Another child begins a journey

A member of a forum I frequently visit (daily) got the horrible news that her 3 year old daughter has Leukemia. She hasn't been told if it's ALL or AML or what subtype but obviously they are in shock and very scared. Please pray for them, the little girl's name is Gigi and her mom is Laura. They are a lovely family.
Also another board member of the same forum went into labor on the 24 and her baby is in critical condition. Please pray for them as well, baby's name is Joaquin and mom is Amy.

Sad Day.

Elizabeth Dunford is being laid to rest today in her hometown. I found a beautiful video tribute to her online. I'm feeling a bit angry right now. Why do these precious kids have to get cancer?? I guess I'm also angry that Elizabeth was cancer free when she died. She really died from the complications of her transplant, which she never would have had to have had it not been for the cancer. I know we've made SOOO many strides and advancements in treating pediatric cancer, I see it everytime I go to work, but children are STILL DYING. There are still those few who react differently to the drug or have a particuarly aggessive type. Please pray everyday for more cures and better treatments to be made. I know researchers are working everyday at St. Jude to find cures, I see their labs and equipment and read their articles and it really is amazing how far we've come. But we need a 100% cure rate. Please pray.

A new angel in Heaven

I'm breaking my silent streak to pay tribute to a very special little girl named Elizabeth Grace Dunford. She was diagnosed with AML M7 on March 17 of 2008, and exactly 17 months later on August 17, she went home to be with Jesus. She was 2 years old. I never met Elizabeth, but she has touched my very soul in a way I thought not possible. I first noticed her name on the labels of chemo I made at St. Jude and I decided to see if she had a caringbridge page like many of the patients do. I probably shouldn't do this, because I start to feel a personal attachment to these kids when I read about their day to day struggles. Elizabeth went through SO MUCH, she did regular chemo, then had a haploidentcal bone marrow transplant in which her daddy was her donor. She was so doing SO WELL, until she developed hypereosinophilia and her skin began to sluff off, once that was controlled, her liver started acting up and it was eventually found out she had post transplant lymphoproliferative disease which is like another cancer, actually the most common type to have after having a transplant. Elizabeth went to the ICU after suffering some seizure type activity, and the angel baby never woke up, but she knew her family was there with her all the time. Elizabeth was extrememly loved not only by her family, but by everyone who came in contact with her at St. Jude. A lot of people are grieving for a loss greater then words can express. Elizabeth was like a beautiful bird that flapped into our drab little cage and made it wonderful, even just for a moment. It was wrong to try to cage her though, and now she's finally free, fly sweet Elizabeth, fly.

2008 in Review

Hummm what happened in 2008?? I got my Canon rebel XTi which has brought me lots of joy and happiness. I completed my 2nd and 3rd semesters of pharmacy school and got initiated into Kappa Psi and got my silly nickname. We had a leap day, had a nice snowfall in Memphis, W FINALLY got a new cell phone, my dad turned 50 and I drove from Memphis to Sedalia for the first time, I changed my blog name and had my 100th post, me and W celebrated our first wedding anniversary, I turned 24, and W graduated from UT with his BSN degree. Some not so fun things happened as well, my car broke down completely, W's truck was hit in a hit and run, and we went through our first rough spot during our marriage. I'm excited to see what 2009 brings us.

Someone? Anyone??

I need blog help, how do I extend the width of the text area of my blog? NONE of my pics ever have enough room to show up, I want the whole screen width!!!!! help!!!!!!

Christmas 2008

Christmas 2008 for me was wonderful, so wonderful in fact I do believe it may be the best Christmas I've had in years. I left Dec. 22 by myself to drive the 3.5 hours to Clarksville to be with my immediate family consisting of Mom, Dad, Kelly, and Janice. Along with W, these are my favorite people in the world. I did very well on the drive and turned onto Northwood Terrace around 1:00 pm. I was thrilled to see Precious and Willie Bo (the dogs) and got a little sad thinking about how Lacey aka LuLu would not be spending this Christmas here with us on earth. Me, dad, Kelly and Janice ate Chinese then went to target and kohl's. Kelly is working at Kohl's for the holidays. Kelly spent the night at mom and dad's with me and the next day we slept in and then drove to Sears to look for a sweater dress for Kelly, we found a really cute one. We ate Mexican then dropped off some food for my mom at here work. Then me and Kelly went to a holiday party thrown by Kandi. Kandi was a good friend of mine back in Clarksville and I'm SO HAPPY I was able to attend the party, I saw alot of dear people I haven't seen in awhile and everyone seemed genuinely happy to see me. The next morning (Christmas Eve) I got quite a surprise when W knocked on my parents door at around 10:00 am, I was sooooooooo happy because he wasn't supposed to get there until that evening around 8pm. So we got to spend the whole day together. Christmas was great as well and I got a lot of nice gifts for which I am ingredibly grateful. It was a wonderful Christmas.

