Dead Dog

Go Cowboys! Beat the Longhorns!!

Pumpkin Carving

Friday night we went to a pumpkin carving party at our friends' Chris and Ivory's house. We had a really good time. It had been a long time since I carved a pumpkin, but I told Matt we should start making it a yearly Fall tradition. Chris and Ivory had lots of tools and stencils for us to use, and we enjoyed visiting with friends and eating yummy food before we started carving.

You know you have a good husband when he guts your pumpkin for you :)

Showing off our finished pumpkins. Mine was a castle with a ghost in it

Matt free handed this spider web

Then he had to go and show his nerdy side and make pumpkin pi :)

All the pumpkins lit up. There were some really good ones.

Our pumpkins are on our front porch now. We hope they last until Halloween.

So Glad this Week is Over

Well, this week was one of those that we are glad to get behind us. Lately, I've noticed that it's rare for me to really have a bad day/week. Of course there are days that are frustrating, stuck in traffic for an hour, parents that no show for intakes, etc., but I usually never have a bad attitude coming home at night. This week was different even though it was a short week for me since there wasn't any school on Monday.
For our small family, this week included 3 doctor's visits and 2 dentist's visits. Needless to say, this was one of those weeks that made us very grateful for good health and dental insurance and sick leave at our jobs.

No one got much sleep at our house on Monday night. Matt woke up around 1:00 with a sore throat, headache and fever and was up most of the night. I was awake with a terrible toothache from 1:00 to about 4:30. So on Tuesday, Matt headed to the doctor's (You have to know that my husband rarely goes to the doctor, so for him to make an appointment the first day he is sick, he had to be really sick), and I headed to the dentist. Matt got a steroid shot that helped his throat and I got some antibiotics and pain pills along with an appointment later on in the week for a root canal.

Matt stayed home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday to recover. I had scheduled a doctor's appointment a few weeks ago for Wednesday which happened to be sandwiched between my two dentist appointments for my annual thyroid check. I got a root canal on Thursday morning and went to work afterwards. I've had no dental problems in my life (aside from having my wisdom teeth removed in high school) until last year when I had some fillings and apparently on of the fillings got infected leading to the need for a root canal. I was pretty sore when I left the dentist and not sure I was going to be able to make it at work the rest of the day. Thankfully, the Aleve I took kicked in and by the end of the day I was in very little pain.

Then on Thursday night Matt said his stomach was hurting and feeling weird, so he went back to the doctor today, just to make sure it wasn't serious and got more medicine. He ended up leaving work a little early today.

Between doctor's appointments and sickness, neither one of us worked much, but the week still seemed long. We are worn out (Rhapsody too, apparently when we don't sleep much at night, she doesn't either) and ready for the weekend and thankful there isn't a home OSU football game this weekend. We have a pumpkin carving party tonight, that Matt says he feels well enough to go to, but tomorrow our plans include a lot of lying around and watching Big 12 football.

Hopefully next week will be less eventful.

OSU Homecoming 2009

This past weekend was OSU's homecoming, so Matt and I headed to Stillwater for the weekend. This was my seventh OSU homecoming (eighth if you count the time I went when I was still in high school to visit Matt), and my first as a "true" alum. I guess I've technically been an alum the last 3 years, but since I was working on my master's I don't count it. Anyway, if you haven't experienced an OSU homecoming celebration, you are missing out. They are known for America's greatest homecoming, and I believe it. This year we were just planning on going to Stillwater for the football game instead of going Friday night to the Walkaround celebration. But these sweet friends called and asked if we wanted to spend the weekend with them, and we just couldn't resist!
And we are so glad we did. We had an incredibly fun weekend. The whole way to church Sunday, we kept talking about what a great weekend it was. Matt and Amie are good friends we made from church when we lived in Stillwater. We have really missed them since we've moved and hadn't gotten a chance to see them in several months. We had some catching up to do. We got to Stillwater Friday evening and headed to dinner on campus. After dinner, we went to Walkaround. If you're not familiar with walkaround, all the fraternities and sororities on campus put up elaborate pomped house decorations that are amazing to see. The detail is unbelievable. So, tens of thousands of people crowd the streets around campus and walk around looking at all the houses. Matt took a couple of pictures of some of them this year. There are vendors set up all around too selling OSU merchandise and food, and Theta Pond is all lit up in orange lights.

