Move Over, Roentgen

After much anticipation, my boards scores and radiology certificate finally arrived in the mail. I am now officially a Registered Technologist in Chiropractic Radiologic Technology and fully certified by the American Chiropractic Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ACRRT), AND I've got the certificate that proves it.

Now I am fully certified to take x-rays in the vast majority of states (any of the ones I would live in, at least).

~Amy C.T., R.T.(ACRRT)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Love,
Brett & Amy

'Bout Time for a Blog Post?

My apologies for my recent lack of blog posts. I have been very busy with work, Christmas, yada, yada, yada... That, and we really haven't done anything interesting lately. ;)

Yesterday, however, we had a great time hanging out with our friends Dean & Michelle. We went and took some pictures in front of Palmer College & Capri College (where Michelle goes to Massage Therapy School) for their Christmas frame ornament collection. After that we went to their place for 2 exciting rounds of Settlers of Catan, yummy dinner, and good conversation. :)

Today, Brett & I decided to partake in the Christmas ritual of sugar-cookie baking. In our house, Christmas just isn't Christmas until we have baked some sugar cookies.

Other than Christmas cookies, an exciting lunch at Applebee's and a trip to the grocery store, our day pretty much consisted of watching movies. We watched 1/2 of Superbad (if you want to be disgusted, rent this movie) and Pirates of the Caribbean- At World's End (long, but good). Last night at Dean & Michelle's we watched Ocean's Thirteen (also good).

I am sure I will have more to report tomorrow. Merry Christmas Eve!

Ice Storm, Round II

Today, Brett and I had a snow day. Well, I guess it was actually an ice day. Either way, schools were closed, and I opted not to drive 20 miles to work on ice-covered roads.

Remember those snow-covered red berries from last week? Well, here they are in their current state.

They are now completely covered in ice. Last week I had to stand on my toes and use my zoom lens to take a picture of them. Now, thanks to ice weighing down the tree branches, they hang just a few feet off the ground. A grand total of 1/2"-1" of ice accumulation is expected. Other than stepping outside to snap a few pictures, I think Brett & I will be staying in for the rest of the evening.

Since I'm Pretty Sure My Brother Never Reads This...

...And even if he does, I'm REALLY sure my nephew never reads this, I thought I'd share my latest quilting creation. This is the Charger quilt that I made for my nephew, Zach, for Christmas. Thanks to our recent ice storm, I actually had time to complete it today. :-)

Again, I swear that the edges actually are square, it's just the angle that makes them look slanted.

And with that, I retire from the baby quilting business. :-P

Very Christmas-y

Is it just me, or does nothing say "Christmas is coming" quite like red snow-covered berries?

Ice Storm

The worst of the ice storm came after dark last night, and it was hard for me to get a picture at that time. It was raining, and cameras don't usually like rain, particularly not rain that freezes on contact. But I was able to capture this shot taken at Palmer of the windows completely glazed over with ice:

Every window on campus looked like this. It was kind of eerie to walk through the halls and not be able to see out any of the windows.

Baby Shower

Well, it was a crazy day for a baby shower yesterday. Davenport got hit with an ice storm, which certainly made things interesting. Originally, the shower was going to be at our friends Matt & Kelly's house, but they live at the bottom of a hill and there were concerns that with the amount of ice we were getting, people might not be able to get back up the hill. So, we moved it to our house. Not even 2 minutes before people arrived our power went out. We had 2 options: light a bunch of candles and have the most romantic baby shower ever, or take our chances and move the party back to our original location. We went with option 2 (I was voting for option 1 :-P). After all the craziness the party was great, and the baby quilts that Amber (left) and I made were a hit.

Left to right: Amber, Renee (& Abri), and Me

Oh, and it should be mentioned that on the game where you guess how big around the Mom-to be is, my guess was exactly right. I rule. :-)

Merry Christmas, Moose

We got Moose a new cat bed for Christmas this year. In the spirit of giving, we decided to give it to him early so that he could start enjoying it now.

Naturally, he much prefers the pile of laundry:

Random Kinds of Factness

A completely random and useless (though still blogworthy) piece of information about Brett and I is the fact that we love to collect ornaments. We collect new ones every year. We like ornaments of places we have been, we get an "Our Christmas Together" ornament every year, and most recently we started collecting chiropractic ornaments. We have decided to get a chiropractic ornament for every year we are at Palmer. Last year's was a snowman couple holding a heart that said "Chiropractic Christmas." This year, what better way to celebrate the season than with a snowman caduceus?

