My very last ever summer break is over. :(

It's been a while! But believe me, I've had a fantastic break. Been too busy to stop and blog about everything. So, here's a recap of my break in pictures... enjoy!

For the first few days, I deep cleaned the apartment pretty well...it kinda needed it. :/ But let's not dwell on that. The first Friday of my break, Lucy and I went to Georgia to spend time with my mom. My dad had traveled out of town for some work so it was just a fun girls weekend! I spent lots of time with friends which was much needed, and I got to meet one friend's brand new sparkly baby boy! Very sweet.

Wednesday, I drove back to Birmingham and then on Friday, Adam and I packed up our stuff and went back to Georgia. On Saturday, I attended Whitney's baby shower (which was so adorably decorated, and the food was delicious!!) and Bryan and Adam took a motorcycle ride up to Dahlonega, GA. I had mentioned in a previous post that I had some DIY stuff planned for break and I was not kidding! After spending time on Google, Pinterest, and Etsy, I decided I was going to make Whitney a cute picture frame for her nursery. I really wanted it to match her colors and patterns, and what better way to display the frame than with a beautiful picture of Mrs. Preggo herself! This was the final outcome: 

I was pretty happy with how it turned out!

Here are a few other photos from the shower:

Belly shot of Whitney (Left) and Bryan's cousin's wife. In Whit's belly is either Baby Jack or Baby Callie. We don't know which yet, but we're so anxious and excited to find out!

I collected the most pins in the "Don't say 'baby'" game ... only because Whitney was winning but then slipped up when talking about a baby show she attended, and I caught her! :)

On Sunday, we loaded up the truck and met Adam's family at the beach in Pensacola. Our condo was beautiful, as was the view! We had a great time. One rainy day we went to the National Naval Aviation Museum. It was incredible!

The picture on the right is moon rock! How cool is that?!

A 360 degree simulator. :)

One morning we woke up and noticed a ship wreck! Or at least that's what we thought it was. Turns out it was a target boat for the Navy to practice blowing it up. During the storm the night before, it had somehow drifted to shore.

One afternoon we rented a boat. Tammy caught a squid and Joel caught a catfish and a shark! 

 If you notice in this first picture of Joel's shark, you can see that the shark actually broke Joel's fishing pole!

Pretty shot of a storm rolling in one day. I loved watching it from our balcony.

We also went to a Beatles cover band concern and danced the night away!

We got back to Birmigham on Thursday and then the next day my parents brought the dogs and came into town. It was so nice to just have them here and the dogs were very excited to be back home (but after spending two weeks with my mom, Lucy is pretty depressed about her Grammie leaving :( )

My dad hung some pictures for us, which makes our apartment so much more like a home!

 This, below, is something Mom and I had worked on back when I was in Georgia with her. Remember the birdcage succulent plant holder thingy I'd mentioned a few posts back? (You can find that post here.) Well our Pier 1 store in Athens is relocating and they had e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g in their store marked down/on sale. So instead of buying a birdcage, we purchased an antiqued lantern. It had glass in it but we just took that out. I love the way this looks, and I almost think it works even better because it provides more support for the plants.

I'm not completely finished with it. I'd like to add a small ground covering succulent, something like John Creech, but Mom and I both agree that I need to let the current plants root before I disturb them anymore. We found a super cute table at HobbyLobby for the lantern to sit on and I'm loving it out on my patio!

Last thing --

In my post referenced above, I also mentioned making a wreath for my SIL. It's still in the works, but it's coming along well enough for me to share with all of you!

