Super Excited

Charlie and Julie get here tomorrow and we are all so excited to see each other! We have a great weekend planned. We are starting the weekend off by seeing Ron White and on Saturday we are going to take them to Seattle for lunch.

We have really missed them and all the fun that we used to have together when we lived in Atlanta.

Love them!!!!!

Very Productive

We had another productive weekend and we have completed our list of things to have done by the time our visitors arrive. Oddly enough the first two things on our list of things to do was the last things that got done.

We finally painted the stair wall, which was something that I was dreading doing. We rented a ladder to paint a tiny space that we couldn't reach. I am officially done painting. I have painted every single room in our house!

The second thing on our list was to hang the TV in our room. Just putting in on the wall makes our room feel so much bigger!

Doug wasn't feeling well on Sunday so I fiddled around outside planting some flowers. He came out around 7 and helped me plant some big foxglove plants. I hope they do well because they are so pretty.

We are ready for Charlie and Julie to get here and anyone else that wants to come and visit come on over, because our house is all set!

I hope everyone has a great week and happy Cinco de Mayo...we will definitely be having a Margarita tonight!

Up Way Too Early!

Why can I not sleep in anymore on the weekends! It is so frustrating. I wake up usually before 7am and try to go back to sleep, but I lay there and my mind just makes this super long list of things that I could get started doing if I get up. So I just get up and start my day knowing that I am going to need a nap somewhere down the line.

Doug and I have a trip planned to Mexico in two weeks and this whole swine flu thing is totally putting a cramp in my side. One of my patients told me that she would pray that I changed my mind and not go. We are going...end of story. I am looking forward to sitting on the beach with a drink in my hand under the gorgeous sun that we never see here in WA. This will be our last trip for a while since Doug is going to be starting his 2nd year of residency in July and will have a lot more responsibility on his plate. Needless to say we are going to enjoy this trip to the fullest!

Thanks to the advice from my mom my little flower arrangement looks a lot better. She suggested that I put some greenery around the edges and her suggestion was just what it needed.




Of course the weekend that we want to plant flowers the sun is no where in site and looking ahead at the forecast the sun will not be back for a while. This is the only downside to living on the west coast in WA. It doesn't really rain, it is just a nagging mist that last all day long.

I am feeling a little lucky today so I think I see a casino visit in our future!

So Lucky

How did I ever get so lucky?!?!?!

I am the luckiest girl in the world...My husband is the best guy ever and he is all mine...

Back up ladies...he is all mine!!!! ;)

And We Are Done ! ! !

I really wanted to redo both of the other bathrooms in our house and with Doug's intern year coming to a close I knew that there was no time like the present to get started. Doug was a little uneasy to begin knowing that Charlie and Julie would be coming to visit in a month and we would have to be done with the bathroom that they would use by then. I knew that if we had a deadline then we could surely meet it. Well, we met our goal by far. We have completed both bathrooms and love the way they turned out! It is really hard to match tile, paint, and counter tops together, but I believe we picked just the right combinations for both bathrooms.

Without further adieu, here are some before and after shots...

The downstairs bathroom...

This picture is for my mom...I made this arrangement and I think that it needs a little tweaking from you. It won't be complete until the next time you visit...please come back soon!

The upstairs bathroom...

We have been very busy these past two weekends...we are glad to be finished with all the remodeling. We hope that next weekend we can spend it outside in the yard...I see some beautiful flowers in our future!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Thank Goodness...

these past three weeks are over! I am exhausted and excited about the three day weekend I have in front of me.

Yesterday was my last day at Bright Now Dental and it felt like the last day of school before summer. I totally did not want to be there. I was counting down the hours and the patients until my day was over with. I am going to miss the people that I worked with, but I am not going to miss the insanity.

I love working at my new office. It is so laid back and easy going. I don't know why, but the patients seem to be nicer and have cleaner mouths...not sure how that happens since I am only right down the street from my old job. I am finally at an office that I can wear cute scrubs. I ordered a whole weeks worth and I am excited to wear them! They are all cute and springy.