The weather was beautiful for walkaround and being on campus for homecoming always brings back memories from my college days. As we walked around we got a chance to catch up on each other's lives and happenings in Stillwater we had missed out on since we moved.

On Saturday we just hung out at Matt and Amie's. They cooked us delicious food, and we got our football fix watching the OU/Texas game. Matt and Amie are some of our favorite friends to play games with. If you haven't figured it out, we are a board game loving family :). Matt and I introduced them to Settlers of Catan, and we played 3 games during the day. We also walked around campus a bit and visited.


Matthew and Amie are special friends to us, and we are thankful for the blessing they are to us and how much fun we have when we are with them.


The only downside to the weekend, was that the kickoff to the homecoming game against Missouri wasn't until 8:15 that evening. So, although we got to spend more time with Matt and Amie, it made for a cold game and a late night drive home.

Bundled up waiting for the game to start

Don't worry, it was totally worth it. It was a great game. There are several homecoming heartbreaker games I remember, but this game wasn't one of them. We came out with a solid victory even without Dez Bryant and Kendall Hunter (2 of our best players). Our team played well and looked like a nationally ranked team. We're hoping for a big upset at Boone Pickens Stadium on Halloween. ESPN says we're the only Big 12 South team left that could upset Texas, and we'll be there to watch it!

We left the game a little early, but this ended up being the final score, so we didn't miss much.

Oh, I forgot to mention another thing that made the weekend great. Remember that awful pre-game song they were playing before all the football games. Well OSU listened to the fans and students, and are no longer playing "Cowboys Forever." Thank you OSU for having some sense and changing the song.

We got home about 1:30am Sunday morning. Needless to say, after church on Sunday, I took a nice long Sunday afternoon nap. It was the perfect end to a perfect weekend :).

A Great Weekend

Friday, I took my national exam for my licensure in Marital and Family Therapy. I'm so glad it's over, except I have to wait several weeks for the results. Not to mention, I don't think my brain fully recovered until yesterday. I told Matt I hadn't had to think that hard for such a long amount of time since grad school.

In celebration of no more studying or stressing, we planned a fun weekend. Friday night after work, we went to dinner with our friends Matt and Erica to a restaurant called the Garlic Rose. It was the first time any of us had been there, and the food was pretty good. After dinner, we headed over to the River Walk for gelato. We had a really good time, and not to mention the gelato was delicious.

On Saturday, we went to the Tulsa State Fair for the morning. One of our favorite things about the fair (and perhaps the only reason we go) is that the Tulsa State Fair hosts the National Sugar Arts show each year which features the national wedding cake competition. I've seen the show in Tulsa featured on the Food Network before, and they have food network challenge competitors present to give demonstrations throughout the weekend. Those cakes are amazing. Everything on them is edible and who knows how many hundreds of hours are spent by the decorators on each cake. Matt keeps telling me I should enter a cake next year, so we don't have to stand in line to look at them. I think we need lots of classes and practice before then.
Matt took a ton of pictures of the cakes, and these are just a few of my favorites. The theme this year was of Sea and Shore.

This one was probably my favorite

Although this was was pretty creative

Okay, let me preface this next picture. If you've ever watched a Food Network Challenge show (the one where competitors have 8 hours to make cakes for different events, and the winner gets $10,000), then you probably know who Kerry Vincent is, aka the Simon Cowell of cake competitions. She's the judge in almost every competition, and Matt and I always watch them together. Well, my husband almost ran into her at the show, so I made him take a picture proving we saw her in person.

After spending a few hours at the fair and eating some ice cream of course, we went to lunch at a hamburger place and then headed home. Because I was studying for my test all last week, and Matt was helping by taking over some of my household chores, Rhapsody didn't get as much attention as usual. So, after the fair, we took her to the dog park to get some of her energy out. We also stopped by Pet Smart since she was almost out of food and saw a toy for her we couldn't resist. Matt and Erica have two dogs that are much bigger than Rhapsody. When Rhapsody was over there on Saturday, she got a hold of one of their toys that was longer than she was and carried it around in her mouth. It was hilarious, so I picked her up one while we were at Pet Smart. That dog will play with any toy.

