My Oncology family

2 of my close c0-workers have recently left the vet school to pursue opportunities in private practices. We had parties for both of them leaving. I didn't bring my camera the day Meghann left but I remembered it for the day Fanchette left.

This is Fanchette with her going-away cake.

A close-up of her cake. Notice it's "half-black". We have a running joke about "half-black" because although Fanchette is "full-black" one of our doctors mentioned some time ago about her being "half-black" honestly thinking so because is so light skinned. We've all had many laughs about that and it couldn't be passed up when she left.

When one of our special patients die we usually try to send the owners a "Dog Heaven" or "Cat Heaven" book signed by those in our Oncology service. Well, since Fanchette was leaving us, Dr. Benoit decided to make her a "Tech Heaven" book, complete with funny pics and room for us to write our last words... hilarious stuff right there!

This is my almost complete dysfunctional Oncology family, plus a few extras!!

Lucky our hamster

I will start this post out by saying that we have a pet hamster. I got her from work almost 2 years ago. She was part of a handling technique lab for vet students and when they were done she was up for adoption... hence, we have Lucky (Brandon named her!) Well, 2 weeks ago I came home from work and Brandon greeted me at the door as always, but this time he acted a little weird. He immediately told me that he thought Lucky was dead. He said that he went in to check on her around 2 that afternoon and she was sprawled out face down in her food bowl. He picked her up and held her for about 15 minutes before putting her back in her igloo (where she sleeps). He thought she was dead when he picked her up and then when she wasn't he put her back thinking she would surely pass quietly in her igloo. So when I got home and went in to check on her, she was still alive. Honestly, he couldn't believe it because of how little she was moving when he had picked her up earlier. I picked her up and she was so cold to the touch that I held her close for a few minutes. She also had both eyes closed and wouldn't respond to the peanut butter I put on my fingertip. I felt that she could have been suffering so I told Brandon that we should take her to the exotic vet to be euthanized. He wasn't too fond of doing that but said that we should put a heating pad around her. We got one from our neighbor and wrapped her up in a towel inside of the heating pad. After ~30 minutes she slowly began to open one eye. After about an hour in the heating pad she began to crawl a little and about 15 minutes later she had both eyes open and was walking out of the heating pad. We were amazed. We decided to put her back in her cage and place the heating pad underneath it. Then she started doing this weird thing where she would walk a few steps and then fall down, seemingly out of it. Then she would get back up and do it again. Brandon, being the engineer that he is, proceeded to google "my hamster keeps passing out". He found a few message boards of other people describing almost exactly what had been happening to her over the last hour or so. The responses to the messages said that she had most likely been hibernating. What.... hibernating?? It said that sometimes hamsters can go into a state of temporary hibernation, called torpor. We were shocked and happy to say the least. The website said to give her a few hours and she would be back to normal and that's exactly what happened. The next day she was perfectly fine, running in her wheel and everything. We couldn't believe it... and to think that I had actually said that we should have her euthanized, wow! She is still doing fine now. Crazy, huh?

Lily and Carlie

Lily had a friend to come over recently. Her name is Carlie and she and Lily had lots of fun chasing each other. We have kept Carlie when Jessica and Caleb have gone out of town but this time Jessica stayed for few hours with me as Brandon was a proctor for Caleb's exam. Jessica and I had a great time hanging out and the girls were so funny as they played.

Here are 2 pictures of them looking out the window at their daddys... so sweet and cute. Aren't they both so long? Carlie makes Lily look so much bigger than she really is. I'm sure Lily would welcome Carlie to come back and play anytime, and I would too!!

YM1 Lifeclass Progressive Dinner

Our Sunday School class had a progressive dinner a couple of weeks ago and we were the host house for the first course, salad. There were 22 people that attended, I think. To fit everyone we had to get creative by bringing in patio furniture, borrowing a car table, and using the famous Reynolds chairs that we got during our time at NCSU. The whole evening was great, we had lots of fun with good friends. Here are a few pics of the time at our house and at the Byrum's house for dessert. I was too busy eating Katy's ziti to take any pics of the main course.

Beautiful Tulips... my favorite!!

Tulips are my absolute favorite flower. We had lots of them in our wedding and I just love them. We had a little place out by our mailbox that we wanted to plant something in since we moved to our house. Last fall, Haydyn, our neice, was selling things for her school and one of the things was a bag of tulip bulbs. We thought we would give them a try out by the mailbox. When the ones we got from her came in we also went by Lowes to get some more. We planted them last fall (supposedly the time to plant them) and over the past few weeks we have had growth! I have been singing to them, wishing them to grow and be beautiful. And... they are!

Yard Renovations

Brandon is making the best of his time these days by working hard in our yard to make it look really pretty for the spring (my favorite time of year!) He has been working really hard the past few days digging up the bushes and monkey grass as well as moving the rocks in our front yard. He put ads on craigslist for the azalea bushes and rocks and he got so many calls he had to quickly remove the posting.... thats pretty neat.

Our front yard with snow before the hard work!

It looks great out there now, a big grassless patch. Hopefully tomorrow he will be able to till it up and plant some grass seeds. In the back yard we have lots of leaves that we wanted to clean up and then plant grass. He raked up all the leaves and gather so many bags full of them. I was so proud of him when I got home from work, I know he worked harder than I did. We are excited for what it will look like when its done.

Another update!

We are really bad at updating this blog, so here we go again. This time it has only been about a month, so not too bad. So here is a quick list of things that have gone on in the past month:

-Took a trip to Asheville to see family.
-Been to Dunn a couple to times to see family.
-We had a niece born on Feb 13th. (sorry no pictures, but she is really cute)
-Valentines day (also Mary Beth's Birthday): We started early in the morning with a drive to Dunn to spend the day with Mary Beth's family. Had good ole red hot dogs for lunch, cookie cake, and cherry pineapple crunch. About 4 o'clock we left to come home, so we could do our valentines day stuff. This year we just went simple and not super expensive. We went out to eat at Lonestar, then we went to red box and rented a movie and came back and just hung out and watched it. We then exchanged some presents (which we both said we weren't going to get anything for each other). It was a fun day and day to celebrate both being with each other and Mary Beth getting older.
-Perhaps one of the most exciting things to happen as been the Celine Dion concert (exciting for Mary Beth at least, but she really had a cool stage that moved all over the place so Brandon thought that was cool). We bought these tickets back in November of 07 and they have been on our fridge ever since. Well it was an interesting show, she sung a lot of her hits and talked alot. Here is a video that we took with a cell phone camera. Its kinda hard to see her, but according to Mary Beth, its the sound that makes it so great.

Other than this we have been really just hanging out a lot and enjoying being with each other and Lily. Brandon still has not found a job, so he just continues to search and apply. But the house stays pretty clean and the laundry done, so hasn't been so bad and we get to eat lunch with each other a couple times a week. If it is good weather we will take Lily with us and we go the Carter Finley parking lot and let her off her lease and just run around, she really likes it, but who wouldn't like running around on such a wonderful place as that!

We will try and stay more up to date with this blog, we promise!