My SIL had requested that I make her a very large wreath, and I wasn't able to find anything already that size, so I made my own wreath base. I bought some pool noodles at the dollar store and then taped them together with duck tape. Then to hide the tape/blue noodle, I wrapped the entire wreath in regular burlap. I couldn't find a pack of only blue burlap rosettes like the ones in the picture she sent me, so I decided to buy a small pack of teal/turquoise ribbon burlap and make my own. I used this post from Craftaholics Anonymous as a guide for making them. While I was at HobbyLobby for the burlap ribbon, I also bought a wooden B. With some black paint I already had, I painted it and then voila! The "toppings" of my wreath were completed. I've started adding chevron burlap to the wreath, but I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with it. The good news is, since I've pinned the chevron burlap down with floral pins, I can start over and redo it at anytime. 

Anywho, that's about all I've done this break! :) It's been wonderful! Now for my last didactic semester. Let's do this!

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As if no trouble at all, year one is done!

Ha!! Yeah right! That was hands down the most miserably stressful (yet oddly wonderful and rewarding) thing that I've ever done in my entire life. We just finished our third semester, which completes our first year of PA school. Now we're all currently on break. I went to a celebration gathering with a few peers after our last final and it was pretty funny to look around and see everyone. It was easy to tell that we were all exhausted and numb with a side of relief, a sprinkle of happiness, and a dash of pride. Here's a picture of most everyone that showed up.

Reflecting back over this past year, I'm absolutely positively amazed at everything that we as a class have been through. I can see now that it made us all stronger as individuals and as a unit. We all relied on each other pretty heavily at times. I think it's pretty safe for me to say that I would never EVER want to do that again. Sorry newbies. Y'all just need to hang on for dear life and work hard. Unfortunately it's gonna suck really badly for a while.

So I have one more didactic semester left and then I start clinicals. I can't even believe it. Surely it's by the grace of God that I've gotten this far already. Time has absolutely flown by. We don't have as much "fun" stuff this coming semester, but the topics we're studying are very intriguing for me so I'm excited about it. Plus it's the last semester! I can do it. We can do it.

Annnyywaaayyy... I'm on break! Woop woop! I haven't done much of anything exciting yet other than deep clean our apartment and start a few DIY projects. I'll do a separate post on those later when they're finished. I've decided to head home tomorrow to catch up with a few old friends that I haven't seen in a while. So if you're reading this and you're in Athens, hit me up! :) I'll be there Saturday through Wednesday! I'm looking forward to it, although I'm sad to leave Adam here in Birmingham by himself. :( He reassures me that he will be fine. ::sigh::

I guess that's about it for now! I'll be back at'cha in a few days with more updates. Lots of fun and exciting things going on this break!

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OR, bird cages, wreaths, and paintings...a conglomeration of my month!

This is possibly the longest I've gone without blogging since I started The Tale of Two Heads.  I haven't necessarily been busier than normal per say, but I've been pretty damn tired. Being in the OR this month has really taken it out of me. Not so much the early mornings but more so having to go to class in the afternoons and study at night. That's the hard part. But being in the OR is so two-sided. It's very easy as a student to be pumped about assisting in surgeries, but it almost feels a little wrong to be so excited when you stop to think about the nervous and worried patients behind the charts and drapes, well, except for the elective procedures...I don't feel quite so bad getting excited about those. But with that being said, it's all part of the learning process, right? Anyway, I've seen some pretty awesome stuff in the OR...a facelift, mastectomy, craniotomies, rhinoplasties, total knee arthroplasties, vasectomy, tonsillectomies/adnoidectomies, diskectomies, cervical fusions, pancreatectomies, spleenectomy, inguinal hernia repairs, cholecyctectomies, sigmoidectomy, uterine prolapse repair...hmm, that might be all. :) And I've loved all of it. With that being said, I'm very curious about exploring the medical side of medicine. Surgery is incredibly interesting, but I can't wait to see what else is out there.

We have one week left of the semester and then summer break commences ... just in time for everyone else's to end. OMG I'm so ready for a break in school. Gonna be honest. I'm so over everything right now. I'm over living in an apartment, I'm over living in Birmingham, I'm over going to class every. single. day. To make myself feel better I daydream about living in Charleston and visiting the ocean every single day instead. Mmmm. Can't wait.