The lovely Christmas tree

Me and Kelly wrapping gifts

Me and W on Christmas Eve

Before Midnight Mass

Will got his Cardiac Stethoscope



Me and Sweet Janice on Christmas

Me and W on Christmas

Me, My mom and Kelly on Christmas day

New Photo blog

I created a photo blog to showcase my photography. Check it out.

Oh how I LOVE....

getting Christmas cards. I don't know why, but everyday I've been anxiously awaiting the mailman so I can look for Christmas cards. I prefer the kind with pictures the most! I love seeing how people's families have changed, especially the kids! Here are some pics I took of my poor reluctant cats. Enjoy.

He's not really mad at me, just about to fall asleep.

Madison says Merry Christmas!!

My Christmas tree is dying!!

So it's still a few days till Christmas and our Christmas tree is wilting and losing pine needles by the dozens!! Poor thing. I did some research and realized we were supposed to cute about 1 inch of the bottom of the trunk off so that it would have a clean fresh area from which to absorb water, well we didn't do that and the water in the tree holder has been full for several days now, so obviously the poor tree was not able to get any water. So I got creative and enlisted the help of my reluctant husband who while I held up the tree(ornaments, lights and all) he sawed off some of the trunk so that hopefully our poor tree will be able to get some water and perk up a little bit. It wasn't pretty to say the least though, ornaments were falling off and TONS of pine needles were shed, BUT I was able to put back the ornaments and it almost looks as good as it did before. Next year I know to cut some off the bottom of the trunk before we put it in water.

Flurries

There were actually snow flurries today for a short while, it beats the rain that's been falling non stop for over 24 hours straight......

Oh Tanenbaum Oh Tanenbaum

One of my absolute favoritest things about Christmas is putting up and decorating the Christmas tree. I LOVE real trees because that is what I grew up with, there is just something special about picking out the perfect tree and decorating it and giving it water everyday and smelling that fresh pine smell. We got a smallish one, about 6 feet, it is a Frasier Fir, and I love that little thing. If it was up to W, we'd have no tree, but I would be sooooo disapointed if we didn't have one. I can't wait for evening time so I can turn on the lights. I was extremely blessed to get a ton of Hallmark keepsake ornaments from W's mom and those plus the meager amount we had from last year, our little tree is looking pretty nice. I did all the decorating while W took photos of me, well he did trim the tree and put it in the tree stand. Enjoy the photos!

A graduation to remember

So W finally graduated with his Bachelor's in Nursing. We were treated to 2 ceremonies yesterday. The first was his convocation which was just for the university's nursing students and the students were hooded and given their pins, there were a few speeches and awards given as well. We were blessed to have W's parents, his aunt, his Granny, and Lynn with us for the ceremony and my dad and sister joined us for the graduation. The actual graduation was a University wide event which included Medicine, Dental, allied health, pharmacy, and social work as well as nursing students, and it was more of a traditional ceremony with presentation of diplomas. Both ceremonies were amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed them both. I was lucky enough to be excused from both my classes yesterday to attend the ceremonies. Afterward, Me, W and his parent's and Aunt went a local Italian restaurant and had frozen custard for dessert, it was quite a wonderful day. Here are some photos.

Thanksgiving cookies!!

So for some reason I've decided to start making cookies for all occasions. But they must be cookies made from cookie cutters so I can have fun decorating them. I made some for the first time today and they turned out pretty good. I'd like to get better at the decorating part, but maybe I just need practice. I couldn't find Thanksgiving themed cookie cutters for the life of me, so I had to make cutout myself and just traced around them with a knife. I made a turkey, a maple leaf, a pilgrim hat, an acorn, and a pumpkin. They were a lot of work and W doesn't even like sugar cookies!! lol Well here they are.

Nashville Zoo

Me and W went to the Nashville Zoo on Saturday to meet up with our friends the Hughes for a fun day of animal watching and picture taking. We got a semi-behind-the-scenes tour as well since one of our friends knew the aquarium keeper. I got some good pics and it was a beautiful day, but just a tad chilly. We ate lunch at the zoofari cafe and it was surprisingly yummy for zoo food. The highlight of the day for me was the lorikeet exhibit where you can interact with the lories and feed them nectar. Enjoy the photos!

