Those Little Smiles...

Well I finally got my camera battery fully charged and so it can stay strong long enough to get pictures uploaded... Yay!

The last few weekends that I was in Midland, I had the privilege of being around my nieces and nephew...and I love them!! They are getting so big and I love their little personalities that are coming out. Unfortunately I only got pictures of 2 of them and I feel like a bad Aunt for not having my camera at the ready for my other nieces, but I will definitely not make that mistake again! But for now let these pictures show the little smiles of happiness that bring such joy to my life... being and Aunt is the best!

A trip to Chuckee Cheese...my nephew could hardly hold himself together to eat before we let him run around and play, but they actually have some pretty cool games there.

Yay Car Races!

So they had this awesome rollercoaster simulation ride that J and I had to do all 4 coasters on...he loved it! It almost made me sick b/c the machine actually moves around, but its not smooth at all...oh the memories...

Me and the sweet baby girl

Just a view of the roller coaster ride action

Then for Memorial Day weekend we get to celebrate my nephew's and my dad's birthdays. The little guy turned 4 this year- so big! We got to play miniature golf and it was fun to see all his friends playing with him. Plus it was Batman themed...can't go wrong there!

Me and M ate alot of ice cream (yes I spoiled her)

The Batman Birthday Boy

My little golfer buddy

He was pretty good!

Hope you all enjoyed these pictures... and to my other nieces I love you very much and need some updated pictures soon!

My husband is Awesome!

I have these moments where a really cool blog topic pops in my head. I play through my mind exactly what I will write and of course, inside my head, I can come up with the most amazing and well articulated sentences, but when I open the computer and click on the 'new post' button...everything disappears. How frustrating right? I find myself having these moments more and more now...not necessarily related to writing a blog, but more for just trying to sort out my feelings and analyze myself. The conclusion I have come up with is...I'm lonely and exhausted. This is not meant to be a 'woe is me' blog, but merely just a request for prayer as I'm trying desperately to hold myself together while Robert and I continue to be in this long distance/homeless situation. It has been tough enough having to live a marriage over the phone, getting to see each other every few weeks, getting your emotions high for the 2-3 days, and then having them ripped apart as you or he drives away again. You would think after 7 years of this we would be used to it...or good at it...but I find these last 5 weeks are already the hardest yet. I'm trying to look at the positive side that we will be able to start over once I'm back in Midland, but I can't ignore my emotions that are happening right now.

I would like to say thank you to all our family and friends for your presence and prayers during our lives and especially during our relationship...you truly are a gift from God. We both can't wait for things to get (somewhat) back to normal. Call this venting or whatever, but if I ever was a very strong person...my strength is being tested and I'm getting very weak. The most important thing for me to remember is that I can't handle these next few weeks alone...no matter how lonely I may feel inside...I have to let God take over and know that He is holding my hand through this. I just pray He squeezes a little harder right now :) And the title of this goes to my awesome husband, b/c he is awesome and has always been there to remind me that I am a child of God and that I need to lean on Him and not myself. (plus of course I forgot what I was going to title this and over the phone I asked Robert what the title should be and thus you have your title...haha).

Coming soon (once my camera battery fully charges): Memorial Day Weekend and the growing nieces and nephews in my life

Hope you all had a great weekend, and if you have any encouraging verses please respond with them!

shiny and squishy things

So the other day while I was walking around the beautiful neighborhood in McKinney, I became very distracted. This happens alot to me in random locations...sometimes very inconvenient locations such as at work or in the grocery store...but none-the-less I became distracted. With what you ask? My wedding ring. seriously... in certain locations and under certain lightings my ring becomes very sparkly and SHINY. Not to mention that it still amazes me that I'm married to such an amazing man (2 years in 2 more weeks woohoo!) and looking at my ring just reminds me of how happy Robert makes me and how blessed my life has become.

SO the ring was shining all over the pavement, my music was blaring with my favorite band (Anberlin), and I was getting some awesome exercise...things were going great! Until...

