Our trip to Tennessee

Erik and I went back to our roots with a much needed trip home to TN. We flew out of Austin and spent almost five hours at the airport due to flight delays, but we made it home! On Saturday Stephanie and Jennifer Ryan came to see me in Nashville and we went shopping at Opry Mills and Target, as well as a stop for Mexican food. The only thing missing was Rebecca!

An off-center shot of the three of us in Greg's huge truck that he let me drive while we were in town. Opry Mills was insane and it started raining like crazy while I was trying to take this!

Saturday night we headed to Murfreesboro to Erik's great-grandmother's house. Most of his mom's family was there. Erik, myself, and Stephanie (now Henry!) were part of the green sweater club.

Sunday after church we opened presents with Erik's mom, dad, and sister. I love my Corgi calendar!




Sunday night we had dinner with my mom and family and opened presents. My brother Austin leaves on the 28th for basic training with the Air Force in San Antonio!



Erik had to take his picture with Elvis at Opry Mills.

Monday we headed to Martin and stopped by the Breedens to see our old friends, Gavin and Shalaine. We miss them so much! Hopefully we'll all be back in TN in the future!


Monday night we went to Jackson to have the Fuqua Christmas at the Casey Jones Village Old Country Store. Erik's dad's family live all over the place and it was so nice to get everyone together and not have to worry about cooking and cleaning up! Thanks to Erik's mom Pam for putting that together.

As you can tell, we had a whirlwind trip, and even though I was sad to leave, it's nice to be back in my own house with my dogs and my own bed! There were so many people we didn't get to see due to time constraints, but we'll be back again soon, although we don't know when. Merry Christmas!

Our Trip to Austin

I have wanted to go see the Lady Vols play for a long time, and lucky for us, they played in Austin Sunday against Texas. We live about 90 minutes from Austin and the tickets were only $14, so it was an easy decision to make. We went to Austin Saturday and stayed at the Hyatt in downtown. This is the view from our room. It would have been perfect except there was a Christmas party going on in their ballroom with loud booming music all night.



We had great seats. 12th row back!

The starters this year are young. Three freshman and two sophomores, I think.
Erik before the game. For some reason people who got our Christmas cards think Erik has gained lots of weight. I can testify that he is as skinny as ever and that it was a bad angle in the photo.
I am blurry but excited before the game. I have also not gained any weight since moving here. Ahem.
A giant blimp of BBQ sauce. It must be a Texas thing. By the way, I've had Texas brisket which is what people eat here for BBQ, and it's nothing compared to TN pulled pork.
The score at halftime. Tied up.
Blue cotton candy. Yum. I enjoyed this while TN proceeded to LOSE. C'mon girls!
We had a great time and stopped at World Market in Round Rock on the way home for lots of goodies.

Christmas Fun with the dogs

I bought these adorable elf hats at Hobby Lobby for the dogs to wear in our Christmas picture. I don't think they were too happy about it. I think I might submit Roxy's photo to loldogs. If I do and they post it I'll be sure to link it here.

How we spent our Saturday

Let me preface this post with a statement of fact: when I get sick, I get really, really sick. I had been battling another sinus infection (or the remnant of one that was never treated) all week long. I went to work on Thursday with a croaking voice and thankfully I got one of our OB-GYNs to write me a prescription for antibiotics. Friday I went back to work with almost no voice and a weepy right eye. By noon I had full blown pink eye (this is in addition to the sinus infection) and I looked like crap. My boss so graciously let me go home at 2 o-clock where I had eye antibiotic drops left over from my last bout of pink eye about 5 months ago. Erik got out of class and brought me movies to watch and gatorade, and we spent Friday night on the couch watching Wall-e and Juno. I still felt like I'd been run over with a truck. I even spent Friday night in our guest bedroom so Erik could get some sleep.

