Happy 8th Birthday Andrew!!

Today my littlest brother, Andrew, turned 8! He was born on June 17, 2005.

This is me (at almost 7) holding him for the first time!!

Aww... :D
 Looking at the pictures above, I can't believe they were taken eight years ago. I mean, I remember every detail of going to see him in the hospital right after he was born, buying him a little shirt in the hospital gift shop,when I held him, I remember my dad saying "Use BOTH hands!!".... Sheesh. I feel very old.  He's such a fun person. I love reading or playing games with him! For his birthday, I got him the newest Magic Treehouse book, and a package of sour gummi worms, which he will hopefully share with me. :D
Happy Birthday, Andrew!

 Check out his blog at http://adventuresofandrewc.blogspot.com/ !!

Candy Striping

Monday I had a really unique opportunity as a  hospital Jr. Volunteer. I got to volunteer in Day Surgery, instead of working the floor. ( working the floor just means I attend to patients in rooms-bring flowers, newspapers, coffee,etc to them, and wheel 'em  out when it's time to go home.) I worked in surgery and surgery waiting. I was able to do this thanks to a super nice lady at church, who is over surgery volunteers.The hospital I volunteer at uses volunteers as a go between with patients patients and the patient's families. Our job is to keep the family informed on what's happening in surgery, where the patient will be, and when they can see him. We also make the families as comfortable as we can, which means we make coffee, give directions to the cafeteria, and assist them in any way possible. It's especially interesting for me, because I want to be a pediatric ENT or orthopedic surgeon, and many of the patients are children with ENT related problems.

  Both floor and surgery volunteers deliver medical charts to Med. Surge 1 &2, ICU, and IMC. This is always fun, because you see what's going on in all the different departments. Our hospital is fairly small, but it's big enough to get lost in, and part of my job is showing people where ambulatory care and radiology are. The cutest part of the job is definitely getting to present new babies with little baby food spoons that have the hospital name engraved on them. We had five babies last Tuesday, and I got to give them the little spoons. :) It's funny, but wherever I go in my candy striper uniform, people are like"Oh, my goodness! A candy striper! I haven't seen one of those in years!" I love being able to tell them about my experiences. Do any of y'all volunteer at interesting or unusual places? Then you should comment and tell me all about it!

EASY-but elegant- Key Lime Pie

Hello, dahlings! Would you like to hear the world's easiest and yummiest recipe ever? You know you would. :)

Ingredients

• 5 egg yolks(you know, separate the yolks from the whites)
• 1 (14 oz.) can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup key lime juice (don't worry about the snazzy kind in the big shiny bottle. Great Value and Food Club brands are okay.)
• 1 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crust.

Steps

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Combine the yolks, sweet milk, and lime juice. Mix really, really well. Pour into the unbaked pie crust.
3. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool, and garnish with lime or whipped cream if desired.

Well? Wasn't that easy?

Vacation part 2

  We left Dauphin Island a little earlier than planned, because it was starting to rain really hard, and we were worried about the only road out flooding(That sounds so dramatic. But,it really was the only road out - after all, it is an island!) So, we headed to Mobile, as it was on the route home. Dauphin Island is about 40 minutes from Mobile, Alabama, and there are tons of fun indoor things you can do there. We went to the Gulf Coast Exploreum of Science, and it was amazing!! I loved the health area. There was a large computer screen where you went 'shopping'. It  calculated all your  'purchases' and told you how healthy or unhealthy they were. The whole health room was educational and fun! There was also an exhibit called The Debakey Virtual Surgery Center. It was in the My Bodyworks health gallery.You have  the opportunity to conduct your own virtual surgery - you choose open heart surgery or knee surgery. Then you get to use the scalpel to cut open the skin, the saw to cut bone and the retractor to access the heart. The patients' vital signs are displayed on the screen as you try  to complete the surgery successfully and quickly -and keep your patient alive and healthy. I was a little scared I'd mess up and "hurt" the patient, but I completed a successful surgery. It seemed so real! The knee surgery was my favorite. The surgery center also had many other medical things you could practice: seal blood vessels with laser beam accuracy, challenge your hand-eye coordination with exhibits that mimic endoscopic surgery techniques(you used a big stick to push little bits of equipment through a tube. Daddy and Andrew were really good at it.) and learn about careers in health and safety. I loved this because I want to either be a pediatric nurse or a dietician. Then we went and ate at a restaurant called Felix's Fish Camp. Their crab soup was AMAZING! Then it was time to head for home.

