Lots of PINK

A lot of big events have happened in the past week:

1. I ran my first 5K since 2007.
2. Mom was admitted to the hospital again.
2. Travis and I bought our first car.
3. I turned 25!

Last Saturday was the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run in Huntsville. 5,500 people registered for the race, and there were over 4,000 in the women's race that I was in! I ran for probably a month to get ready for the race, and my goal was to finish in 27 minutes. I was a little bit slower than that (27:29 officially), but that's ok. If I'd known that the course was downhill for the last stretch, I would have gone faster I think. Hopefully I can run faster next year. The race raised over $250,000 for breast cancer research!!! Very exciting!

Before the race

I ran "for" my mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother

Me and Travis

Lots of pink!

Almost finished!!

Afterward!

My supporters--thanks for coming!! :)

Mom started running another fever Sunday night and felt bad all day Monday so she ended up back in the hospital Tuesday morning after seeing Dr. Bondly. She had to stay until mid-day Thursday. They ended up giving her a blood transfusion, antibiotics, and potassium while she was there. Jenn surprised Mom by coming home Tuesday afternoon and showing up at the hospital so at least one of us was there for her! She also had several visitors come by to see her while she was there, and she was in the same ginormous room as last time. She's definitely glad to be home though!

I mentioned in my last post that we were officially car shopping since Travis's car bit the dust last Monday. I'm proud to say that we bought a car on Wednesday! If you know us very well, that's a pretty big accomplishment because we don't usually move too fast when it comes to big decisions. I guess the idea of only having 1 car for too much longer was enough to speed up the process!

After test driving a Fusion, Camry, Altima, and Accord over the weekend, Travis decided that the Altima was his favorite. It has a special type of transmission called CVT that means that it doesn't shift gears like a normal car does. It really is a smooth ride! He also liked it the best from a looks perspective too. We narrowed down the candidates to 7 Altimas that had the features we were looking for and were also Nissan certified and under 40,000 miles. Two of them were in Decatur (one was the one we'd driven Saturday) and five were in the Atlanta area. Monday morning Travis began to call each dealership and start the haggling. By Monday night we had two serious contenders who had already dropped their prices fairly close to what we were willing to pay. Lynn Layton in Decatur wouldn't budge much, and the other places in Atlanta either never returned Travis's phone calls or wouldn't drop their prices enough. By Tuesday night, we had a plan. We were heading to Marietta and Roswell, GA first thing Wednesday morning to check out the two contenders. The cars were very similar (same year, model, features, and only 3,000 miles difference) which worked in our favor.

So, we left the house at 5:30 AM Wednesday to head to Roswell first. We got to Regal Nissan around 10:30 AM (EST) and checked out the first car. It was just as nice in person as in the photos online. We drove it around town and on the interstate, and it was a really good ride. Once we started talking prices though, that's when things started to get interesting. This dealership had had this car for about 2 months, whereas the other place only had their Altima about 10 days. We haggled with them for a little while, and they ended up dropping their price even lower than we were hoping they would. We told them we would have to call the other dealership and see if they could do better than that; if so, we would head there to check out the other car. When we called them though, they actually said they would pass on the deal. I guess they didn't want to drop their price that much since they hadn't had their car very long. Overall, Regal dropped their price almost $4000, which I felt like was pretty good. I'm sure they still made a profit on it because it was a leased vehicle, and they leased it out originally. We were so excited to get a good price though!

After signing a bunch of paperwork, we headed to a different office where somebody pestered us for at least 20 minutes about buying an extended warranty on the car. Since it was a certified used car, it already had an extended warranty, so spending an extra $1000 to cover us for only 5 more years would have been crazy. The car is only 2 years old, so we're banking on something breaking after 5 years from now, not before. It's just funny that when they are selling you the car, they tell you how nice it is and everything, and after you've agreed to buy it, then they tell you how things will break and you better buy the warranty just in case..haha. They also tried a last-ditch effort to convince us to finance it, but we didn't get baited on that either. Whew.