So, not much has been going on here in Bham. A few weeks back we went home for a retirement party for our band directors. They've played a significant role in both mine and Adam's lives, and they're very close friends of both our families so we most definitely wanted to support them. It was wild seeing so many alum there! And it's always fun to catch up and hear what everyone's doing now. As much of a whirlwind weekend as it was, we're both glad we went.

These past two weekends we've gotten the dogs out of the house and visited a farmer's market and a sidewalk sale in downtown Homewood. There definitely are fun and cute little areas of Birmingham. This weekend we also went to an antique store. I'm on the lookout for an old bird cage...I wanna make something kinda like this...

See, I've kinda neglected my plants outside and some of them croaked on me. :/ So I figured if I got a bunch of succulents it'd be pretty hard for me to kill them! And why not display them in a cute little bird cage?? Anyway, we found several little bird cages, but I didn't feel like spending $40 on them so we walked away. Can you negotiate in an antique store? I don't even know...

Over the past month or so I also made a few wreaths! I made one for myself and one for Bryan and Whitney for their new home. This one is B&W's:

And this one's mine:

I like mine, I'm just not sure I love it. It's growing on me still. I'm much happier with the one I made for B&W's new home, which is a good thing because I don't think you should keep your best work for yourself. Anyway, I actually gave it to them a few days after July 4th (their housewarming party was on the 6th), but I see nothing wrong with showing a little patriotism at anytime/all the time. If I wanna hang a little red, white, and blue after Independence Day then dammit I will! Merica! People have American flags hanging year round, right? No difference.

I'm about to make this wreath for my sister-in-law. I'll report back on how it turns out later.

Last thing. So, you may remember me talking about a painting I saw in Charleston back around Christmas. It was at a friend of a friend's house, Adam and I were staying there to visit the city. The painting was very inspirational and really helped me get past the big bumps in my first two semesters of PA school. It's my computer backdrop and the lock screen photo on my phone. To refresh your memory here's a pic of the painting:

Well as it turns out, this painting now belongs to me. :) The friend of a friend got married recently, and in the midst of combining homes with her new husband it was decided that she didn't really need it anymore so our mutual friend, Katie Stone, passed it on to me. It meant a whole lot to me. As silly as it may sound it's very special that I get to keep this. Thank you Jordan and KPS. :)

So anyway, that's about it. That's all the updates I've got! Adam and I have a busy break planned so there'll be a bunch to come, but until then!

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The Rainforest

Man, I can't even remember everything that's happened since my last blog post. I'm pretty sure two weekends ago was pretty low key. I think we really just hung around the apartment, washed some cars...stuff like that.

But! On Wednesday, we went home to Athens for the 4th of July. Adam and I got to spend a lot of time with both of our families which was so refreshing. On Saturday we went over to Bryan and Whitney's new pad in the Buford Historic District for a house-warming/spend-the-night party (we left the pups at my parents' house for the week -- we're going back to Georgia this coming weekend but I already miss my girls!). Ok...so hands down, this is THE perfect house for Bryan and Whitney. They have a long, hilly, windy driveway that's beautifully landscaped with flower beds scattered all along it and there's a pretty big pond in their front yard too. When I say pond, I don't mean a little rock-garden with a fountain kind of thing ... I mean like a tiny lake. And there's a cute little deck off the driveway overlooking the pond. Off the house there's an upstairs and downstairs deck as well as a side deck with a nice hot tub. And to add to that, they literally have a forest of wild magnolia trees right off the deck and hot tub. I felt like I was in the rainforest, so that's what I've decided to dub their new place. The Rainforest. I was very impressed with it and instantly fell in love! And the cherry on top? It's only a few minutes walking distance to downtown Buford. Too. Much.
The house was adorable, too. Definitely not a cookie-cutter kind of thing. It was unique and had a cozy-cottage feel to it. :) This was the first time I'd seen Whitney since she really started showing in her pregnancy. She had this perfectly round little baby belly that she pulls off VERY well. And yes, I did get to feel the baby kick! So exciting. :) We had a great time visiting our tight little group of friends in Bryan and Whitney's new home and we look forward to making many wonderful memories there throughout the years to come!