Ok, so on to Saturday. I woke up Saturday with the worst sinus pressure on the left side of my side of my face that I've ever experienced. I got up and took a shower hoping that would help. It didn't. Erik woke up and I told him I was going to the minor care ER at the hospital where I work for a steroid shot. Typically this shot coupled with antibiotics is the only thing that helps my sinus infections. We both got ready and went to the hospital and even though the ER waiting room was busy I only had to wait about 30 minutes before they triaged me and put me in a room. Luckily, the minor care ER doctor on that day is a friend of ours from church and we have community group at his house. I was so glad to see him, and he let me get the steroid shot. I will say this, I am a total wimp when it comes to pain, so when I go requesting a shot that hurts as bad as that one, I am desperate. The nurse gave me the shot and we went on our way.

The law school hosts Law Prom every year and I really wanted to go. I bought a super cute dress (everybody usually wears cocktail dresses and the guys wear suits) so I was determined to go, even if I was sick. The party didn't start until 8 o'clock, and we got there about 8:45. Here are the only 2 pictures I took.
This is Erik and his friends from school, Greg, Kevin, and Nick.

And here are their dates, Mandy, Maggie, me, and Lori. Greg and Lori came over to our house the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and ate and then Erik went to their apartment Thanksgiving day to hang out while I was at work.

We had a good time. They had casino tables where Erik and I played badly, a bar, food, and dancing. I can't wait to go again next year!

Our Thanksgiving

One of the things I did not fully anticipate when considering a move so far away from family was not being able to see them for holidays. So far we've missed on July 4th, Halloween, my birthday (which isn't a holiday), and now Thanksgiving. I worked from 7am-7pm on Thanksgiving day, and to be truthful it was depressing. We only had one patient on the floor and guess who had her? That's right, me. I did cook a small dinner on Wednesday night for some friends of Erik's from law school as they weren't going home for the holiday either. By the way, a turkey breast in the crockpot in insanely easy and very moist. Friday I got up at 4:20 am and hit Belk's for a Christmas tree, Wal-Mart, which I walked into but then quickly walked back out, Target, and Hobby Lobby. I was done with everything by 8:30 and came home and read New Moon all day and put up my new pre-lit 7.5 foot Christmas tree. I forgot to mention, I'm now a little obsessed with the Twilight series. It's so good, so if you like love stories and/or vampire stories, read it! The movie was good too!

I bought new stockings for the dogs and these have a little slot where you can put the dog's picture in it so here are a few that I took.



Here is my Christmas tree. I went back to the first set of ornaments that I have that I my mom bought me before we got married.


Since we are shipping most of our presents this year to Arkansas and Tennessee, I haven't really wrapped very many. However, when we got home from church Sunday, I found this.
Thanks, Roxy. It's our fault really. When she was a puppy we gave her cardboard paper towel holders to chew on, and she loves anything cardboard.

I'm really excited this week because the law school is hosting a "law prom" and Erik and I are going. It's a casino theme where you play real casino games and you trade in your chips for raffle tickets that go towards cool prizes. Also the law auxilary is having craft night Thursday and we're making ornaments. It should be a fun week!

Game On

Just as I was beginning to think our mouse problem was under control I found this:



Do you see the bite marks on my new bag of flour? Then I found a trail of flour bag paper under the sink where the dishwasher hose comes out. He also tried to eat some of my powdered sugar. Needless to say, I was livid. Erik bought some foam sealant stuff and sealed up all the holes under the sink, so essentially the mouse was trapped. On Saturday we braved HEB (it was insane) and bought some more regular mouse traps. Not 30 minutes after we went to bed Saturday night I hear "SNAP" and I knew the little sucker was caught. Sunday morning I get up and I found a tiny little field mouse with his neck snapped in two. I didn't take a picture this time because he was staring up at me with a death stare. I briefly felt bad, but then I recalled the previous Friday night where I had to clear out and bleach the entry pantry after working 8 hours on the postpartum floor. Then I didn't feel so bad. I caught this mouse in the exact same spot as the first one. We still can't figure out how they're getting in the house, but we live next to an empty lot, so I know where they're coming from. We have some more traps set out for when the next one comes, as I have no doubt there will be more mice.
On another note, we will be in TN in about a month! We are so excited to see our families again and have an early Christmas with them!