"I think I just stepped on something squishy..." is what I thought to myself. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and had stepped on something hard and yet very squishy...no good can come from this. So I looked down and, as you may have guessed, a dead squirrel lay sprawled out on the sidewalk, guts everywhere, flies swarming, and yuckiness displayed everywhere! Yes this is gross...and I was mortified that my shoe had come in contact with such a disgusting thing. Needless to say, I still love my shiny ring, but I'm trying to be more aware of my surroundings and not get so distracted. Haha we will see how that goes!

Moral of the story: pay attention and watch out for distractions...and dead squirrels... eww.

Mr. Creature

So we know that I have a tremendous fear of spiders... as in extreme arachnophobia... but I also can't stand certain creepy crawly bugs with wings either. Of course, as I was in the shower the other day I managed to overlook a very large winged creature looming on the ceiling over my head. That is until I stepped into the shower and did my usual peripheral scan of the surroundings...a precautionary measure in case there were any spiders in there b/c I have seen spiders in my shower before... and then I spotted it. After jumping a few feet and hurtling over the side of tub, I realized that mr. creature wasn't moving...I decided then that maybe I could hustle through my lather, rinse, repeat routine before he swooped down on me (b/c of course thats what mr. creature was going to do). Well, no good. Just seconds later...mr. creature decided it was his turn to flutter across the ceiling. It was time for action.

Now up to this point of my life whenever I have encountered some corta creepy crawly, I have taken extreme...or ummm...odd measures to kill the scary monster. I used to grab a spray bottle of cleaner...didn't matter what kind, but Windex works great b/c its ok on most surfaces in the bathroom... and I would assume a combat mode of attidude, sneak up to the creature, and spray the cleaner all over. I know this sounds barbaric and all, but remind you that I am seriously TERRIFIED of these things. So drastic measures must be taken...and drowning the bug in clenear until I can stomp on it just happens to be the method that has worked for me.

Unfortunately with mr. creature...I was late for work and didn't have time to assume army combat mode and find a spray bottle of cleaner... so instead I just kept a very watchful eye on him as I sped through my shower routine and ran out the door. I believe he escaped eventually and traveled on to different places...hopefully not my room now that I think about it...maybe the Walker's cat got him. Oh well... goodbye mr. creature!

41 more days till I'm home for good... but in the time being I'm loving McKinney! Its such a cute town...

Neighborhood Walk

So the place I'm "working" at has the most random hours... some days we start at 7 am, others we start at 10 am, some we get done at 7 pm, and other we get done at 4 or 2... yes random. Well today we got finished at 4 so I had some time to go for a nice walk around the neighborhood in McKinney. It was a beautiful afternoon and the neighborhood is so nice and quiet. I thoroughly enjoyed it as I was enjoy walks...I think running is great for exercise, but every now and then just a nice walk is so peaceful and a much needed stress reliever (not like I'm really stressed, but its just a nice relaxing activity). Plus I love having some time to enjoy the beauty God put in our world.

My favorite activity to do while walking, especially if Robert is with me, is to critique houses. I pick little parts of houses I like to create my own house...including driveways and landscaping. I have one mighty (maybe hideous haha) house in my mind. When I walk with my parents, my dad always jokes that my mom should have her own TLC show called "Blow up that House!" She will not just critique houses, but she will literally blow up her 'not so favorite' ones with a blast from her finger (all make believe of course) complete with sound effects. The best part is when she says "oh that ones got to go...boom" and the owner is standing outside... oops! Got to love those walks... have you gone on one lately...grab a friend or loved one and just enjoy each other's company... or critiquing someone else's house :)

One last time

I would like to consider myself a professional traveler... I mean I have been alot of places in my life and I like to brag that I am a professional packer as well. I can fit anything into a suitcase (within reason) it just takes a little puzzle piecing everything in there. But even though I'm so good at traveling, at this point in time I'm a little tired of it. Yes I like going to exciting places, but I would rather see these places with my husband.

