Grandma's 80th Birthday!

Oh yea, I'm two for two today! Here's the pictures from her special day. I made four different flavors of cake - chocolate, italian cream, carrot, and chocolate chip! They were all delicious...

Hard at work:My mom, my grandma, and I at her party - ready to eat cake!

Finally, the finished product!!Grandma decided she wanted an iPod for her birthday. I hope I'm that cool when I'm 80.
My Aunt Susie made beautiful flower arrangements for the party.
My lovely grandparents, Flo and Joe.
Aren't they the cutest!?
The whole Smith family!
Finally, this wouldn't be my grandma's party without a picture of Max!

Train Cake

I found train cake pictures! Yea!!! So..for your viewing enjoyment...

First is the picture of me making the cake - it was "orange dreamsicle flavor"

Unfortunately it turned out as a heaping pile of goo, so I did my best to form it into the trainiest shape I could.


Since Chris wasn't around to take the photos in progress, we have to jump straight to the end product. I used Patrick's favorite candies - Twizzlers and Red Hots - to decorate. I even made a little "Patrick" driving the train!




That little "shocker" symbol (on the puff of smoke coming out of the train) is the hornblasters logo. If you don't remember this (or maybe I didn't even talk about it the first go round), Patrick wanted a train cake because he is the very proud owner of a train horn that he installed on his car. He now drives around honking his train horn at innocent people and scaring the pee out of them. While I find it a bit inhumane, Patrick finds this funny. He's an odd duck, but we like him that way.

So...wow.

Time flies! There have been an insane number of things going on, and there's no way to recap all the events. Bummer. I'll see what I can do:

I've been married 4 weeks as of today - hooray! Best day of my life ("so far"). No pictures yet, but soon I hope!! Chris and I kept a little "wedding blog" from our wedding and honeymoon. I will probably post that someday, but it's not finished. It needs pictures. (Seriously, what is it with me and pictures...) The honeymoon - AMAZING. That's all that needs to be said. I gained like five pounds in a week because it was all-inclusive meals and booze. Now I need to start working out. :) That's next on the to-do list, actually.

The week we got back I worked 80 hours including two overnight calls (30 hours each, which helps make up a good hunk of that 80), and played with kiddos. Most of them were cute. After a couple weeks of peds, I flipped my brain upside down (I mean that almost literally) and took care of grown ups. I'm still waiting for a cute one. I've had a couple "dissatisfied customers" the past few days and it's sort of frustrating, but (adult) medicine is crazy challenging so I am enjoying it. I'll probably enjoy it more when it's not quite so challenging, though.

Next week is my last week of my AI then we go into "anatomy block" which = "do absolutely nothing" block. I think our final exam is a 1-page, double spaced paper on whichever anatomical part we choose, or something. I'm looking forward to it!

We're still getting everything settled in (especially after getting all the registry items dumped here from my parents house - holy cow we have a lot of stuff!), almost all the thank-you notes are written, and I am finally feeling like I live here. Yea!

It's been a pretty amazing month, if I say so myself, I think I like this whole marriage thing!

Hooray!

PS

So, remember how the weather channel has the 10 day forecast? Well a couple days ago it said it would be 64 degrees on the 17th...not bad, I thought!

Unfortunately, it now says 49!! and there's even a little note under it that says "Brrr! Keep outdoor photos to a minimum."

Weather.com, why???

Thankfully, everything is indoors and nicely heated! :)

Happy Wedding Week!

Yes, friends, I will be a "Wife" in less than a week. It finally started to feel real when we did our "last runthough" of the Mass before the official rehearsal Friday (our priest is a little OCD, we've had many, many practices!). Chris and I practiced holding hands, saying our vows (which although we're just repeating after Father Al we still somehow managed to mess up - whoops!), nearly bringing our priest to tears (I'm hoping because it was touching, not because we were that bad at our lines)... and now things are finally starting to come into place.

