Long Lost Blog

Greetings blog readers! After about 1,000 major life events and some 4 months since our last post, we figured you had waited long enough and it was time to write our next segment. Quite a bit has changed in our lives in the last 4 months and a few additional changes are on the way. In the time since we last wrote, we have moved to a new place, gained a doctoral degree, went home for vacation, hosted Heather's parents in our new home, and had our 5-year anniversary... just to name a few! As is often the case, this is a pretty lengthy post. The actual serving size is 1/2 blog post but at least there are zero calories! So feel free to indulge and read it all in one sitting. But don't feel bad if it takes a couple tries.

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

Draco!

We used to have a problem with Draco jumping on the couch while we were away from home.  I think this is mostly for two reasons:  1.  He didn't have a soft comfy bed of his own were he could relax and 2.  When we first got him, we may have let him up on the couch once to see how it was.

As you all know, Draco is really hairy and sheds enough hair to make me think he could be Bigfoot, who I image has to be the hairiest beast of all time.  Anyways, we let Draco on the couch ONE TIME and immediately decided it was a bad idea and we would never do it again.  And then we paid for it big time!  Every time we would come home he would be on the couch.  We would holler at him and make him get down.  But he kept doing it. He got clever (so he thought) and started to jump off the couch when he heard us coming. Unfortunately for him, the warm spot and hair he left behind gave him away every time!  We had no other choice but to block the couch every time we left home, which was a pain but at least it kept our couch free of dog hair.  

This sounds sad, but fortunately for us Draco is older now and his legs aren't what they used to be.  He can no longer jump on the couch! Also, now he has a really ultra plush bed to sleep and lounge on. It was custom made by Heather and Draco loves it.

 

We were getting ready to change the sheets on our bed the other day and in a moment for silliness  we put Draco on the bed.  We figured, he could never get on the bed himself, so we wouldn't ever have to worry about the problem like we had with the couch. Surprise surprise, he LOVED it!!

When Tim reached to lift him off the bed, Draco stood up faster than we've seen him move in a long time and ran to the opposite side of the bed. Tim walked over to the other side of the bed and again Draco sped over to the other side! We couldn't stop laughing! It was very clear Draco really liked being up there and was not interested in coming back down.  

That's all for now folks!

We're back!

Hello blogosphere! It's been a few months since we've shared our adventures with you. I'm sure that most of you are aware of at least a few topics in this post, but probably not all. So, enjoy this update from the Davis household! Brace yourselves. This is a pretty legit blog submission.

For starters, we are going to be staying here in Nashville for a few more years!  I'm sure everyone has already heard....but Tim has been accepted to the Ph.D. program at Vanderbilt! Graduation from the Au.D. program is in just 2 1/2 short weeks and then we are FINALLY moving to a new home at the end of May.  We had been thinking about moving out pretty much since the first week of living here. Long story, but it took us two years to actually make the move. We'll be moving into a much nicer duplex down the road and are really looking forward to living in a nice neighborhood.

We took a short overnight trip to Memphis to visit our friend Brittany in February (oh my goodness that was forever ago - this is what happens when we don't post for 4 months).  Much to Heather's delight, we did the Gibson guitar factory tour! Sorry, no pictures were allowed.  But, we got to see the parts of a guitar in various stages of assembly which was really cool.  We also stopped by the famous Peabody hotel for the duck ceremony .  Wait, a ceremony for ducks? Yes, it's a real thing. Allow us to explain. They have these ducks that are trained to march down to a fountain in the lobby in the morning, swim all day and then march back in the evening.  Apparently they have their own suite in the hotel where they sleep at night. We caught the evening show where this guy comes down into the lobby, gives a speech about the history of the ducks, and gives them a signal to get out of the fountain and march into the elevator.  It was a little lot corny, but fun... And when in Memphis, right?!?!? The trip was mostly about the good company, and it was definitely great to see and spend some time with Brittany.  

In mid March, Tim and I decided to pick up and take ourselves to Chattanooga for a day trip.  It is 2 hours away from Nashville and we hadn't really had a chance to explore south of Nashville yet.  The main things we had in mind were to check out the aquarium and the historical Incline Railway.

Turns out we enjoy the aquariums!  We knew the one we visited in Atalanta would be hard to beat, but Chattanooga was great!  The first two pictures below are of the butterfly room.  You can't tell from the pictures very well, but there were butterflies everywhere flying around,  landing on you, and sitting on nearly every plant.  It was beautiful and a really cool experience. Some of you may be wondering why they had an exhibit on butterflies in the aquarium. So were we...

This exhibit was like the exercise facility at your hotel, with mirrors on most walls to make it seem much larger. It would have been really cool to have a tank that stretched for 100+ feet full of jellies, but it was actually about 20' long.

