Poor Rhapsody

I love how every other post is about Rhapsody. She's just so cute, I can't help it. :). Well, Rhapsody will officially never pass her cuteness on to future generations. We had her spayed yesterday. I dropped her off that morning and picked her up after work. She was pretty pitiful last night. She was shaking and whining and totally dazed out. She would fall asleep standing up and we could tell she was drugged up. It was hard to see her so out of it, but I was glad she was home with us than having to spend the night at the vet. I was looking forward to a lazy evening cuddling with her in the recliner. She wanted nothing to do with us however. She just wanted to be left alone. She crawled under our bed and slept there for a long time. I'm sure we were a funny site when we were both bent down looking under the bed at her. She knew how to work the attention though. We were reintroducing her food to her, so I brought her bowl to her bed and hand fed her a little to get her interested. Turns out she was only interested in food when it was being handfed. I even set the bowl in her bed right next to her mouth and she wanted nothing to do with it. That is totally Rhapsody though. She's a big drama queen. She seems mostly back to herself today which is good.

Dazing out under the computer desk

Having Friends Over... On a Weeknight!

I keep having these moments when I realize what I was missing out on in grad school. Last week was one of them. We had friends over for dinner on a Tuesday! Maybe I should explain why this feels so momentous. When I was in grad school, there were several semesters when I had work, clinic, class, or off-site every single weeknight. The few semesters when I didn't, I spent free weeknights catching up on reading and homework. I remember planning the grocery list and only buying meals to prepare on Friday and Saturday. Now that I'm out of school, I'm still adjusting to free evenings. I think one of the best parts of my job is that, aside from an occasional evening family session, my workday is 8-4. I love being home to cook dinner and do fun things in the evening. Matt and I are enjoying our date nights and I love being involved in the AWANA ministry at church. It's also nice to be able to plan things with friends that don't have to be on the weekends especially since our weekends have been pretty busy lately, so we invited a couple from church over for dinner on a weeknight. It was fun visiting with them since we all graduated from OSU, and they are one of the few couples without children in our Sunday School class. It's nice having Christian friends in the same life-stage as we are. We had a great evening with them. Hopefully we can do it again soon, on another weeknight. Sometimes I feel like I have to be resocialized into normal life out of grad school. Most of the changes are really nice though, which helps with the transition :).

Mixed up Celebrations

My birthday is only five days after Valentine's day, and this year we ended up celebrating my birthday on Valentine's day, and Valentine's day on my birthday. My parents wanted to come up to help celebrate my birthday and it worked out that the best weekend for them to visit was the weekend of Valentine's Day. So, Matt and I planned to have our Valentine's date (dinner and a movie) the week before Valentine's day for our weekly date night. But, I caught that awful 24 hour stomach flu the day before we planned to go, so we decided to postpone it. My parents came up Valentine's weekend, and we had a great time with them. Rhapsody was so glad to see Missy too. They played nonstop the whole weekend. Matt made me a fabulous birthday cake on Friday. I love how thoughtful he is. So we ate that on Friday night and opened presents. On Saturday we went out to breakfast, and then did a little shopping. That afternoon we just hung out at our house and played wii. For dinner we went to Olive Garden. It was packed and we waited over an hour, but the food was delicious. Overall it was a great birthday weekend.

Playing Wii and surrounded by worn-out puppies





Yummy cake!



My Valentine's Day presents. I love having a live-in Valentine.

Since we didn't get a chance to have our Valentine's date the week before we decided to go out on my actual birthday. We went to eat at Los Cabos, our new favorite restaurant and then went to the movie. The movie wasn't very good, but dinner was great, and it was fun to have a special night. We're also celebrating again this weekend. Since I get my birthday off as a paid holiday, I'm going to take this Friday off, and Matt is too. We're going out Thursday night and staying at a Bed and Breakfast and then spending the day together on Friday. I'm looking forward to it!

Weekend Roadtrip

This past weekend I left Matt and Rhapsody at home and headed to Stillwater to spend the weekend with some amazing girls. Friday night I met up with my entire cohort for the first time since graduation. It was sooo good to see all of them again. I had missed them a lot. For me, one of the best parts of graduate school was my cohort. The OSU MFT program follows a strict course sequence and clinical sequence. What that means is for the past 2 1/2 years I have had almost every class with all of these girls, and we have experienced every clinical and program milestone together, and believe me, we had some tough experiences. I think I saw my cohort more than Matt during most of my tenure in grad school, and I learned so much for them. They are a huge blessing to me. Who would think that six very different women could all bond and get along so well together? It had to be from God. I think this is a huge strength of OSU's program, because as grueling and time consuming as the program is, I needed five other women experiencing the same things I was to be able to make it through, and I know that I am a better therapist because of the influence they have had on me clinically, professionally, and personally.


