of the pool (an olympic sized pool) and I was out of breath and my heart was about to pound out of my chest. I swam a total of 4 laps (8 lengths of the pool) which is about 200 meters. Today I swam 13 laps which is about 475 meters, then I soaked in the hot tub for about 3 minutes (it was too hot) and then sat in the sauna for a little while….again, too hot so I had to get out. I’m not relaxed and feel good about working out! We’ll see if we keep this up. It’s only about 2 blocks from my office so I can go workout in the mornings if I want before work, which I plan on doing on Fridays. I’ll let you know in a month if we’re still going!
“Once we surrender our mind to GOD completely, HE will take care of us in every way.†~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba quotes
This morning Brian challenged us to face our Giants so we can follow God completely. He talked about 5 giants that we each face, I’m sure at one point or another I could easily say I have or will face all 5. The giants were: fully surrender, intentional relationships, caring for others, personal responsibility and leadership.
My biggest giant is Fully surrendering to Christ. At the end of the service we were able to go up to the stage and pick up a stone to signify our “giant” as a reminder for us. Hopefully over the next year I’ll be able to work on my giant.
I said it last year and I’ll say it again…I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions because I never keep them. But I do like to make goals. To me, a resolution is something that you want to change about yourself or somthing like that, and a goal is something that you want to achieve. I’d rather set goals and strive to achieve something new in the new year. Maybe it’s just me and maybe there really isn’t a difference, either way, here are some of my 2009 goals.
here are my goals expanded on:
1. I want to complete a bike race (cycling…and assuming my heart will handle it)
2. maybe ride in the “hotter than hell” bike race in wichita falls, Tx (it’s 100 miles long so I’d better get working.)
3. I really want to get back in shape…not to lose weight just to get physically fit again, and so I can do #2. Breaking your back and not being able to do much of anything physically demanding for several months makes you kinda lazy, and squishy for that matter–ha!
4. I need to finish reading the books I have from last year that never I finished
5. I really want to finish paying off our consumer debt (we’ve paid half of it off in the last 6 months–wahoo!!)
6. Have good health this year and stay out of the hospital (not that I really have full control over it though)
7. Get back into the routine of doing devotionals
8. Actually finish my Project 365 this year…you can follow it on my flickr stream. It’s a project where you take a self portrait of some sort for 365 days..the goal is to improve your photography techniques and help you learn lighting.
And that’s all I have, I’m sure I’ll think of a few more but that’s it for now. What are some of your goals for the new year?
I can’t believe it’s already 2009 – It seams like 2008 just flew by! A lot happened this past year, some not so good and some really good. If you told me at the beginning of 2008 that I would go through 2 surgeries, have 5 CT scans, take a visit to the Baylor ER and change jobs, I would have laughed in your face. But a new year brings new challenges, whether you want them or not! So lets take a look at 2008 shall we!
The year started out great we had been in our new house for a few months and had fun as we started to paint and do landscaping around the yard. We pretty much finished doing things to the house (for now) but will eventually do more to the yard when spring rolls around. Here is just a little of what we have done so far…
In March Jonathan and I took a trip to Memphis, TN just for fun. We had a great time visiting Graceland, the Gibson factory, walking down Beale St. and eating some delicious Memphis BBQ. Here is a video of the highlights from our trip…
On April 28, Jonathan and I celebrated our one year anniversary! We stayed a night in downtown Dallas and then went to the arboretum for the day.
In May I graduated, again!
I finally finished my bachelor’s degree after finishing my associates degree in 2002. I took a couple of years off inbetween my associates and going back to finish my bachelor’s but with hard work and determination, I finished it and it won’t necessarily get me more money or anything, it will give me more opportunities in my career field and in a way get a better paying job! I will be able to teach if I choose to and also I can continue on to get a master’s degree if I want…which I may eventually. I would love to get a masters in exercise physiology but we’ll see where God takes me on that one!
The week after I graduated I had sinus surgery. I had a severe deviated septum that wouldn’t allow me to get rid of a sinus infection I had for almost 6 months. So the fixed it, I got a new nose…well not really, but I can breathe better…
that’s attractive huh?
The following month (June) my best friend, Jen, got married and I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. We had a lot of fun at the wedding and all the events leading up to it…
Two days after Jen and Jed got married I had a little accident…so we’ll call it. To make a long story short and one you can read here, I had a wonderful 14 hour stay in the Baylor ER and ended up with a sprained neck and 4 broken vertebrae in my back….
I have had a long road to recovery and had many visits to the neurosurgeon and a lot of CT’s. I had a final visit to the neurosurgeon last month and he said it was healing, not completely healed yet, but healing for sure. So yeah! I still have pain if I do certain things or move certain ways but for the most part I feel pretty good.
Then September rolled around and time for another surgery…bet you didn’t see that coming-HA. I have had two procedures on my heart in the last 5 years and I started having some problems again so my cardiologist thought it would be best to go back in and check everything, just to make sure everything was good to go. So I have another heart cath and everything checked out ok…we just adjusted my medication and we’re back in business.
