Made with Love

There will soon be a new little face joining the Linn/Estes/Oglesby/Bailey etc family. My 3rd cousin Ben and his wife Lyric are pregnant with their first child, a boy they're naming Jack. (Ben's brothers have been joking that the baby's middle name will be Daniels, after their favorite liquor, but I doubt that Lyric will let that happen.)

As an aside, I'm not really sure how the baby and I will be related. Is he my 4th cousin? My great nephew once removed? No idea, really. I think we're just going to stick with the family tradition of just calling everyone that's not your brother, sister, mom, or dad "cousin." It's simpler.

Anyway, my mom told me on Tuesday that the baby shower would be on the following Sunday. I like making baby burpees for my friends, so of course I had to make one for my little cousin-to-be. I wish I had had more time to make them more cutesy, but I had to do what I could with the time I had--and that was a half day off from school and an hour and a half wait at the Toyota dealership's service area waiting while my car's oil was changed.

Here's what I mailed to Abilene for the little baby bundle...





I told my mom--I really like them, and I hope Lyric does, too, but if she doesn't, well...they're for the baby to spit up on, so I'm sure they'll be worn out soon! Haha.

Presenting Christmas Presents

As promised, here is the long-awaited post about my favorite Christmas presents.

The first and best present is always time spent with family and friends. A close second is time away from that stressful place I call dental school. Ha.

Like Madonna, I'm a bit of a material girl, so here are my favorite tangible presents...

Canon Rebel Camera

Ironically, the camera itself is the only thing I can't take a picture of, so a stock photo will have to work. This camera takes beautiful, colorful, true images. After reading the instruction manual and watching part of the instructional DVD I'm fairly certain that it is also more intelligent than me. Then again, so are a lot of people.

Massage chair

My husband gives incredible back rubs. The talent is both a blessing and a curse--a blessing for me because I get to be the recipient, a curse for Jeffrey because he doesn't usually feel like giving me a 30 minute massage every single night. Enter massage chair. This chair does Shiatsu and Rolling massages, can be made to concentrate on a specific area of soreness, has heat, and improves my mood after a long day at school by 435%. I now receive 30 to 45 minutes of massage per day. But you don't have to be jealous--come over and try it out for yourself!

Movies

Jeffrey and I received/bought with gift cards about 20 movies this Christmas. He would probably hurt me if I had took out all of these DVDs from their designated places to take a picture. I honestly can't tell you if Jeffrey gets more pleasure out of owning and watching DVDs or just arranging them anal-retentively on the shelf.

Those were the biggies...but there were lots of other great gifts given. Other things that happened over Christmas...

My mom got a leopard print suitcase, and then decided to act like a leopard.
We tried to take a good family picture.

Then we tried again.

Then we tried again.

Then we got it.

Dixie became my photo subject.

Dixie got a dragon with 16 separate squeakers. Then she ate them.

My grandma got her lips plumped?

And fun was had by all!

Talking After Midnight

This afternoon when I got home from school, Jeffrey and I spent some time sitting in our backyard talking about our days together while watching Dixie sprint frantically up and down the fence line each time she heard a neighborhood dog bark.

Suddenly, Jeffrey started laughing and asked, "Do you remember what you said last night when I came to bed?"

I didn't, because I had gone upstairs early last night to watch a little TV and promptly fell asleep with the lights still on. Apparently by the time Jeffrey got into bed, I was solidly in a deep sleep. I don't remember him getting into the bed, and I don't remember any of the following conversation that Jeffrey promises happened exactly as written below:

Lauren (talking to the dog, as Jeffrey starts to get into bed): Come on, Dixie, better make room for "once" (pronounced "own-say," the Spanish word for eleven)
Jeffrey: What?
Lauren: Yeah, I'm one and Dixie's one. That's once.
Jeffrey: WHAT?!?!?
Lauren: [no response. still sleeping.]

Even my subconscious is bad at math.

Fry Baby

Christmas was amazing. Celebrating the new year was great. Time with family and friends was enjoyed by all. And the presents...well, the presents were simply fantastic. But all of that deserves it's own post. This post is about the important things in life: fries and dental school.

There is always a great internal struggle over New Year's Resolutions for me. The trouble stems from the fact that I am a people pleaser and that trait extends even to myself. So while the turning pages of the calendar to a brand new year inspire me to resolutions of grandeur, the more rational side of me begs for more easily-kept resolutions so that I won't disappoint myself if I fail.

This year the internal tug of war ended in a draw. One big resolution (complain less about school) and one smaller resolution (read my bible more).

Jan 4th update: Big resolution going down! Mayday! MAYDAY...!

Yesterday I started back to school with a new patient exam on a very sweet lady who ONLY speaks Spanish. It was like playing charades...except not fun. I used a combination of the Spanish I learned in high school (which was in disarray from 7 years of non-use) and wild gestures to get my point across. Thank goodness a Spanish-speaker came by right when I needed to ask the patient if she had any urinary problems. It would have gotten pretty awkward at that point for me to act out the question.

At the end of the appointment, the patient said (in halting English), "Thank you for see me today."

I looked at her and asked (in halting Spanish), "Is my Spanish better or worse than your English?"

She laughed and then said (in perfect Spanish), "Your Spanish is a little better than my English."

So, four days into the new year, I'm one resolution down, but who's counting?

Jeffrey told me matter-of-factly on January first: "You can't make small resolutions, or you won't keep them. That's why I'm making a big one this year."

I immediately felt a sense of dread as I tried to guess what his resolution would be. My first terrible thought was that he would want to work out every day. This would inevitably lead to my own personal misery as he would wake me getting up each morning for sunrise workouts and just generally make me feel badly for counting my trips upstairs each night to bed and walks with the dog as cardio workouts.

He surprised me, though, when he said, "My resolution is not to eat french fries for a year."

While I admire his courage for giving up America's favorite side, I will not be joining him on this journey. My answer to that joyous question, "Would you like fries with that?" has been, is still, and will always be a resounding, "YES."
Welcome, 2011, many new things await us this year, but some will never change.

Another post about the dog

Here's the bottom line, folks: there's nothing to blog about except my dog. So here goes...

This is a tennis ball.

This is Dixie.

See Dixie destroy the tennis ball.

See Dixie sleep because she's tired and her stomach hurts from eating a tennis ball.

Here is Dixie in the back yard. Shhh! She's hunting wabbits (and also probably looking for a place to poop).

Aww. We love Dixie.

And Dixie loves tennis balls. To death.