Is there anything better than...

...a small town Memorial Day Parade?

Ya'll Come Back Now, Ya'hear

Rick and I had both previously lived in Charleston. Since we were going there for Honor and Ned's wedding, I took some extra days off and we rented a beach house on Isle of Palms. We spent the week introducing Will to some of the finer Southern pleasures.

Some of the highlights:

Eating boiled peanuts and watermelon on Honor's parents' dock and throwing the peanut shells into the water

Shelling on the beach at low tide

Sitting on a joggling bench with Grandpa

Going for oysters at Bowen's Island, a dive where they bring a pile of steamed oysters to the table; you shuck them yourself and throw the shells into a hole cut in the middle of the table

When Will declared, "I want to stay here forever!"

Wedding of the Year

We just got back from Charleston, where one of my oldest and dearest friends, Honor, married her sweetheart of a bazillion years, Ned. It was a truly breathtaking wedding- if Martha Stewart and Southern Living Magazine got together to throw a wedding, it couldn't top this wedding. Since I was in the wedding, it was hard to take pictures, but Rick snapped this one of Honor coming down the aisle with her dad. Isn't she beautiful? Note her dad's seersucker suit- I love the South.

I've known Honor since high school and even though I'm not one of those people who is especially good at keeping in touch, we have managed it somehow. It probably helps that our birthdays are exactly 1 week apart, so at least once a year we take time to catch up. (Thanks, Honor, for always turning 29 again a week before I do).

Our paths crossed again in Boston, where we both lived after college. That's where I met Ned. Even though I think Honor was a little in denial, it was clear that Ned had it bad for Honor. You could tell by the way he looked at her when he thought no one was watching. His eyes were so full of love and adoration. It was very sweet and romantic.

Then there was the year that my amazing she-woman friend ran the Boston Marathon. She called me and asked if I would jump in and run the last 6 miles of the race with her for moral support. I thought we had a good plan. I got all geared up, went early to a spot in front of the Dunkin' Donuts right after Heartbreak Hill, schmoozed the policeman who was posted there to make sure people didn't jump into the race, and waited.
And waited.
And somehow we missed each other. When I spoke to her later, she said that she got past the place we were supposed to meet, realized she had missed me, and burst into tears (oof- break my heart). Luckily, Ned just happened to be at a Marathon Party about a block down the course. He spotted Honor, jumped into the race (I have no idea what footwear he had on or how many drinks he had had), and saved the day knight-in-shining-armor style. I'm certainly not trying to take credit for them getting together, but when Honor called me a few years later and told me they decided to give their relationship a go, I turned to Rick and said, "I knew it!".

She picked fabulous colors for her wedding: Tiffany blue and espresso. I couldn't help but go into crafting overdrive.

A CD cover I made for a mix of 'Laid Back Love Songs for the Breezy Bride to Be'

A little photo album













A smash book passed around the bridesmaids luncheon













The wedding guest book
(Thanks for your help, Leah)

Just now emerging from the sugar-coma

Well, Easter weekend was one big sugar-fueled whirl of egg hunts. On Saturday we went to Kinsale Golf Club to commune with the Easter Bunny, sing songs about jumping jelly beans, and hone our hunting skills in the cut-throat world of preschool-age egg hunts. Woowee, not since the whistle blow at the end of break time at the pool last summer have I seen such a stampede of crazed, gleaming-eyed children.

Will performed admirably, then retired to the steps to survey the booty.On Sunday morning, Will checked to see if the Bunny had left tracks in the flour we left on the front porch- the Bunny had. Note that we are still wearing our Disney mouse ears at all times.
After church (where Will asked loudly if Mary, Jesus' mother, was the same as Wendy, Michael & John's mother, Mary, in Peter Pan) there was a slightly less tense egg hunt in our back yard.
Once again Will could barely wait to break into the bright plastic treasures.

Thanks, Easter Bunny.

Here Comes Monkey Cottontail

I got my Easter cards done just in the nick of time to at least get them postmarked before Easter.

The little carrot boxes were my Card Club project for this month. I have to confess that I borrowed the idea from my fabulously crafty friend Mary's blog. It was a nice excuse to blow the dust off of my Cricut die-cutter.

Happy Easter, Everybody!
I hope the Bunny is good to you

Last ER Ever

Even though I hadn't watched 'ER' in probably more than ten years, tonight I watched the very last episode of 'ER'. Which seemed fitting because I vividly remember watching the very first episode of 'ER'. I was a first year student in dental school and taking my basic science courses over at the medical school. At Harvard they have this really wonderful case-based system where the students are broken up into tutorial groups of about 8 people with a physician tutorial leader (my first tutorial leader was Judah Folkman who had recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for figuring out that tumors can grow quickly by recruiting blood vessels to grow toward them. Seriously- how humbling is that). So a case would be presented at the beginning of the week- a patient description, vital signs, symptoms, history, etc. The group would develop a list of possible diagnosis and "order" tests. The next day we would have our test results and we would discuss how this changed the possible dignosis and maybe order more tests or procedures. By the end of the week we would have worked toward the final diagnosis and there would usually be some ethical or social issue worked in there along the way.

