March 2012

Current Temperature:  80 degrees with isolated thunderstorms
Current Gas Price:  $3.59 per gallon
Total Cockroach count: 4 (I keep waiting for my first summertime sighting...eek!)

Howdy familial relations!

How are each and every one of you? We miss y'all and have thought about you this week! It's about time we saw you! We're excited that we are going to see most of you pretty soon! Just a couple of months and we'll be together!  :)

So, ok, March.  Well the good news (for y'all anyway) is that March was way more exciting than January and February so you'll actually have some fun things to read/see!  As of now, I am completely finished with my IEP audits and am only one week away from Spring Break! YES!! This month has been filled with working weekends, staying late at work, and crying on Wesley's shoulder but I have survived it and am DONE!! It is a good feeling to finish something and know you put your best effort toward it, isn't it? Now that rewriting the IEPs for this audit is finished, I can now begin my testing and writing the IEPs (again!) for annual reviews.  And there was something else I was supposed to do........hmmm.......oh yeah, therapy! Haha, just kidding! This time of year is pretty crazy for all the speech therapists.  It's especially crazy down here because they do all their IEPs at the end of the year!  But the first thing to go in order to get all this done is your regular therapy schedule.  Interesting...

Wesley is almost finished with his ER block and will begin Block 11 (community medicine) next Thursday.  Community medicine is probably the easiest block of them all so Wesley will have lots of free time in April.  We're going to be in Charleston for vacation of 1/4 weeks of the block and then he really only has a couple more things he needs to do! The rest if free time! The best part is that he will get every weekend off (with the exception of a CME he's doing in Atlanta at the end of April).  Wesley is taking his STEP 3 exam this coming Tuesday and Wednesday (April 3-4) so please keep him in your prayers.   As usual, he is not at all nervous and feels confident that he'll do well on it! Hee hee, so unlike what I think before big tests...but hey, I'm not the doctor!  THANK YOU to all of you for supporting Wes on National Doctor's Day! He felt very loved and appreciated by your kind words!

The most exciting thing that happened this month was the resident retreat, which was early in March.  This is a weekend, sponsored by the hospital, where all the residents go to some retreat location (either beach or mountains) and hang out all weekend.   The attendings are responsible for staffing the hospital and being on-call and all that jazz...so it's a pretty great weekend for the residents! Everyone brings their family and we all just have a great time!   We spent the weekend at the Ridges Resort (http://www.theridgesresort.com/) in Georgia.  Our villa ended up being the "party house" and everyone came over to our place to hang out! Which was awesome until about midnight when I wanted to go to sleep ;) We also went hiking together on Saturday, which was super fun! Our friend, Matt Haldeman, is a big hiking guy and he planned a hike for everyone with lots of waterfalls and stuff.  It was great to see so many of the residents come with their babies strapped to their chest and what not! Haha, we weren't sure what kind of turn we'd get but lots of them came! And the waterfalls were beautiful! Check out the pictures:

This is me with Amy Boyer (left) and Clory Foust (right) watching the guys play football.    These are by far my two favorite friends down here! With the exception of Lauren Pinkston, whom I also really love but is not in this picture!  She's in another picture though!  I have just really enjoyed spending so much time with other ladies, since our husbands are always working there is always some other girl to hang out with and it's been so much fun! 

One of the little girls was picking flowers and putting them in our hair.  Amy didn't want to put  her flower in her hair,  so I took it and put it behind my free ear.  She started cracking up and thought I looked like a little alien guy or something.  I suppose you had to be there but we were all laughing pretty hard...I made her get in this picture with me since she was laughing so hard! 

Here's Wes playing football with the guys.   

Here we are by the first waterfall! 

Here's a bunch of us hanging out while everyone gets pictures by the waterfall.  Not my best photo ;)

Here we are by the second waterfall. 

Wes, Payton, and Matt climbed over a bunch of rocks and stuff to get closer to the waterfall. 

I did not bring my jacket so I was freezing by the waterfalls.  We were standing in the shade and the mist from the waterfall was so chilly! Clory looks less cold than me in the this picture I think...but she was cold too!! Do I look cold? 

This is Lauren Pinkston.  She has bad knees too so I let her borrow one of my trekking poles  to try out!  She was a big fan after using it to go down hill.  Here we are showing off our "ghetto" trekking poles! 

