Birthday Bash 2007

Everyone has friends, but then you also have a category reserved for your "best" friends. The people you can honestly be ridiculous around, and you know they will still love you.
This weekend my husband and I made a treck down south to Nashville. Nashville is home to my best friend Karen and her husband Scott. My other best friend, Rachel, and her boyfriend Will also came up from Alabama to help us celebrate my birthday. It was GREAT!!
It was so nice to be with my 2 best friends and fun to see how each one of them is so grown up! Karen was married in September this year and she and her husband were amazing hosts. Aside from going out to dinner Saturday night, they cooked the entire time. I especially loved the banana pancakes. Rachel is now seriously dating Will and it was my first time to meet him. He is a really nice guy and I am excited to see how their relationship will progress :).

I enjoyed being around two friends who know me so well. We had fun retelling old stories, and catching up on new ones. We also had a blast just hanging out.

I had been craving Japanese food, so we went to a Japanese steakhouse on Saturday night. I just loved watching the chef perform as he made those knives fly! The food was delicious. I also got to see my good friend Lauren and her boyfriend. It was great to see her! We all had a fun time eating and talking.

Here are a couple other pics from the weekend:

Rachel and Will Pose for a quick pic at dinner

We were stuffed!

Season's First Snow

I was on my way to work taking in the beauty of our first snow of the season when I snapped this photo out of my car window. (don't worry, I was stopped at a red light). This picture hardly does justice to the beauty of the snow. A thin white sheet had lightly dusted our city and the snow was luminous up against the dark tree braches of winter. It was freakin' gorgeous!

I am so thankful to God for the glorious beauties he gives us in nature.

No Ordinary Delivery

Our friends Tony and Jaimie (pictured left) recently brought a new baby girl into this world. Claire Elizabeth was born at 12:32 p.m. on January 12th.

My friend Jaimie went in for a sonogram on January 12th and the doctors reported to her that the baby would need to be born that very day because she was so small. (they were afraid she was not getting enough nutrition in the womb). Jaimie wasn't due until February 8th so this was definitely a shocker.

After the baby was born at 4 lbs. 7 oz. they took her to the Children's Hospital. This was a very scary time because we did not know if little Claire was going to survive. Her lungs were not fully developed and she was having a hard time breathing.

Jaimie and Tony spent many sleepless nights by their new little girl's bed, hoping and praying for the life of their child. Thankfully, after a couple of days of bad news, Claire started making progress. She was taken off the ventilator. Soon after they were able to bring Claire home.

I'm so thankful for the life of this new child. I just love her already and am thankful that God brought her into this world. There is such innocence in a new child and I can't wait to see what my little Claire is like as she continues to grow.

Here are a couple more pics of her:

Here is baby Claire in her hospital bed at Kosair

I'm so proud! She is beautiful (even if she does look just like her daddy!)

Happy Birthday Suzanne!

My beautiful wife is now 27 years old. I have the best wife in the world. She's possibly the funniest person I know and definitely the sweetest. She does more for me than I deserve, and I can't imagine my life without her. Happy Birthday! Love you sweet thing

Alabama Fans

Since most of the people that read our blog are Suzanne's friends, I bet that we have a few Alabama fans reading this. Here's how those in Tuscaloosa are reacting to the hiring of Nick Saban. Gotta love those Bama fans

Where's the Testosterone?

Hey everybody (all 3 or 4 of you that read this blog), this is Rocky, and I'm making my first contribution to "our blog." Sometime in October, Suzanne came home and told me that she started a blog for us and that I'm supposed to write on it. I put off posting anything because, well, I didn't want to. Between school and work, free time can be hard to come by. So, when I have some, blogging doesn't top my list of things to do. Suzanne's vision is for her to keep everybody up to date on what we're doing and for me to write the deep, theological articles. There might be one or two of those if you're lucky, but mainly I'll probably just write about things that I'm interested in. What am I interested in, you ask? Well, I like books, sports, movies, food, music, God, exercise, fantasy football, and my dog Buddy...not in that order. So, my articles will generally be about these topics. I didn't know if I was going to ever add to our blog, but after reading Mark Rogers' blog (a Louisville friend whose blog we provide a link to), he inspired me to take part. Suzanne has done a great job with this blog, but it is in desperate need of some testosterone (albeit not as bad as Chuck & Ashley Flurry's blog, which is pink -another friend whose page we provide a link to). Therefore, this will be my task, to talk about our life and interests from the Y chromosome's point of view

There's no place like home and Wii wish you a merry Christmas

Rocky and I headed down south to Alabama for Christmas. It was wonderful to be with my entire family. Pictured from left to right are Stephen, me, Rocky, mom, dad, Leah (my sister-in-law), and David. I was so thankful to see my mom since the accident and as you can see she looks great. I had not seen my brother David and his wife Leah in almost a year. He is in law school in Houston, TX. We had a great time together, going to the movies, bowling, decorating cookies (as seen below), playing poker, and just hanging out.

My youngest brother, Stephen, got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas which we had a blast playing. It's almost like a simulator. When you play tennis you hold the controller like a tennis racket and "hit" the tennis ball. Modern technology is amazing. Does anyone have a way to upload video clips to blogs?? I have a great video of my husband boxing. It's pretty funny and he really gets into it. I have to say to my suprise I was a champion boxer. I defeated my brother, but the next day, I was SO sore. The Wii also has bowling, golf, and baseball which are all a little less intense than boxing. Here are some more pics from our trip home:

Leah sings her favorite Mariah Carey Christmas Song

Dad is REALLY excited about his new shirt

This purse has a story, it's hard to tell from the pic, but it is atrociously ugly. I got it from my brother one year when I asked for a purse, I thought it was a legit gift so I tried to say thanks. It was actually a joke bought by my sister-in-law. So after I got it, the next Christmas I wrapped it up and gave it to my sister-in-law. Then, this year she wrapped it up and gave it to my mom!!

One tradition we have at Christmas is decorating gingerbread cookies. Here you can see my dad is thinking back to his fond childhood memories of decorating cookies.

Stephen got tired of decorating the cookies so he started eating all of them so mom wouldn't make him stick around to keep decorating

Here's my favorite cookie!

Rocky and I pose for a quick pic while decorating

Go Cougars!

Pugalicious--Stephen hangs out with David and Leah's two pugs, Otis and Gracie

Mom got stuck dog sitting!

Leah and I have some fun with the automatic timer on my camera

Here's all the kids, how did Buddy get in that picture?

Stay tuned for New Year's pics (as soon as my friend Ashley emails them to me, my battery in my camera died over Christmas, gotta get a new one soon :)