Progress

I have made a little progress on the weed bed (no, you can't call it a flower bed if it doesn't have flowers). Not as much as I would have liked to have by now, but I'm working on it.

Before

Not done yet

Carl has also made great progress on the bathroom. He is putting me to shame with how much he has gotten done. It is not quite finished, but we were able to have people come over today and use it.

Just a sneak preview :]

About Us

Just a little about us, our life, and those in it.

I'm Tiffany and my husband is Carl. We started dating in May 2005 and were married August 16, 2008. I grew up in VB and Carl in Portsmouth (so you have to cut him a little slack). He is really into bowling and bowls in leagues, I get excited when I bowl over a 100. The only time he has seen me play soccer was when I played sand soccer, and he showed up in Jordans. His idea of flip-flips used to be Nike strap sandals (I immediately bought him a pair of Reefs and those Nikes have never been seen again). We got engaged in March of 2007 before he left for a national bowling tournament. Originally our date was set for this coming August, but moved it up because we could. :] We moved in together in May of 2007 when I graduated from college and we welcomed our furry baby, Koal, into our lives that July. We were married in August at his Nana's church (we were not happy with the Pastor there) and had our reception at The Women's Club in Portsmouth. We "honeymooned" in Williamsburg because we used our real honeymoon money as a down payment on our house we had purchased April 2008 (the one we have been remodeling in previous posts).

"Honeymooning"

Koal is a crazy dog. He is mostly a good dog, but sometimes something goes wrong in his head and he becomes destructive (e.g., tearing a strip of leather off of our brand new leather couch). He loves to swim, but hates to take a bath. He has torn his cruciate ligament, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He has calmed down a lot since we first got him and he now listens to his mom (the non-discipliner).

We have 3 nieces from my sister, Mel, (Kaylee, Ryleigh, and Molly), 2 from his sister (Lexi and Carolyn), and 2 nephews from my brother (Caleb and Noah). We also have some adopted kids... Mason, from Erin and Mark (who is in the post below and who I was a nanny for when he was 2 months old up until he was 2 when my school schedule didn't give me a lot of time during the day) and Emma, from Kelly and Harry. We have a few friends expecting. Our lives are full of children, and we love it! Hopefully one day we will have our own.

Lexi (blue dress), Ryleigh, and Kaylee

Molly

Carolyn

Caleb and Noah

My all time favorite picture of me and Mason (this was when he wasn't even a year yet)

Miss Emma

Carl works for Advanced Technology Institute as and admissions rep. He is going to go back to school taking a few classes here and there while I'm finishing up my school. I am in grad school for speech-language pathology. I am finishing up my first off campus internship at a traumatic brain injury center. Hopefully in the fall I will be at a CHKD location. Then in May I will graduate. I am beginning to work on my thesis, so there may be some crazy up coming posts about that. I work part time at The Little Gym of Chesapeake as an instructor. I love that job.

So here we are, in 2009. About to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. Carl is finishing up the bathroom remodel. The only room left to re-do is the kitchen, which I can hopefully will be able to sand on my own. Then it is off to the outside to make the house have more "curb appeal".

Thoughts and Prayers Needed

It happened again... Mason broke his femur :[

Mason our very good friend's son who has Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or brittle bones. This is his second or third femur fracture this year. You can read about his story here(or at least up through June 27 of this year). Please keep him in your prayers for a fast recovery so it doesn't keep him down for too long (they are working on getting him to walk).

There are also two other little ones in our area who have OI as well... Kira and Jayden... both born within a month or so of Mason.

Mason and Ryleigh on a play date

Unbreakable Spirirt

Ryleigh's Birthday!

Ryleigh turned 3 on Sunday! Time flies! We had her party at the VB The Little Gym (since the one I work at "needs an over night bag packed" to go to). Here are some pictures of the fun.

On the bulletin board

The "Horn Jive"

Molly enjoyed crawling all around the matted gym, although Uncle Carl wanted to hog her the whole time :]

Riding the "Birthday Monster" as it deflated.

Happy Birthday!

"I need to eat!"

Sorry there is no sound, my camera doesn't record sound, but they are singing happy birthday and she had already blown out 2 of her candles, haha.

And just for fun...

On the rings

Yesss... I was able to climb it!

You Know You Are An (future) SLP when......

-You have the urge to do a fluency count on the President (I am very curious as to how dysfluent he is).

-Your friends feel self conscious talking around you in fear you are judging their speech.

