4th of July

This weekend was the 4th of July. I really enjoy spending this holiday with William. Last year when I spent it away from him I found myself really missing him and having a hard time making it through all the talk about Independence and Freedom without my army boy. This year was a success. I went home early on Thursday night after work. Friday morning William and I woke up and ran some errands. I mowed my mom's yard (because apparently my 19 year old brother is lazy and incapable), got my haircut, did a little shopping (bought a super cute dress and some shorts) and deposited my pay check. Meanwhile William was helping his grandfather with some work. I went to surprise them but they weren't at Nana and Popi's. Instead I found out through the security gaurd at the gate that they were at Jason's Deli. Amusing!

Friday evening we headed down to the bay. We headed out on the jet skis and rode until sunset. I was proud that I wanted to drive and that William let me. I sure hope he was proud... because normally I just let him do the driving. Saturday we rode all day, played with the family, ate lots of yummy food, and William's best man Troy came down! We had a ton of fun. I almost lost one of my Rainbows, but luckily it floated and my jet ski driving came in handy when I headed out after it! Yay for not losing the only pair of shoes I brought home from Dallas! We shot off close to $700 in fireworks. Well, the boys shot them off. They had slight lighting issues. As in we had a hard time lighting any of them. It was pretty windy, but William's thumb pulled through and set a majority of them off on his own. Troy had a close call with one that decided to blow up on the pier, but everything else went pretty well.

Sunday we had dinner with Kelly's new fiance and her parents. It was a good time. I'm sooooo excited about having a sister. And Amy is a great one! She's loud like me (sorry Amy it's true), she's a speech path like me, she's going to be a military wife, and she gives me the time of day. Most of my family has really good relationships with their sisters in law. I really hope that Amy and I can always be there for each other from close by or far away!

Weekend with the Newlyweds

This weekend I went to College Station. I stayed with William and we hung out with Bryan and Jonna most of the weekend. It was good seeing them. I haven't seen Jonna outside of wedding or phi lamb events in a while. I insisted we by cookie dough, make margaritas and eat cones.... just a few of our favorite past times, but this time we let the boys join. I very clumsily christened Jonna's new apartment's carpet with red crystal light. I was so upset but I think it came out. Phew!

William and I also went to see The Proposal. It was decent. We laughed a lot.

Life is starting to take a toll on us. We bicker a lot... but I hear it's a newlywed/almost married thing. I worry a lot... but I hear that's a girl thing. He procrastinates a lot.... but I hear that's a boy thing. So I guess we are normal. But I'm just super ready to have a regular life sans school and separate cities. We (really just me) have been doing some job hunting. It is starting to really feel like we are going to have to open our options up to all of Texas. One posting I saw that fits William is in Port Lavaca. It's on the water and Victoria isn't far away. I feel like it would be similar to living in San Leon or Kemah and having League City nearby. Good news is I did a quick job check for my own sake and 4 districts around Victoria/Port Lavaca are hiring SLP CFYs (speech language pathologist clinical fellowship year). That's good! Graduating in May has really got me excited. All of a sudden I have less than a year left of school. Whoo hoo!

Good Ending

So overall this week is ending well. I went to a different doctor on Thursday. He recommended I wait to have the surgery to see what my body does. Basically he told me there are no guarantees the surgery would prevent the abscess from returning. So my options are to get it removed and endure the 6-8 week recovery or just wait and see if it comes back and possibly just treat it with lancing until I have time to take off from everything to recover fully.

So that basically means, I'm going to Mexico. I'm pretty excited about this. We are going to Cabo San Lucas with my dad. It will be a great great break!

I also am hiring a Day of Wedding Coordinator. This makes me happy. I'm so glad I'll have a third party person to take care of all the details on the day of our wedding.

Lastly, and probably the most exciting thing for this week is that I decided to kick it into high gear and graduate early. Well, for some of you this isn't going to be surprising. Especially since I was announcing this about a year ago in regards to Baylor. So yet again, I'm going to complete my degree early! That makes two degrees in 5 years. Pretty good I'd say. Really thought this lifts a huge weight off of William and I. This means I get to move in with my HUSBAND in May! Which is so exciting! We won't be wasting money on paying for living in two cities and it cuts off a little bit of money in tuition. Plus we can just get on with our lives. I still won't start my first SLP job until August, but I'll probably work full time at the museum if we are in Houston or wherever we are living!

I'm headed to College Station in a few hours. Hopefully sooner rather that later. Currently I'm in class and my professor is talking so fast. I guess she wants to leave early too. I'm so happy I get to see Jonna (and Bryan). We are going to eat cones, and craft, and possibly plan t-shirts, and it will be like old times! YAY!

I'll post some pictures on Sunday!

I wanted to go to bed early....

I had planned on going to bed early. But clearly that didn't happen.