A Funny From Outback

While at dinner at Outback this evening, Brett and I were amused by the sentiment on this coaster:
Its times like these when I'm glad I have a blog... and a camera. :-)

Happy Birthday

I had a very fun 22nd birthday. It snowed which was exciting. It was the perfect kind of snow: the kind that falls and looks pretty but melts as soon as it hits the ground. We had dinner at a restaurant called Granite City which we had been wanting to try for a long time. It is a restaurant/brewery with a very nice atmosphere. I would recommend it to anyone who has been thinking about trying it. Other than that we pretty much just hung out around the house, which was nice to do too. Here are some pictures from the day:

Tree Hunting

The Friday after Thanksgiving is our traditional Christmas decorating day. We went to the same tree farm we went to last year to cut down our tree.

Jack Frost Pines Tree Farm:


THE tree:


Trimming the tree:




The Finishing Touch:


In all it's Christmas glory:

I'm Dreaming of a White...Thanksgiving???

We had our first taste of winter Wednesday night. Snow fell for a good portion of the evening, but due to ground temperatures being so high, not much of it stuck around. We did see a little evidence of winter on it's way when we went to cut down our Christmas tree yesterday:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Even though we were not able to be back in San Diego for Thanksgiving we still had a pretty good day. We went down to our neighbor's house for dinner, but being big fans of leftover Thanksgiving food, we decided to do our own Thanksgiving at home first. Here are some pictures from our day:

Brett's Delicious Turkey:







Some things never change, but I think my fingers may have gotten a little bigger:








My delicious home-made apple pie ready to go into the oven:







Ready to go to dinner:

Bowling

Well, I may have spoken too soon about our bowling team kicking butt. We got our butts kicked last week on bowling night. The guys we played bowled multiple turkeys each game, which was certainly difficult to compete with. Although, according to the score board our team won because the guys we played were not so smart and deleted their handicap. In an effort to keep things on the up and up we let them count their handicap on their total score and we got totally clobbered. Better luck next week. Fortunately for us, one of our team-mates has a good friend who is a semi-professional bowler. He will be giving us pointers when we practice next week.

Hilarious

Anyone who has ever played Wii can appreciate this:

Update

I realized today that I have been a little bit of a slacker when it comes to the blog posts, so I thought that I would update you on what's been going on lately.

1.) My knee. As many of you know I injured my knee recently. Not terribly, but bad enough that I couldn't walk on it for a few days. I am happy to report that I am walking much better now. Luckily, I now work for a chiropractor (see #2) and she is working to make sure that my knee recovers. Just for fun, I thought I would post the picture above. Through the magic of digital x-ray, that is actually MY knee that you are looking at. Pretty cool, huh?

2.) My job. This is my third week working at my new job. I landed my dream job (with pretty decent pay, too) in Durant, which is about 20 miles west of here. The only downside of the job is the fact that it is 20 miles away, but I figure if that's the only downside I am pretty lucky.

3.) Bowling. Palmer League bowling began last week. Every Thursday night from now through early next year we can be found at the bowling alley. Last week our team did pretty well. We won, and our team score was into the 500's for all three games, while most other teams were only in the 300's. It looks like it is going to be a pretty good bowling "season" (is that what you call it when it's bowling?). I plan on taking some pictures tonight, so hopefully I will have those posted in the next couple of days.

Today is October 30th

Today is October 30th, but (for reasons that I do not understand) trick-or-treating is going on tonight. Not tomorrow. No, we wouldn't want to actually hold Halloween festivities on Halloween. Is this just some weird Midwest tradition that I do not understand? I also had someone tell me that trick-or-treating is usually done the Sunday before Halloween. That information is inconsistent with the fact that trick-or-treating is taking place on this fine Tuesday, but it still brings up 2 questions: 1) Why Sunday? It's still a school night (the only logical reason I can come up with for the change) and 2.) Why not just have it on Halloween?!?!?!? If anyone has the answer to this please let me know.

Black Mold

In recent news: we may have black mold living in our walls. We had our (downstairs) neighbors Ken & Jen up Sunday night for pizza and a movie. They told us that there is a bit of a mold "situation" brewing between our two apartments, and they think it may be black mold. Apparently there is evidence that our wonderful apartment complex just painted over some water damage from a leak rather than repairing it properly, so this time we have a city inspector coming out to verify that it is in fact black mold and to force the complex to fix it properly. The unfortunate side of this is that if it is "toxic" mold and they do have to do some serious work to fix it, it is very likely that we will have to move. The mold inspector just called Ken today to make an appointment, so I will update more when we know more about the situation.