If you get a chance

If you're like me and enjoy looking at cool/nifty/odd blogs, click on over to cakewrecks.blogspot.com and check out all the professional cake gone wrong. My personal favorite is the Naked Baby Mohawk Carrot Jockey cake.
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2008/06/naked-mohawk-baby-carrot-jockeys.html

Sopapilla Cheesecake

Last week we had a Mexican potluck at work and I was nominated to bring dessert. All the girls wanted Sopapilla Cheesecake, so I googled it and this was the recipe I found. I warn you, this stuff is ridiculously good.

Sopapilla Cheesecake
2 8 oz. pkgs cresecent rolls
2 8 oz. pkgs cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1 stick of butter
1 tsp vanilla
more sugar
cinnamon

Roll out 1st can of crescent rolls onto a 9x 13 in pan. Pat it out to cover the bottom of the pan. In a medium bowl combine the 2 packages of cream cheese, 1 cup of sugar and vanilla. Spread this mixture over the crescent rolls. Take the second can of rolls and spread on top on the cream cheese mixture, stretching it out to fit. Melt the stick of butter in the microwave and pour it evenly over the second layer of rolls. Sprinkle the top generously with more sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Devour and go into a sugar/butter coma.

I'm an old woman now

Yesterday was my 23rd birthday and also the first day of Erik's law school finals. I slept in til 9:30, shopped at Hobby Lobby and Target, got a Frappachino at Starbucks, and poor Erik took a 3 1/2 hour long exam. He made it through and is preparing for his next final as I type this. For dinner we went to Shogun here in Waco, which is a Japanese steakhouse where they cook in front of you on a hibachi grill. The food was so good! Afterwards we came home and ate some leftover Halloween cupcakes that I made and I opened Erik's present to me, a bathrobe that I've been wanting. I had a great birthday and I'm so thankful for my family and friends for remembering me on this day!

House of Mouse

Note: The image you are about to see may disturb you.

Last Tuesday I found small droppings in the cabinet under my sink. I suspected mice, but I thought the droppings were too small to be mice. I googled "mice poop" and in fact, it was mice poop. I bought 4 mouse traps, 2 of the De-Con traps and 2 old fashioned wood traps. I set one De-con trap in the cabinet under the sink, one in the space between the fridge and the wall, and an old fashioned one between the fridge and the wall. Thirty minutes later I hear a "Snap!" and one of the De-con traps was closed. Erik was asleep so I made him throw it away the next morning. I thought the mouse was caught. I was wrong. I worked from 7 am until 11 pm on Thursday and came home exhausted and went straight to bed. Friday morning I get up around 9 and just casually glance at the remaining traps I left out just in case. To my horror, the old fashioned trap was flipped over with a mouse carcass sticking out. I immediately texted Erik and told him to come home as soon as his classes were over, and that I had caught the mouse. Well, Erik calls me at lunchtime and said, "I saw the dead mouse this morning but I wanted to leave it for you to see since you wanted to catch the mouse." Hello!!! Can you feel the love? Here is the picture I took of the dead mouse. Dee-scusting.

Just too funny not to post

Crockpot Chicken Paprikash

In a effort to save money and stick to a budget, I've been building a list of 30 meals that I can cook during the month. I got to #10 and realized that I was about 20 meals short! Now, I can cook a lot of things and put meals together, but I wanted 30 easy to make meals. So Monday I traveled through the blogosphere and found some new recipes. One of them was Crockpot Chicken Paprikash. Let me tell you, I love the crockpot. I am always in search of good crockpot meals, because they are so easy! This dish tasted great and I made homemade mashed potatoes to go with it. You can always throw in a green vegetable side to round out the full meal. Here's the recipe.

cooking spray
2 c. mushrooms, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp. garlic
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp. paprika
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c. chicken broth
2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 T. flour
1/2 c. sour cream

Saute mushrooms, onion, garlic, and bell pepper in a pan coated with cooking spray for 5 minutes. Stir in paprika, salt, and pepper. Put mixture into crockpot. Put chicken breasts (they can even be frozen) into crockpot. Add broth. Cover and cook on low for 5-6 hours. Stir in flour and sour cream and allow to cook another 10 minutes then serve.

