McCullough Christmas 2009 Video

As a part of the night I we had the fun of using Thomas' gift to his parents which was a flip video camera. We used it to create this video. We hope you enjoy this video as much as we had making it. Merry Christmas. I want to Thank Martha for the music on the video. This video was done by John Gifford with the assistance on associate camcorder Claudia Gifford.

Christmas 2009

This was a great evening of fun and fellowship with the family. It was fun being at Lee Ann's house. Thomas had given Claudia and I a new flip video. As a result I have prepared this video so we can remember how special that night and each night this group of characters have shared a meal together. The video will be attached soon.

Sometimes only in retrospect does the joy and special aspects of moments like this truly impact you. The joy of ten conversations going at the same time all at full force is special. The fact that the 8 nieces, nephews and spouse wanting to be together at dinner says volumes. Thank you family for the thrill of watching 34 of these rites of passage.

Thanksgiving Day in Pictures

Our family is thankful this year for the times we get together, share our stories, our lives. I am thankful David and Kaylen's wedding brought so many of us together to dance. I am thankful for all the universities that have and still are teaching our children. I am thankful for the research and the medicines that are making Dada feel better. I am thankful for new cities to visit as our children continue to branch out and discover new places. I am thankful that our God is a magnificent God.

Thanksgiving 2009

As is the tradition of the Connecting Dots Community we convened at one of the Sisters homes. This year it was at our house, the Gifford's. We really had a blast of eating and sharing this memorable time of the year. We missed David and Kaylen, Thomas and Jay. We had the pleasure of Katherine being here. When the Blog photographer, Martha, uploads her pictures we will add pictures. In the meantime we just noting the great time. It was wonderful to have Tom and Bettie here.

Happy Halloween!

Howdy y'all! One week away from Halloween...how exciting! I love this holiday...it's a nationwide day of acceptance for being weird. I wanted to share a little decoration that Kaylen and I have added to the house this year. (She has never celebrated Halloween before, so I'm showing her the ropes.) I found the idea online, and here is the finished result:

Maybe this spooky effect will teach the neighborhood rugrats to not be so cavalier about soliciting my candy! We'll add the photos of our pumpkin carvings once they're done...another work in progress! What is everyone doing for Halloween decorations/pumpkins/costumes??

Wow!

That was some weekend. David and Kaylen did a fantastic job of getting married. It was something special to see the whole family there with the except of Nana, Dada and Toga. They were greatly missed. We discussed their presence at the Rehearsal dinner and all during the weekend. I just wanted to go on record early that I had a fabulous weekend. I look forward to many more weekends just like this one. I also look forward to the other interpretations of the weekend from all the participants. We do have a limited video of some of the great family dancers lead by the Gifford boys and girlfriends and the engaging Jordan with his Aunt Lee Ann. Check out the slideshow.

Two more pictures.

Other happenings. We went boating to celebrate the completion of third year of medical school. I can wakeboard now! It took about 26 tries. Not joking. Yay for friends with a boat!

This is the Kaylen workspace. It's all her stuff from her apartment, plus wedding swag that we have gotten, plus a creativity table. She had made all the bouquets and boutonnieres (impossible to spell) from scratch. Here she is working on her wedding shoes. Hot glue gun FTW!

I finally figured out how to do this thing.

Hello everybody!

So the point is letting everyone know what I'm up to? Okie dokie. I'm one week away from taking my Step 2 CK (clinical knowledge) exam, followed by the CS (clinical skills) exam. That means I'm studying basically all day...these are the middle of the three Step exams that equal doctor. (My parents did not have to do this!!)

Otherwise, did y'all here that I'm getting married?! You should have your invites by now...RSVP ASAP! We know you're coming but it sure is fun getting 2-5 envelopes per day. Kaylen and I trying to follow the workout regimen of P90X, a super-intense home workout program, to get smokin' hott for our honeymoon. It's HARD! But I'm addicted now. Oh, and we recently transmogrified our home into a vegetarian safehouse. Partly for honeymoon hotness, partly from a book a read recently, The China Study. It's a book about diet and chronic disease, mainly the American "diseases of affluence" - heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol. It combines a lot of lab research and epidemiology. Check it out! Pretty scientific at times, but the author always explains things very well. Not like many of the McCulloughs need convincing anyway!

Uhhhhh...other recent events....OH! We had a giant (well, small) ant battle on the sidewalk a couple days ago! Check it:

These two hives, from Sidewalk Crack West and Sidewalk Crack East, were in the middle of a ten-thousand ant war. The action was furious - ant on ant brutality, lifeless exoskeletons of spent ants strewn about, and calls for reinforcements. Only one colony could be victorious and claim dominion over the continent of Sidewalk Square 37. Oh the ant-manity!

