Busy Week

So..we have lots of updates, but I'm going to have to postpone those till later :). On the other hand, both Robert and I have a pretty busy week going on.

Robert is spending the week in the New Orleans/Mississippi area for work---checking railroad crossings for the Department of Transportation. There is probably a lot more to it, but that is the big picture :). It is hard being gone for home 3 days/2 nights a week and not seeing Robert, but it is even harder when he is gone for the entire week....especially with limited computer access for him. But as usual....we will get through it :). At least I have a few things going on in Auburn to keep me occupied this week.

Because Robert is gone all week, it is my responsibility to take care of the dogs....not an easy task when I can't really bring them to Auburn. Thank goodness my parents were willing to keep an eye on our squirrel chasing monsters. And hopefully they won't pull any arms out of the sockets while being let out :). Thanks guys!!

So here I am....working late at the office on my thesis and successfully procrastinating by updating. I wish writing research papers wasn't so hard, and it doesn't help that I absolutely HATE writing. I can't complain too much though because my graduate career has afforded me some great opportunities. This week I and the other top 13 students from the state competition in Hawaii will be recognized for our achievements at the state house. We will be given an opportunity to talk about our research on the floor of the Congress as well as the Senate during legislative meetings.....kind of scary, but definitely a great opportunity. I was also notified today that I have been chosen as the department's nomination for the Outstanding (Master's) Graduate Student of the Year award. I have a few things to get together for this, but it's definitely an honor to be recognized for my graduate work.

Well....guess I better get back to writing if I'm ever going to finish. Hope everyone has a great week!!

Leave No Trace

Ok, so this is just a litte smidge of what's coming up.

As most of you know, I am a pretty avid backpacker, camper, and hiker. This weekend, Feb 9-10, will be our annual Leave No Trace Trainers Course in which, yours truly will be helping teach. It's a fun event, it's short notice, anyone is welcome. You know, we'll even teach you how to dig your very own cathole :)

So, that's where I'll be this weekend. How about you?

Update

So, it's been a while...40 days to be exact. We need to update.

We'll work on posting some photos and tidbits soon.

Sorry to keep everyone waiting in such suspense. :)

A little inspiration for you today

If you're feeling a little down and defeated, I may can help. You just need a little bit of inspiration and I have just the person that could help. Meet Bob Coomber.

Bob Coomber is a young 52yrs. old, lives in California and is the perfect example of someone that doesn’t let the curves that life throws, us hold him back. After being an active individual in his youth and young adulthood, he was diagnosed with diabetes, osteoporosis and became wheelchair bound at the age of 31. Through all of this and more, Bob has remained a positive person who not only pushes himself beyond the limit but also goes out of his way to help and inspire others.

He recently became the became the first person in a wheelchair to summit 14,246-foot White Mountain, which is California's third-highest peak.

Just recently he was also inducted into the California Outdoors Hall of Fame. His mantra is “No excuses. No excuses. No excuses.” He is an excellent example to inspire you when you decide that you just "can't get it done".

Take the time to check out this individual and let him share his enthusiasm for life with you. If you want more, you can read his blog here: http://www.4wheelbob.com/

There, hopefully that can serve as a little inspiration for you today!

For Phil

I didn't know Phil, personally. I knew of him. Phil was one of those folks that I associated with through an online backpacking community, and just never got to meet. I read of him, read about some of his trips, and debated with him from time to time. Over the last few years, I learned a good bit about him from our online community. He was a good guy.

Phil was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma in 2005. He didn't play the "cancer card" or make pity on himself. He was determined to beat it. Through all of his problems, trials, and drugs, he won. He says he won because he had an awesome wife, life was good, he had many friends, and he beat cancer. He always said he could and would beat it. Way to go Phil.

Unfortunatly, he didn't stay in remission long, and had to fight the fight again. He was determined to defeat it again. However, this time he wasn't so lucky. During treatment, he developed bacterial pneumonia and was admitted to ICU on 12/4/07. Word came out in the online community that he lost the fight yesterday morning, 12/13/07. He will be missed.

If you'd like to read about his fight, he shared his progress on his blog - Bear Thoughts.

So, Phil. This is to you good buddy.

-Robert

Sick

Blah....uugh....Blah...uugh.

Just a measely update. Bethany is sick. She's been home in bed so far all week with a fever and just an overall nauseous feeling. Last night her feever was nearly 102F. As of this morning it was breaking.

She'll be back soon. I'm sure everyone has been missing her!

Hawaii!!

