Soccer and Rock Band

Casey graduated from TNU playing soccer all four years as their #1 goal keeper. She was awesome and has NUMEROUS records on the books to prove it! She kicked tail, let's just say that. This weekend TNU had an alumni game for all the girls that had played on the team in the past few years and Brent and I headed out to watch the game.

The girls were great - they played against the current TNU team and while the "alums" didn't win, they played great. Afterwards we had a great cookout and got to see Katie and Marty - 2 of Casey's closest friends and bridesmaids from their wedding.

After the cookout everyone came over to our house. I don't even have to TELL you what we did, I have pictures!

Friday Funnies

Fourth Marriage
A woman, married three times, walked into a bridal shop one day and told the sales clerk that she was looking for a wedding gown for her fourth wedding.
"Of course, madam," replied the sales clerk,"exactly what type and color are you looking for?"
The bride to be said: "A long frilly white dress with a veil."
The sales clerk hesitated a bit, then said,"Please don't take this the wrong way, but gowns of that nature are considered more appropriate for brides who are being married the first time - for those who are a bit more innocent, if you know what I mean? Perhaps ivory or sky blue would be nice ?"
"Well," replied the customer, a little peeved at the clerk's directness, "I can assure you that a white gown would be quite appropriate.Believe it or not, despite all my marriages,I remain as innocent as a first time bride.
You see, my first husband was so excited about our wedding, he died as we were checking into our hotel. My second husband and I got into such a terrible fight in the limo on our way to our honeymoon that we had that wedding annulled immediately and never spoke to each other again."
"What about your third husband?" asked thesales clerk.
"That one was a Democrat," said the woman,"and every night for four years, he just sat on the edge of the bed and told me how good it was going to be, but nothing ever happened."

This is how we roll...

After my doctor's appointment, Brent took me to Wal-mart to pick up a few things and well just get out of the house for a while. We knew we had to go somewhere that had wheelchairs and what's a better place than WALLY WORLD! We actually did have a lot of fun with the motorized wheelchair at walmart especially since this was the first time for both of us to use it legitimately.

After Wal-mart, we ate dinner at Red Lobster then walked around Cool Springs Galleria Mall. Brent got to deal with a very unfriendly "guest services" lady for my cheap wheelchair that we had to leave our keys as a deposit (??), but we had a great time. I have such a great husband that was willing to push my tail around the mall for 2 hours! We were 15 minute late returning the wheel chair and our friendly guest services lady says, "I was just calling security. You almost didn't have your keys." She was so friendly. Really. Great job CBL malls in hiring your "friendly" guest service people.

Anywho, we had a fun time and I got to get out of the house! WOO HOO

Scary/Gruesome/Gross Pictures

WARNING!!!

The below pictures are pretty rough. Definitely not for the queasy stomach, but I've had a few people tell me they were "excited" to see pictures from today's doctor's visit.

Thanks to my loving husband, I get to provide a visual to all of my "loyal" readers. The visit went really well today. I did get to see the incision, which is actually a lot worse that I had imagined. The past few days I've realized it had to be bigger than they originally told me because it has been hurting around my ankle and I thought the incision would only be along the side of my foot. In my head I was picturing about a 2 inch incision if even that much, but today I saw that it's MUCH bigger. oh well. There goes my career as a foot model.

Side Note: Actually, my good friend K. Lawson told me about a year ago that I had freaky long toes, so I knew that foot modeling was out of the question

Anyway, back on topic...

So everything is healing nicely. They took another x-ray, the doctor shows me the pictures and says, "well the bone is gone!" As if they thought there might be a chance they didn't get it??!! Strange if you ask me. I wanted to asked, "wasn't that the point of this whole operation thingy??" ha ha

So even though my foot was swollen up like a water balloon, they said it was ok. They put me in a new cast which feels 1,000 times better as it's not hitting directly on my incision and is much more comfortable. Ugly. But comfortable.

I go back to the doctor next Wednesday to have the stitches removed, but they told me that I will be on crutches in a boot of some type for at least another 2 weeks AFTER that. Fun.