We spent all morning at the aquarium, had lunch, and then headed to the Incline Railway.  It is a 1 mile long incline railway car that takes you up to Lookout Mountain.  It was been in operation since 1895 - with new trains and technology along the way  - thank goodness.  The views from the train and from the top, were beautiful.  The track starts out quite shallow in slope and gets steeper as you approach the mountain. At the top, the track is on a 73% grade. It felt a lot like being pulled backwards up the big drop on a roller coaster. Fortunately they let us down pretty easy...

The view from the top was fantastic!

Here's the motor that makes it all possible. 

A quick video showing the wheels starting to turn.

One more shot from the top before we head back down!

The windows in the ceiling came in pretty handy!

Finally, 2 weeks ago we went to Anaheim CA for the annual American Academy of Audiology conference. This time, it doubled as a mini vacation for Heather and a great little reunion of almost all of Tim's classmates.  We were also fortunate to get to spend also got to spend half a day with Tim's sister Cami, husband Dave, and sweet little nephew Jack.

Loved the palm trees outside the convention center!

Tim's favorite flower, bird-of-paradise.

Cami and Dave were nice enough to drive us all the way to Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific. I loved how the natural light shined through into the water here

Isn't he cute??

And that, our friends, is pretty much all for now! Graduation is rapidly approaching and we are all so excited to have Tim's family here for a few days. I'm sure that we'll put a post together after that! Until then...

Merry Christmas!!!

I could come out and tell you that we are leading the way into this crazy internet age by putting our Christmas letter on our blog 'cause it's the cool thing to do, but I'd be lying. We just didn't get this silly thing written in time to mail it out. No big deal! 

There isn't a whole lot that is new in our lives this year. I am still working on my Au.D. degree and am in the middle of my 4th and last year. I'm working full time at the VA Medical Center and have been enjoying clinical work very much. It's been a real honor to serve the Veterans in this capacity and I will definitely miss it this next summer when my externship ends. Speaking of which, Heather and I have decided to stay in Nashville for about 3 more years while I pursue my Ph.D. in cochlear implants. Vanderbilt has a great cochlear implant research lab and I'm really looking forward to being a part of it for a few years. Heather is still working hard as a case manager at Zander Insurance here in town. Now that I'm working full time too, I'm so impressed at how strong her work ethic has been this entire time! She's always been a hard worker, and continues to impress me with her endurance. 

As you probably know, our plans for Christmas did not include being in Walla Walla this year. While not our first Christmas away from home, it is our first Christmas being just the two of us. We decided to make a trip home (Bellingham) in October and got to see our family and friends then in lieu of a trip home for Christmas. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. And it was! We had a wonderful time there. But as the Christmas season neared, we found ourselves wishing we were going home to be with our families. But alas, this year we will be doing our own thing. Working on establishing our own traditions. We got our tree set up a couple weeks ago and it has been slowly but surely filling up with presents! 

Looking into next year, I will be graduating from Vanderbilt with my Au.D. in May. It will be a great opportunity to have family gather in Nashville for some celebrations! Heather and I will also be looking to move out of our apartment and into a rental home this summer. After 8 years of apartment living, I think we are both pretty tired of having neighbors this close and no private yard space for the dog. We'll be keeping an eye out for a good property and will obviously post on this blog if/when we make the move! 

We hope you all are having a most wonderful holiday season and that you have a very merry Christmas, where ever you may be. 

Catching Up

Sheesh, is it November already? What's that? We're practically half-way through November already?? I'm not sure if I should be excited that the holidays are so rapidly approaching, or afraid because I can't seem to keep track of time!!Ok ok, I'm way more excited than afraid! Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away! Like most, Heather and I are just nuts for the holiday season. Since we went to Bellingham a few weeks ago (read our last post about that trip if you haven't already), we won't be going home again for the holidays. We've done both Thanksgiving and Christmas day with just the two of us before, but never both in the same year.  I'm sure we'll come up with some fun stuff to do so expect a few blog posts in and around those days! It's been about 3 weeks since we last posted here. I guess you could say a few things have happened since then. Halloween came and went, Hurricane Sandy battered the Northeast, and Obama was elected to a 2nd term. For some reason, the national news only covered the storm and the election. So I'll go ahead and fill you in on our Halloween costumes!

This year, Heather and I dressed up as Popeye and Olive Oyl! Heather made me a sailor shirt and painted some anchors on my arms, and I bought a hat and pipe to complete the outfit. Of course, Heather made her costume as per usual! Not bad eh?

I just realized that we did a couple other things recently that never made it into a blog post. We went to the annual Nashville Oktoberfest celebration in Germantown. This is the 3rd year in a row that we've gone and we have a great time every time! This year we bought shirts to add to the authenticity of the thing! We both got quite a few compliments. :)

Another thing we did recently was that we went to a new gun range in town. Up until now, we've been driving out to Greenbriar or Hendersonville to go to Guns n Leather to shoot. They have great ranges and a nice store attached to each one so we don't really mind going there, but we've always thought it would be nice to have another option closer to (or in) town. One day in September we were driving down I-65 and we saw a building called Nashville Armory! Eureka! We checked things out a few weeks ago with high hopes. Unfortunately, the overall experience wasn't great. While the facilities were new, well lit, and clean, some staff was not well informed, prices were too high, and we got this persistent feeling that we were getting nickel and dimed at every corner. Also, this place was LOUD!!! I didn't realize the effect that the acoustic treatments at Guns n Leather have on the overall sound levels. 