In November I decided, for many reasons, it was time for a change so I resigned from my position at Children’s Medical Center and accepted one at Baylor Univ. Medical Center in Dallas. It was tough leaving some of my friends behind, but it was time to move on! For the most part, I liked the time I spent working at CMC and will cherish the friendships I made while I was there.
But since I have made the move to Baylor, I can honestly say it was the best decision I’ve made in a while and a good move for my career. I love the people I work with and love what I do at Baylor. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me in the next year or so with my career.
In November, Jonathan and I also went to a marriage retreat at Sky Ranch with our church. We had a blast doing the ropes course, flying down the zip line and getting to know more couples at our church. Tim and Kara were able to go with us and we hope to do it again next year.
To finish off the year, we celebrated the holidays with family and friends and you can read all about that in another post! We have done so many fun things this year, it’s hard to sit down and write them all out, there were many things we did like go to the rangers game, state fair of Texas, Waxahachie’s hot air balloon festival, and I could go on forever, but I won’t…
…so here’s to a great 2009, filled with many more memories and new opportunities!
ARE OVER!! Not that I’m happy about that but life can finally calm down now and get back to normal. What did we do for the holidays you ask…well, here is a look at what all we did the last few weeks/months. Over the last month I have taken several family photos. There were the Treadaways, our pastor and his family…
…And then Jalyn, our friends Josh and Shalyn’s baby…
…then there were the Nash’s. Gracelyn, who is 2, didn’t really want any part of taking photos so it made for a difficult day, along with my camera that was acting up…that’s a whole other story…
We went with a group of our friends from church to see Bethlehem Revisited in Waxahachie…
Our holiday festivities with family started on Dec 21 when we held our annual Turner-Medlin Family Christmas/Jake’s Birthday party. We all went to the Medlin’s and had some yummy chili and all the “kids” (we’re too old to be called kids) did a white elephant gift exchange and then Jake opened up his birthday presents. Jake turned 8 this year and I can’t believe he’s getting so old. I remember the day he was born…anyway, we had fun time together and couldn’t wait to do it all over again on New Years Day, when we celebrate my dad and Bob’s birthday…more on that later in the post.
On the 23rd we had all of Jonathan’s family over to our house for dinner and games. We all had a great time and always look forward to seeing everyone. (to see any of these collages bigger, simply click on it and viola)
Christmas Eve we went to our parents church for a candlelight service and then back to my parents house for dinner. After dinner we headed over to my aunts house to spend some time with her and my cousins and their kids. Had a good time seeing all of them and about 10:00pm my cousin’s son, Bryce, announced that “there was good news and bad news…the good news is that santa is in Texas, the bad news is that santa is in Texas and I’m not in bed!” So with that we all headed home.
Christmas morning Jonathan and I opened gifts at our house, well some of them…I made Jonathan go on a scavenger hunt for his gift. He started out at our house and then headed to the park which sent him to our pastors house where they slipped the present in their mailbox for me. I think he enjoyed it but maybe not as much as his present which was two tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert.
After that we went to my padres house for Christmas with my familia and ate a great lunch and opened gifts. And as always, we let the kids go first which only takes about 10 minutes total because they rip through them all at warp speed. After lunch and presents we decided to play a game of family feud…that was a lot of fun, except my dad kept forgetting the rules! My niece got a doll house and my nephew got a new Wii so they were both preoccupied with those the majority of the afternoon and that was a gift to all of us!!! That’s the only way we were able to play family feud.
Later that afternoon we headed over to Jonathan’s parents and hung out there a while. Tim and Kara got rock band for the wii so we played that for a while and then Jonathan’s dad made a great ham for dinner so we ate and opened some gifts. Over all, we had a wonderful Christmas and are blessed by our family and friends that spent it with us!
Then for about a week our lives were back to semi normalcy…I went back to work but Jonathan had the week off. New Years Eve we spent over at Richard and Amber’s house playing games and eating some yummy mexican food. Then for the countdown to bring in the new year we lit some sparklers–that’s always fun!
And finally, Welcome 2009! We have entered into yet another new year. We slept in new years day because lets face it, we were up late partying the night before!! You know us, we’re such the partiers-HA! Then later that afternoon my family and the Medlins came over to our house and we grilled some fajitas and celebrated our dad’s birthdays! Honestly I can’t remember how old they both are–somewhere in the early 60’s! yikes, sorry guys, I love you, but that’s old!
We always have fun getting together but don’t do it as often as I would like. The Medlin’s have always been a second family to us, Bob and Vicki were like our “other parents” and Ty and Tami were like siblings growing up. It’s so much fun now that we are all grown up and adults…We’ve all grown up together and shared special occasions together as we each get married, have kids and watch each of us, or them, become parents for the first time…it’s been fun!! A great way to start a new year. I’ve been told that how you spend your New Year’s Day sets the stage for that year…we’re off to a great start!
Because we had so much fun on New Year’s Day, you get two collages.