I've really been falling off the wagon in terms of keeping up my blog recently... so here's my excuse:

Last Saturday (June 13) after my shower I had William take me to the ER. I had a very painful lump on my lower back (just above my butt crack to be exact... i know lovely right). It was making my toes tingly and really the pain was just unbearable. The very nice ER doc stuck a needle in it and swirled it up for me. Now that's not a technical term. Basically she tried to use Lidocaine and her needle to aspirate ("squeeze the heck out of") this-what she termed- abscess. She was unsucessful. Lame. Now not only was I in pain, but I was in MORE PAIN. She wrote me an rx for pain killers and what I later found out were weak weak WEAK antibiotics. Thanks nice ER doc.

So after a few pain killers I was driven back to Dallas on Sunday by my friend's Anne and Christine. Monday morning I got up and drove myself to practicum. Bad. Idea. I barely made it home. I cried the entire time I was on the freeway. I had made an appointment that morning to go to my General Practitioner to see what his take on this "abscess" was. Megan very kindly offered to drive me so that I could again drug myself. Needless to say the GP was a very short appointment. He took one look at it and said "mmmm, ouch, yea... umm... you are going to need to see a surgeon... I wouldn't touch that with a 10ft. pole". Thanks. Really. That's exactly the kind of encouragement I needed.

Fast forward to Tuesday. I got an appointment with the surgeon. And after a night of horrible fever and pain I was ready to have my lower body amputated. And while I was prepared for that, I was not prepared when the surgeon jumped me with a scalpel and began to "drain" the pilonidal cyst that was hugely infected on my back. When the scapel first hit my back I heard this huge "pssshhhhhh" noise, like when a coke can is opened, except it was coming from MY BACK! Then I smelled the wonderful smell that is pussy infection (sorry if I'm grossing you out). And then right about then was when my head went fuzzy and I feel sure my eyes were rolling back in my head. I said "I'm going to pass out". The doctor was like... "oh you are doing great". 45 minutes later when I could finally walk, he decides to tell me that normally he does that in outpatient surgery, but that I looked tough enough to take it. Again... THANKS. That again was exactly the kind of encouragement I needed.

I thought that was the worst... boy was I wrong. I spent the next four days in bed. My mom came into town... and boy was I glad she did. Oh and did I forget to mention that Lucy got sick in the middle of this all? Yea while doped up on painkillers I spent $170 on her at the vet. Great.

So if all of you thought that was the end of my horrible story. Wait. There's more. William switched spots with my mom on Thursday so she could go back to work. He took me to the doctor where I found out that I need major surgery to get this thing taken off my back for good. (Look up pilonidal disease). On the way home from the doctor his care broke down.

Okay while there is a whole story about William's car, I'm too tired. So I will save that bit of depressing posting for tomorrow!

The one with shower pictures!

So after I wrote on Thursday about heading home for the weekend... it turned out to be more eventful than I thought it would be. So here is goes.

On Friday Anne, Christine, and I coordinated our schedules so that we could all ride to Houston together for our shower. I was supposed to pick

Anne up at 11:30ish so we could head to school. Since I had to get everything in the car prior to that I got up early early to go to yoga instead of working out at the country club. Except, there was one problem... during yoga I realized I had a very painful lumpish thing right on my tail bone. Theories ran through my mind... pimple? bruise from working out a lot? tumor? my mind wanders... Anyways I chose to ignore it and went on about my day. I picked up Anne and we headed to class.

Now of course this class had to be the MOST annoying, LONGEST, MOST BORING class ever. Dysphagia isn't really any of our favorite subjects... but we go none the less. Well on Friday the 1st semester students decided to take advantage of our weak TA and ask a ton of dumb questions and tell personal anecdotes through out the class, with no mind that there were 115 other students that didn't care what they were sa

ying. So of course, the class lasted until 3:45. When was class supposed to get out you ask? 3:45... except even our real professor NEVER keeps us until then. Okay enough ranting... lets just say the problem was resolved between me and my friends. We decided the next 1st semester student that opens their mouth in class will receive a tracheostomy from me (minus the passy muir valve - which allows talking). This was the subject of Friday's lecture if you were wondering.

So FINALLY off to Houston we headed. Lucy and I dropped everyone off and then headed by Dana's to drop off some stuff for the shower!

Yay for Saturday! I woke up and went to my dress fitting. It looks great! I took my new hairpiece and my new shoes to try on with the dress! They took measurements for my veil and also need to make some adjustments to the hooks in the back for the bustle. Meredith, my dad, and my brother were all there to make sure it went well!

Then my dad and Annette and I went to lunch. We wen

t to a fun place in the heights. Kind of like and old diner place. I then went home and got dressed for the shower. On the way to Dana's I ran by Pretty Penny to pick up my invitations. They look GREAT! I can't wait to send them! Also I went by Get Personal, one of my favorite boutiques in Memorial, and got some graduation/hostess gifts for Dana and Nicole!

Then it was shower time! I had an absolute blast! P

ictures say so more than words.... so here they are!

Didn't break a single bow!

There is more to this weekend's story... but I'll have to save it for another post!