Spring "Break"

**WARNING-Picture Overload. Feel free to stop reading at any point, all about the memories! And I do so much better combining mega posts than I do little ones! **
Ahh....Spring!!! I've waited so long for this beauty!
We had a great Spring "Break" week! Colby was truly on Spring Break and had a great week off of class, however spent the week studying for his Step 1 of the medical boards that are this summer. This has proven to be a heck of a semester for him while he studies for all of his regular classes, while also studying for boards on top of that. Poor guy! I was also on Spring Break from school but can you believe that they don't have Spring Break at the hospital?!? Hmph! But I did take a day of PTO so that we could get stuff accomplished! And we surely did! We were originally going to go camping, but we were both so exhausted from our lives that we simply needed to catch up with things around the house and just being able to sit on the couch and watch a movie together. We also got to hang out with friends.

We kicked the week off on Saturday with bowling with the Townsends...and dang, we hadn't been bowling in forever, I was sore the next day..out of shape, what?

Colby bowling it upYours Truly

Daniel, aka The Big Lebowski, laying on the heat with "Black Beauty"

And he sulks in defeat when a shot didn't go as planned

Love these sweet friends!

Daniel pointing out our amazing game scores! Stiff competition!

The order is Daniel, Claire, Colby, and me....all in the 130s!?!

On Sunday we went to celebrate with Meagan and Adam at their wedding. Congrats you two!

Then...you are NEVER going to guess what happened on Mon and Tues!?! I got a NEW (to me) car!!! Whohoo! For those of you that know me well, this is now my 5th well-loved car and by far the greatest I've ever had! I'm queen of hand-me-downs and for once we went car shopping! I will post a tribute to my cars one of these days because there have been some some great ones (3 peetering out at over 200,000 miles). So I appreciate this more than you know and still feel like I'm driving someone else's car! What a blessing! It's amazing and guess what? There's a little thing that goes on my keys and I can push a button and you know what happens? The doors unlock!! Whoa! I'm in heaven! It's a cute silver Mazda 3 and I don't have any pictures of it for some reason, but I'll fix that.

Here's our favorite passenger loving his seat in the new vehicle! Poor guy now has to use a towel b/c the new car is Fancy Nancy.

Wednesday we drove toward New Braunfels to visit my little sister Hope and met up with my mom, Aunt Re, and little bro John Michael. We had a great time seeing them spending a day away. On the way back home we stopped in Austin to visit my roomie Meg and her husband Graeme in their new home! It was fabulous to see them and we can't wait to go back to visit longer and so appreciated getting to see them for lunch.

Hope and I doing our favorite sister activity...nails!

John Michael needs bricks on his head he's growing so fast!Meg and I in her beautiful new home! Love my roomie!

Thursday....Colby's parents, sister Kaylan and her fiancee Austin came to visit for the weekend! We had a blast getting to spend time with them! Colby played golf with his dad, I got to hang out with his mom and Aunt Donna shopping and eating-my 2 favs! I unfortunately had to work while they were here but I still got to meet them at the end of my work days for dinner and rooting on the Baylor Bears. Can I get a Sic 'Em!?!? The only Big 12 school to have both men & women in the elite 8! And now only in the Final Four for the women!!! Of course we had to play some ping pong too!

The dynamic duo at work

We made Colby play left handed for a fair match-up!

Reo was obviously not excited about the opposing A-game coming his way! :)

Austin and Kaylan brought their new puppy Mali and Rocky had a blast meeting his new cousin! Here they are at the first meeting...a little unsure of each other

But in no time they were playing away! Rocky continually layed down to make himself smaller so that Mali would come play

He even shared his toysAnd taught her how to shake them around

So she wanted to try it with her bear too! HahaIt was a fabulous Spring Break and we loved feeling refreshed! And last but not least, I didn't get to post about the wedding we went to a few weeks ago, but I had to post a picture of this beautiful bride! Paige was one of my good friends at Baylor and we were so excited to celebrate with her and Christiaan!

Going, going, GONE!

Whelp....I finally did it! I've been growing my hair out for over 2 years in order to donate it and I just got my hair cut last week! Cut, that is, to the tune of 14 inches!!! Yikes! It was quite the shock and I was really nervous about it. You're wondering, umm... Joanna, you grew your hair out knowing you were going to donate it, so why the long face?!? I dunno! I thought it would be easy, but I was quite nervous. I guess because everytime someone had seen my hair down and fixed, they'd ooh and ahh and tell me how pretty my hair was long b/c it had never been that long. So I was kinda liking the ways I could style it long and make myself feel all supermodelish with long tresses, ha!

First, let's start with some of my favorite long hair moments! December at Casino Night

Last summer at Ashley's wedding

This is my hair after I would take it out of the "wad" that I would wear it in at work, Colb always thought it was funny how wavy it would get so he took a picture one night

I mean...supermodel right, who would want to part with that?!? HA! RIGHT....