I am getting better at the stairs in our apartment, but it's still pretty scary and Brent's still right there with me the entire time. Oh and we did get a permit to get a handicapped tag for our car which Brent is pretty excited about.

So...here they come...are you ready for some nasty "Halloween-ie" pictures as Brent calls them?

Here's my battle wound.....

And no, that's not hair on my foot, that's fuzz from the cotton that was wrapped around my leg underneath all my bandages. It was stuck to my leg.

What Have You Been Doing?

Everyone's been asking what I've been doing on my time off, recovering from my foot surgery. Well let me just SHOW you what I've been doing:

I love to scrapbook, but since we've moved to Nashville I haven't had much time to drag everything out and work on some pages. I've started a massive undertaking of scrapbooking our cruises. This is just the beginning of our first cruise with the Moncriefs way back in 2005 to the Bahamas. It's one of five cruises I have to do over the next week and a half. Hopefully I'll be able to finish at least half of them over my few days off!

I'm heading to the doctor in a few hours to do my first check up - I'm anxious to see what my battle wounds look like as well as to hear how much longer I'll be laid up in bed.

Hope everyone is having the beautiful weather that we are here in Nashville!

Post Op - Day 2

Greetings! I thought I'd do a quick post of how things have been the past 2 days after my surgery.

Thursday morning we arrived at the surgery center around 11am, met Dr Lawrence who asks, "Are you a praying kind of person?" Which I thought was awesome. After he prayed with Brent and I, we waited another 5 minutes and they wheeled me back into the actual operating room. I felt like I was on ER when they wheel the beds through the hallways. It was strange. The actual operating room was FREEZING and that's my last memory: I said, "it's freezing" and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room 2 hours later saying, "it's freezing."

Brent finally got to come into recovery with me and we started the process of getting dressed and ready to go home. I hadn't had anything to eat since 7:00 p.m. the night before so needless to say, I was starving as it was 2:00 p.m. now. They gave me strict instructions not to eat anything spicy or greasy so i decided that a grilled cheese and root bear float from Sonic would be ok...??? It sounded good and I devoured it.

I had strict instructions to keep my bandage nice and dry. Here's what I have to deal with - you probably can't tell from the picture, but there's a splint under my bandage that goes all the way up both sides of my leg.

I was sent home with some ridiculously strong Oxycodone and a few instructions to be sure to keep my foot elevated, come back on Wednesday for a check up and call if we had any problems.

Brent was so awesome during the past few days. He's waited on me hand and foot - getting me whatever I needed. He woke up every 4 hours on Thursday to make sure I kept taking my drugs and checking on me to make sure I kept my foot elevated and all that stuff. He was great.

Friday was a pretty rough day. I started the morning with a rather queasy stomach, being extremely careful what I ate - realizing that my body did NOT like the oxycodone. Let's just put it this way: I didn't keep any food in my body yesterday. It was horrible. We finally called the surgery center and they called in another prescription that has medication in it to help with your stomach. I took ONE last night and it came back up.

I've decided to forgo the oxycodone and see if I can survive on Advil. So far so good. I'm starting to feel a little pain but it's 1,000 times better than being so disoriented and puking every 2 hours. Brent was such a trooper yesterday - he was right there for me the entire time, getting me whatever I wanted, cleaning up and being able to handle it.

Funny story...I was sitting up on the couch (still drugged out on oxycodone) and had asked Brent for a peanut butter sandwich. He was in the kitchen (right behind me) making it, but I had dosed off for what felt like 45 minutes - I woke up and yelled for him, "BRENT?!" He was right behind me and it scared him - he said he jumped. It was funny because it had only been about 45 seconds since I had dozed off. I had no concept of time yesterday while I was on drugs. If I talked to any of you on the phone yesterday, I will probably confuse it with another day (sorry).

Funny times.

Wordless Wednesday

State Fair, Visitors and Cake!

Hi-dy Ho Neighbors!

It's been a while since I've actually posted on anything "real" - other than cake! Not that anyone's complaining - especially my co-workers who get to eat all the cake I bring each week from class.

We had an eventful weekend - starting with Friday at the Sapp's house; they invited us over for pizza and games with their friends Marti and Chris. Both of which were in the wedding party, so we have gotten to all know each other these past few months.

