Graduating was the first major event since our last writing, but I assume that everyone who reads this blog already knows about that. It probably suffices to say that we had a fantastic few days hosting my parents and sister Cami in Nashville. Sadly, Nicole couldn't make the trip as planned but I got to see her a short 6 weeks later.
Oh, before I go any further, I should tell you briefly about my main graduation present! Up until then, I had been taking pictures primarily with my cell phone as most people do, but I have another camera. I bought a Canon Powershot A620 during my Sophomore year of undergrad. The camera was alright but at just 7MP and using the Digic II processor, it often left something to be desired (like resolution...). Heather and I knew that someday we would like to get a nice D-SLR camera but didn't really have the money to spend on one. I did my research and was fortunate enough to be able to try my sister's Nikon D7000 on a couple occasions. I fell in love and thought it would be a great fit for us as well. So that's what I got! I have the kit 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens and also bought a 35mm f/1.8 portrait lens. The camera has been a ton of fun so far and we've been able to get a good number of nice pictures. It didn't take long at all to realize that the camera is awesome and I am not at all as good as the camera. I'm doing what I can to learn about photography and how to best use this awesome tool, but I hope to take a little class sometime soon to help boost the skills. Most of the pictures in this blog will be from this camera.
Back to graduation! We spent a day with my parents before my sister arrived, mostly goofing around town and enjoying some beautiful weather.
And just for kicks, here's a picture of my graduation from Western in 2009. Everybody says "Awwww".
And here's the latest! I just detected a pattern in my dad's graduation outfits... :)
A couple weeks after graduation, Heather and I finally moved out of our apartment on White Bridge Road (aka Target Road) and into a much nicer duplex on Woodmont. We had been wanting to move out of our apartment since the 3rd week of living there. While we always appreciated the location, price, and amount of space, we truly detested the noise level of the unit, most notably that coming from the unit above us.
We were prepared to do all the moving ourselves in one day. The evening before the big move, our very friendly next door neighbor approached me and asked if I needed any help in the morning. I politely declined, but he insisted asking "how many guys would you like to have help?"
"I don't know, 3 or 4?"
"What time would you like to start?"
"I'll pick up the truck at 8 so maybe around 8:30."
"See you then", he said!
Well, I guess I won't fight him too hard on that! So the next morning we brought the moving truck to the apartment. I was just getting ready to move the first big things into the truck when our neighbor pulled up with 3 of his friends in the car. They were so very nice and were ready to get right to work. In about 1 hour, we had the entire truck fully loaded! Wow. I thanked them over and over for their huge help.
They responded, "You're welcome. So where is the new place?" As if to ask where they should go next to help us unload (totally unexpected).
"Oh, that's really not necessary. This has gone so much faster than I expected, so we should have plenty of time and no trouble unloading the truck."
Again they insisted, "Come on man, it'll take us 45 minutes but it would take you guys 3 hours."
Of course they were right. So we all drove to the new place and we had everything unloaded by 10:45!! No joke. We loaded a truck, drove to the new place, and completely emptied the truck in 2 hours. THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! Those guys were the nicest neighbors I've ever known.
Seriously, we were excited to move!
The new kitchen is actually big enough for multiple people to be in there at once (i.e. > 1 butt kitchen)!
One of my favorite things is the long hallway with recessed lighting.
Towards the end of June, I made a solo trip home for some quality time with friends and family, and a family reunion at Wallowa Lake. Since we didn't go home for Christmas last year, this was my first trip home in about 18 months. Turns out, a lot can change in 18 months! My parents had moved into a new house, sold their old house, and my sister Nicole had had a baby. Not that these things were surprises, but it was a bit eye-opening at just how much you can miss when you live over 2,000 miles from home. I took about 700 pictures while I was home and posted the best 35 or so on my Facebook page. Check out the album called Family Reunion! I'll let those pictures speak for themselves. I'm totally in love with my beautiful nieces and nephew. They are growing up FAST and I know that Heather will absolutely get a kick out of them when we go home this Christmas.
