The nay-sayers and Sarah...

On Saturday night, after David got back into town, we headed over to Brett and Sarah's for some pumpkin carving! They also surprised me with an little birthday party! They had made some delicious pumpkin squares and two pumpkins for a little pumpkin carving competition.

Here we are with some of our possible designs.



It was Sarah's first EVER time to carve a pumpkin, so we felt pretty good about our pumpkin carving skills. Brett let Sarah draw their design on the front of their pumpkin and was SO disappointed. He told her that her design was "uncarveable" and wouldn't work. Sarah showed it to us and we had to agree. However, she told us all is was a "shadow design" and would work. We didn't really have much faith. Brett soon gave up and let Sarah take the knife. We all pretty much continued to give her a hard time as she carved and carved. She never gave up hope. We never thought it would work. We were wrong! It actually worked and we ALL had to eat our words! Way to go Sarah! Sarah's pumpkin looks WAY more professional than ours!

We all decided that the "shadow design" works and successfully creates what appears to be a scary cave man!



Church today was good and we had a great lunch with some friends afterward. This afternoon we hung around and took care of some "home stuff." We bought a little bit of candy for possible trick-or-treaters and watched some TV. We haven't had hardly ANY trick-or-treaters the past 2 years here, but tonight we had 7! Mark year three down as the year of the most trick-or-treaters ever!

First baby shower at the house

Today I had my first baby shower here at the house! I was nervous about having enough room for everyone, but it turned out good! I hosted with Alicia, Jessica and Leah. I thought it all went really well girls! Thanks for making it so fun! The baby shower was for Allison, whose baby is due right around new years!

Here's a look at the table the night before when I was working on it.



Here it is today!



The adorable cookies.



Another table shot.



Opening presents.



The hostesses, minus Alicia, with the Mom to be!



We also had warm cider and played two great games. What great friends I have been blessed with in Kansas City!

Since Thursday night David has been in Chicago at the ADA meeting...so I've been at home getting ready for the shower and hanging out with the animals. :) After the shower I went with Matt and Dianna to the dog park. Deuce and Shelby are great friends now. :)



David is just about home and should be landing as I type this. I can't wait for him to get back! Tonight we're going over to Brett and Sarah's house for some pumpkin carving and games. Happy Halloween!

Beat Ole Miss Birthday

What a great birthday I have had! Yesterday, Sunday, I turned 25! Wow...totally "mid-twenties." My class threw me a party on Friday afternoon and showered me with cards, gifts, and food! They fed me breakfast, lunch, and gave a gift card to Bravo to cover a night out. We also have quite a lot of Starbucks gift cards to use up now. It was so sweet to read all of their hand written cards. I have a good class and great group of parents.



On Friday night we headed to Fayetteville to celebrate my birthday with family and go to the Ole Miss/Arkansas game. Mom got me these adorable cupcakes from "Cupcakes on Kavanaugh" and they were delicious. Lucky for us she sent all the extras back to KC with us!



The Hogs pulled out a victory over Ole Miss...although it was a wet one. There were two rain delays in which they actually asked everyone to exit the exterior part of the stadium. We went underneath and stood arm to arm, back to back, and pretty much completely smashed with everyone else in their ponchos. At one point the rain came down so hard that it blew through the underneath part of the stadium and everyone had to kind-of take whatever cover they could find. It sure did make for an interesting afternoon! We are more than excited to beat Ole Miss though...sorry Houston. :)





After the game we all went to Mermaids for dinner. It was great and so nice to just hang around with family. I thought I might post a couple parent pictures. :)

Mom and Dad...



Mike and Kathy...




On our way back to KC we stopped in Rogers to see Parker and give him his 1st birthday present. His actual birthday is today...one day after mine! Although he doesn't look totally thrilled in this picture, I promise he loves me. Happy birthday Parker!



On Sunday night David and I went out to dinner at Houston's for my birthday. It was SO GOOD. That place is unbelievable. I can't imagine a better birthday weekend.



My good friend Katherine even had David and I over for dinner on Monday...so nice to not have to cook or clean up! Thanks Katherine!

From family to friends

Tripp left to go back to Fayetteville on Sunday, and on Monday Anna was coming through town! She had to go test a child in rural Kansas and asked if she could stay the night at our house on Monday. She lives in Columbia, so our house was a nice half-way point for her. Regardless, we hadn't seen each other in person since my wedding! Yikes!...almost 2 1/2 years ago! Anna was one of my bridesmaid and is a best friend since elementary school.

We had a great time Monday night hanging out, watching Dancing with the Stars, and even went down to the Plaza for a little bit. Anna, thanks so much for coming and staying with us! We loved it!







This Friday we head to Fayetteville to celebrate my birthday with family and to watch the Arkansas/Ole Miss game. My class is throwing me a birthday party this Friday at school and I am being treated very special. Special Startbucks orders to be delivered, catered lunch, and a class party! I am so thankful for my job and a great room mom! :)

Tripp in town!

What a fun weekend! Tripp came to town on Friday night! We couldn't wait for him to get here. I made banana pudding in honor of his arrival.




