OBX Vacation - Day 1

Day 1: Beach day
- 10am: Head to the beach
- 1pm: Quick swim in the pool
- 1:30pm: a late lunch and then clean up for naps
- 2pm - 4pm: Naps
- 7pm: Ride bikes to Corolla Heritage Park for the Corolla 4th of July festival and fireworks

The Beach

Jordan LOVED playing in the sand and spent most of the day out of the water. Although he did enjoy playing in the "baby" waves, he wouldn't set foot in ocean water deeper than his ankles. Guess he's seen too many shark documentaries on Discovery Channel. ;-)

Matthew, on the other hand, is my water baby. He was completely fearless in those waves. The surf was quite strong, yet every time he would get trashed by a wave, he'd just come back up screaming for more. His exact words: "That was totally cool! Let's do it again!!" He'd go out with someone and, as soon as that person decided it was time to go back to shore, Matthew would grab someone else by the hand and drag them back to the surf.

4th of July Festival
What a gorgeous place to sit and watch fireworks. We rode our bikes over to the Corolla Heritage Park for the 4th of July festival and fireworks show. The park is set against the sound and it is absolutely beautiful at sunset! After the sun went down, the fireworks were set off over the sound. I felt so blessed to be in such a beautiful place with my family, celebrating the birth of our country. I thank God for the sound principles that this country was built upon and for the freedoms that we all share. Happy Birthday, America!

Outer Banks - July 2010

After Chicago, we headed to Outer Banks, North Carolina for a family vacation. What an amazing trip! We shared a house with my parents, Jeremy's parents and Jeremy's brother, Daniel. The idea was to have quite a few of our family come, but it didn't work out, so we had tons of extra room in this huge house:

SO fun! The Outer Banks is not a typical touristy, boardwalk-along-the-beach hot spot. It's way more laid back and is a nature lover's paradise. We stayed in the northern part of Outer Banks in Corolla. Our house was on the sound side (the calm side of the water in between the islands and the main land), and the ocean side was just a short walk from our door. :-) It was also great that our house was part of a community, so we had access to the community pool, gym and tennis courts which were just across the street.

Since I took a ridiculous amount of pictures, I'm going to break these posts up into parts by day. Stay tuned for more Outer Banks details! :-)

A visit with Grandma & Grandpa Crouch

We had tons of fun with Jeremy's parents when they came out for his graduation. It was a short visit that was mostly filled with graduation stuff, but we made time to visit the zoo and a couple parks.

Columbus Zoo






Hills & Dales Metropark

Thanks for the fun visit, Grandma Vickie and Grandpa Mac! :-)

Jeremy's Graduation Party

When I asked Jeremy what kind of residency graduation party he wanted me to throw for him, he said he wanted to invite just a handful of friends (he's not as much of a party animal as I am). If I had it my way, I would have invited everyone we know it Dayton :-), but we ended up just having a little gathering with a few fellow residents. Still, I do even small parties big, so there were lots of fun details and way too much food.

The theme of the party was "Old School - Celebrating the End of 28 Years of Schooling" (although I was a little wrong there - it was only 26 years of schooling. I forgot that he was on a mission for 2 years).

For the food, I only did dessert, and I decided to do a Milk & Cookies bar since it's Jeremy's absolute favorite (plus, it went well with the theme). We had all kinds of cookies, from my famous chocolate chip-toffee cookies to snickerdoodle cupcakes (recipe on marthastewart.com):





To go with the cookies, we served school lunch cartons of milk, strawberry milk and chocolate milk. My favorite thing was the striped paper straws that I found on modernlola.com.

I made the banner out of varieties of green scrapbook paper and gold ribbon (Wright State school colors). It says "Congrats Dr. Crouch".

The centerpieces were simple - just 1 sunflower and 1 white gerber daisy, bundled with a pencil. I put white paper down on the tables and set out crayons - great accents for a school theme, but also entertainment for the kids. :-) I also laid out some cute old school pictures of Jeremy.




As for the the activity, we truly partied old school style and played a little kickball. It was so fun! I love acting like a kid.



Finally, how about some pictures of the cute kiddos enjoying the treats..

A break from the kiddos

Following Jeremy's graduation, Jeremy and I got to have a weekend getaway to Chicago. The coolest thing: we stayed in a $400 hotel room for free! (Long story short, I have a hotels.com account and since I've stayed 10 nights through hotels.com, I got a free night. It was good for any hotel up to $400, so I hopped online, searched for one of the most expensive hotel rooms in Chicago I could find and booked it.)

I should have taken a picture of our beautiful suite. Suffice it to say that we experienced a (free) weekend of luxury and it was fabulous. Actually, I don't have much at all by way of pictures, but oh well...

My favorite place in Chicago: the boardwalk along the lake & the marinas

Stuffing our faces with the most amazing Chicago Deep Dish from Lou Malnati's Pizzeria.

Quote of the week

My friend, Melissa, was over here this morning. I told the boys that Melissa is pregnant. They looked at me funny, so I then clarified that Melissa has a baby in her tummy. So, later this afternoon, Melissa and the boys went out for a walk. Jordan looked up at her and started talking, and this is how their conversation went:

Jordan: So...You have a baby in your tummy?
Melissa: Yeah, I do! I have a baby in my tummy.
Jordan (with a really confused look on his face): Hm...Why did you eat a baby?


Hahahahaha! Isn't it hilarious how a toddler mind works? :-)

OK, now you've had your laugh for the day. You're welcome.

Jeremy's Graduation

Holy cow, has it been an eventful month! I have tons to catch up on, but let's start with the most important event of the month - Jeremy's graduation! Yippeee!!! I can't believe we're done. And even more so, I can't believe we've finished it all with our marriage, family and sanity in tact! Unbelievable.

Jeremy's parents flew out and my family drove over for the blessed event. On June 19, 2010, we all got dudded up and headed to graduation which was held at a banquet hall in Carillon Park. When I put my dress on, Jordan asked, "Are you going to be a princess today, Mommy?" And then Matthew asked if he could spin me. So cute!


Jeremy won two awards.He won the CREOG award, which is an award for scoring the highest on the annual national OB/GYN competency exam, and he also won the William Nahaas Surgical Excellence award for being the best surgeon in his class (in fact many of the staff have commented through the years that Jeremy is one of the best surgeons to go through the program there). Can't tell that I'm proud of him, can you? heehee. OK, less bragging and more pictures...

This is Brian Jewell, one of Jeremy's residency buddies and his fellow "P90X graduate"

Graduating Residents: Jeremy, Phil Jones, Kelly McCluskey, Anna Schissel, Adrienne Perfilio, Alicia Thompson

OK, this is SO cute. This is our friends' little girl, Madeline. During dinner, Matthew whispered to me, "Mommy, I want to spin that girl." (by the way, he is SO girl crazy). I said, "OK, go ask her." So, he did, and Madeline got up, curtsied (!) and then asked Matthew, "Would you like to dance?" Ohmigosh, they were such a crack-up! Don't you love how he's just staring dreamily at her? haha

Jordan also developed a little crush that night. If the boys were 13, I think a fist fight might have ensued over Madeline. Ha!

And now, Jeremy is the sidekick of this guy - Dr. Steve Guy (his new partner). Yay! :-) Go fight some OB/GYN crime, you two!

Jeremy, I'm so proud of you, Sweetie-pea! Now we'll see if the 8 years of schooling and 4 years of slave labor were worth it. ;-)