And now, this is the last picture I took with Colb a few days before the cut, finally realized the ends were either due for a trim or the cut, so I opted for the chop

SO....without further ado:
Here I am while the lady is measuring it all out, my ponytail was 12 inches!
And then, the most surreal feeling ever, the scissors going through the hair, it felt so weird and I could hear the blades chopping through, clearly a little nervous as you can see my face!And then she showed me my ponytail!

Going off to make a wig for one of those sweet girls that I get to spend my day with while at work

TaDa!

I thought it would be fitting to take a picture with our Heme/Onc nursing shirts

And here's a fixed and styled pic! I'm slowly getting used to it, as I went from the longest my hair has ever been to the shortest- she cut tons of short layers! Which also, I might add my advice about leaving some extra length when donating, b/c it took at least another 2 inches to even it out after cutting, so I estimated 14 inches.The very next day I took care of one of my favorite patients and next to her bed she had her 100% human hair wig that she had gotten from http://pinkheartfunds.org And what a blessing that was to me to see her using hers and loving it! She's 18, and is now deciding whether to be blonde or a brunette for prom and she showed me her beautiful dress that day! :) I haven't sent my ponytail off yet, b/c I wanted to research more into where to send it. I have heard that several places actually charge the recipients for the wigs- even Locks of Love?!? Is this true? I'm pretty sure that pink heart funds doens't charge the patients, so I'll probably call and talk to someone. Does anyone have a good recommendation b/c I don't want my hair to go to somewhere where they will have to pay, because trust me...they have SO many expenses already that go into 3 years of treatment and hospital admissions! Thanks! :)

Can I get an Upgrade?

Well, I guess I don't really need a bootie shaking Beyonce theme song for this one, but the upgrade has been quite a change in the Brownlee household! We bought an Entertainment Center off of Craigslist (for a steal!) back in January and I can't believe I haven't blogged about the transformation! Many of you have known that I have been looking for one for the last year and a half and couldn't find the one we wanted. I was kinda picky b/c I wanted one where the doors close over the tv b/c I'm not a huge fan of the television being the focus of the room when we aren't using it. But I also wanted shelves and not just an armoire. So after a ridiculously long search at stores, sales, Canton, you name it, I found it! It was quite the process getting it home safe and sound to our living room. We had to rent a Uhaul and bring it down from McKinney. When they say DFW Craigslist, they really mean ANYWHERE in a 2 hour radius, ha! I think you'll agree with me that it was much needed, considering we've been using the same $15 dollar stand we bought 4 1/2 years ago with a superglued corner and lots of sharpie marker. hehe

BEFORE:

Yes, what you are looking at is our little black stand, with a bar stool next to it, with a plant stand stacked on top so that our digital antenna could get reception. We don't have cable, so this was the best option for "bunny ear" picture.

A Year and a Half people!!! This is kinda embarrasing to post. Disclaimer: When we had company over, we would put this back in place and hope no one would want to watch tv, ha! Frugalness at its finest!

Here is what the "wall" looked like at Christmas time. I didn't have any pictures of the room before, not sure why, but you can imagine it empty when the tree was taken down.

And NOW....drumroll please....

TaDa!!!And with the doors open
So now the room looks like this!!! Yay, no more ghetto-fabulous. Progress indeed!

Puny Blogger

There's been a bit of a party going on in my chest, nose, throat, etc. for the last 2 weeks. Yuck! So I was a little behind with my blogging. I finally gave up and went to the doctor on Wednesday and am rescued by a Z-pak! Well, not out of the woods yet, but feeling much better! So scroll down for the highlights over the last 2 weeks! :)

Valentine's Weekend

We had a really fun Valentine's weekend because my great friend Nadine and her now fiancee (yay!) came in to celebrate her birthday on the 13th! We had a great time seeing them and miss our SA friends so much. On Saturday afternoon, we headed to Grapevine for a yummy lunch at Big Fish and then went to several different wineries on the Valentines wine trail. It was a lot of fun and was such a cute area. We can't wait to go back again!

Heather & NadineHeather, Nadine, Andy, ColbyThen...Saturday night we got all dressed up and Colby took me out to see...

...the ballet! Romeo & Juliet! It was so beautiful and I loved every minute of it! For those of you that don't know, I grew up dancing my entire life and even taught through college, so ballet is something that is so close to my heart. Whenever Colby and I were first dating in Waco, he surprised me with a trip to see the Austin ballet do the Nutcracker, and I knew it was meant to be! We have since seen Swan Lake and Cleopatra together but this one ranked up in my top picks. Perhaps a lot of it was that our "stage" Romeo & Juliet were actually married in real life, so their chemistry and dancing together was so beautiful. It was a fun date and surprise, thank you love!http://www.texasballettheater.org/index.php?q=node/7
Valentines night we went to church and then had our traditional crab leg dinner in our cozy home. It was delicious, cheap, and not crowded at all! Plus, we both were having to study that evening especially Colb with a test on Monday morning. I really enjoyed the simplicity in this day with my favorite Valentine!