I'm glad that these next 7 weeks will be the last of our long distance journey. I'm physically and emotionally drained from having to battle the emotions when either Robert or I have to drive away from each other. Sometimes it feels like it gets easier... I mean after 7 years of on and off distance and hundreds of thousands of miles (this is not an exaggeration after I thought about just how far we sometimes had to be separated)... I'm just so ready to be counting down these 7 weeks. I don't mean to keep bringing this up to be annoying or whatever, but for anyone who has ever had to leave their loved one for an extended period of time you know that its tough. We may have been married almost 2 years now, but I say we should go on a second honeymoon after I graduate to celebrate finally getting to actually be married in the same town. Anyone want to make a donation to the Fowler 2nd honeymoon fund? haha it was worth a try.

So for now we will just celebrate 7 weeks or 46 days of distance left for our marriage. Then I will be back in Midland (and hopefully nothing will have to pull us apart from each other unexpectedly) for my last 2 clinicals and hopefully will land a job wherever God desires. I'm becoming more open to new things involving physical therapy so my job search has expanded. I'm dreading every day away from Robert while I'm here, but I'm excited for the future for this countdown to reach 0!

I need a new eye

So last night Robert and I were eating with my parents when I realized that my left eye was draining...eww right...but I wrote it off as part of this looming sinus infection I've had for 2 weeks now. Well as the night progressed so did the puffy redness around my left eye... yep...pink eye. You've got to be kidding me...

I was supposed to leave on Saturday to drive to Dallas for my next clinical starting on Monday... but seeing as I can't wear my contacts for 48 hours my traveling is now delayed... boo. I hate not being in control of this situation and I hate even more that it ruins my schedule. I also don't like that I had to go to some random doctor (I like to call them a doc in a box) in town, which you know I showed up 10 minutes before they opened... was the 2nd person on the list (some guy was there before me) and still didn't get out of there until after 2 hours.

But at least I have to put 2 eye drops in every 30 minutes until dinnertime and then 2 drops every hour until I sleep...yikes thats alot of drops! I think the only good thing is that I get to have one more night with Robert... I just hope I don't spread to him my germs.

So as of now the plan is to leave on Sunday and arrive in McKinney, TX that afternoon. 7 more weeks of the clinical...7 more weeks of patients...and actually the last 7 weeks I have to be away from Robert!!

Boxes of Memories

So Robert and I had to pack up our disaster of an apartment and move it into a storage unit last week. I say disaster because I had packed some things... and then I left for College Station amongst the packing and left Robert to pack some things... and then when I got back from CS the Friday night before we moved it was mad dash to place all the last minute things into boxes. We stayed up that night till 2 and then woke up at 7:30am Saturday morning to continue the madness. We managed to pack all our favorite items up nice and organized in labeled boxes with plenty of that wrapping newspaper stuff you can get at Uhaul... then we managed to throw the most random things into the last minute boxes...like baskets with pictures with computer cords...and what did we label these boxes (as if we thought we were being fast and informal)..... Misc.
How in the world does that tell us whats in there! But of course its the last minute word choice when you just don't want to write out everything thats in there...so now we have like 10 Misc. boxes. Hopefully we won't need those for a while!

Even with jam packing two uhaul trailers, my parents SUV, and the bed of two trucks... we still had some stuff not make it. This was ok since Robert had to work in Abilene on Monday and Tuesday so we had to come back anyway. But on Monday night after trying to throw some more Misc. boxes (bc of course all we had left were items that didn't go well with each other) we came across a tupperware bin of old pictures and albums. We were pretty tired but we stopped and examined the contents...and to our surprise found some funny old pictures from our first prom, our high school year books, pictures from choir in high school and even some older photos on me. It was great reading through the yearbooks and looking at the pictures... how far we have come!

I look forward to actually going through all this stuff in more detail when we actually move into a home sometime hopefully soon. Its always fun to look through old photos and remember the beginnings...memories aren't meant to be boxed up and away... they are meant to be....remembered. Have a great week everyone!