We met at Deborah's house on Friday night and headed to Chili's for dinner. That was fitting because I can't count how many times we ate lunch there on Wednesdays and Thursdays. After dinner we headed to the wine bar in Stillwater. It was so nice to catch up with how everyone is doing in their jobs/wedding planning/job hunting. It's weird to not be going through the exact same thing with everyone right now. I could have stayed and chatted for days with them and not felt like I knew everything going on in their lives since graduation.

At the wine bar in Stillwater

On Saturday, Deborah and I headed to Wichita for Lyda's bachelorette party. Lyda and I bonded over donuts at the new graduate student orientation and continued to bond during those long road trips for FISH. During one of our first trips together after we had only known each other a few weeks, she said, "Angela, isn't weird to think that we're going to be like best friends by the time we graduate?" A little creepy at the time, but more fitting now looking back on it. I'm so excited for her wedding in a few weeks.

Lyda changed her mind. She's choosing a Ph.D. over having babies.

What a fun weekend!!

Rhapsody's First Haircut

We took Rhapsody to the groomer for the first time this week. I dropped her off on the way to work, and Matt picked her up at lunch. She absolutely hates baths and acts like we're killing her when we try and cut her nails, so we were both happy for a break and to hand her over to someone else for a bath, nail trim, and haircut. Her hair is much softer now, and she smells better too. I've never had a dog before that needed to be professionally groomed because of her coat. When we first got her, we thought about learning how to groom her ourselves, but after our first experience trying to cut her nails and bathe her, that idea flew out the window.

Looking pretty after her first haircut.

What do you get...

What do you get when you combine the aftermath of an ice storm with a sunny afternoon, and a very curious, and energetic puppy who likes to dig?????





















One VERY dirty Rhapsody!

This is what Rhapsody looked like this afternoon after she had gone for a walk and then hung out in the backyard for awhile. She was such a mess. Since it was cold, we had sympathy for her, and tried to wash her in the sink. Next time we will have less sympathy and just use the water hose. Sometimes I wish we had a little prissy puppy who hated to get her feet wet. Instead we have a dog who goes out of her way to find puddles to run in during our walks. Oh well, Matt always says, "Good thing she's cute."

Snow Days and the Weekend

Freezing rain and sleet hit Tulsa Monday afternoon, and I experienced my first snow days as a non student this week. I only worked Monday and Friday of this week, so I've worked five days in the last two weeks. I could get used the that schedule :). However, I think all the snow days were good for me because I actually managed to get bored this week and was ready to get back to work. This is a big deal to me because I think it shows that I'm slowly recovering from graduate school. There have been many times during the last 2 1/2 years that I didn't think it was possible to be bored. There were so many things I didn't get a chance to do during graduate school because of the major time commitment and work load, and I didn't think it was possible to do everything I felt I was missing out on and then not have anything to do. I also took off about 5 weeks after graduation before I started my job, and never got bored during that time. I was hoping the break between graduation and starting work would allow me to catch up, and then be bored, and ready to start work, and that didn't happen, and I thought that I really could be a stay at home wife. I'm glad that I got bored and I hope that makes going to work easier in the next few weeks. I did have a really good day at work on Friday. I saw six kids, and I felt like I got somewhere with some of the kids and had a good time hanging out with them too. I never realized how funny middle schoolers are, but I think I laughed at least once during every session. I like the middle school population because they are old enough to do things with and to see change but they are still kids.

This weekend, my grandparents came up and stayed with us on Friday night. We ate dinner, visited, and of course played Skipbo. I'm really lucky to have such a close relationship with my grandparents and I loved visiting about old times with them. Grandaddy always asks me if I remember feeding the baby calves when I was little (probably around 5 or 6) and how my mom made him change my shoes before I went out to feed them. He always kept the shoes in his pickup long after they fit me, and he still has those shoes which I think is really sweet. He told me he cleaned them and keeps them in a wooden box that my dad made. My grandparents have had a big impact on my life, and I really enjoy how much they want to be involved in my life. I also love how they have totally accepted Matt as another one of their grandchildren. I realize that a lot of people my age don't even have living grandparents, and I have grandparents that come up with excuses just to visit us and spend time with us.

On Saturday, they left and Matt and I headed to OKC to buy groceries on base with Mom and Barry. I'm still getting used to how far Tulsa is from other places. I'm so used to everything being an hour away. OKC is an hour away from Weatherford. Stillwater is an hour away from OKC, and Tulsa is an hour away from Stillwater. The trip from BA to OKC seems so long now and from BA to Weatherford seems like an eternity. I hope we get adjusted soon. The trip was long but it was nice to see my parents and I figured that we roughly saved about 70-80 dollars on groceries and now have a very full freezer.

Tonight we're going to a Superbowl party with people from our church. It's been a pretty full weekend, but a good one.