On Wednesday of this week Doug only had to work a half day and then everyone was going to play golf, well Doug had told me that he was probably not going to go with them. When I get off work I tried calling him and got no answer. I thought maybe he was at home asleep and wasn't answering. When I come home there is no Doug, just his path of destruction. There is an empty beer bottle on the counter just above the trash can...(side note...why, why, why can he not put trash in the trashcan or dishes in the sink?!?!?! He always sets trash on the counter...I mean he has made it that far with it, why can't he just open up the door and put it in the trash...I am probably going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life...end of side note)..., I can follow his next move by where he took off his uniform because it is left in the floor right where he removed each piece, and then his next stop must have been the bathroom because his pooped was left in the toilet. After I gag for a minute I attempted to flush it and realize why it was left in the toilet. The boy had left the toilet stopped up! At this point I am so frustrated with him and praying that he was out getting a plunger not playing golf! After about 45 minutes of being home he calls and said he was playing golf and for me to come and meet him at Hooters. At Hooters his exciting day continued. It was Wingo night and of course Doug won a game. He had to participate, along with all the other winners from that night, in a cake eating contest and he won. He won a $50 gift card to return to Hooters. YEAH...we get to go back! ;)

This weekend we are going to get started on redoing the other two bathrooms in the house. I am so excited to get started this morning but Doug is still asleep. The goal for today is to tile them both. I have already painted the cabinet black in the upstairs bathroom and I am happy with how it turned out.

The bathroom before...

Doug tearing out the baseboards...

Here is the cabinet with only the drawers painted...I was making sure that I wanted to paint is black. These drawers came from the cabinet that we took out of our bathroom. (Sorry the toilet seat is up in this pic)

The really close to finished product...

We hope everyone had a great Easter. We missed being with family, but we survived another holiday alone. I sent Doug on a scavenger hunt through the house to find his Easter basket. This year it was easy clues, next year I will make them harder!!!

What A Week...

Thank goodness the job hunt is finally over. After searching the web and dropping off resume all over I have finally found the perfect (at the moment) job. I did a working interview this week at an office that is located right down the street from the office that I work at now. I am talking so close that if I step outside I could throw a rock and hit it. I worked there on Wednesday and Thursday of this week and I am so glad that they offered me the position. I will be working Tuesday - Friday from 8 to 5, which is way better than working Monday, Friday, and Saturday from 8-7 (the days and hours that I would be working if I stayed at my current job). I am making the same pay with better hours and less patients. I see a total of 18 patients a day at my current job and my hands are about to fall off. I will only see at the most 8 patients a day at my new office and I am so glad! My hands and wrists can only take so much and I feel that they have gone through a lot already. From working my high school years at Bruster's scooping ice cream to working through college at Chili's carrying huge heavy trays, my hands and wrists have been through a lot...needless to say I am glad that I married a Doctor that is going to let me cut back on hygiene to raise babies after he gets out of residency! ;)

Last week I worked a total of 55 hours, which is a huge difference from my usual 30 hours a week. I worked on my off days doing my working interview and since I gave my two weeks notice on Friday I will have to do the same thing for the next two weeks. I will be working at both offices since my new office wanted me to start asap. I know Doug works way more than 55 hours a week, but he knew that going into medical school...I on the other hand thought that being a hygienist meant only working 4 days at the most and enjoying 3 day weekends. :)

Doug lucked out this weekend and had the whole weekend off! It was beautiful here and it is forecasted to continue through the first part of the week. I am so glad to see some blue skies with the temperature in the high 60's! So of course we spent our gorgeous Sunday skiing at Crystal Mountain! We had an awesome time. It was so pretty and warm we were loosing layers of clothing with every run that we made down the mountain. Some friends from Madigan joined us and I am glad that we could end this ski season with great friends, wonderful weather, and perfect snow!

One of these pics might be this year's Christmas Card...you can see Mt. Ranier in the background!








I love riding the slopes with people we know...







Time to start another busy week...

We went Clammin'

While living in the Pacific Northwest Doug and I want to take in all that it has to offer. One of my patients told me about clamming. There are set dates with set beaches that everyone, young and old storm at low tide. We set off bright and early on Sunday morning for the pacific coast with a couple of friends that we "talked into" going with us. We all were clamming virgins and didn't have a clue what we were doing. I had done a little research online and was probably the most informed of us all and with that said we were doomed from the beginning :). We stopped on the way and bought a license so we would be legit clammers. On the way we also stopped to find a clam gun. My research told me a clam gun was the must have clam digging device. The unbelievable happened...everyone was all sold out of clam guns. We had to settle for a clamming shovel. I had also been informed by a patient that natives laugh at people with shovels. After about a 2 hour car ride we had finally arrived at Copalis Beach. We pulled onto the beach to find a line of cars stretched for miles and miles down the beach with probably 4 people per car clamming on the shore! We all took a mad dash out of the car.