If you haven't figured it out, I'm super bored studying.

Fourth of July

I hope each of you had a great Fourth of July. What did you do?

Claudia and I spent Friday night at Lee Ann's lake house. Then we did one of our favorite things, which is kayaking White Oak Creek. It was a great day weather wise. The water as always was crystal clear and we had a lot of fun paddling the Creek and seeing the wildlife and all the 4th of July campers. Later, while I read a book at the house Lee Ann and Claudia went to the lake. When I got down to the lake I discovered that they had decided to swim along the bank of the lake for about a mile to another boat dock. When I got there I could not find them. As I scanned the horizon I saw two what appeared to be logs over by another boat house. As I watched over time the logs would morph and grow in size. Then I realized as I saw the logs doing water ballet in the lake it must be the girls. The returned in a joyful and tired mood. They had taken their lifejackets so they could float when needed. As always life at the lake was a very relaxing and reinvigorating time.

Quick Update

Hey everyone! I am so excited about this Blog...haha I have never really been a blogger, but since out family has moved past facebook stalking and on to blogging, I thought I should jump on! So here goes...here is a quick synopsis of what I have been up to this summer! I started off the summer with a trip to San Salvador (island in the Bahamas) where I was a TA. I visited this amazing island last year and had a great time this year! On this trip I finally got to scuba dive...so I ended up being about 10 ft. away from a HUGE hammerhead, a couple black tip reef sharks, and some really cool fish! (If I can master this picture loading I'll put some pics up!) After the Bahamas trip I came home and bummed around Nashville for a little before my next trip to Denver!! I havent't had the chance to go out west in a while, so I was really pumped when I learned I was going to get to go to Colorado. I travelled to downtown Denver for a few days for my sorority's National Convention, then visited Dave (another TA from San Salvador :) for the rest of the week. The Convention was really great way for me to connect with a lot of other alumni in my sorority as well as learn a ton!! I explored downtown Denver some and and found som really great areas (16th street was key!). So after that I hung out in a Denver suburb with Dave and his family....went hiking and camping in the foothills north of Denver....and, the most EXCITING part...caught my FIRST fish!...and cooked it! Needless to say, I was sad to say bye to the mountains..So now that you are all caught up to date, my next adventure is starting tomorrow with Dad, me, and Rach travelling to Venice to catch our cruise that is sailing all around the Mediterranean Sea!! I am so excited to get over there!! Not so much about the long flights...but ohh well I'll get over that part!!!


So there is my summer so far :) Hope everyone else is having an amazing time, and I can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to!

How do you begin?

If you have never written on a blog, it is easy, once you get started. Posting photos is sometimes not so easy. You have to make sure the template is vertical for a vertical photo etc. If you received my email, there should have been a place that you accept the terms of being on this blog. You then go up to the very top right corner, where it says "new post". You can sign your name if you are using an email with someone else ( Dada and Janet). Otherwise the blog signs your name under your post. You can also comment to someone else's post, by clicking on comment under the specific post. Have fun with it. You can "preview" what you have written first, or just go on and "publish the post"

Granny's Rolls

I have something we all thought we had lost...Granny's rolls (Margie's grandmother).  I found it in Nana's old recipe book.

I think the secret ingredient is the Crisco!

1 cake yeast

1/4 cup warm water to dissolve the yeast, let sit 10 min

1 cup milk, scalded

3 T. sugar

3 T. Crisco

1 tsp salt

Combine and cool until lukewarm

Add 1 cup flour, beat well

Add 1 egg and yeast mixture, beat well

Add 2 1/2 cups flour

Cover to rise for 2 hours.  Roll out and cut circles, brush with butter and fold.

Rise for 30-45 min 

Cook at 400 for 15-20 min.

All of us old enough to remember these famous rolls know what we almost lost.

Connectiong the Dots? The reason behind our blog.

I don't know if any of you played the "connect the dots" game as a child...but I know that I did, and it always fun to see what design would appear when the dots were connected. If you take a map of the U.S. and put a dot on every city that we all live in; we make quite an impressive pattern! Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio, Alabama, New York and Oregon. Who knows what will be added to our pattern next!
So the idea of the blog came up as a way to stay connected with each other, through ideas, thoughts, photos, things we do now and past stories about our wonderful family. We have so much to share with each other and when there are long times apart; this will hopefully keep us in touch. Have fun with it!