On Saturday, Brent's parents came for a little visit to Nashvegas. We decided to hit up the TN State Fair - I had been told it was just "ok" and that was definitely our sentiments once we left. I thought that since it was our STATE fair that it would have been HUGE with LOTS of activities, but it wasn't. We saw the typical cattle, goats, some beautiful sheered sheep, chickens, crazy roosters, several guys with mullets, women wearing stuff they shouldn't have....so I guess, all in all it was your typical Fair!

We ate dinner at Genghis Grill - it was Brent's parents first time to partake in the gluttony of the "grill" and Brent and I haven't been in a while (I think we got burned out on it on all the trips we took to Nashville before we moved here; we used to eat there EVERY single time. Brad and Casey have recently told us they got SICK of taking us there...ha)

Brent's parents were even good sports and let us teach them how to play Rock Band. We all rocked out for about 2 hours then everyone zonked out in the bed.

Sunday we ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel (thinking of you every minute, Brittany ;) ) and they headed out on their own merry way.

We had a great visit!

Cake Class...

I was really looking forward to this week's cake - it was our first time to work with fondant. For those of you who are not cake people, fondant is that icing that is on all of the "designer" cakes. One girl in my class said that Martha Stewart single handedly make fondant popular. However, by NO means does my cake this week even closely resemble a Martha Cake! My mom's cake she made a few weeks ago for the baby shower that look like suitcases were made from fondant and the wedding cake she made for Casey was also fondant!

I did realize that I need to buy more food coloring as all my cakes are starting to resemble one another - robin egg blue, hot pink, hot yellow...ha ha oh well.

Oh and the design of this week's cake is already selected for us - we have to pretty much make the cake that our instructor tells us to. I'm not sure I would ever have a need for a cake with a big bow on top of it.

Anyway, here's my first fondant cake:

Next week we get to learn how to make roses from fondant and the following week is the MECCA of all cakes: we have to make a TIERED cake (think traditional wedding cake) with over 30 (yes, THIRTY) roses.

In other news...
I have surgery on my foot Thursday this week. I'm not a bit worried or concerned about it - for all of those who have been asking me that - just thinking about what recovery will be like, when I'll be off drugs, etc. I know it will all be ok - just pray for Brent :) He's taking Thursday, Friday and Monday off from work to be with me. I know he'll be BORED to tears, but he's a GREAT caretaker.
Thanks everyone for your kind words and thoughts for my surgery. Hopefully I can post about it later this week (if I'm on drugs, who knows what I'll say)

New UTC member...
Our friends Katie and Kevin had their little boy this week: Owen. While I haven't gotten to see pictures, I know he's a cutie pie (because he has great looking parents)

Wordless Wednesday

New Toy!

This is sad, but I am so excited about my new toy: a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer! That's right, that's when you know you're an adult when you get excited about kitchen appliances. I broke my hand mixer a few weeks ago when attempting to make Royal Icing for my cake class. Now, I feel like a semi-pro with my amazing mixer.
Oh and I must also tell everyone that my husband tried to negotiate a better price for the mixer at Macy's. I'm getting better about this not embarrasing me at all the stores (especially because it's worked quite a bit - he negotiated a better price for some shoes at American Eagle just to name one!), however the salesperson working with us gave him this, "You're an idiot" look when he asked what was the lowest she could go on the mixer. Her response was, "the price on the tag." I just thought of our friend Jimmy and I know that if he had been there he would have LAUGHED out loud at her response.

As embarrasing as it may be to some, I just keep reminding myself, "Live Like No One Else so that Later, we can Live Like No One Else, " Dave Ramsey.

We had a great, relaxing weekend where we got to stay at home for once!! Sad, again, that we were excited to stay at home.

I wanted to do a quick blurb on an amazing event that took place this past weekend in Chattanooga, which was a walk for St Jude Patients that were assisted by Candlelighters in Chattanooga. Check out my sister's blog entry for all the details and pictures. Our family is celebrating 10 years this year since my nephew was diagnosed with leukemia. He is definitely one of the fortunate ones counted as a "survivor" and we are so excited to get to celebrate such an amazing miracle.