This recipe makes really tender chicken and a nice sauce. Yum!

Note: Some of the recipes I try don't turn out great. This week I tried making "Chili spaghetti." Um, it wasn't the best, and it tasted like cheap canned chili, which was appropriate because that was a main ingredient.

Pictures

Last Saturday Erik and I got up before 9:00 (yikes!) and had professional pictures taken by our friend Rachel Shipp. Her husband Andrew is a third year law student and we met them back in March when we came to visit. They are also the ones who set up the guys to come help us move, so we became fast friends! Rachel stays home with her two adorable boys and has a photography business on the side. We haven't had any professional pictures taken since our wedding day, so I figured now is the time. You can view a few of these pictures at Rachel's website, www.shippphoto.com and then enter her blog and scroll down. We had a great time taking the pictures and then we when and got sunburnt at the Baylor game, which they lost.

I've Been Tagged....

Meredith Westmoreland tagged me to list 7 random things about myself so here I go:
1. I'm a very "homemaker" kind of person. I really enjoy decorating, especially for holidays, and cooking. I prefer to have people over and cook for them in my home than to go over to other people's houses. Every now and then I get cabin fever, but for the most part I'm a homebody.
2. I am not a morning person, nor a late night person. I admit it, I'm a bear in the morning until I've had a shower and some coffee.
3. My pets are my babies. We always had dogs and a cat when I was growing up, and it was just natural to have a pet around. Today Roxy and Sasha keep me company during the day when I'm home and provide lots of love and fun. I wish I could have more pets, but right now I'm doing well to keep the fur under control.
4. I am so glad we moved to Texas. So far I have a job that I enjoy ( most days), a husband who is enjoying school, a nice place to live, all kinds of shopping available, and a great church. What more could we ask for? Maybe some family near by?
5. I know lots of random pop culture trivia. I can take anybody down at Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit. I dare you to try and beat me.
6. My favorite meal of all time is my grandmother's fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn bread, and black eyed peas. I can make everything like her except the fried chicken, which I don't even attempt to make so as to avoid gaining tons of weight.
7. One of my favorite TV shows is Jon and Kate plus 8. I TIVO all the episodes and watch it religiously. I think families with lots of kids are so interesting, but trust me, I'm not getting any ideas about big families!

We're still here....

It's true. I haven't posted anything in a while. No, it's not because Erik and I live this exciting life in Waco, TX (haha). Actually it's just the opposite. Erik goes to school 5 days a week from 8-5 and then studies a couple extra hours after that. I go to work 3 days a week and then try to recuperate after that. He studies, I cook, we play with the dogs, and most weekends we have people over to eat and play cards. This is our life right now and it's not too exciting. Add in the fact that I've had a sinus infection this past week and that leaves no blog posts. But I promise you, readers, we will be back!

Roxy and the Dog Door-a love/hate relationship

Last weekend Erik and I went to Lowe's and bought a storm door with a built in dog door. We (mostly Erik) installed it on Saturday and then taught the dogs how to use it. Roxy wasn't really a huge fan and when we would push her out, she would spend most of her time doing this. Finally by Monday she got the hang of it and now uses it like a pro.

This is our new dog Sasha. Molly went to live with a sweet family in Arkansas, so my stepdad Greg sent my brother down to Texas with Sasha to become part of our family. Sasha is part Pomeranian/cat/squirrel/yoda and is the most loving dog ever. She and Roxy are still trying to figure out who's the boss between them.
In other news, I'm officially off orientation at work and completely on my own! It's kind of scary, but so far no one has died! Seriously though, I just try not to think about it and do my job like I would if I still had a preceptor. Also, my 90 day trial period is up and my supervisor said I'm doing a great job-lots to be thankful for!

