October '08 - Gulf Shores (part 2) - Zack and Kristen's Engagement Pictures

October '08 - Gulf Shores (part 1)

In my opinion, there is never a bad time to spend a long weekend at the beach... but fall is especially nice, since the weather is warm enough to spend long days outside (but not too hot), and the water is still warm from the hot days of summer. So, last fall we went to Gulf Shores with Matt's parents, Seth and Amy and their kids, and Zack and his fiancee (now wife) Kristen. I loved having some people who were willing to be models for me to practice some photography, too! I'll have to put pictures up in several posts, but here is part one -- some casual shots of the family!

Hannah was a good helper with desserts

Caleb would bring a book to whomever he could find to read to him

Playing in the waves: Matt and Hannah

Candy and Caleb

September '08 - New Orleans

Last September, during one of the busiest months of residency (the neonatal ICU.....), $29 plane tickets on Southwest + a weekend off + a good hotel deal on Priceline = a trip to New Orleans! I planned it all out and didn't tell Matt where we were going until we were in the car on the way to the airport (and then realized I had to tell him because he was driving....).

We stayed in the French Quarter just off Bourbon Street, and walked or took the trolley everywhere we went. We took a walking tour of the Quarter, went to some good museums, visited the Aquarium and the Zoo, and ate wonderful food!

Jackson Square

Courtyard in the French Quarter

Me and Matt at the Aquarium

This pair of White Bengal Tigers were enjoying the afternoon!

Alligators getting some sun

August '08 - Wears Valley

Continuing on my catch-up blogging: These pictures are from our time at Wears Valley Ranch last summer with my extended family on my mother-in-law's side. We went up to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which borders the ranch, for an afternoon at the river.

Seth giving an inner tube ride to Hannah, Zeke, and Carissa . It's a bit tricky to get all three kids on an inner tube to have their faces to the camera at the same time....

Bethany and Caroline

Aunt Corky and Sam

Abbey with Eliza and Sam

Aunt Lisa isn't drowning Carissa, really....

...she went face-down in the puddles all on her own!

Caleb playing with rocks

The river!

It's about time...

...I updated this thing! I didn't realize it has been over a year since I posted.... oops.

I'll try to get caught up with pictures over the next few posts -- going back in chronological order (those of you who know me well, know that I insist on reading books/watching movies/etc. IN ORDER, so this only fits).

These pictures are from last August - our annual trip to Atlanta for a Braves game.

Great seats!

Matt and me

Jay, Sarah, and Caroline (age 7 months) - Caroline's first Braves game!

I'm an Author!

Wonderful news this morning - my CF project (which I have been laboring over for years) is going to be published!! For those of you who don't know, I started a project in medical school where I interviewed adolescent and young adult patients with Cystic Fibrosis, focusing on what they knew about the genetic side of CF. Short genetics lesson - CF is autosomal recessive (meaning you have to inherit one mutated gene from each parent to have the disease). So we wanted to find out what CF patients knew about their chances of having a child with CF. It's a bit more complicated given that CF patients, especially males, have a really hard time having biological children, but no need to go into all those details here. Anyway, I did patient interviews and then developed an objective survery which I took to CF clinics both at Children's and at UAB to ask patients to complete it, did all the data analysis myself, and got to present my research at the CF conference in California back in October (see Why I'm Learning to Love Medical Conferences). And now my research is going to be published (as a letter-to-the-editor, not quite as good as an article, but not nearly as much work either) in one of the big time medical journals (Chest, for you medical folks). Hooray!

From Renal to the ED

Today is intern switch day; a day that is both looked-forward-to (if you're ready to do something different) and dreaded (because it takes a lot of work to tie up all the loose ends from the rotation you're leaving, and a lot of work to learn the patients & diseases on the new rotation). It is the day at the end of every month when the interns change over from one rotation to the next. (The residents switch the day after the interns, so it's not complete chaos on the same day.) So I tidied up everything I have done on the Renal service this month, and am headed off to my next rotation, the ER, starting this evening.

Renal (a.k.a. nephrology) - kids with kidney problems ranging from acute kidney damage to those with renal failure & on dialysis to those with kidney transplants - has been my world this past month. Maybe not medically as interesting to me as other months (there is a LOT of biochemistry involved in kidney diseases, and that was always a weak spot for me), but I learned a lot.... and that's good for me. I definitely have a sense of accomplishment - and relief - about finishing my renal month. But, I'm ready to move on (knowing that a career in nephrology is not likely in my future!) and glad to be going to the ER!