Stephanie and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Ugh. Woke up to a grumpy husband trying to fix our kitchen sink that has been clogged with pumpkin seeds. Blah. So all I hear is him taking deep angry sighs and cursing every so often until he decides to call a plumber. He's also mad because I didn't change the cat litter boxes yesterday or do any house cleaning. So I get to school pretty early to begin my last minute cramming for a kinetics exam I have today which I virtually did NO studying for. Why you ask would I not study for an exam? I don't know. This happens every semester. I go through periods of burn out where I literally CAN'T make myself study. I was doing SO WELL too, I mean all As and Bs. I'll be glad if I got 5 answers right on this exam, and it's all my fault. *sigh* I did make it to the gym to relieve some frustration, but when I came out I had gotten a ticket. I was pretty mad about it since I've parked there for over a year and never knew I couldn't. It's only 10 dollars, but still. I've also been really irritable and wanting to eat everything I lay eyes on. PMS at it's best. BLah. I am attempting to do some last minute cleaning and do the cat litter boxes before W gets home at 11:30.

Halloween 2008

I had a good Halloween this year. Me and W carved pumpkins and they turned out super cute. I carved a kitty cat face and a ghost and W's was just a face he made up, but it was really cute. I had to work on Halloween, but got off around 9:00 pm and ran home to change into my costume and grab a bite to eat. I was a witch. I LOVE to dress up for Halloween :) My costume was a little shorter then I anticipated ( I ordered it online) But it was super cute so I just wore some shorts under it. I then spent a few hours at the Kappa Psi/PDC halloween party. W had to work and didn't get off until 11pm and was too tired to go out, so I just went and met up with some friends. We had a blast. I got home around 1am and had to be to work the next morning at 9:30am, but I got up with no problems thank goodness. I made some delicious pumpkin muffins today and we had meatloaf, sauteed veggies, and mashed potatoes for dinner tonight. Here are some pics.

17 month old baby boy with DS READING!

Pumpkin patch

Me and W FINALLY made it to the pumpkin patch. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I liked it. It was pretty much just a pumpkin patch and some other field with beans that sorta looked like peanuts and a corn maze and a little stand with fruits and vegetables. It was neat though and me and W had lots of fun looking at all the green pumpkins LOL. I don't know why but I found them hilarious. We picked up some acorn squash, cherry tomatoes, and homegrown apples and of course pumpkins. I plan on making some dutch apple pie with a struesel topping here in the next few days. We ate at a crazy buffet that had Chinese AND southern food. It was OK. LOL but I don't think we'll be going back. OT: Janice went to the doctor and apparently she DOES NOT have high blood pressure. It was taken twice and was about 100/80. We're not sure why it was so high when I took it, maybe because the cuff was a little too small and maybe because she was excited. I'm just really glad she's healthy. Well here are some pics.

Oh me oh my.

That's what's going through my head right now LOL. I got off work only 1.5 hours ago and I have to go to bed VERY SOON because I have to be to work at 9:30 am tomorrow. I wanted to share about me and Will's day. He woke me up very sweetly this morning and asked me if I wanted to go to the pumpkin patch. I had wanted to go on Thursday but sadly it rained ALL DAY. I was surprised that he offered since he didn't seem really excited about it. Well we got directions through google maps, but something went wrong and we never found it! So sadly no pumpkin patch today, but he promises me we'll do it before halloween. We did eat at Bhan Thai which is a really good Thai food place that Will had never got to try before. He loved it. I have begun the process of putting away all my warm weather clothes and pulling out all my fall sweaters. I hate doing it but love after I'm done. I will also be getting rid of quite of few clothes that are too big for me. That's right, I weigh around 118-119lbs now which is below my goal of 120. Not sure how that happened really. But people have noticed and that feels really awesome. My parents are in Tunica again so I'm going to see them tomorrow after work. I thought I would stay the night, but I may not now since I want me and Will to go to church on Sunday. We'll see. Well gotta go to sleep.

Got a new jacket today....Woot woot!

I got an email from Victoria's Secret today that today and today only they'd be offering select coats 20% off. I have one nice coat I got from my mom last year, but I've really been wanting a longer one as well so this is the one I chose. Isn't it cute? Now I can't wait for it to get cold. lol.