Happy Birthday Brynn!!!

Susan, Courtney, me, Brynn with Carlee and Staci

Last Wednesday night we celebrated Brynn's 27th Birthday!!! The girls all got together for dinner at Cyclone Anaya's in Addison to hang out celebrate Brynn! This was the first dinner that we have had a dinner since Susan delivered Carlee and was released from the hospital. (We celebrated Courtney's b-day in Sue's hospital room in June!) It was so much fun spending the evening together and so special to all of us to have Carlee join in on our girls dinners!!!

Extreme Home Makeover

A couple of weeks ago Extreme Home Makeover was in the Dallas area (Lancaster to be exact) working on a house for a Dallas Police Officer that was shot in the line of duty. Carlton Marshall was shot in he neck in October 2007 while on a SWAT raid serving a narcotics search warrant. He was immediately treated on the scene by 2 SWAT Doctors that cut a hole in his neck allowing him to breathe and then was taken to Parkland Hospital (where I work!) for care and spent over 9 months in the hospital. He suffered severe spinal cord damage immediately, followed by hearing, a stroke and even contacted meningitis.

Gregg and I both wrote letters to Extreme Home Makeover a while back when the Irving and Dallas Police Departments were working to nominate the Marshall Family for the build. (Lt. Marshall's wife is a Irving Homicide Detective.) We were so excited when we heard that this family had been chosen and the house that they were living in would be replaced with a new and much needed home complete with a therapy area!

We went Wednesday night to go help move in furniture and decorate the house before the family came home Thursday. We went out at 8pm and were planning on staying all night long. Around 2am things were slowing down and starting to stall and so we left. (I had to lecture at 10am Thursday morning and so I wanted a little sleep!)

While we were there we got to meet a lot of the behind the scene people for the show and learn so much about Extreme Home Makeover! We helped move some furniture, arrange things for the designers to look over and even got to do a little decorating- ie: putting the toilet paper on the roles and stocking cabinets with extra candles!

The evening was lots of fun and a totally awesome thing to get to be a small part of! I heard a rumor that the show would air in September so everyone must watch then!

4th of July

I love the 4th of July and everything that it represents! It truly is my favorite holiday! We had an amazing 4th of July this year and enjoyed spending the day together!!! (This is the first year since we started dating that Gregg has been off on the 4th and we have gotten to spend the actual day celebrating.)

We decided to rent a hotel room for Saturday night in Las Colinas. We got a suite at the Omni Mandalay on the 25th floor with a balcony so we could go out and watch Irving's Fireworks. The room was awesome and it was great to be away from home and to not have to worry about traffic and all of the heat. We picked up sandwiches for supper on the way to the hotel and brought our own wine and drinks to enjoy! We decided that it would be fun to get dressed up for the night and just enjoy a evening together! The Irving Symphony Orchestra played patriotic songs before the fireworks started and so it was great to get to hear all those songs!

And a couple of silly pictures from our evening!

View of Williams Square from our balcony (where the ISO played)

FIREWORKS!!!

Happy 233rd Birthday America! We are so proud to be an Americans and feel so blessed to live in the land of the free! Thank you to all the men and women of the military past, present and future that have fought for our country and our freedom!!!

Happy 4th of July to everyone! Hope that yall had as great of a day as we did!

The end of Camp

Bailey came back from camp on Friday and so Gregg and I decided to go back to Temple and surprise her! (There was a program for parents to go and watch when they picked their kids up and since B went to camp with her other aunt and was staying with her she didn't have "parents" to meet her at the end of camp.)

We left for Temple around 3pm in order to get there at 5:30pm for the show to start. We heard about mid-way there that the buses had not shown up on time to pick the kids up from camp and so they were going to be late getting back. We decided to keep going and called Gregg's friend Nos to meet us for dinner. It was great to get to see him again and spend some time with him.

The buses finally got in around 8:30pm (3 hours late) and we got to see Bailey! She was so excited that we were there and was so anxious to tell us all about her week and introduce her to all her new friends! Once there all the kids had pizza and then they sang a song for the parents that was so cute and had movements to it. After the song we watched a picture show of the kids from the week. It was great to see all of the pictures and see what they had been up to for the week! Bailey talked through the entire show explaining to me who was in each picture and what they were doing. It was great to see her so excited about everything!

After making sure that Bailey had all of her belongings together and saying goodbye to her a dozen times, which made me cry, we finally left Temple around 10pm and headed back home. It was really hard for me to say goodbye to B this time. It breaks my heart to know that she isn't going home to Seth.

We love you Bug and are so glad that we have gotten to spend so much time with you recently! Can't wait to see you again!