-You secretly try to do therapy on your friends' children (Okay, let's pretend to be snakes. Ready? Sssssssss)

-You know the correct pronunciation of "larynx" and it really annoys you when others do not say it properly (especially your loving husband who has been taught how to say it)

-Your husband asks you, "Shouldn't he be talking more/having a bigger vocabulary/understood better/etc. by this age?"

-Your husband throws some of your vocabulary in every day conversations.

-You randomly say to a child's parent, "He/she really has some good articulation skills for his/her age."

-Your friend describes to you a cleft she saw in a newborn baby just because she knows how excited/interested you would be in it.

-Sometimes you wonder how many people actually have brain injuries and just don't know it (they lack initiative, don't seem to have a lot of control over things they say, they are not at all organized, etc.).

That Much Closer

I walked in for my advising appointment this morning and our director said, "Oh, I was just about to email you." I knew we were going to be getting our comps* scores back, so I was a little scared.

"Umm... is it a good or bad email?"

"Congratulations," as he sticks his hand out.

"Did I pass ALL of the sections?!" (you are allowed to not pass 2 sections and just retake them, but if you fail more than 2, you retake the whole thing).

"You passed everything."

If I spent more time at The Little Gym, I would have probably flipped in the air, but since I only work 1 day a week, I stuck to shaking his hand and telling him he made my day. All that studying paid off and that whole Friday before, Ashley and I stayed glued in the library helping each other. So keep your fingers crossed for her and the other girls who took it in June!

Now just studying for the National Exam which is at the end of this month. We do have a 99.8% passing rate and we are reminded of it all the time.

Here is a preview of what my nose was stuck in for a month:

I thought about burning it, but too much went into it! And it is so nicely organized.

Each section had a layout such as this.

And each had its own set of note cards, complete with a heading.

So much information!

At least we didn't have to have any pictures like this** on there!

*comps= comprehensive exam... sorry to confuse you Mel with all of my abbreviations, maybe you should look into getting that second degree ;-]

**They are drawings of different clefts... yes, we got these in our cleft palate class last summer.

What were they thinking?

As stated in a previous post, Carl and I did not share the same taste in house color, decor, etc. with the previous owners of our home. Here are some examples:

Brick is the new tile back splash.

Really? Was it necessary to make the bathrooms appear any small?

I felt I needed sunglasses every time I stepped in this room.

So I sometimes don't use a ruler when I hang things, but not using one to center the bathroom light wires.... probably not a good idea.

This is our shed out back.

This is what our shed sits on. I am scared for my life when stepping inside.

And while on the subject of our backyard... was there a point to those?

Anyways... Carl and I have done a lot to bring up the value of the home. We (Carl) have put down Pergo flooring, Berber carpet in the bedrooms, we have re-done one bathroom and are in the middle of re-doing another. I am going to see if I can't sand down the kitchen cabinets and paint them white (if it doesn't look good, we had planned to re-do the kitchen anyways, just trying to save some money) and then get new knobs and counter tops for them. I have no idea if I'm going to be able to take the brick back splash off myself, or if I'm going to have to have someone come in a do that for us (I just don't want to mess up the dry wall and then have to have someone come and fix it anyways). Any takers on taking it down for us? No, no one? Sigh.

Happy 4th Of July!

We had a nice day hanging out at my parents' house with my sisters, brother-in-law, nieces, and Mel's mother-in-law. The day was filled with laying out by the pool, swimming, eating homemade wings, more swimming (that may or may not have involved nakedness...from the younger ones of course), and fireworks.

That's the time out chair on the shed's roof.

Kaylee swimming underwater

The cutest butt ever

Enjoying his own pool

And when not in the pool, he was Cubbie's shadow

Enjoying the sun

Enjoying the water

They love their Cubbie

Likely Excuse

"Everyone else is doing it."

Not that I will have interesting things to say. I'm in school so life is not all that exciting. Carl and I are redoing a bathroom and I have started working on what are suppose to be flower beds (but I lovingly call weed beds) out front.

Maybe the people who owned this house before we did may read this, and to them, the rest of the post is for.

Dear previous owners.... I'm glad you thought it would be a great idea to paint the bathrooms sky blue, including the ceilings, because it wasn't. We have most certainly not enjoyed painting two coats of Killz on it before we can actually paint it. And thanks for the beautiful "lawn"... those yellow "flowers" sure do add to its curb appeal.

Such a beautiful weed bed.