Chris and I went up to visit his friends this weekend, his "sort-of bachelor party" I suppose. It was a good time and we got to spend a little time with his family, but mostly it was great to have a little "us time" during the drive--I'm living at my parents house right now and it's hard to find a private moment when we're there. If I haven't told you yet, I am marrying the man of my dreams. On Saturday!

There are millions of tiny little details, everything hopefully getting wrapped up this week but I hope if they don't then I won't care. I like to think I've been a pretty easygoing bride but I still find myself stressing over little stupid things...but I keep reminding myself that at the end of the day it doesn't matter if my brother spills all his food on his tux or if I trip in my dress (OK that would matter a little!), I'm going to be married!

I wish that we could have invited everybody I ever knew, too, because I feel a little guilty that we kept our guest list relatively small...I wanted to invite our whole med school class, all our teachers, anybody and everybody who wanted to join in our special day. Things just got too complicated, though, so we kept the guest list as short as possible - with mostly family and just a few friends. I think it will be a wonderful day, but I just hope no one feels slighted that they weren't invited!

We have a pretty busy week planned, lots of last minute to-do things. One thing I'm looking forward to most is the "Couples Massage" we're getting tomorrow (my birthday gift from Chris this year!!)...I have never had a massage before so I'm a little nervous but I hope it will be amazing!

bullets...and my flu rant

I need to get to sleeping (I do need my beauty rest, you know) but a few quick updates:

• I had the most. awesome. weekend. Super huge humongous thanks to all my friends and family who made it great. I feel like a human being again (after studying and being a lame-o the past couple months) and it's great.
  
• Poor Chris has the swine flu (I think...I am pretty much an expert on it after being in B-town). I hope he gets better soon! He called tonight and said he's got chills and his body is just shaking...oh dear. 1) I hope he gets better really soon. and 2) I hope myself and my family don't get sick - we've been around him all weekend!
  

Time out from the bullet points for a minute, and I will teach you what I know. I worked in Bardstown (one of the largest pediatric clinical research trial locations in the NATION, seriously) with some "experts" on vaccines. Dr. Block has published tons of papers, so I think he knows what he is talking about. You can PubMed him if you want and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, this is my schpeil:

1) Swine flu is not regular winter flu. It's earlier, and it consists of mostly an upper respiratory infection (runny nose, maybe little cough, etc) + aches and pains + HIGH fevers and chills (higher in kids, their immune system kicks a little better than ours) + sometimes diarrhea. No other flu since the 1970s has had any sort of GI symptoms so this is new. Everybody always says "oh I caught the stomach flu" but it's not influenza. Influenza is a respiratory thing.

2) The "flu vaccine" does not cover the swine flu. At all. There is a swine flu vaccine coming out (we studied it in B-town) BUT it is not out yet. Hopefully soon. Unfortunately for most of you, you probably won't be eligible to get it (and there won't be enough for all of us). Babies, pregnant ladies, and healthcare workers (me!) will all be eligible first, then down the totem pole from there.

3) Older people (like, 60-70ish) actually have a partial immunity to this H1N1 (Swine) flu. This is because there was a similar virus that was around 50-60 or however many years ago, and they probably got it partly then. That's why they're not getting sick and dying from this, but the sickest of us are in their 30-40s.

4) GET A FLU SHOT because it can not and will not give you the flu. You may still get the flu (because 1) you already got infected BEFORE you got the shot and it was just incubating or 2) the shot didn't cover the strain you got or the the strain mutated) but one measly little shot may save you a heck of a lot of trouble. And it's pretty cheap. Do it.

5) This isn't proven but it has shown to be pretty true: The "FluMist" which is what they give kids now is a live attenuated vaccine that you squirt up your nose instead of getting a shot. The docs in B-town believe that the FluMist gives you partial immunity to the H1N1/Swine flu, because we had enormous numbers of kids with the Swine flu, but none of the docs that got the Mist got sick. Including me. So, keep your fingers crossed for me so I can go take care of my soon-to-be-husband! I need him healthy to walk down the aisle!
Anyway: if you get a chance to get the FluMist then I would try it out. For some reason they don't give it to adults - I think it's because of the live vaccine thing, adults have more medical problems...etc. and also I have heard that adults don't mount the immune response from that as well as the kids. However, getting a squirt up the nose is much nicer than a sore arm so I recommend it.

