Happy Birthday to Jordan!

Jordan's 25th birthday was last Friday. We went to dinner at Nick & Sam's Grill. It is really close to us and we had heard great things about it (from Travis and another friend). It was amazing! If you live in Dallas you must go. It is very reasonably priced for a nice dinner out. After dinner, we went to see The Mechanic. It was actually pretty entertaining and of course Jordan loved it. I made Jordan my Aunt Nett's strawberry cake. It was delicious but it fell completely apart when I tried to take it out of the baking pan to put it on the cake stand! So I turned the cake into cake balls (I mixed the icing with the cake and rolled them into balls). haha problem solved!

Then on Sunday my parents took us to the Fort Worth Stock Show as part of Jordan's birthday present. I will get all the pictures and post later this week.

Nursing School Finally!

Tuesday was my first day of nursing school. I have been waiting for two years to go so I was really ready! The amount of books required was kind of shocking! Look how many there are! Some of those really thin booklets on top are online books too so the picture doesn't do it justice. On my first day, Jordan was so sweet-he got up early to make me pancakes (my favorite breakfast) and bacon.

The first few days have been good-I'm finding a lot of the material interesting already. One of the best tips Ihave learned so far is that generic drugs (over the counter and prescription) are pretty much the same as brand-name ones so don't waste your money on brand-names!

Random Tidbit For You Gals

I get the Rachel Ray magazine, and this tip was in the latest issue: using an eyedropper, trickle rubbing alcohol onto broken makeup to form a paste, then drag the back of a spoon over it it reshape. Leave overnight to let the alcholol evaporate. I decided to try it and it worked! It always bugs me when I crack makeup into a zillion pieces!

Before

After

woo hoo! :)

Knee Update

Things are going awesome with Jordan's knee! I posted about a month ago that the physical therapist Jordan was seeing had adjusted Jordan's hips back into alignment. A lot of times your hip will keep going back out of alignment so you have to train it to stay correctly and also continue to get it adjusted (just like at a chiropractor). Jordan's hip is staying in alignment with just that one adjustment! He finished up the physical therapy sessions and has begun running. It's not much running so far, but he has had no pain! Since the adjustment in November, Jordan has experienced less and less pain everyday. Things are looking great, but we are still hesitant to say it is fixed completely. Won't it be crazy if this is all it was the whole time, and a few months of good physical therapy is what's going to fix it?!

Larkin Update

They are planning on moving Larkin to the U.S. tomorrow. They recently moved him to Germany, which I guess is good news. If he is stable enough to move, he must be improving. I found this out through: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/larkinohern

Please continue to pray for Larkin and his family.

Mohawk

Even though Jordan isn't in the military anymore, he still keeps his buzz "military cut." I usually cut it for him, and the other day I thought I'd see what he looks like with a mohawk! He looks really pleased, as you can tell from the pictures. haha!

December Events

Earlier in December I went to Clarksville, TN to visit my very good friend Amy. Jordan was in Training in Cleveland that same week so it worked out perfectly. Jordan and I met Amy and Tyler, her husband, at Ft. Benning very soon after we first got there, and we have stayed in touch with them. They moved to Ft. Campbell when we were supposed to move to Alaska. Amy had a rough few months with her husband being deployed, a good friend dying in Afghanistan, and a few other tough things so I decided to give her a visit. Another friend, Maddy, whom we also met at Ft. Benning, came too for a few days so it was a fun reunion. Maddy has a new addition to her family, Matthew, so we got to see him too-he is so cute isn't he?! I didn't get a picture with Maddy, but here is one of Amy and me. It was freezing that week in Tennessee-in the teens most of the time!

New Year's Eve with Emily and Michael. We went to Coal Vines for dinner then back to our apartment for games!

Armed Forces Bowl Game-Army v. SMU December 30 at SMU. Both of our teams were in bowl games, and we got to go to both! Army won, whoo hoo! This game was at 11:00 am in Dallas the day after the Baylor bowl game in Houston so we woke up at 5:00 am to make it back in time. We were so exhausted after this game, but it was an exciting few days!

Texas Bowl-Baylor v. Illinois December 29. We won't discuss the outcome of the game, but it was still fun! Good thing it was at Reliant stadium, which is a dome, because it was pouring rain all day in Houston.

I don't have any pictures from Christmas, but we had Christmas with my family the Monday before Christmas. We had dinner at Bucca di beppo then opened presents. We left Tuesday for Houston to have Christmas with Jordan's family. We had such a great time! We saw True Grit and The Fighter while in Houston-both fantastic!