So, I've been a really terrible blogger lately, but things have been busy with travel for the holidays and then travel for work. Travel for work wasn't too bad though because I was able to go to Hawaii for free!!! I was gone for about five days, and two and a half of those were for traveling to and from the Big Island of Hawaii. Our first stop was in Honolulu before we hopped on a little plane to Kona. Of course, it just happened to be raining in Honolulu when we landed and then it was dark by the time we reached Kona. Here are a couple of pictures of the Honolulu airport and a sunset through the airplane window.

There was a four hour time change that was a little tough to get used to, but it was nice getting the day started early with a quick jog before anyone else was really awake. By the time I made it back to the room to shower, this was the view I saw from our baclony:

And around the corner of the balcony:

We stayed in a pretty nice resort, but the resort was pretty much all we were able to see for the short amount of time that we were there. But the pool was nice to hang out in for a little while. And of course the view was fantastic!!

Too bad we didn't get to stay at the Hilton.....it seemed like it was its own village on the island and you even had the option of swimming with the dolphins within the resort.

Everything there is pretty open, so for lunch we had a couple of visitors that were hoping to get a snack.

And last, because we were pretty much staying on a volcanic island, there was lava rock everywhere. Instead of people spray painting the sides of the lava rock, they used bleached or dead coral as their "grafitti". For those that like to take natural souveniers this was a big "no-no" on the island of Hawaii. Apparently, if you take anything made by the island such as a lava rock, you would be cursed by their gods. Bad things have happened to people who take lava rocks home.....such as their house burns down. Every day the post office recieves hundreds of pounds of natural souveniers that people send back because they had been cursed :). Because I didn't want to find out if this curse was true or not, I just took a couple of pictures and called it good.

And they're off!!

Bethany's dad and I decided we would run in the Vulcan 10k on Saturday in downtown Birmingham. It was definatly fun! If you're looking for a great place with wonderful scenery, I highly recommend it. The course starts at Boutwell Auditorium, runs along 2nd Ave., down by the Highland Golf Course, and back to the auditorium. Of course there's a good long uphill in the middle followed by a quite fast downhill. Excellent. For those of you unsure, the 10k is equivelent to 6.2 miles.

The necessary pre-race photo inside the auditorium. I told Bethany to take lots of pictures so she did. Of course we need the pre-race photos. I had a little case of jitters, but they went away rather quickly, right after the first mile.

And they're off. We were several minutes behind the leaders, but it's all good. We had timing chips on our shoes (provided by the race) that kept up with everything.
Bethany took some pretty good pictures of us coming into the finishing chute. Mr. C finished in just under an hour and I finished in a little over an hour. Not too bad. The winner finished in 29 mins though.

The typical post race photo. I was pretty excited about it. I definatly have plans to keep it up. The next race is either the Turkey Burner 5k (3.1mi) or the Jingle Bell Run 5k (3.1mi). The next big one though will be Feb 10, 2008, which will be the Mercedes Half Marathon (13.1mi). If you want to come out and cheer us on, feel free to do so. We'll make a day out of it!

Halloween & Such...

So we decided to go to Baker's Farm out in Harpersville,Al to gather some pumpkins for Halloween. It was the same place we went last year, but it was just as fun. There was the cotton pen, the corn maze, small animal zoo, the hayride, pumpkin picking, and the lemonade stand. Quite fun. Robert took some pictures and of course shared in the fun with everyone else.

Bethany finally found a horse to ride. The great thing was that you didn't have to clean up after this little guy. I think we may even be able to put one of these in our backyard without breaking the housing rules.There were lots of pumpkins. Last year we saw short flat pumpkins, white pumpkins, and even the large pumpkins. This year, well it was still the flat pumpkins, but also knobby little pumpkins. There were lots to choose from either way!

Bethany says, "I think I found one....but I need to keep looking."Actually, she found more than one. She found two. It seemed like she would find one, like it, hold on to it, fine another, make a pile, and keep going. Eventually we talked her down to just two. I'm sure she would have been happy with more.

Well, now that we have them, it's time to carve them. Bethany stopped by and picked up some templates for us to use...Pretty good idea. I carved a weird looking half jack-o-lantern, half face on mine. It was the largest pumpkin we had and sadly, the design was still almost too big.

I took another picture, but I tried to get fancy and it didn’t quite work. I was hoping to zoom in during the shot to get a scarier picture, and it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Here’s to trying anyways.

