Our First Valentine's Day

To celebrate our first Valentine's Day since getting married, we traveled up to Maggie Valley, NC with a couple of Randy's co-workers and their families.  Upon arrival there, I was not so excited about the place we were staying; really, nothing more than an old, sketchy motel.  Although if you ever travel to Maggie Valley, there isn't a much more than that in general.  

So Saturday we all went for some good ol' country breakfast to get our day going.  With full bellies, we packed up everybody to go tubing in the snow (well, fake snow)! We had good fun with this activity until I fell off the tube and ate some snow pretty badly. Eventually I got talked into getting back on the tube for a few more runs. Some late lunch and down time prepped us for an evening of skiing at Cataloochee.  We spent several hours out on the slopes traveling up to the 'blue' slope finally. Randy had never skiied a blue before but he did very well. 

Here is us waiting for the rest of the group at the bottom of the slopes:

A nice pizza dinner to celebrate Valentine's day and some gin rummy while watching all the holiday movies on TV was perfect for us. Sunday morning we headed back to Augusta because we both had things that needed to be done before Monday.  

Now, the reason I mentioned the sketchy motel in the beginning of the post was because it plays a role now... Today I went to the Student Health Center at MCG to get my diagnosis confirmed: bed bug bites!! The doctor was certain they must have come from the motel this past weekend. What a pleasant thing to find out.  So, now we are cleaning everything; clothes, bedding, the cat, etc. The gift that keeps on giving... Happy Valentine's Day! 

My first blog post

Amanda has been heckling me about not having blogged yet so here goes. Probably the biggest news recently is that we found out last week that we will be going on a medical missions trip to (I'm going to butcher this if I don't look it up) Guanajuato, Mexico. We are very excited about it and are looking forward to it a great deal. Amanda will be going as a PT student and I will going as one of a handful of PT providers for the trip. I went on a similar trip to the Phillipines when I was in PT school (way back in 2002; yes, that's right - I'm old, or so Amanda reminds me). It is an amazing opportunity to spread the Gospel message while being able to serve and help meet peoples' physical needs as well when they otherwise may not be able to receive care. We are so excited! Amanda is in the process of getting a new passport (she changed her last name back in August because she agreed to put up with some bum for a lifetime or so).

I was pumped up yesterday by National Signing Day for college football (if you don't like how this paragraph has started, you may want to just skip it). Georgia signed a great class of incoming players, headlined by Aaron Murray, a quarterback from Tampa, FL; Marlon Brown, a receiver from Memphis, TN; Branden Smith, a defensive back from GA; as well as a host of other outstanding players that hopefully will light it up 'between the hedges' over the next several years. Brown was especially big news because he chose UGA over Tennessee at the last minute (how do you like that Lane Kiffin? Kiffin is Tennessee's new head coach who claimed they were going to take some players away from GA; UGA wound up signing the top 2 rated players from the state of Tennessee!). In all, UGA finished with what most people had as the 8th-9th best signing class in the nation. ESPN had it rated as the 6th-best class (funny, I went all the way down to 25th and I didn't see Ga Tech's class ranked; had to be a misprint, right?). We'll have to wait and see how these high school talents play out in the future, but nonetheless a great day to be a 'Dawg (what day isn't?).

As for the whole me drinking the bottle of milk thing at the baby shower, I will just quote NFL Hall of Fame coach Vince Lombardi: "If they keep score you might as well win." I don't know that he meant that mantra to be applied to drinking milk from a baby bottle, but there you go. Will add more later.

Boys and Baby Showers

This past weekend, Randy and I had a lovely time with some people we haven't seen for a while. Friday night we saw Romeo+Juliet with Erin and Gary (long lost friends who aren't so very lost anymore) at the Shakespeare Tavern - which was awesome! Saturday I tried THE final bridesmaid dress for Ginny (right??) and caught up with her over lunch. In between, we got to spend time with my parents, whom we hadn't seen since Christmas. But Sunday was quite entertaining...

Apparently the male gender amps up baby showers. Enter the scene: Randy's best friend Matt and his wife are having their second baby (a little boy soon to be by the name of Ashton Kenneth). So, the not-so-surprise baby shower was where we found ourselves on the only appropriate day to have a baby shower for a little boy: Super Bowl Sunday. Many males also found themselves here, which is definitely a new-er experience for me. I always thought it was just females who bothered in these gatherings of 'oooh-ing' and 'awwwing' over cute baby clothes with a chance visit from the daddy-to-be towards the end of the shower. Seeing as how the day was already brewing with testosterone-packed competition, why not start the party a few hours pre-game with a little man vs. man race.

Contestant 1: Randy


Contestant 2: Matt

Oh, what a glorious race it was. They were neck and neck the whole way through chugging a half-bottle of milk through a nipple. I was having flashbacks to high school marching band camp skit night where two seniors always managed to challenge each other to chug a gallon of whole milk - neither ever won... But alas, this victory must go to only one. That 'one' was the man I then had to ride in the car with for the next 3+ hours back to Augusta. Ladies, remember this when you invite or encourage your husband/boyfriend/male friend to attend baby showers. They will find a way to masculinize the shower. No simple games that involve avoiding saying the word "baby" or guessing the circumference of the pregnant belly...this is intense competition. Be prepared!