Happy Fall!

The weather is so incredibly hot around here in the summer so the cool Fall weather always has a spending as much time outside as possible. We do everything outside including.....

Painting pumpkins for Halloween

reading books

going on hikes with our cousins

 

Soccer

and "training" for the kids' big run on Thanksgiving. Here are the kids after than ran a mile around the neighborhood. Luke just dropped to the floor! HaHa! You would think for as much energy as they seem to have everyday they could run two miles and not be phased!

And just a quick side note....Ella now looks like this! She lost her two front teeth a couple weeks back and looks super silly!

Happy Halloween!! Aaaaargh!!

Wow!! Halloween went super fast!!!
Luke was a Pirate and Ella was his trusty Parrot!

Luke had a hat with a feather but we canceled the hat at the last minute because it was really too small for his head. He also had a sword which we forgot about until after it was all over. He was devastated! The black wig we tied with a red sash in the back looked so funny! He was pretty proud! He loved his vest with gold buttons which he came up with after watching Jake and the Neverland pirates on Disney.
Here is a pic of the parrot showing off her pretty wings. She also had a colorful tail so I was joking with her all night saying "Shake your tail feathers, Sista!" She loved her costume and was proud of her idea to paint her fingernails yellow like bird talons! Ha!

As always, we put up Halloween lights all around the front yard and started a fire in the fire pit so Lauren and I could stay warm while Craig and Lyle took the kids around the neighborhood. That is my favorite part! Getting to chit chat by the fire with my sister-n-law while passing out candy to some "questionable" trick or treaters! We drank hot apple cider and gossiped!
 
Before too long the pirate and parrot made their way home after a long voyage around the neighborhood.
 


They loved passing the candy out about as much as they liked getting it themselves.
 
Notice Luke's new picture face in the pic below....he does this almost every time I take a picture of him. He says it is his funny face.

 Soon they were ready to go inside and dive into their candy! They quickly started trading!Uncle Craig made sure Luke got a good trade.



It was a great night but went too fast! It is really a blurr. I am going to have to find a way to slow it down next year. Halloween is my favorite holiday by the way!

Lyle and Me

I always use this blog to document special moments in the kids' lives so in the future we will remember what was going on with them at certain times. It occurred to me today that I need to also document what is going on with Lyle and I as well. So here it goes...
Last week Lyle and I went out to eat for his birthday and decided to take a quick picture of the two of us.....and I thought it was hard getting a good pic of the kids:) What was my problem??


 
 Lyle is currently in his third year of his general surgery residency. It is a total of 5 years so we have two and a half to go. He rotates between three different hospitals doing different rotations each month. Right now he is doing vascular surgery at the VA. Last month he was on transplant at the main hospital. He loves getting to do the surgeries but gets bogged down with the paperwork and patient management sometimes. He is doing great though. It is ALOT of work no doubt but he handles it great and NEVER brings the stress home to me and the kids. I'm amazed at how calmly he handles it all. Residency is just how we expected it to be. We were not blind or naive at how hard it was going to be which was a benefit for us because I think it has helped us handle his crazy schedule better. Some rotations are better than others but it is not uncommon for us not to see him for about three days straight. One rotation though he was able to pick the kids up at school every day! That rotation went too quick!

Lyle wants to do a fellowship which is where he will specialize in one particular type of surgery so after these five years in AR, we will be on the move again. At the moment a transplant surgery fellowship (kidneys and livers) is what he is leaning towards. He will start applying this time next year and we should find out where we are going by March of 2014. His fellowship will be for two years. After that he will apply for attending positions. Who knows where we will end up!


I am doing a post doctoral fellowship at UAMS, the same place Lyle is at just in the research buildings. It is super flexible and allows me to take off when I need to for the kids. Right now I drop the kids off at school in the mornings and pick them up at 3 everyday. I really have a great schedule.
I got my PhD in cancer biology so I have continued that interest here doing cancer research particularly in pancreatic, colon and thyroid. I work in a lab that specializes in a technique called Mass Spectrometry which is a method that allows you to look closely at the expression of proteins and their modifications within cells or tissues. I do a lot if tissue culture work where I have reduced the expression of a particular protein (ATAD2) in cancer cells and am determining how that effects their sensitivity to chemotherapy. I have made an interesting finding but am now facing the hard part of making sense of it. I love the work but get frustrated with how painstakingly slow it can be at times. I am still learning to be patient with it.
 
Lyle and I are actually getting to do some research projects together...something we have always wanted to do. We wrote a grant together and got it internally funded! It deals with identifying histone modifications induced by over expression of the oncogene RET that may drive the development of thyroid cancer. So far we have identified a couple modifications that could be interesting andare just trying to confirm them. We are also doing a side colon cancer project that we are hoping leads to some publications. Lyle and I work really well as a team. I say he is the brains and I am the muscle:) He is great with coming up with the ideas and I am great with doing the experiments to test those ideas. It has been really fun doing this together. In the future we would like to run a lab jointly. I will stay in this position until we move though and will then look for a similar job where ever we go. I am also working a part time job from home being a content writer with a company called Sigma-Aldrich. It just brings in a little extra money for us right now but usually takes up most of my nights. So if I am ever slow getting posts out you can pretty well guess its because I am doing Sigma. Luke will ask me at night, "Mom can you snuggle or do you have Sigma?" Makes me laugh!