*Snap snap* --back to reality -- ::sigh::

So this morning I started my summer OR rotation! I know there'll be much to report on in the next 19 days... can't wait for more!

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My sleep study

Ugh. I'm supposed to be studying for pharm right now (test on Tuesday), but instead I literally spent about an hour watching youtube videos. There's this one particular chick that posts tons of "how to" videos of doing herself over to look like celebrities. And she's good. Like, really good. I watched her do makeovers on herself for Michael Jackson, Beyonce, Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie, and Scarlett Johansson just to name a few. Anyway check her out. Click here for awesomeness, but be warned, you may find yourself surfing her channel for a while.

Anyway, this weekend Adam went back home to help his parents install a new pool after their old one died not long ago. I decided to stay in Birmingham because I needed to study (which I really have done, I promise), and I had a sleep study this weekend that had been scheduled for months. Thus I stayed.

So yeah, this sleep study. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I showed up there Thursday night at 8pm and they showed me to my room. It was pretty much like a hotel room.

 After I signed some papers and picked out my breakfast for the morning, they started hooking me up to all sorts of stuff.

Sorry the pictures are a little dark. These things included:

• EEG (electroencephalogram),
• EMG (electromyogram) on my face and legs to detect motion and movement from facial twitches/grinding and restless leg,
• EOG (electro-oculogram) to detect rapid eye movement,
• 2-lead EKG,
• Two elastic bands around my chest and abdomen to determine the depth/effort of my breaths,
• A nasal cannula (not for oxygen, but to make sure I was breathing; it also had a little piece that hung down onto my top lip and was probably the most annoying thing out of all of this),
• A snore microphone which was another electrode affixed to my neck, and
• A pulse oximeter (which was actually really painful on my finger).

Every electrode on my body had this vaseline jelly underneath it (including the ones in my hair!) so I felt and looked gross, hence the uncombed hair look in the pictures above. After I was tucked in bed with everything plugged in (I was required to go to sleep by 10pm), they had me practice breathing with a nasal CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure machine) incase during the night I stopped breathing. Apparently if that happened, they'd rush into the room and put this thing on me.

So this was pretty strange. When they turned the machine on, the positive pressure made it feel difficult to exhale through my nose. Inhalation was extremely easy, which I suppose is the point. But for a short moment I panicked. It felt almost as if I was being suffocated. I "practiced" breathing with this for about 10 minutes; the tech promised me there was nothing in there except for air. After a while I got used to breathing with this and everything was fine. But then when she came back in the room, she turned the machine off before taking it off my face. That was almost as panick-inducing as putting it on my face because it literally sucked my breath away for a second. 

That night I slept terribly, of course. I woke up at 7am (thanks to the technician) with a headache and just felt super tired. They took all the equipment off of me except for the EEG, EKG, EOG, and the EMG electrodes on my face. I was much more comfortable this way. My sleep study continued over into Friday. Every 1.5 hours I had to lay down for 30 minutes and try to sleep. If I was unable to, they'd get me back up after 30 minutes, and then an hour and a half later, I'd try again. Not to my surprise, I wasn't able to sleep at all Friday. But I did study! They finally released me at 2:30pm. I was SOOOO happy to be out of there, take a shower, and sleep in my own bed.

As soon as I was released, I called my sister-in-law (she and the kids were in town again this week) and went over to the pool at their hotel. We had also hung out on Thursday before I had to go into the dreaded sleep study, and it was really nice to do something fun before being admitted for the night. Anyway, I hung out at the pool with them for a little while before they went home for the weekend. Love those babes!