Then we had to wait on them to make us a second key and replace the battery, so by the time we left there, it was 4:30 PM EST! We ended up driving straight home and straight to church. When we finally got home, we were exhausted but thrilled! Car buying wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. You just have to do a lot of research, know what you're doing, and not get talked into anything by a smooth talking salesman.

09 Altima

Pretty!

Yipee!

He's pretty excited!

Today, we went to the Pink Luncheon put on by one of Mom's good friends who had breast cancer several years ago. This year's them was "Boil Out Breast Cancer" and we had Frogmore Stew for lunch. It was yummy! Everything was decorated in pink, and there were lots of good "pink" desserts. They raised over $9000 for breast cancer research, which is awesome!

Mom and her girls!

Travis wore my Liz Hurley race t-shirt since he refuses to wear pink...haha

Sisters :)

Claire came for a little while too!

Last night Travis and I went out to eat at Red Robin for my birthday, and I opened a few presents when we got home. Thank you Cheryl, Alisha, Tyler, Emily, and Melissa for the soup bowls that go with my fine china! I'm excited to have more stuff to fill up my china cabinet. Travis also got me the teapot and vegetable bowl for my collection. Yay! I also got some lotion, body splash, and a new pair of earrings. It was a pretty good day! Tonight we are celebrating my birthday with Mom, Dad, and Jenn (Felix and Gabby came with us for the weekend too). I'm looking forward to some yummy chicken casserole for supper. Tomorrow, Travis and I are going to the Bama game against Tennessee. Hope we get another W!

A better nose, improved flower beds, and our hunt for a new car!

I've had a new patient since yesterday morning. So far, he's behaved himself pretty well.

Travis had outpatient surgery yesterday to hopefully fix the breathing and sinus infection issues he's had since he broke his nose 5 years ago. We had to be at the Surgery Center at 6:30 AM, and we were home by a little after 10 AM...so it was pretty quick overall. The surgery itself lasted less than an hour. Dr. McCary said Travis's septum looked pretty bad, but he said he got it straightened up nicely. Travis and I can tell his nose points differently just from looking at it, so it's gotta be a lot better than it was! Travis was so funny right before we were about to leave to head home after surgery. He was very concerned about understanding all of his instructions perfectly...like he thought I wasn't listening or going to follow them when we got home..haha! I kept telling him that I'd take care of everything, but I guess he didn't trust me :)

Luckily, he doesn't have packing in his nose (which is supposedly terrible), but he does have stents. He said it feels like he hasn't blown his nose in centuries. His post-op appointment is tomorrow morning, and he'll get the stents taken out then. I'm sure that will feel much, much better with a clear nose. So far, the worst part has been using saline nasal spray every hour, but I'm making him do it even though he doesn't want to. I'm such a mean nurse. He declined my photo-op when I wanted to document him wearing his nasal dressing, so y'all won't get to see a picture. Let's just say he'll be glad to not have to wear that thing hopefully after tomorrow!

Mom had her 4th chemo treatment on Monday, and other than feeling pretty "blah" yesterday and today (which is normal for day 3-4), she's doing pretty good so far. Unfortunately, I couldn't go down there this week like I've done in the past since I had my own patient here in town, but it sounds like she's surviving without me. Next 4 treatments will be a different chemo drug, Taxotere. Hopefully that one will have less side effects. No sense in worrying about that drug before we get through next week...hopefully with no fever and hospital stay this time!! :)

This Saturday I'm running in the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run. I ran 3 miles on Monday and yesterday, and it wasn't too terrible, so I think I can do the 5K without walking. My goal is to finish in 27:00 or under...pretty slow compared to my high school PR (21:00), but oh well. What can I say? I'm getting old and slow! I'll let you know how it goes in my next blog post...