Outside of work, what little time is left, we make sure we are spending time together. We struggle with balancing our time between being parents and work but we are managing. We are having a blast with the kids! They are so much fun now. We play soccer or football in the yard...always boys against girls:) We go on walks either around the neighborhood or down by the river. We try to sleep in on our mornings off and love having big pancake breakfasts. It is great when Lyle is home with us! One thing about being so busy is it really makes us appreciate whatever little bit of down time we can find.

Tonight, Lyle read the kids a chapter in their Percy Jackson book and they are now asleep (in our bed of course). Lyle and I are on the couch watching Monday night football as we work on our iPads. He is studying for a test he has tomorrow and I am doing this...updating the blog. I have just made us some tea because we are both going to be up late trying to get work done. Seems like our jobs never end but we are really really happy!

Lyle's Spooktacluar Birthday

Today is Lyle's 37th Birthday so the kids and I thought we would have a little fun with him this year. We decided to do a haunted house for him to walk through when he got home from work! I can't explain to you the level of excitement in our house waiting for Lyle to come home from work. It was great! We started with this sign on the door

We made a path for him to follow using orange Halloween lights on the floor. When he opened up the door we turned on our scary music. He was quickly greeted by these three scary monsters. First Luke with his ugly masked and sword jumped out at him from behind the TV. After that Ella our glowing ghost (she wore a bunch of glow stick necklaces underneath the sheet so she would glow)came out from down the hall and followed him around the rest of the maze saying quietly...boooo! go away! It was soooo funny how serious she was! Then Lyle had to walk through a pit of snakes and the layer of creepy spiders where he was met by me...I was a blacked haired Vampire! Then at the end Luke jumped back out at him saying "LEAVE THIS HOUSE! while pointing to the door. When he walked out the door, we quickly took off our costumes and turned the lights on. He came back in and we shouted Happy Birthday and acted like nothing ever happened and we had no idea what scary monsters he was talking about! It was soooo funny!! The kids loved it!! I think Lyle did too!

We love you, daddy!! Happy Birthday!!

A post just about Luke

Luke is growing so fast these days. I wanted to share little things about him now just to remember them down the road.

He is 3 yrs and 9 months and is in his 3rd year at 2nd Presbyterian. He's classroom is down stairs this year so one of the games I play with him each morning is that I forget to go down stairs and he has to remind me. He giggles when I walk past the stairs and he has to yell at me to turn around! He has his best buddy Landon Battreal in his class again and that is a big deal!! Those two are so funny together. They will also go together to CTK next year!

Luke is very independent these days. He gets himself dressed each morning, brushes his teeth and grabs his book bag before heading out the door....he refuses to learn how to buckle himself in his carseat though mostly because his sister takes such good care of him and always does it for him. She spoils him!! And he loves her for it! There is nobody that is more important to that boy than his sister. She is the coolest and the funniest person ever to him right now!

He is really smart too! He can write and spell his name. He knows all the letter sounds and our game everyday on the way to school is spelling words. He is starting to sound the words out and can easily spell words like cat and mop. He can count to 50 and is even learning Spanish in school.

He hasn't officially started any sports yet but LOVES playing baseball and soccer. If he isn't throwing a ball around the house he is karate chopping something. He is all boy...climbing or jumping off things at all times.

He is a great eater. Eats anything I put in front of him although surprisingly he isn't that big a fan of pizza. He loves his milk and peanut butter the most.





Here are a couple of Luke stories I don't want to forget:
At school a couple weeks back his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he got older and he said, 'I wanted to put kidneys in people like my dad does." Ha!
We were coming home from school and Luke was excited about getting to go to Chapel at school earlier that day. He said, "Mom, we got to see the kidney in church today." I said, "The what?" "The kidney...you know, the thing that plays music...the kidney!" "Oh, you mean the organ!" Ha ha!

Luke is still my little boy though. He loves to snuggle and still needs to hold my hand every night. Even if he is sound a sleep and I lay down beside him he searches for my hand to hold. I love it!!



 He is quite stubborn though. He fights back with me and always says, "Mom, do you remember the golden rule? Treat others the way you want to be treated?" Drives me nuts!!



 I love you so much Luke!

Grandparents' Day

This post is way late but i wanted to share with you how lucky my kids are!!!
Ella celebrated Grandparents' Day about two weeks ago at her school. They have a big dinner where grandparents come eat and explore the classrooms. This year Ella had two sets of grandparents there!! Moms and Pa came all the way up from TX and Pappa and Grandma drove down as well. Ella was beyond thrilled to have everyone their just for her! She felt very special!! Here are a few pics from that night:

My favorite picture

I took a quick picture of Ella reading to Luke in her bed tonight. I love seeing how close they are now. She is trying to teach him some of the words. I hope they always stay this close!!