Not really sure why we ran, I guess we were afraid that if we didn't hurry up they would all be gone. We didn't know what we were looking for much less what we were going to do with them when we caught'em. Everyone around us were digging up clams left and right and we were just banging our shovel on the sand hoping that one would pop up.

Finally we asked some veteran clammers what to look for and they were kind enough to let us use their clam gun and educated us on how to find the clams. The clams leave a little indention on the surface of the sand when they start to dig deeper into the sand, hence why you bang your shovel on the sand to get them to move. This helps you locate where to start digging. Once we knew what to look for we started to collect our limit of clams and had a total of 30 clams when we had to close up shop at noon.

It took us about 2 hours to clean them when we got done. After all that work we didn't even like our fried clams.

We are going to try to make clam chowder with the rest of the them...hopefully we will like that a little better.

Back to the Real World

We drove back from Whistler on Saturday and we were both sad to leave. We had a wonderful time skiing in Whistler and highly recommend that everyone take a vacation to Whistler if you love to ski. We stayed in a hotel that we could ski in and out of, drop off our skis at the valet, and then head on up to our room. We had a kitchen in our room where we ate lunch and most of our dinners. We tried not to spend too much extra money. There was a free shuttle bus that picked us up right outside of the hotel and would take us on a short 8 minute ride to the village where all the shops, restaurants, and bars were, so we never had to drive anywhere! I can't wait to go back next year!

On the drive back the weather was kinda ugly and Doug attempted to capture the beauty of the Vancouver shore. Just imagine a clear blue ski minus the fog when viewing the pictures...

Before we crossed back into the states we decided to stop in the duty free store to see how much money we could save. It is hard to know if you are saving anything when the prices are all in Canadian dollars and we figured that by the time the credit card company adds in their transaction fees we really wouldn't be saving that much. So we continued on to the border. The duty free shop could only be entered if you were crossing the border and it put you back out right at the long line full of waiting cars for the border. We were driving along in the lane that the store put us in and realized that we were in some lane for people with a Nexus pass. I thought that it was the name of the store, turns out I was wrong. Doug stopped and told one of the the assistants that we didn't think we were in the right line. At first they wanted us to try and cut back across the lane, when they seen that that was not going to work they told us to go ahead on through. So the point of the story...this time it paid to be an idiot. Right after we crossed the border the radio informed us that the line at the gate was about an hour and a half wait. We died laughing and couldn't believe that we crossed in under 5 minutes!

On Sunday we recovered from our long week of endless skiing. We laid around all day and watched I don't know how many movies. We can both be so lazy...I love it. Laying on the couch, cuddled together for an entire day is pure joy. Too bad we both had to return to work on Monday.

How Crazy Are We?!?!?

Today was our day off from skiing, so we decided to do the next best thing...BUNGEE JUMP!

We slept in this morning recovering from our night out. And as soon as we got up we headed down to Whistler Bungee. I was really nervous and had some major butterflies. Doug had bungee jumped before down in Destin and I had done something similar to bungee jumping in Daytona, but nothing can prepare you for jumping off of a 160 foot bridge down into the water below.

I was very scared when they started putting on all the harnesses, but I knew that Doug would not let me back out now. I decided to jump backwards because the instructor said that it is the most intense way. To tell you the truth I don't really remember the jump I just remember dangling and waiting on the cord to drop so that I could attach it to me to get me back up to the bridge.

Doug did an awesome job filming my jump...

Doug had to be different and jump off head first. He did like a little scissor kick thing as he was going down and he did just a little bit of screaming or hollering, which ever you want to call it. He admitted that he was a little nervous too.

Like I said, Doug did an amazing job capturing my jump...I on the other hand could not return the favor. I could barely see over the bar and I was scared that I was going to drop the camera. Whenever he jumped I accidentally pressed the power button so the camera shut off. I did manage to get it turned back on in time to see him hanging above the water. I was so disappointed in myself and really sad that I didn't get his jump on film. SOOOO sorry Doug!!!!