Friday night Lindsay came over and we had such a fun girls night!! We drank lots of wine (I needed it after the experience I had just had), ordered pizza and watched Legally Blonde while eating popcorn. We kept laughing at each other about how well we were able to quote the movie. I mean I'm not really surprised. I only watched it like 394023 times in high school. But it's still been a looong time since we'd seen it.

Saturday night we did the exact same thing all over again, except this time it was the sequel to Legally Blonde: Red, White, and Blonde! :) Had so much fun with her! Of course I missed my Adam, but it was nice to just have a girls weekend.

Anyway, that catches me up to now. I've officially pushed studying off for another hour, so I really must get started now. Till next time. :)

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Fast and Furious

So let's see ... the last post I made about a quick family vaca to Florida was thankfully the LAST trip Adam and I made to Florida for a while. No fourth trip to write about. Instead, last weekend we had our friend Rickie come visit us! We had a lot of fun hanging out and visiting ... we went out to dinner Friday night, Adam and Rickie spent most of the day Saturday at the pool while I studied, and then Saturday night we hung out with Lindsay and played a board game.

This past week my brother started a four week training class in Birmingham and his wife and kiddos came down on Wednesday to visit so we hung out Wednesday night and had dinner together.

On Thursday I had a quick class from 10-12, but after that, Katie (my sister-in-law) and I hung out with the girls and Huston-Liam down at the pool.

So on Friday, I decided last minute to hitch a ride back home with my brother. I spent the night at their house Friday and had a sleepover with my nieces.

On Saturday we went over to Mom and Dad's house for a really nice BBQ with some family and then I went over to Lindsay's parents' house that evening (Lindsay went back home, too). It was fun to just sit around and talk to Lindsay and her parents! Her mom is a nurse practitioner and her Dad is a PA, so of course I absorbed everything they had to say to me!

Sunday morning I woke up early and went to church with my in-laws and then after church I back to my parents' house and we went to see my grandmother in the nursing home. It was a super fast visit, but it was really nice! I was glad to be back home for a minute.

Meanwhile in Birmingham, Rickie decided to come back to AL and Bryan came with him! So they had a boys weekend here at the apartment. As far as I'm aware, this is the only picture that was taken.

I'd say they had fun. :)

So anyway, I'm now back in Birmingham and I'm really looking forward to a little break in school. I'm starting to get a little burned out already, and it's only the 5th week of the semester. :/ ::Sigh::

In other news, though, I paid my car off today!! I'm so excited! Of course, this only means that now we have the truck payment to take over. Oh well. :/

Next time, everyone!

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Rio Lindo

Just as I mentioned in my last post, we packed up the car again, loaded up the dogs again, and went to Florida. Again. For the third weekend in a row. But we had such a great time! This time we went to my uncle's ranch (Rio Lindo) in Old Town, Florida. My family was trying to remember the last time we had all been down there. None of us could remember exactly, but I know it was more than 10 years ago. Maybe 15 years ago? Maybe even more.

I was really worried about going down and being disappointed in how I had actually remembered the ranch. I'm sure you all understand, when you visit some place as a child but then go back and see it as an adult, there's a pretty good chance it won't be as big as you remembered or maybe as extravagant. Well, I'm very pleased to report that I was not disappointed at all! The ranch was just as I remembered and I was so SO happy to be back.

We rode around the land on four wheelers and trucks admiring the beauty and looking for deer, hogs, and armadillos (we shot the armadillos :), cooked some good food, and sat around on the patios to catch up with the family. My uncle who owns the ranch is a retired neurosurgeon, so of course I loved having a few conversations with him about school. He says that if he were still practicing, he'd hire me in a heartbeat, :D which of course would mean that Adam and I would have to move to St. Pete, and Adam said he could definitely handle that. :)

Anyway, here are a few pictures of his land, but of course they don't do it justice. So peaceful. So beautiful.

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