Saturday night, we just relaxed and watched the Big 12 lose in football. It's hard to be too sad when OU loses, but we wish the Big 12 had had a better night. I made up for my hard studying on Sunday by taking a long nap and then headed to our new Wal Mart for groceries, since we were out of about everything. I asked Matt if he would be in charge of cooking dinner last week so I could concentrate on studying. He agreed and was resourceful enough to prepare meals without having to buy groceries. If you knew how much my husband detested grocery shopping, you'd understand that he would probably eat about anything that didn't require a trip to Wal-mart. He actually did a great job cooking though, and I was thankful to not have to worry about meal planning, shopping, or cooking for a week. We had a great study free weekend!

Therapy Friends

A couple of weekends ago, I went to OKC to see some great friends from graduate school. I met up with Lyda, Deborah, and Deidre. Lyda, Deborah, and I graduated together along with 3 other fantastic ladies that we missed that night, and Deidre will graduate in just a couple of months. WOW I just realized that that means I haven't been in school in almost a year. That seems crazy. Anyway, Lyda moved out of state after graduation and just recently moved to OKC. I'm so glad she is close and we can see each other more regularly. I got a chance to see her new apartment, then we all went out to dinner and went out in Bricktown to a piano bar Lyda was dying to go to. I had such a fun night and was reminded how blessed I was to have developed such good friendships with these girls. When I was applying to grad schools, one professor cautioned be against applying to OSU's MFT program because the program was so small. I'm so glad I didn't take his advice. Being in a small program meant that I formed some incredible relationships with the girls in my cohort, students in the rest of the program, and faculty. I wouldn't trade those relationships for anything.

Deborah, Lyda, and Deidre

At dinner, our conversation involved memories of embarrassing memories in the observation room on clinic nights. If you can imagine one very small room crowded with 15 or so students and professors, embarrassing moments are bound to happen. I would share them all on here, but most of them are inside jokes. However, since the main reason I started this blog was to serve as a sort of scrapbook for our family, I want to make sure I always remember these moments, so I'll put a few memory cues on here for myself.

- Lyda's conversation with a supervisor about Bowen being her love language
- Deborah's comment to a supervisor after a bet involving wearing a KU shirt during clinic
- Deborah's comment about a bathroom incident
- Glade's sales pitches of the magic bullet
-What happened when Lyda attempted to join with a client in the waiting room by sitting on a plastic tub
- What happened when Jennifer attempted to join with a client in the waiting room

So many fun memories that only a few people in my life really understand. That's one of the reasons they are such great memories

Me and Deborah

Deborah and I share common love of OSU sports. I remember calling her after OSU losses and asking her if I needed to give her a suicide assessment.
She was the procrastinator of our cohort, and I remember her coming into the office lots of times in the morning saying she had been up all night finishing a paper or freaking out because she hadn't finished yet.

Me and Lyda

Lyda was my very first co-therapist and we got to share our first therapy sessions together as interns. I have lots of good memories with Lyda, but I'll just share a couple of my favorite

One of my favorite conversations with Lyda. You had to have been there to get the full effect
Lyda: "Angela, I really need to make a budget, will you help me?"
Angela: "Sure, okay lets start with how much money you earn each month"
Lyda: $550.00 (remember we're grad students in a full-time clinical master's program)
Angela: "Okay, good. Now how much is your rent per month"
Lyda: $500.00
Angela: (Throwing the pen in the air) "I'm not helping you anymore"
The conversation does continue with Lyda increasing her "going out" allotment about 3 times throughout the budgeting exercise.

One other funny memory that comes to mind occurred on the drive to Memphis last year for the AAMFT national conference. Deborah was close to running out of gas, and we couldn't find a gas station. Lyda says, "That's okay if we run out of gas, I'll just call AA"

There are countless other memories that I made with these girls especially adding all the time we spent together in classes, finishing up paperwork late at night in the office, clinical milestones, lunches out, working together on assistantships and all the non-school activities including parties, sporting events, Apples to Apples games, and MFT get-togethers. Now that we have transitioned out of the school phase we are not only friends but professional colleagues, and I know these women will continue to play an important role in my life as we continue to grow as therapists.