It was a very relaxing, non-busy weekend and a great time to spend with family. On Saturday we all slept in! Then we decided to take Deuce to the off-lease dog park and walk around on some trails. Deuce was fairly well-behaved and only instigated a couple of mad chases. We were proud dog owners most of the time. However, we do have a renewed sense of responsibility to our dog...we bought him so we have to committ a significant amount of time to raising him right or he'll be a bad dog! Yikes.

After the dog park we went to lunch a greek place and got back just in time for the Razorback game. Sometimes is tough being a hog fan...what can you do? Regardless of how they play every year we'll love them just the same.

After the game we went out to eat on the Plaza at "Blanc Burger." So good. Thanks Mom and Dad for the dinner! Then we decided to go and see "The Social Network." It was quite interesting and a good movie. We took Tripp to church this morning to show him off and had a great lunch with some friends! Sadly, Tripp has headed home but we'll get to see him next weekend when we head down for the Ole Miss game. Love you Tripp!



We have begun the "Experiencing God" study at church and it seems like it's going to be a really great study. Up until this point, much of our time in Kansas City has been spent finding our place, making it through school, working, and coming together as a couple in a new city. Now, in third year, it seems that we have a lot of thinking and deciding to do about our future. It's pretty daunting! We thought that the Experiencing God study would really help us determine God's will for the next step in our lives...lives after dental school. Already God has spoken in ways that we did not expect. One thing that stuck out to us both is that instead asking God, "What is your will for MY life?"...we should be asking, "God, what is YOUR will? And what do we need to do in our lives to join you there?" God is at work around us and we want to make sure that we join God in what he's doing!

Cloth Eater

We had taken Deuce's collar off to give him a bath yesterday and hadn't put it back on yet. David turned around while studying and found the once beautiful collar pictured above. Where are the other parts of the collar?...we assume somewhere in Deuce intestinal track. So much for Deuce being a true Razorback fan. Apparently he thinks we looked sloppy against A&M and didn't want to have that collar put back on. We hope we're not raising a fair weather fan.

A Nephew!

We are not sure if we announced it earlier, but David's brother and his wife, Sarah, are expecting. We found out this Thursday that it is a boy! We are thrilled to be expecting a nephew and can't wait to be an aunt and uncle. We're also excited for John and Sarah to go first so that we can learn from their experiences! :) Our new little nephew will be named "Shepherd Michael Rainwater," aka "Shep." We can't wait to meet our new nephew in March!

This weekend has been a wonderful time of relaxation. We have just been SO tired the last two weeks so we've really laid low this weekend. On Friday I had a half day at work because it was the end of the nine weeks. On Friday night David and I went on a nice walk with Deuce and then just got a pizza and a movie.

This morning I went to my Sunday School's ladies brunch and had a really nice time. We all brought our wedding albums and had fun looking at each other on our big days. Tonight we grilled some chicken and had a great dinner here at home. David starts his midterms on Monday, so we are again thankful for the amount of time we have been able to spend together during this time. On another happy note...the Razorbacks won today! Woohoo! They beat Texas A&M. At the same time, Alabama lost to South Carolina, which really helps Arkansas. However, Granny and Grandad...I am sad that Alabama lost for ya'll. Love you!

Oh my gosh it's 7:32!

We haven't blogged in a week in a half because things have been SO busy! Since our last post I've gone to class twice and David has started studying for his mid-terms that start next week. This past weekend was eventful with lots of fun things going on.

On Saturday we went down to the American Royal for the Kansas City BBQ Festival. Little did we know, there's actually not much, if anything to do, unless you have a private party to go to. Oops. How were we supposed to know? When we were standing in line to buy food (even though we had already paid to get into the thing) the man in front of us expressed something that pretty well mirrored our own thoughts...he asked his wife, "So why do so many people come if there is nothing to do?" We laughed so hard and decided to mark it down as another funny story to tell and an experience to have had in KC. If only we had known we needed to really KNOW some people to have some good BBQ!





Sooie sometimes tries to steal Deuce's food.



On Saturday morning I went to a very fun baby shower with some people from Sunday School. It was great and we played some pretty fun games.

On Saturday night we had our great friends from dental school over for an Italian dinner! Jake and Jamie brought Beau along, and Ali brought her signiture salad and Kristin made some delicioius cheesecake. We just hung out, played some games, and talked about how much better third year is than first and second were!

I've really been thinking about it a lot lately...I am just so thankful for third year. David and I both want to make sure we don't ever forget the time and energy that David had to spend studying and how much time I spent at work and at night class.

I have been extremely tired these last couple of days and not going to bed at good times. I was so tired last night that I forgot to set my alarm for this morning! David's went off, but I didn't even hear it and he turned it off. I rolled over thinking, "Hmm, I don't feel as tired as I thought I would this morning. That's weird, it looks for light outside this morning than it has in the last couple of days. Oh my gosh it's 7:32!"

FYI, I live 30 minutes from work and the morning meeting starts at 7:40. To say the least, I missed the meeting and barely made it by the time the kids were walking in the room. I put my make-up on in the car and felt certain people were looking at me thinking, "Now it's THAT kind of people that cause car accidents." Yes it is, and I'm thankful that I didn't cause one. It always makes you feel so frazzled to get up late. Tonight I'm going to bed EARLY!!!