Being a Labor and Delivery Nurse

For the last three months I have been training as a Labor and Delivery RN. Let me just say this is the hardest thing I've done next to learning how to be married. It's been a rough three months adjusting to a new schedule that begins at 4:55 am three days a week and doesn't end til 7:30 pm. I used to have nightmares every single night that I would do something wrong and I would constantly wake up. Thankfully during this training period I've had a great preceptor with 28 years experience who's taught me so much about this field. While the birth of a child is magical, it is by no means pretty, and I have learned to be comfortable in this setting. One thing I was deathly afraid of in the beginning was catching babies, which is nurse-slang for the nurse who takes the baby from the doctor after it is born and attends to it. In the past 2 weeks I have come to love this job and often request it during assignments (usually I'm rejected and given a laboring woman instead :-) One of the toughest parts of this job was learning to fit into a group a women who have been doing this much longer than me and aren't accustomed to newbies. I tried to do this by working my tail off and rising to challenges. Hopefully I can continue to earn their respect. My absolute favorite thing about this job is meeting couples who truly desire a baby and experiencing the joy of the birth of their child with them. Whether by c-section or natural labor it's an awesome experience every day. By the way, I love having 2 days off every week!
P.S. Erik started law school this week and it's going well!

Our trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas

Last week I had 5 days off in a row (wow!) so Erik and I drove the 6 hours to my dad's house in Hot Springs. We went out on the boat, visited my 92 year- old great grandmother, went to Target, had a birthday party for my brother Austin, and watched A LOT of the Olympics. We had a great time.

Ethan Drake Shepherd, age 4, in my dad's minivan at Target.

Austin turned 19 on August 16th and Ethan and I made the cake for him.

Can you tell we're related?

Silly faces. I'm actually surprised at how many pictures Ethan let me take of him. Normally he runs from the camera unless it's his idea to take the picture. Then again, he's four.

Yum, good cake.

Happy birthday brother!

Two of the grandkids and Mimi. I'm the shortest one. :-(

Ethan all ready for a day on the boat! He has matching shark swim trunks and a hat.

Here he is "centering his chi." When he does this he actually says, "Ooohmm."

Every boat trip this kid's been on he falls asleep.

Erik and myself.

Too cute.

In other news Erik starts school tomorrow officially and I'm working like a crazy woman this week, so that's all for now!

X-Files - Season 1

Jessica and I just finished watching Season 1 of the X-Files. In some ways, this show was "before our time" but we thought we would like it...and of course we did. We are fans of shows like Lost, and I have been watching The 4400 lately...both are popular shows (well, The 4400 "was" popular) and both were influenced by the X-Files. I love Sci-Fi stuff and had seen an episode or two, but never got into the show. Anyways, we decided to rent the DVDs and really enjoyed Season 1. In the next day or so we will be starting Season 2.

P.S.
One of our favorite aspects of the series so far is Scully's early 90s fashionable women's wear...as seen in the following stills:

Books, books, and more books

The Waco library system has really been a friend of the Fuquas here lately. We make a trip once every week and half or so and load up with some reading entertainment. Lately I've been on Patricia Cornwell kick and her Kay Scarpetta series. It's a mystery series surrounding a medical examiner/lawyer from Virginia who gets caught up in all sorts of murder and trouble. I've also discovered the joys of library cookbooks. There are a lot of ancient cookbooks to sort through, but you can find a gem or two hiding in the stacks. Recently I've checked out one of Ina Garten's cookbooks, as well as Ellie Krieger and some baking cookbooks. Erik made some really good brownies last week out of one of these.
For lack of anything better to do with my time I decided to make my own cookbook using a downloadable application called Booksmart. It's a really neat program where you can design your cookbook, upload recipes and pictures, and then when you're done you pay a fee and they mail it to you. This is something I'm going to take my time on, since I'm always trying out new recipes and searching for easy and quick meals. I figured this would be a good hobby for me and worth the investment of my time.
In other news, the highs this week are 106 and 107. Yeah, it's hot here.

Two Year Anniversary!

In honor of our two year anniversary I posted some pics from our wedding day. Since then we've gotten a dog, I graduated college, and we moved over 750 miles to Texas. I love remembering back on my wedding day all the wonderful friends and family gathered together to watch us get married. It was by far the happiest day of my life and I'm so blessed to have Erik as my husband!