The second pumpkin I carved (left) and Bethany’s little knobby guy (right).It’s kind of cool if you ask me. Under the light, the knobs really stood out in some of the pictures.Her knobby gremlin, all by himself. Also, it was time to make cookies. Bethany and her mom baked and iced cookies for the holiday. I think there was somewhere around 5-6 dozen cookies made. Since I was out of town until Sunday, they did most of the icing…but it still turned out pretty good without my helpWell, tomorrow is the big day. We’ve heard reports that folks in our neighborhood have spent nearly $200 on candy and still ran out. We’ll see how far our bag gets us. We’re planning on sitting outside, dressed up somehow, passing out candy. Hopefully it won’t be as hectic as they make it sound!

Why so cheap?!?

So how much would your body be worth to the Medical field? Apparently, mine isn't too much.


$4875.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

-Robert

I'm not worth too much dead either :).


$4190.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

-Bethany

Baby Shower Cookies

This past Saturday, my mom and I went to Tamara's baby shower. It was a lot of fun, and Tamara and Dallas went home with TONS of stuff for their new baby. Tamara's mom asked mine to make her famous cut out cookies for the shower.....the theme was under the sea. My mom and I had a good time hanging out decorating cookies.
While we were finishing up cookies, my dad and Robert went for a run. They are working towards a 10k in November. They were able to spend the day watching football.....yay for Alabama and Auburn winning!! When my mom and I got home we went out to the Santa Fe Cattle Company for dinner....it was really good. Overall we had a good Saturday afternoon :).

AL vs. Houston--Homecoming

A couple of weekends ago, Robert and I went to the AL vs Houston homecoming game. Robert's grandmother gave us 2 of her tickets to sit on the 30 yard line--fantastic seats!! The only downside to that game was that it started at 2pm. Inside the stadium was HOT and there was no breeze....unfortunately we couldn't sit in the sun any longer and left at half time. We ended up going back to the tent and watched the game with Amy and Michael in the shade :)....amazing what the temperature difference is. It was a pleasant weekend and Robert and I were able to spend some time with Robert's grandmother. Robert was also able to get some good pictures of the campus at night, but I'll let him post them when he gets a chance. Overall it was a pretty laid back weekend :).

This blog is now rated...

Yes, yes, we're slackers. We haven't posted much in a while, but we will. Hopefully this weekend we'll have something to post about. It's just been a pretty routine few days lately. Work, thesis, run, work, thesis, run.

We'll get something up here soon. In the meantime, feel free to know that this blog is safe for all ages! Just in case anyone was ever wondering about our blog. By they way, you can check your blog's rating here.

The Big 1!

Well, we have been married for 1 year (actually on 9-30-2007) and what a year it has been. For the day's celebration, we started out by going to Cedar Grove Church, which is the small little church just outside our neighborhood. It was cute, the inside was very traditional, maybe had 100 people at the contemporary service and turns out Bethany knew of' the preacher's daughter who just happened to sit in front of us. The preacher's daughter was friends with one of Bethany's roomates at Auburn. Small world, huh?

Afterwards, we came home and decided to try our hands at making Shrimp Pasta with a tomato cream sauce and it turned out oh so good. So good in fact, that I have been eating it for lunch these last three days. For dessert, there is nothing better than 1yr old wedding cake that has been in the freezer. Granted, it didn't taste like it did a year ago, but it was still pretty good. A few of the dots and swirls were missing, but hey, it's been there for a year. We're still debating on whether or not we'll rewrap it for another year...but probably not.

(Check out that cool table that I refinished while you're looking at the food...doesn't it just look fantastic?)

Unfortunatly, we weren't able to celebrate much after lunch. Yet again, we had to drive to another funeral home. My Great Uncle, Archie "Underwood" Achimon, passed away over the weekend and the visitation was Sunday. He was 94. We met up with my parents, said our well wishes to the rest of the family and began to head back home. Personally, I'm tired of funeral homes and funerals. Two in two weeks is more than anybody needs to go to!

On the way home, we made a slight detour over to Bethany's parents for dinner. Ribs, mashed potatoes, cheese rolls, and cobbler. Don't tell anyone, but she picked it up as take-out :).

Saying Goodbye....

A little over a week ago on September 20, we said goodbye to a very important person in our lives....especially in Robert's life. Lovingly called Papa, he will always be remembered as the smart, funny, generous and loving person that he was.

The list of wonderful things to describe him could go on and on. It was nice to hear all of the great stories from Robert's family about how this man played such a huge role in their lives. In the few years that I knew him, I could see how much he loved Robert and how much Robert loved him. Robert even picked up a quite a few traits from his Papa....including the love of ice cream. It was a bittersweet moment when we heard the ice cream truck during the funeral....brought a smile to our faces during such a sad time. He will be greatly missed....