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.