Oh, if you've never heard of Wallowa Lake, it is an absolutely breath-taking lake at 4,300 feet above sea level. It's about 3.5 miles long and averages nearly 300 feet deep. The campgrounds are at the far end of the lake in this picture up against the mountains. I think this deserves to be the biggest picture in this post. As always, click on a picture to see it full screen.
Less than a week after I got back from Walla Walla, Heather's parents came to visit. Sadly, Cory had just started a new job and was unable to get time off to join us for the trip. Cory, if you're reading this, you should keep in the back of your mind that we have been getting really good at making Thanksgiving dinner, and we can never eat it all. Just sayin'...
Surprise surprise, we had a great time with them here! We made a trip to Farmer's Market, had the obligatory dinner downtown at Rippy's, and took a tour of Jack Daniel's distillery. It was especially nice for Heather to get to spend some time with her parents since I had just been home the week before. Can't wait until Christmas to see everyone again! Except for Cory, who needs to come here for Thanksgiving...
The last major blog-worthy life event was our 5-year wedding anniversary on August 8th! You all are forced to look at one of our wedding pictures on the top of this page and we hope it sets the tone for this blog. We have been so in love for the past 8 years or so and our love seems to grow deeper with each passing year. Anybody that knows Heather knows just how lucky I am to have her as my bride. She helps me to be a better person, and is my absolute best friend in this world. I love you sweetheart.
To celebrate our anniversary, we had had our minds set on a couple gifts. About 2 years ago, we agreed that for our 5-year anniversary, I would get a gun, and she would get a ring. If you aren't aware, I entered into a similar arrangement before we got engaged. "Buy me a ring and you'll get a motorcycle", she said. Five years later I'm still waiting for my bike, dear!! :) Anyways, this was our deal this time around. I ended up with a Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun, and she got a beautiful blue sapphire right-hand ring. Not bad 'eh?
In addition to the gifts, we decided to head South to the gulf coast for a nice weekend with our toes in the sand. I have been doing a lot of driving in the last 8 months for work, which totaled up to over 10,000 miles on the car in 6 months. I wasn't really excited about the idea of taking our car on a 1,000 mile trip over the weekend, so I thought I'd look into renting a car. I've had some great success recently in getting great cars for cheap by initially reserving a small car for really cheap and negotiating an upgrade when I picked up the car. The last two times have resulted in a fully loaded Suburban for about $30/day and a loaded Equinox for about the same. Since this was a special occasion, I thought it would be fun to get something worth driving! This was the result...
At a rest stop near Huntsville, AL, you'll find one of three 224' Saturn IB rockets used in development of the Apollo space missions!
Do yourself a favor and click on these next two to see them full screen. This first was the view from our hotel room in Pensacola Beach, FL. The second was a nice beach we drove to just a couple miles from our hotel.
And I believe that concludes the major blog-worthy events of the last few months! I'd say I'm sorry it's been so long since we've posted, but you all know how it is. Sometimes I get on a roll and post every weekend for a couple months, but most of the time it's like this. Sporadic, at best. I hope that you are all well, and that you enjoy reading this thing!
Starting tomorrow, I'm beginning the next chapter of my education. As most of you probably know, I'll be starting my Ph.D. work at Vanderbilt, with my area of concentration being in cochlear implants. If you don't know much about them, stay tuned! I'll put together a post about them sometime soon. The short story is that they are devices that are implanted into your inner ear that send electrical signals directly to your nerves instead of sending sound through your ear canal like a hearing aid. They are typically used for patients that have very little or no hearing, and in general we have good success with them. There is much remaining to learn about our abilities to hear in this manner, and we hope our research will help more people to hear even better in the future. This is going to be a great deal of work but that which I am passionate about and think I'll enjoy greatly.
Again, we send you our best and look forward to many more fun activities that we can share with you all right here.
-Tim and Heather