Last weekend was a 4 day weekend for both of us. It was Travis's Friday off, and he had Monday off for Columbus Day (gotta love government perks!). We spent most of it working outside in our yard. Friday, we spent several hours pulling up everything in our front flower beds. If you remember from prior pictures, it wasn't much. The few shrubs we had were very pitiful. However, they did NOT have pitiful roots. It was near impossible to pull some of them up, so we ended up cutting them as far down as we could. Saturday, we spent most of the morning and afternoon helping Jessica and Collier move into their new house (which is very cute!). I can't wait to see it once they get everything set up! Monday morning, Travis and our neighbor, Rob, worked on trimming the bushes in between our houses. They had gotten very tall and out of control. They worked for several hours, but there is still a lot to go. What they did get done looks much better though! Monday afternoon was dedicated to pulling weeds and loosening up the ground in our flower beds. It was so compacted that it was literally hard as rock. Poor Travis...he got the rough end of the deal....swinging the pick axe all afternoon after working so hard that morning. By the end of the day, he was tired and sore all over. Big thanks to Cheryl for giving up your afternoon to help us...we really appreciate it! Although our flower beds are bare now, they actually look better than they did with the old shrubs in them. Next up is mixing in some soil conditioner, lining the beds with stone, and then we'll be ready to plant!

Before

Before

After

After

Ready for planting!

Those bushes were out of control!!

Much better!

Can't post in my blog without adding some pictures of the kittens! They are growing bigger every day! If they're not sleeping, they're chasing each other, wrestling, or eating. Not a bad life...

Can you find Felix in all of that junk? :)

Gabby likes to nap in her bed occasionally...

Felix prefers this chair

One of these days, I'll get the chair recovered...

Our other big news of the week is that Travis's car died on Monday. It's a 95 Honda Accord with at least 220,000 miles on it, so it's just time to give up on it. The clutch is what quit working, and it would be pretty expensive to replace, so we're just going to get a new car instead. We're looking at family sedans similar in size to my car like the Fusion, Accord, Altima, Camry, etc. We're thinking about getting something that is a couple of years old with low mileage. Hopefully we can get a good deal and find something in the next week or so! Feel free to shout out car buying tips if you have them b/c neither of us have ever done this before....kinda nervous about it...

Time to get back to taking care of my patient! Hope you're enjoying your week so far :)

Fall is my favorite!

I love this time of the year so much. The weather is SO NICE outside, football games are on every Saturday, and Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. (It always amuses me how stores put out their Christmas decorations before Halloween even gets here!) Anyway, October is a great month. Later this month, I will be turning a quarter of a century old. Yikes! I guess it's a pretty big birthday, but I wonder if you ever look forward to having birthdays after your 25th. Most people seem to dread turning 30, 40, 50, etc. Guess we'll see! :)

I put out our fall decorations last week and, much to Travis's dismay, decided that we didn't have enough, so I've been out buying some more cute stuff at Kohl's and Michael's. So far, I've only decorated the inside of the house. If we (cross our fingers) get a lot of work done in our flower beds this weekend, maybe I'll buy some outdoor decorations next week!

This pumpkin candle holder came from Kohl's. I thought it was really cute!

Another candle display for the foyer table...also from Kohl's. Our house smells so good these days!

I already had most of this stuff except the leaf garland, which was $3 at Michael's...

This was my birthday gift from Alisha last year! The small pumpkins are supposed to be place card holders, but I just used them for little signs :)

Mom also said she has some fall decorations she's not using anymore, so I'll go through that stuff next time I go down. We're going to be so festive this year!

