DPT Family

• About two weeks ago was one heck of a week for our class of 18 PT students, but a very good one! We:
• had our last class...ever.
• took our last final exam...ever.
• took our comprehensive exam (a recall of 3 years of info, basically) and 100% passed!
• celebrated that twice in one day...lunch at Pawley's Front Porch (the most amazing burger you've ever had) and dinner at Mellow Mushroom and
• took a Board Review class to get an idea of how to prepare for studying for boards

• So all in all, we finished the academic portion of our 3.5 year program!!! We are all thrilled to have the rest of the summer off to relax and finish research until we begin our final clinical rotations July 30 in various places and settings. Some are doing a second/specialized orthopedic rotation, some are doing pediatrics, and 3 or 4 of us are doing home health. Clinical ends mid-October and we graduate December 13! The end is in sight!!! 
• Here's a pic of our class (minus Aaron & Christina, Jess, and Forest) after comps at Pawley's :)
 
• Honestly, I'm a little sad our time together is almost at an end! I've lived life next to these 17 other people for the last 3 years! We've seen the good, bad, and ugly of each other! We've 
• celebrated 4 weddings (and 3 more to come)
• mourned the loss of loved ones
• studied God's Word & prayed together
• welcomed a baby girl into the world
• laughed at stupid YouTube videos
• presented I don't even know how many case studies
• and celebrated the end of nearly every semester like champs! Oh that reminds me! 
• Two intramural sports championships (with some help from other classes)! 
• And all 18 of us have made it through with no hold-ups!
• It's been a real honor and privilege to work with these 17 people who I call DPT family! :)

Moving Forward into Summer!

Couple new things happening around the Hassell Castle as we move forward into summer:

• Frisbee-We are playing ultimate frisbee in the Columbia Ultimate Disc Association Summer League! This is the third summer Aaron's played and he convinced me to sign up this year. Our 2nd game is tonight and I'm pumped. Typically when I'm playing with a new group of people, I am very self-conscious about my playing and get real focused on myself and how bad I suck. Bad move. I'm learning to focus more on just having fun and improving my game and not getting offended when someone gives me a tip. That kinda leads into the next thing...
• Humility-We started a new series at Midtown last night on humility. The biggest and hardest thing I learned from the first sermon was that there are two kinds of pride. The first is what I normally think of as pride...the "I'm so excellent, I don't need God" kinda attitude. But the second is the polar opposite...having the constant mindset of "I am not excellent in any way" and staying focused on how "not excellent" we are. We may think we need special treatment because of how "not excellent" we are. I have a harder time explaining and recognizing this type of pride, but I know that it lives in my heart. The solution to killing pride isn't "just be more humble," but being humbled by the fact that Jesus humbled Himself and died for my pride. I genuinely desire to grow in humility and am looking forward to the rest of this series :) From the video below, Aaron will benefit from it too, lol. This is from an "interview" I did with him on a road trip about 2 years ago. Sorry it's sideways!

• Reunion-I traveled down to Charleston last Friday to meet up for dinner with my best friends from college. April will be moving overseas soon, so we took advantage of the opportunity to meet up so we could send her off! Since we were all together, Mer's sister threw her a baby shower the same weekend; I was so thrilled so many of us were able to make it, but we missed 3 of our girls. So much is changing with all of us so quickly between jobs, grad school, family, marriage, babies, and overseas missions, it's hard to keep up, but we try to plan as far in advance as we can to make time to visit at least once a year. 
• If you know me and are reading this blog, you probably know these girls, or  ARE one of them, but here's the roster: back (L-R): Peg, Madeline, Meredyth, Amber M. (doing a Slovak "2" bc she, hubby Patrick, and baby Samuel (exp. 7/14/12) will be moving to Bratislava soon!), front: me, Amber W., April, Jenna
• April's moving to Asia so that's what the pose is about ;-P

  
More to come on PT school!

Harbison State Forest

Last Saturday Aaron and I ventured out to Harbison State Forest for a little hiking. We saw 2 deer, some cool plant life, and a little baby birdie with a lot to say. Enjoy the pics below!

 This one was much less skiddish and let us take a few pics.

 The one in the back heard or saw us and was hopping around trying to warn the other. Finally got a good shot of both of em. They were so close to us!!!

 so green!!

 cool hollowed out tree

 I heard this bird when we were on the trail and took a few minutes to find him; don't let him fool ya, even though he's so little, he is LOUD!!

 Camelbak to scale the size of the bird...he was soooo tiny!

It took a lot for Aaron to convince me the black ones were okay to eat, but they were good and we didn't get sick, thankfully :)

 Pretty yellow flowers that were scattered all along the way.

 Some baby pine trees we saw...they look so funny to me. I guess it's the alfalfa type bunch of needles on the top that's weird.

 Mushroom

Whole trail took about 2 hours (3.5 miles) and was beautiful. We'll definitely be heading out there again soon!