Walker & Emily: 2009

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Christmastime

After a full week in Montgomery, we are back in Birmingham... Our week was filled with delicious food, family, children, Christmas decor, coffee, relaxation, and did I mention all the delicious food? The week in photos...

Hope your Christmas was merry!

Monday, December 21, 2009

6 weeks later...

We are still alive! My apologies for the extensive blogging hiatus. Life has been nothing short of crazy the past several weeks, and blogging just didn't quite make the cut on the priority list. The good news? Both Walker & I are off until Jan 4, and excited doesn't even begin to cover how we feel about this time to rest. To catch you up since the last post (be forewarned, it's a long one)...

These two found out they are going to have a baby! Baby G will be making his/her debut in late June, and we are so thrilled to be adding another kiddo to the family!

We moved! It's a long story, but in sum, one of our neighbors was leaving the country for a couple of years and wondered if we would be interested in renting her (much bigger and nicer) home while she was gone. As much as we loved our little 2 bedroom/1 bathroom, we couldn't turn down the extra space (and cheaper rent!). Several weeks later we packed up our things and moved 2 doors down to our new home!

Sort of big for our tiny family, right? It took us awhile to make it feel homey, especially with our crazy schedules, and although we still have a long way to go, we are now quite cozy in our new place. The new home came with an added bonus that we are still getting used to...

That's right folks. This dog-loving, cat-disliking couple is now responsible for the care of two felines. Part of the reduced-rent deal involved taking care of Dr. Barbara's two cats (the other looks just like this one - we have trouble telling them apart). Formerly named Micah and Ashley, we have renamed them Garfield and Chloe. Classy, right?

We headed to Montgomery for Thanksgiving, and although it was only for a couple days, we had a wonderful time visiting, and it made us even more excited about being able to get away for several days at Christmas. I was a poor documenter of the occasion, but did snap this sweet one of Matt and Lauren...

A couple of weeks ago we hosted a dinner party to celebrate Fran's 25th birthday. Close friends desperately missing each other + a wonderful occasion to celebrate + delicious food + wine + Cranium = ridiculous amounts of fun.

Since Walker & I finished up last Friday, we have enjoyed sleep, coffee, pajamas, hot chocolate, Christmas decorations, shopping for and wrapping gifts, chocolate bark, delicious homemade meals, and quiet nights at home. Hooray for a time of rest and Merry Christmas to everyone!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Adeline Elizabeth

Meet Adeline...

Lizzie and Brian welcomed daughter #2 into the world on October 31 at 11:53 p.m. Her sister Campbell loves her...

As does her aunt...

Newborns can only be so entertaining for a 20 month old, so we spent lots of time outside playing with Campbell on our visit...

She loves Bella...

And Bella loves her. Although on this particular afternoon, the chicken pictured below seemed to be Bella's favorite source of entertainment (the chicken's interest in Bella was not mutual)...

Congrats to Lizzie and Brian for their beautiful daughter, and hooray for adding another niece!

Monday, November 9, 2009

Humor in medicine

The other day one of my residents got a call from a pharmacist... apparently someone stole one of her prescriptions, filled it out themselves, and attempted to fill it at a pharmacy. What was the prescription for?

"Mofeen, 1 gallon"

For anyone confused, "mofeen" = morphine, and it is most definitely not dosed by the gallon :)

(just a little tidbit to fill the gap since my last post... one to come soon with pictures of our two sweet Norris nieces!)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Reviving Old Furniture

So we picked up this old piece of furniture pictured below. The piece came from my Great Aunt's house. And yes, it screams 1970's. So we had the idea to try to revive the old lady and make it useful as we move into a bigger house. In a picture by picture slideshow below, I'll explain how we did it.

The before picture.

As you can see below, there were sweet 1970 like grooves that not only were stylish but also doubled as handles. Sadly enough, we had to pull out the grooves in order to make the drawers flat all the way across.

After removal of outer groove.

Next step was to fill in the holes in the drawers with puddy. Once the puddy dried, we sanded it down. This step was repeated a couple of time in order to make sure that the hole was completely filled and smooth all the way across the drawer.

Once the holes were puddied.

Before starting to paint, we sanded down the entire chest along with the drawers with an 80 grit sandpaper. This removed all of the original wood coating.

Furniture sanded down.

Our next step was to paint a base coat. This base coat would be the color that would come through when we later distressed the chest in order to give it an antique look. We used a bluish gray color and put on two coats. Below is a picture after the base coat was applied (along with a great shot of my knee).

Base coat.

We then painted the top coat which was an off white. We ended up using three coats of the white. Once it all dried, we then used a 120 grit sandpaper and slowly distressed certain parts of the chest. After we had distressed the piece to our (Emily's) heart's desire, we applied a glaze over everything to give it a smooth finish. We also went to Lowe's and picked up some handles that we thought would go along well with the style and color. Below is the finished product. It's kind of hard to really see the full look in the big picture. The first one will give you an idea of what it truly looks like.

Up close shot of the drawers, handles and distressing.

The whole piece...its not great lighting in this shot.

We're no professionals, but hey, it was fun and we learned some interesting things in the process.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Memphis

This past weekend we headed to Memphis for my cousin Cate's wedding. It was so fun to get away for a few days for a mini-vacation, and much needed after the exhaustion of preparing for my Internal Medicine Shelf Exam last Friday morning. The wedding weekend was beautiful, and the wedding/reception were one of the most unique and personal I've ever been to. We ate at a delicious restaurant downtown on Friday night (Majestic Grill... if you are ever in Memphis we definitely recommend it!), Rendezvous on Saturday for lunch, and enjoyed a delicious post-wedding brunch Sunday morning (apparently good food = fun). As usual, time flies when you are having fun, and before we knew it, we were back in B'ham and preparing to start another week.

The view from our room...

Beale Street...

With mom...

The first dance...

Cousin Austin once again dominated the dance floor...

With the bride and groom...

There are lots of exciting things happening in our families these days (including a new niece due VERY soon!)... More on those later....

Monday, October 12, 2009

Flashback...

Anyone else been bowling lately? Sometimes its fun to do something active you haven't done in a long time...

(warning: exercising uncommonly used muscles results in some peculiar patterns of soreness)

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Weekend with Family

We spent last weekend in Montgomery and it flew by entirely too fast. Walker helped his mom do a few things to prepare for her upcoming move (she bought a house and closes at the end of the month!), and we celebrated my mom's birthday on Sunday. Lele, Matt, and his girlfriend Anne were also in town for the weekend (along with all the dogs) which made the weekend that much more enjoyable!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful mom!!