Tonight Jonathan and I went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert for his Christmas gift and had a blast. This is my 5 year to go to the concert and I have loved every year. It’s a Christmas tradition that I had and then when Jonathan and I started dating we decided to make it our tradition. We are going on a cruise in February so we decided that we just wouldn’t be able to spring for tickets to TSO this year and the cruise. We were both bummed about not getting to go, Jonathan was pretty bummed so I decided to surprise him with tickets for Christmas. He tried many times to get me to agree to get tickets and it was hard to tell him “No, I just don’t think we can this year” when I had already bought 2 tickets. Anyway, we went to the concert and love it! The camera police are usually out making sure you don’t take any pictures of the concert but I was able to sneak some with my camera phone–gotta love them! So here are some illegal pictures from the TSO concert:
After the concert we met Jen and Jed for dinner at Patrizio’s in Highland Park Village….let me tell you, they have some amazing italian food! I’ve been there before and have always wanted to take Jonathan so I figured why not now! We had a good time with Jen and Jed and then decided to get some Italian Gelato at Paciugo’s to go with our Italian food.
And that concludes our holiday festivities! I hope everyone had a good time with their family and friends over the holidays and here’s to a wonderful new year!
1. Put your music player on shuffle (ALL MUSIC).
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the game as well as the person you got the game from.
IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OK†YOU SAY:
Miles To Go
WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Dreamer–no lie, that’s the title
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
satisfaction
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Drive Away
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
The Chain
WHAT IS 2 + 2?
Midnight Bottle
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Harder To Breathe
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
White Dove Fly High
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Party People
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
123 Like A Bird I sing
WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Low
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Ready, Set, Don’t Go–Yes A Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus song
WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
She’s In Love With The Boy
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Butterflies
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Until You
WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Right Now
HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Lost
WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Get Your Back Off The Wall
WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
X Girlfriend
WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Clothes
WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Labels Of Love
DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Without A Sound
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Fever
WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Borrowed Home
WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Time Of Your Life
Ok, I don’t have 10 friends who blog or whatever so I tag….um, Shari again-HA and Amber
Amber tagged me so now I guess it’s my turn to list 7 things about me. So here goes:
1. It’s no surprise–I love photography, taking it, looking at it, anything about it. I love learning new ways to improve my skills.
2. I’m in a group on Flickr where you take a self portrait of some sort every day for 365 days. It makes you think about photography techniques and you end up learning and improving your photography. It’s tough, but I’m having fun.
3. I am dying to go to the UK…London, Scotland, Ireland. Maybe one day the hubs and I will make it there…and then maybe we’ll get to visit our mates Thomas and Olly who live in Scotland.
4. I love the feel of digging my feet in the sand on the beach.
5. I have a fear of deep waters, that’s why I like the beach, not the ocean…I don’t know why, I’ve never had a traumatic experience with it, I just don’t like it. It freaks me out! Just looking at the ocean on google maps kinda makes me hyperventilate!
6. I would love to do a triathlon one day but I hate running, so maybe I’ll just do a bike race instead.
7. I love making my house feel like a home! That includes, painting it, putting up decorations or even just rearranging the furniture to make it flow. It’s my home and where I can be me, a safe place, I want it to feel like it’s mine!
I was cleaning out a big box we had in our guest room closet yesterday and found a bunch of old letters, cards and what not from high school. It was fun reading them and reliving the memories of trips to Mexico, Honduras, Colorado and other places, along with some of my former youth leaders who became good friends. There were two women that I absolutely loved, Alison and Annie. I found some letters they had written me while in high school and it just reminded me how much they helped form who I am. They were mentors for me in my high school years and helped me grow as a Christan woman. I haven’t talked to either of them in years and would love to see them.
It got me thinking how much I miss having people like these two in my life. I don’t have a “mentor” or a woman in my life now that has a role like Alison or Annie did years ago. I think it’s good to have someone in your life that not necessarily leads you but is a mentor of some sort and you can look up to or help you become a better person/Christian. I look at Jonathan and he has that person in Brian, our pastor and friend. Brian has played a major role in jonathan’s life and probably more than either of them will admit!
Oh the memories, I also found an old notebook that Jen and I passed back and forth in high shcool so it was fun reading some of those notes. I’ll have to let her read them too.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around casa de Blundell. Last weekend Jonathan and I put up the Christmas lights, the tree and all the decorations inside.
Of course I couldn’t reach the top of the tree so Jonathan had to put the star up.
I’m always afraid Jonathan will fall off the roof when he’s putting up the Christmas lights so I have to stay our there to “supervise”, and while I’m standing there, why not take pictures…
There are always some of our decorations that I love to put out and I’m always tempted to keep them out all year long, but couldn’t get away with it. This is one of my favorite decorations–it’s a candle holder, if you take the top off the candle is inside.
Then there is my favorite ornament…it says “Youngest Child (mom’s favorite)
But my favorite part of Christmas is being with family and making more memories. This year we are having Jonathan’s family over for the Blundell/Knotts family Christmas on the 23rd, we’re excited about that. Just 24 more days until Christmas, are you ready?