Here's a picture of Guns n Leather. Notice the acoustic treatments on the walls and ceiling, the carpeted barriers between shooters, and the partial walls after every 3rd shooting lane. Even though the range has about 15 lanes, you really don't notice the blast from shooters that are outside your section.

In contrast, here's the range at the Nashville Armory. Notice all the hard reflective surfaces, plexiglass barriers between shooters, and lack of isolating walls between groups of shooters.

Here's an example of the nickel and diming at this place. If you click on the picture above, you'll notice the white spacer between the target and the track. They told us that if we shot the spacer, they would charge us $9/hole. Yikes! So much for going for head shots. I wasn't about to let one get away from me and cost me money!

Lastly, Heather mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she would like to learn to play the piano. She took lessons for one year in junior high, but has since lost her touch. I was so excited to hear this as I too have been missing the ivories. I quickly got to work shopping around for a good deal on a keyboard. So for the last week or so, Heather has been working through a great level 1 book that covers theory, technique, and lessons. At the end of her last lesson, she played Jingle Bells! Yeah, you can just imagine the size of the smile on her face after that one! Definitely looking forward to much more of this.

And that pretty much covers things for now. Hope y'all are doing well and are getting as excited as we are for the holidays!

Bellingham

Wow. I can't believe it has been three weeks since I've posted here! A big part of the reason it's been a while is that Heather and I went to Bellingham for a much needed vacation. The rest? Well, laziness I suppose. :)
I think most of you are friends with us on Facebook so you've probably already seen a decent chunk of the pictures from our trip. I'll probably put up another 10-20 pictures in that album and will include a few highlights in this post. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time!

The night before we left Nashville, we were thinking about things we may want to do on our first day there. We were flying into Sea-Tac so we had the option of doing something in Seattle on our way to B-Ham. I wondered if the Mariners had any home games left. Turned out, they had their last game of the season at home that next day! So we bought tickets for the best seats we could get and got ready to feast on our favorite thing at the field... garlic fries!!

The weather was spectacular. The air, crisp and fresh. The sounds, exciting. The smell, baseball-y. It was, the absolute perfect way to start our vacation!!!

Oh, and we ended up renting a car that we've had our eyes on for quite some time. We got a Chevy Equinox LTZ! The thing was loaded with options and was a real treat to drive!

We had most of Thursday to ourselves. We rented a 2-bedroom condo in Bellingham to make lounging around more comfortable. The place was great! If we ever vacation with other people again, I'll definitely try to go the route of a house rental instead of a hotel. It made such a difference having a living room to relax in, and a kitchen to cook in! We easily saved the difference in cost by eating some meals at the condo. We'd definitely recommend it if you have a chance. We used www.vbro.com to find our rental.

We spent part of our first day walking around Western, and being by the water as much as possible.

Check out the album on my (Tim's) Facebook page for more pictures!

Oh, when we got back to our place on Thursday afternoon, we found the outside pane of our patio door was broken. It wasn't us! We called the property management people and they said a rock hit the window when the landscapers were mowing the grass. Lucky it only broke one pane!

Seth and Emily were the first to come visit us. As always, we had a great time catching up with our best friends. Seth and I went Sumas to a really legit go-kart race track. These were not your ordinary go-karts you find at a mini golf/batting cage place. These were on a huge outdoor racetrack. They hold sanctioned league races there. We had to start out with the slowest go-karts but they still went 40-45mph. Not bad! We've had a few chances to race each other before and we seem to be pretty level in terms of driving skill. Good times! While we were out racing, the girls got a mani-pedi and some coffee. Just like ol times!

My parents, sister Cami, and her son Jack were next up to Bellingham! This was just our second time seeing Jack and he was absolutely beautiful! Lots of fun to play with, and so darn cute!

My dad probably had the best time of all playing with him...

Seriously... the kid is cute!

Just FYI, Bellingham has the best farmers market ever.

Last but not least, Heather's parents and brother came up!

As expected, seeing our family and friends just made us miss living closer to home more than ever. If you haven't heard, I've decided to pursue a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt once I finish my 4th year of the Au.D. this Spring. When we left Bellingham in 2009, we told ourselves and our families "It'll just be three short years. We'll move back to the PNW for our 4th year. It won't be that bad!" And here we are, preparing to commit to living in Nashville for another 3-4 years. I definitely never imagined being in school for quite this long. But through this all, I've learned that you just can't predict with full certainty the road you've yet to travel. Going to Bellingham was an incredible trip for the both of us. Restorative and relaxing. And we've never missed being at home more than we do now!