October is also a great month because it's Breast Cancer Awareness month. Pink is my favorite color, so I love seeing all of the pink everywhere. I finally got a pink ribbon magnet for my car last week when I was at St. Vincent's with Mom (I've been meaning to get one for a while!). And, I'm slowly getting in shape for the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run on October 15th (next Saturday!). I've been trying to run every other day for the past few weeks, and this week I've been running about 2 1/2 miles through our neighborhood and the connecting neighborhoods. This morning, I finished in 21:35...pretty good for being out of shape! The race is a 5K (3.1 miles), so I think I can handle it. I also reached my goal of raising $500 for the race...thanks to everyone who donated!! Thank you for your support and for being so generous!!! :)

Mom is feeling a little bit better every day since she left the hospital. I know she's glad to be home! She's had an extra week to recuperate and run errands/take care of stuff that she probably wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise, so that's been good. Her next treatment is this coming Monday, and it's her last treatment of the two-drug combo she's been on. Go Mom!!!

It's been a little while since I've given a kitten update. Felix and Gabby are as goofy as ever. I really do think Gabby has a demon in her sometimes. She's just crazy!  I don't know where she gets all her energy, but it seems like it never ends. She still loves to be petted and held, and she loves to climb in my lap when I'm sitting on the floor or at the table. I think I've said it before, but she can purr louder than any cat I've ever heard. We call it her "motor", and it definitely rumbles! She usually purrs even just being around us, so she definitely loves us.

Travis is turning out to be the disciplinarian of the two of us (who's surprised!), and he has even been known to "spank" a misbehaving kitten (a.k.a. like when Gabby knocked over a picture frame and the trashcan in the bathroom last night). We still catch them both on the furniture every once in a while (some days are worse than others), but they obviously know they aren't supposed to be up there because they jump down right away before we can even get on to them).

Felix is definitely coming out of his shell too. He loves to be petted (when he's in the mood for it...he won't always let us), and he doesn't run away when we come near him anymore. He lets us hold him, but he isn't too happy about it. He's got a lot of energy too, but he's still more relaxed than Gabby is. He definitely has an appetite like his daddy...I think he definitely eats more than his share of the food. They are both getting so big! They are still pretty long and lean, but I bet they weigh 5-6 pounds easily.

Felix loves "sunning" in the kitchen chairs!

Gabby doesn't like to pose very well for pictures!

Cat napping

Felix is so cute!

Gabby snuggled up in a blanket in my lap

Travis and "Motor Magee" (Gabby's nickname)

They really do love each other...even if it doesn't look like it here!

That's better!

We've really enjoyed having friends over to watch most of the Alabama games so far this year. I don't think we've watched a game yet by ourselves...except the first game that we went to. Bama looks good so far! They play Vandy at home this week, and Ole Miss away next week. We will probably go to the Tennessee game after that, but that may be the only other game we go to this year (unless we can find some *cheap* Iron Bowl tickets!!).

Tonight, Jeremy, Tyler, and Melissa are coming over for supper. Hopefully Travis will get home in time to eat with us! He has been working some crazy hours this week. He worked (from home) almost all weekend, and last night he worked until about 8:30. They have a big 3-day presentation coming up toward the end of this month, so they've been trying to get ready for that. I'm sure he'll be glad when it's over! Travis is actually having surgery next Wednesday, so that may be the only way he can get a little break from work for a few days. Ever since he broke his nose playing football on the Quad in t-town our sophomore (I think) year, he has really had a lot of sinus problems and trouble breathing. He had one surgery on it already, but this time an ENT surgeon, Dr. McCary, is going to fix his septum and shave his turbinates. Hopefully that will help him a lot! So, next week, I will be playing nurse to my hubby instead of my mom! I wish I could be in two places at once, but I don't think I can make that happen. I did tell Mom that I could bring her up here and I'll stick her on one end of the couch, Travis on the other end, and Felix and Gabby in the middle, and I'll just take care of all 4 of them at once! She laughed, but I don't think she'll be taking me up on that offer :) Luckily, she's got a lot of options for people to sit with her next Wednesday and Thursday since I won't be there. She'll be in good hands!

Well, I guess that's enough "news" for now. Hope you are having a wonderful week! :)

Erin