Weekend with the Round Rock Phillippis

We had a fun weekend-Brian and Amanda came to visit.  We had fun at the park, made some play-dough, the guys got to go check out the new Batman movie and the girls got their toes done. 

Matt's play-dough masterpiece-Minnie mouse!

Short and sweet weekend, but we had a lot of fun. Come back soon!

Nawlins!

So this weekend our trip was to the city of New Orleans for  a wedding of Matt's co-worker.  We had to fly into Mobile, AL because the flights to New Orleans were booked solid.  From there we rented a car and drove 2 hours to our hotel.  We flew with two other couples that also work with Matt.  We didn't get there until around midnight or so on Friday night.  Matt and I were exhausted so we went straight to bed.  The next morning we were eager to see the city.  We knew first we had to get some of the legendary beignets for breakfast from Cafe du Monde.

For lunch we tried Po Boys, another famous New Orleans food.  (I'm still not quite sure what the difference is between a Po Boy and a sub sandwich)  Matt got the original-roast beef-and loved it.

Here are some of the other things we saw as we walked around:
Voodoo shops-some were more touristy than others.

We stumbled upon this one that was really creepy.  Neither of us really wanted to go in.

Love that New Orleans architecture

Street music

New Orleans is known for it's food... Road kill anyone?

Or how about adding alligator to your food storage rotation?

We toured one of the near-by cemeteries. People are buried in tombs due to the high water table.  This is supposedly the tomb of the Voodoo Queen.  People trying to learn voodoo go there and practice rituals-hence the x's drawn on the side.

We took the river walk back to our hotel-great views of the Mississippi

Saturday night was the big wedding, and in New Orleans, they do it right.  After the ceremony came the food, music, and dancing.  Congrats to Lauren and Matt.

The next day we had to fly back.  In the morning Matt and I set out for a nice walk.  We didn't make it very far before getting caught in a downpour.  We managed to make it back before we got too wet! Luckily we escaped the rain on our road-trip back to the airport. We took the scenic route-the highway along the coast.  It was beautiful and sunny.  We stopped for lunch at a little place on the beach. We also took a little break to go put our toes in the water just to say we had been in the gulf.

We got back around 8:00 Sunday night.  Just in time to get baking Matt's traditional birthday cake for  his birthday on Monday.  Happy Birthday, Matt! :)

Walking in Memphis

So on Friday Matt got talking to one of his co-workers who is getting married next weekend. His friend 's fiance was already gone getting ready for the wedding so they decided it would be fun to go and do something for the weekend.   When I met Matt for lunch that day he said, "Hey, want to go to Memphis tomorrow?"  I was like "What?!"  He explained that they had checked flights to several places and the ones to Memphis were wide open.   So two of Matt's co-workers and us hopped on a plane Saturday morning.  Spent the day walking around, got some Memphis BBQ for lunch, and were home in time for dinner.  Ah, the life of an airline employee :)

Peabody ducks

The Rendezvous-some good BBQ!

Beale Street

Elvis

Orpheum Theater

New X2

So finally after months on the job search, I have a job!  Matt's boss knew I was looking for a job and told Matt his wife's practice was looking for a nurse.  Long, story short,  Matt's boss's wife is now my boss.  Matt joked and said he wonders if they go home and say, "how was your Phillippi today?"  The job is at a family practice here in town, working similar hour to what Matt works.  I've just been doing a lot of training so far, but I think I'm going to like it.  One of the things I do is take triage calls.  People ask me a variety of questions and our patients are a variety of ages and demographics.  I like it because it makes me rely on all of my knowledge from nursing school. It's a good review for me.

I'm now in my second week of work and our plans were originally to have me work for a month or two and save up for a down payment on a car.  After just one week of carpooling that plan failed.  We went out on Saturday "just to look" and a salesman met us and  showed us a few of the cars.  In order to tell us the prices of the cars he had to take us back into his office and then gave us his whole little spiel. We talked about it and figured we could save up more for the payment or just pay one more payment, either way we end up paying the same amount.  So we ended up with this:

A 2009 Toyota Camry LE with only 15,000 miles. V6, a moon-roof, and Matt loves the volume control on the steering wheel.  It was a deal we couldn't pass up!  And yesterday I slept in an extra half hour and then drove myself to work without dropping Matt of first and it was awesome!