Our Vacation Part 1

Monday,we drove through Louisiana. We drove from our house in Texas through Shreveport, and then straight down, all the way to New Orleans. We stopped at Oak Alley Plantation, just outside of New Orleans, and had a tour of this amazing old plantation....

Oak Alley

The weird looking thing is a ceiling fan. A slave would pull the rope, and it would fan the guests.

The plantation owner's' wife slept here.

The very lavish master suite.

One of the slave cabins

 We crossed a lot of bridges over the Mississippi. You could see a lot of factories and oil companies.

Then we were in New Orleans. Parts of it were very pretty.

However, parts were scary. We decided to go for a walk through the streets, and we wanted to walk down Bourbon Street, because it's very famous. However  there were a lot of bars and clubs, and shops that sold stuff with, er, bad pictures on it and posters of ... people posing , shall we say, inappropriately... We quickly abandoned that idea.

Then we went to eat at Deanie's Seafood. It was really good.

It started raining, so I had to take a bunch of fast pictures from the car.

                                                 There were beautiful flowers everywhere.

Tuesday, we kept driving, through  a little piece of Mississippi and Alabama, then we got on a long bridge and drove to Dauphin Island, Alabama. We rented a beach house called "Sunny Pit." It had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a nice kitchen and 360 views of the Gulf and the Mississippi Sound. It was so cute!

My room at the beach house.

             We went swimming every minute we could, even when it was windy and raining! On the days it stormed, we played board games and read books.

 We toured historic Fort Gaines, also on the island. It guarded Mobile Bay from Union soldiers during the Civil War It was used as an outpost during the Spanish-American conflict in 1898, and as an Army base in WW 2. The famous quote "D*** the torpedoes... Full Speed Ahead!" was given during the Battle of Mobile bay , which took place at the fort. All over the fort were little tunnels leading to rooms that would've stored ammo, men, or guns.
There were tons of winding steps leading to tiny  rooms, like secret passages. It was really fun to walk through it, imagining what it was like for the people there.

These stairs seemed to go on forever, but they led to a large store room for guns and supplies.

Mobile Bay.




Wow. This was very long. Part 2 won't be as long, I promise. Comment?
<3

As I'm writing this, I am sitting in a beach house looking at the  waves in Dauphin Island, Alabama.Monday we left our little farm in east Texas and drove through Louisiana all the way down to New Orleans. We ate lunch there, then drove through a little piece of Mississippi, then Alabama!! The beach house is fairly large,the backyard  four lots,  everyone of them oceanfront.On the way here, we toured sprawling plantations. I've been through these states before, but never these parts of them. SO MUCH  FUN!!! We went swimming yesterday (i got the cutest new swimsuit)
I love living in the South, even more so  when I travel through it.

...do not be discouraged...

With so many sad things going on in the news, particularly the Boston Marathon bombings/ hunt for suspects and the West, Texas explosions, it's hard not to get discouraged and worried, but Joshua 1 : 9 gives us some encouraging advice:

When you feel helpless,like you can't do anything to help these two grieving cities, remember there IS something you can do.

PRAY.

I visited Boston when I was 10, and I loved it. It's such a beautiful, historic city. Everywhere you turn, there's a bit of history. Please pray for the friends and family of those wounded or killed, and those being affected by the manhunt.

I live in a little town in Texas not unlike West.  :'( It's just so sad to think something like the explosions could happen here, in a town like mine. Pray for West.



                     

                                                            ....do not be discouraged....