Graduation Day!

Here Brett & I are at the Awards Ceremony.


Hooray! I graduated! Now I am one of the world's newest Chiropractic Technologists!


Brett & I at my super-yummy graduation dinner at Biaggi's

Now for the fun part. I start my new job as a C.T. on November 5th. More updates on that adventure to come.

Fall Colors

Voila!

Here it is. The quilt that has consumed most of my time and a good portion of my sanity for the last couple of weeks. It's finally finished, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. Aside from needing some pressing, which I will wait to bother with until just before the baby shower, I think that Abri's jungle-themed-but-still-slightly-girly quilt was a success.

P.S. The edges actually are square, it's just the angle of the camera that makes them look slightly askew.

My Handiwork

Unable to find any Chargers gear here in town, (although Raiders can be found everywhere, what's up with that?) and because I was not about to be shown up by my friends in their team gear on football night, I opted to make my own shirt. As it turns out, there is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to print-it-yourself iron on transfers (don't let the iron get too hot, don't leave the iron on too long, and don't remove the backing too soon- in case you were wondering.) Although the picture didn't transfer completely, my error actually yielded somewhat of a vintage look, so I will pretend that is what I was going for. :-)

File Under: "Things that make you go Hmmmm"

So I went to Subway today, got the usual 6" Veggie Delite on wheat bread, paid with a credit card, and saw this on the receipt:

Someone please tell me why on earth I would return anything to Subway ever, let alone up to 30 days later? This is one of those things that makes you wonder what person had to attempt to return/exchange something after the 30 day time period that prompted them to have to put that limitation on the receipt in the first place. My guess is that it's probably the same idiot who got the "do not use while bathing" warning put on hair dryers.

Now I'm a Pro

This morning I took a free sewing class from a place called Neal's Vacuum and Sewing Center. A very nice lady named Edith (who reminds me very much of my Grandma) taught me just about everything I could ever want to know about my sewing machine (and then some). What impressed me the most was the fact that she managed to incorporate every single feature of my sewing machine into one project, which I completed during the class:



It's an eyeglass/rotary cutter holder. I opted to keep my rotary cutter in it. The best part of it all is that sewing is not half as hard as I thought it would be. Now I'm definitely well on my way to pro status. :-)

Not much to report...

I haven't blogged in a while. Not much going on here in Davenpit (no, that's not a typo). Right now I am busy with finals and end of term projects, not to mention preparing for graduation. Good progress is being made on Abri's quilt, hopefully I will have time to actually complete it this weekend, and of course I will share pictures of the finished project when I do. I will graduate on October 19th. We have lots of family coming in and I'm sure I will have lots to blog about by then, but for now I will leave you with this funny:

A Quilt for Abri

Today I embarked on my latest adventure: sewing a baby quilt for Abri, the soon-to-be-born daughter of our friends Corey & Renee. I have never really sewn anything before, so the adventurous part comes in learning how the heck I am going to do this. Once I figure out what I am doing, I should have it together in no time at all. I will keep you updated with more pictures as I get more done. But for now, the picture shows the fabrics that I will be using. Abri is going to have a jungle themed room and I thought this fabric was just perfect, and it actually came in a bundle so all of the fabrics coordinate really well. That soft green fabric is a flannel that I will be using for the back of the quilt.

Chargers/Bears Game/Post-Boards Party/Nates Birthday

Last Sunday we had a multi-purpose party. First, the Chargers vs. Bears game was on, and since all of our friends here are Bears fans, we like to make a big deal about getting together when the two teams play. It makes for an even more fun night when the Chargers win (which they did last Sunday)!

Here is our resident Charger fan by our sign we made for our front door:



Despite many threats to the contrary, our sign managed to survive the evening without any acts of vandalism by our friends.

We also got together to celebrate the fact that everyone was done with Part I boards, which is the first of five tests they will have to take to get their license to practice as a Chiropractor. Here is the group: (I could only get some of them to stop watching the game :-) )

From left to right there's April, Brett, Amber, Nate, Renee & Cory, Derek, and Kyle & Amanda who refused to look at the camera).

And last but not least it was our friend Nate's birthday. Happy Birthday, Nate!



(Don't mind the makeshift birthday candle :-) )

Antique Tractor Show

This past weekend just for fun we decided to head down to an antique tractor show not far from our house. It was a pretty fun event with lots of farmers and some live country music. At one point the tractor show actually turned in to a tractor parade. Here are some of the sights from the tractor show:







Brett found something he liked. :-)