• ok back to the bullets. Sorry for the little tirade, I just think that people have no idea what they're reading most of the time, and for some reason there is a lot of misinformation regarding the flu. I hate to sound arrogant but I really do know what I'm talking about. :)
  
• As an aside-my hair looks AWESOME...eee!
• OK, it's time for bed. I wanted to talk about how awesome my weekend was but I need some sleep. More to post soon. Pictures may not come soon seeing as how Chris thinks he may die...so...don't hold your breath for them. ;)

Oh yes, and WASH YOUR HANDS!

whew

Well, step 2 is over.

Thank goodness!

It actually wasn't half bad, it was WAAY better than Step 1 (promise) so that is something major to be thankful for. There were no jackhammers, no girls behind me with tuberculosis (seriously I was going to kill that woman last year), and no ridiculously weird questions. Just me and 352 questions. I hope that the test went well, I am pretty confident I can pass it but I want to redeem my Step 1 score since it wasn't quite what I wanted. Of course, I'll settle for just passing again too, because I sure as heck don't want to retake it!!!

Last night after the test Chris and I rushed over to Dr. Smyth's house, the director of the MD/PhD program at UK. There was a big cookout and everything was nice and it was cool to see some of our old buddies. I had two (two!!!) glasses of wine and felt all warm and a tiny bit dizzy which was fun too. Although before you call me a lush: the glasses were tiny (like, those cute little plastic wine goblets you get at liquor barn) and I can't hold liquor to save my life. I'll have to start practicing.

Anyway, this morning I had an absolutely amazing "bridal luncheon" hosted by my Aunt Susie. It was seriously awesome, I have some wonderful women in my family and we got to spend time together and had a delicious meal (brunch, my favorite!) and everything was just lovely. Ah. I have some pictures of that I should post up too.

I also got my wedding hair practice done today! WHOO! I got my hair re-blonded for the wedding and she practiced the updo. My hairdresser is SO nice and helped me FINALLY make up my mind on the hair. Pictures to come (or maybe you'll have to wait for the wedding!)... I know, I always promise pictures but Chris always has them, and since I'm staying at my parents it's hard to bug him every day about pictures when I'm bugging him about all those other things.

Today was Gregory's birthday, the last in a huge line of birthdays for our family. Gregory was 18 today so he bought a lottery ticket. He wanted a funfetti-flavored ROCKETSHIP cake, so there will be pictures of that too. It turned out pretty freakin' awesome!

Tomorrow is my bachelorette party, I'm super excited. I already had a bachelorette party with the gals in my rotation group, so this one is a little added bonus. Today, though, I freaked out that nobody was going to come to my party except Sabrina and me (and although I would have tons of fun anyway with just her that would be lame) so I invited boys. My brothers, Chris, Sab's fiancee, all sorts of boys. So I guess it's not a bachelorette party, but it will still be fun. And there are people coming, they just never RSVP'd until, like, today. Oh well. We're going to paint pottery (apparently a prerequisite to becoming a bride), have a cookout at my parents, then have little fruity girly cocktails (those were planned before the boys were invited, but I'm still excited to try the 'appletini' that my mom plans to fix!)

I learned today that apparently I am a "laid back bride." I didn't really know what that meant until I found out that many brides require their bridesmaids to have matching hair and shoes. The dresses are long, so I think my maids can wear what they want.

My mom works with a lady who has a side business as a wedding planner and apparently she had just gotten her nails done for a vacation she was about to go on and a bride said "you will NOT have hot pink nails at my wedding!" so she had to take off all the polish from her manicure for the wedding, even though she paid for a manicure. Seriously people, there are more important things in life.

Of course, I think the focus to be on the marriage, not just the wedding. I could go on and on about that but I suppose I better be getting some rest, I have a crazy party planned for tomorrow! ;)