For some reason at Harvard Medical School they like to brag that Michael Crichton was a student there... before he dropped out. Michael Crichton created 'ER' and a lot of Harvard physicians were consultants on the show. I swear the characters on the show are named after real people. There is a Peter Benton Hall in one of the teaching hospitals and I saw Kerry Weaver on a plaque in one of the conference rooms. There was a lot of buzz about this new show coming on, so on Thurday nights a bunch of us would get together in the dorm and watch 'Friends' then 'ER'. We were a little surprised when the cases we had just discussed in tutorial started showing up on 'ER'. How fun was it to watch the show, then someone would shout at the TV, "That guy drank antifreeze" or "That kid wasn't abused; he has osteogenesis imperfecta" or we would just laugh when the actors mispronounced the medical terms. After I graduated and started residency, I stopped watching because it made me feel too tense and anxious. Tonight was no different-

HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN 15 YEARS?!

Back from Cali

10 Favorite Things About Our Trip to California

The main purpose of the trip was an anesthesia meeting, but since we were going all the way to the west coast, we decided to make a trip of it. We spent the first couple of days on Coronado Island at the Hotel Del Coronado. Then we drove up to LA and spent 3 days at Disneyland. Last, and certainly least exciting, was my meeting back in San Diego. Though the fun continued for Rick and Will, who visited Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.

1. The smell of the air
Words cannot describe how fresh and lovely the air smelled in Coronado. When we walked around, I noticed several varieties of flowers that I had tried to grow in my flowerbeds back in Ohio, but they all had inevitably scorched in the summer or died with the first frost. The grounds of the Hotel Del looked like Paradise.

2. Sitting on the balcony in the morning
Our room that the Hotel Del had a balcony overlooking the beach. On the first morning, Rick took Will for a walk on the beach. Watching Will chase birds down on the beach under Rick's protective eye was some kind of wonderful.

3. When Will told me I was the princess of the sand castle we had just built

4. Explaining to Will that the men and women jogging along the beach were exercising because they are in the military and staying in shape so they could keep up safe is part of their job
Rick was thrilled to be back on his old stomping grounds. He was stationed in San Diego for many years, including the time he spent as a Supply Officer for Special Warfare Group 1 (they oversee the Navy SEAL Teams). We saw a lot of military activity from the beach- ships, helicopters, and submarines. Rick was always pointing out that ships were doing anchor drills or that it looked like some group was getting underway. One morning we saw some people swimming back and forth between buoys. Rick said he was pretty sure it was a SEAL class training for their 2 1/2 mile ocean swim. He said it must be a pretty new class, because there were still a lot of them. Yikes- I saw the movie 'GI Jane'.

5. The surrey ride
I had just asked Rick not to wear his Ohio State sweatshirt to go golfing because I was worried he would look like a tourist. Then Will got his heart set on renting one of these. Truthfully, it was fun.... and, boy, did we look cool.

6. The fruit
Getting back to the Paradise thing... You know that song from Camelot-
"The rain may never fall till after sundown
By eight the morning fog must disappear"?
I'm sure that somehow the same laws apply to Southern California. And the beautiful weather grows beautiful fruit. At every meal we ate huge strawberries and plump grapes, juicy melon and sweet pineapple. For some meals, Will ate nothing but fruit, but that seemed okay.

7. Our Ears
We spent most of the week in our Will-assigned-personas. Will was Mickey Mouse, I was Minnie Mouse and Rick was Goofy (hee hee). When we got to Disneyland, we each got hats to match our characters and Will made sure that everyone wore their hats at all times. He addressed us as 'Minnie' and 'Goofy' and insisted that we call him 'Mickey'. Again, we were at the height of cool.

8. Fireworks
We could see the Disneyland fireworks from our hotel room. The best thing about that was that we could watch them with our shoes off and our poor, puffy, tired feet elevated. There was a station on the hotel TV that played the music that went along with the fireworks show. They really thought of everything.

9. Will's crush on Minnie
We saw a lot of characters, but the only character Will got really jazzed about seeing was Minnie Mouse. The first time we saw her, Will ran up to her and she picked him up and twirled him in a circle. Then they sat down on a bench and chatted for a long time. We spent a lot of time at Minnie's house in Toon Town. Watch out Mickie Mouse.

10. My child was complimented on his manners
We were in one of the gazillion gift shops. Will was doing some "shopping" and I was telling him to put things back. One time a mother and her child were standing in front of the shelf where Will needed to return his latest item. As he walked away, I heard the mom say, "Did you hear that little boy say, 'Excuse me'? He has very good manners." Huh. I didn't know that he knew that 'Excuse me' was good for anything other than saying after he burped.