Man's Best Friend

A dog is truly a man's best friend.

If you don't believe it, just try this experiment.

Put your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car for an hour.

When you open the trunk, who is really happy to see you!?

Ironman and Cubbies

This past weekend we had the privelege of visiting Louisville, KY to support our great friend as he competed in the Ironman Louisville! We are so very proud of him for completing the race which was a 2.5 mile swim, 119 mile bike and 26 mile run all which took him only 16 1/2 hours :) (he he)

Here are Brittany and Brent at the swim finish. Aren't they cute?

Seriously, to check out his version and details of the competition, be sure to visit his blog: My Path to the Ironman

We stayed at a really neat hotel called 21c Hotel, which was a combination of a museum and a hotel. Brent thought their art was "creepy" but it was definitely unique. They had a bunch of these red penguins throughout the hotel that "moved" around during the night. We even saw one that had a sign around its neck cheering on a fellow Ironman competitor.

The Ironman was on Sunday, but we still had some traveling to do: we left Louisville on Monday morning and headed to Chicago, IL which is only 4 1/2 hours away from Louisville.

Monday

We went to Wrigley Field to watch the infamous Chicago "cubbies" take on the Houston Astros. Unfortnately, the Cubs lost and we didn't get to hear the Cubs song that Brent kept telling us about (we're still not sure he didn't just make it up in the car). We looked for about 15 minutes for a parking spot and were just about to pay $45 for a spot when we found this guy holding a sign "Parking $25" so we pulled over and he directed us to his back yard of his condo - we ended up parking in the alley of his condo. Only the "Montikers" could fully appreciate this guy's entrepeneurship.

The One, The Only - Wrigley Field

This was the most fascinating thing EVER - there are bleachers on the tops of these buildings. Once we were inside the stadium, we could see that these guys had some great seats. Very unconventional, but just one more thing to make Wrigley Field so unique!

Wrigley Field is sooooo awesome. It's the second oldest stadium in the country and definitely has more character than any stadium I've ever visited. The Moncriefs were excellent ticket pickers and we ended up with excellent seats, in the shade. We all had a Chicago-style dog - complete with the poppyseed bun, grilled onions, and crazy "neon" green relish.

After the game, we headed to the W Hotel which overlooked Lake Michigan and was GORGEOUS!! For dinner we had Pizzeria Uno for dinner - deep dish Chicago-style pizza that was fantastic. Afterwards, we were all exhausted so we headed back for a peaceful night's sleep in our fab hotel.

Tuesday

Brent was able to swing a deal when he booked our room and scored 2 free breakfasts from the W Hotel restaurant. The bad part was that there were 4 of us. Oh but have no fear - Jimmy and Brent had no shame in eating their heart's desire out at the restaurant AND taking to-go boxes of food back to the room for Brittany and I. To give you an idea of the restaurant - it was around $50 PER PERSON to eat at the restaurant for breakfast!!

I work with someone who is originally from Chicago and she was a lifesaver with excellent recommendations on things to do in the Windy City. We took her recommendation and went on an Architectural Tour of the city on Tuesday afternoon. It was really interesting to learn about the various buildings and their history in the city.

Of course we visited Michigan Avenue, with a variety of stores. I had convinced Brent not to take his tennis shoes (because they took up too much room in the suitcase) and it ended up backfiring on me as he had to buy shoes at NikeTown because his flip flops had worn a HUGE blister on his wittle foot. (poor thing...i know)

That afternoon we went up in the John Hancock building to the 96th floor to overlook the beautiful city - even the women's bathrooms were all windows which overlooked the city. It was amazing!

We wrapped up our last night at another pizza place: this time, Giadarno's which took 1st place on best pizza for the Montikers! It was incredible.

We didn't make it to Soldier Field THIS time, but there were plenty of reminders that we were in Bears Town and Brent was in heaven.

Wednesday

We took the recommendation of Ramone at the W Hotel and ate breakfast at and amazing restaurant serving up some amazing eggs, omelets, pancakes and waffles. Our full tummies took us to Navy Pier, we walked around (not much to do here except see the beautiful lake) then headed back to pack up the car and begin our trek home.