Happy Thanksgiving!!

We usually spend Thanksgiving with Kemper's side of the family and Christmas with my side of the family, but this year my parents, older sister, and brother are joining us in little San Angelo, TX. They have been curious to see this, what Kemper likes to call "God's Country" town that he grew up in. It should be interesting!! Joining us in SA will be Kemper's sister Jill and her family all the way from Georgia. Kemper's grandmother is known for her wonderful Thanksgiving dinners so I'm excited that I get to share it with my side of the family this year.

Time to tell the Family Part two

*Mom remember to pause the music at the bottom!

Telling our families about the baby in person was very important to us so we made a special trip to San Angelo to tell Kemper's side of the family. We decided to do the " say Helen's pregnant" video trick again to see their response. Kemper's grandmother got it right away while everyone else was a little delayed like my family. They too thought he was kidding and didn't want to move in fear of ruining the "picture". Kemper's mother's response was "I knew it!!" She said that when she saw me when we arrived in San Angelo she had a feeling and thought I looked a little different, but dismissed it and continued on with her hello's. If your wondering why there is a shot of the Luby's sign at the end of the video, it is because that is where we had dinner previous to telling the fam. Why Luby's? Well Kemper's sister Jill happened to be eating at Luby's with Kemper's mother each time she told the news of her pregnancies so we decided it would be funny to keep that tradition alive. It was harder than we thought. Kemper's mother knows he prefers Mexican food so his mother kept asking us "why Luby's? are you sure ya'll want to eat at Lubys? we don't have to eat at Lubys" so we had to tell her that Kemper had a craving for chicken fried steak just to make sure she didn't figure it out.

Time to tell the family

Finding a perfect moment to tell everyone all-together, Helen and I devised a scheme by taking the family's "picture" before the Boston Red Sox baseball game, but instead of making them say "cheese", we came up with something better by making them say "Helen's pregnant!".

Our "trick" to catch Helen's family on video didn't work out as well as planned. Where we were hoping to catch everyone in celebration, we instead got video of everyone staying still for the "picture". Considering my past history of playing jokes on the family, everyone just assumed I was joking around and not being serious, hence the delayed celebration responses. Isa was mad at me because she first thought that pregnancy was not something funny to be joking about. Little did she know that I was indeed telling the truth. Also, baby Nolen was leaving "presents" for his Grandpa, and you can hear Pierre tell the family about the stinkers. At the same time I announced our surprise, Chrissy started yelling "are you serious?", but Grandpa thought she was asking that question to him about Nolen...! Eventually, everybody figured it out and we were off to see the game. Oy vey! ~Kemper

Unexpectedly Expecting!!

We are very happy to announce that are expecting our first child mid April! We have always been in agreement that both wanted children and that we wanted to be married for at least one year before we began trying. So a few weeks after our 1 year anniversary in July we brought the subject up again and both agreed that we would like to start trying for a family after the New Year, little did we know I was already pregnant! In our discussion about having children Kemper told me that when the time came and I found out I was pregnant that he wanted me to surprise him and not tell him flat out. The night I found out Kemper had just came back in town from a trip to San Angelo. It was late and didn't have anything planned so I debated on telling him without the surprise, but decided not to in the end. All night I was awake with excitement still in shock and trying to come up with a creative plan. I had just started this blog about a month before I found out I was pregnant and Kemper being the computer nerd, I mean computer man, helped me out so it was not uncommon for me to show him what I had posted each time. So when Kemper came home for lunch that day I told him I had a slide show that I wanted him to see. Little did he know it was a slide show that read out WE ARE HAVING A BABY, with pictures of the positive pregnancy tests. He had no idea because we already discussed we would wait until after the new year. I took a video with my camera ( he though I was just messing with it) and you can see what I like to call his horrified happiness. I was a little nervous so my sweaty hands fogged up the camera.

Almost Famous??!!

Last February I traveled to San Pedro Sula, Honduras on a medical mission. This mission was organized by the Friends of Barnabas Foundation http://www.fobf.org/, a Christian based mission group that provides medical care to the people of Honduras. I was first introduced to this team by two of the Pediatric heart surgeons that I worked with. They had taken a small team to Honduras the year before to perform open heart surgeries and catheterizations on the poor children in need and were very successful. So for one week I along with a team of doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, child life specialists and chaplains worked together and were able to successfully perform 9 open heart surgeries and 14 catheterizations. It was probably the hardest week of my life. We all put in a minimum 16hrs a day/night and we were working in an environment that wasn't really equipped to handle open heart surgeries. We brought all of our own supplies, medications, and equipment so they were very limited. I along with two other nurses and one doctor worked the night shift in our makeshift ICU. Although it was about the most stressful exhausting week of my life, I would do it all over again because it was such a rewarding experience.

Along for the ride was a photographer from D magazine and she had an article about our mission published in the October 2008 issue of D magazine. I was shocked to see my picture when I opened the issue. The picture is me working on my very first night getting a patient back from the OR. The stessed/ panic look on my face is because I just realized my patient was bleeding out and needed to go back to the OR. He was taken back and the bleed was stopped and he is a happy little boy today. My friend started a blog during the trip, so take a look!http://www.trenasue.blogspot.com/

Just a little behind!!

Well I started this blog for us as an online diary and to keep our friends and family updated on the exciting events going on in our lives. My plan was to blog each month but so far as you can see that hasn't really happened, so I'll have to do a little recap of the last two months because so much has happened!