We stopped at a scenic overlook on our way back on Sunday.    It was pretty lovely! 

So there you have it, the Resident Retreat! We really did have a great time!  We were talking afterward about how it really felt a lot like being at college again.  Like at a Mosaic retreat where we'd all hang out and just do whatever.  But there were a lot of people around and it was just fun to "hang out" together...and I mean like really hang out...not like the hang out until 10:00 when everyone has to go because all of the resident's have to work the next morning kind of a thing.  We also had a church service together on Sunday. Lauren's husband, Gavin, did the teaching and Wesley did the music.  I must say I was super impressed with Wesley because we did not have any instruments so he would just start singing a song and then everyone would join in...yikes!  I would have been beside myself having to sing in front of everyone but he was calm, cool, and collected as usual and just belted it out! And he sounded great too!

Several weeks later, we hosted 5 high school boys (plus two leaders) at our house for the weekend.  They were doing a little retreat of their own and Ben, the student pastor, had people in the church host the kids for the weekend.  We ended up with the boys because they were the smallest group and we have a pretty small place! I certainly would have preferred the girls but it turned out to be a blessing because the Thursday before, Clory and I decided at 10:30 to go and see the Hunger Games at the midnight showing.  It was amazing to me that we were still able to get tickets at 10:30 but this is Greenwood, so they still had some available! We also got there at 11:45 and still got great seats! Sweet!  I totally loved the movie and thought they did a pretty good job of keeping true to the book but also having it make sense to people who had not read the book.  Did any of you see it? What did you think?  Well anyway, so I got three hours of sleep the night before the boys came for the weekend.  So it ended up being a good thing that it was boys and not girls because I would have wanted to hang out with the girls and instead I went to sleep :)  Haha, Wes enjoyed getting to know the guys a little better though!

Just last night, we went and saw the Hunger Games again with some friends.  It was fun to see it with other people a second time too!  We went to Fusion for dinner beforehand!  It's a pretty good Thai place in Greenwood.  Here we all are:

From Left to Right:  Gavin & Lauren Pinkston, Nicole Kennedy, Matt Haldeman, Payton & Clory Foust,  and me & Wes. All of the girls (and Wes) had read the book so we were excited to see it in action (even though Clory and I had already seen it!!) 

Welp...that's about it!  We're having dinner with Jim & Opal Halderman (G&G Haldy) tonight, so we are really excited to see them! They are headed back up to Ohio and are going to stop to see us on their way! Jim is doing much better but please continue to keep him in your prayers! We love and miss you all! Please let us know how we can be praying for you!! Hope you're all doing well and we can't wait to see you in June!

February 2012

Current Weather: 80 degrees and sunny
Current Gas Price:  $3.56 per gallon
Total Cockroach count:  4

Hello dear family...well I lied when I told you that January's post would be the most boring to date because really THIS ONE is going to be the most boring post!  Haha, in fact February was so uneventful that we took NO pictures at all during the entire month....awesome!

We have basically just been working, working, working.  Wes is finished with Block 9 (Peds).  So he's officially in Block 10 (ER) now.  It is so crazy that we are already in Block 10! This intern year has gone SO fast and we can hardly believe that it's almost over.  Wes comments on this fact between on-call shifts, "I'm SO happy...I can't wait to not be an intern anymore."  Well said Wesley!

Work has picked for me as well because of the crazy way they do their IEPs here! In Ohio, IEPs start after an initial evaluation and end a full year after the "Initial IEP date."  Here, the IEPs start after an initial evaluation but end on the last day of school.  SO...in Ohio I had to write IEPs all throughout the year and had IEP meetings sprinkled throughout the year.  But here I will have over 40 IEPs to write and meetings to attend in only a week or two (they like you to keep the new IEP date as close to the end date as possible).  So basically, May will be a crazy month.  Also, because of the way they do their IEPs, I have not been able to dismiss any of my kids, even though some are ready to go, but have had to add all the new ones that I evaluated this year...so my caseload is nice and plump and I'm finding myself having to do a lot of work at home just to keep up! BUT...only 10 more weeks until summer vacation! WAHOO!!

Ok, so wow...that's all I've got! Sorry February was so boring but we've got a lot going on in March so we should have more to update you on! We love you all and miss you! We think of you often and want to hear what's going on in your life! Please keep us updated!

Love you!