A Day in the Life of a School Speech-Language Pathologist

This is my "busy season." I've been feeling like this a lot lately:

Because of all of these:

    At the end of the day, it is truly rewarding!

Ends and Odds

     I have to say, I have a fun time in life! Here lately I have had several wonderful opportunities to hang out with some dear friends and family. It is so fun to see my friends and talk about guys and life and just laugh! It is also a ton of fun to goof off with my crazy family! We celebrated my dad's 64th birthday with a party hat, homemade ice cream, mustaches, and playing revolutionary war with a bb gun! Complete with running and shooting the target at the same time which is harder than you would think!
                                           

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?!!"

Share a diet coke with Dad!

Happy to be 64!!!

Mustache fun

Seriously the best family photo ever!!

Party hard, nap harder

Couldn't leave her out

Effiestache

Girls night! They didn't approve this pic, but I did!!!

Elizabeth's wedding!

Besties!

Bribing Effie to take a pic with me!

To Be Loved

     Last week, my friend Rachel and I went to see the amazing Michael Buble in concert!!! I have always wanted to see him and was finally able to! I absolutely love his music. The concert was fantabulous! The opening band was Naturally 7, an extremely talented a cappella group that blew my mind! Then Mr. Buble made his grand appearance with the song Fever and flames on stage! We had floor seats and one row behind us was a second stage. He was sooo close! I really got into it at that point and started to sing along and dance---just a little! Towards the end, heart shaped confetti fell from the ceiling. It was such a fun night! It all ended too soon. I could have listened to him all night!!! 

Ivy Green

     The life of Helen Keller is such an inspiration to me. Especially now that I am a speech-language pathologist! It is truly amazing how she was able to learn to communicate at the age of seven after losing her sight and hearing as a toddler. I'm sure it wasn't easy for her teacher Annie Sullivan. But she kept working and she truly made a difference in her life and ultimately the world! The birthplace of Helen Keller is not far from where I live and once I discovered that I knew I wanted to tour it! 
     Located in Tuscumbia, AL, the birthplace of Helen Keller is called Ivy Green. It is over 200 years old and many of the original features are still in the home. There is a museum room with many photographs and memorabilia. The tour guide gives detailed information on each of the rooms in the home as well as stories from Helen's life. They have the famous well where Helen first learned that things have words and learned language. It was an amazing experience and I truly enjoyed it!

The grounds were so pretty!

A letter she wrote!

This bed has a crazy quilt!

The dining room where Annie Sullivan taught Helen to eat properly.

Signing "water" into her hand. :)

My cute parents!

Butterfly!

This is the house where Annie worked with Helen away from her family.

The Seemingly Never-Ending Quilt Project

     It all started with this picture in a DIY magazine.  

     The article is not even about that beautiful circle quilt, but rather how to create the canopy. But it didn't matter. I was inspired! I wanted my own beautiful circle quilt on my bed. Actually, the idea to make my own quilt probably began with the fact that my grandmother made numerous quilts in her lifetime. I kinda put it on my mental bucket list. So, in the summer of 2011, I started my 1st quilt. Did I really just say 1st? My fabulous mom helped me cut the fabric. I even found this tutorial online. {Thank you!!!} I decided to make mine queen size to fit my bed. I seriously took my time with this project. There were months that I didn't even pick it up. Plus, I did the actual quilting part by hand and that was very time consuming. I didn't think I would ever finish it! Slowly but surely though I made my way through the 100 circles and 100 squares and the border. 3 years and thousands of stitches later, I finally finished it this summer!!!!!!!! I worked so hard on it!! I am super excited and I absolutely love it!!!! As you will see Effie loves it too! 

Figuring out the placement

Quilt top completed!

Quilting by hand

Effie loves this quilt!

Bless her little heart!

Surprise! She really made it hard to work on at times.

On this day, she decided to chew on the batting, lol. 

Tornado knocked out the electricity, but I improvised! :)

Finally finished hand-quilting!!!

Cutting off the extra batting. 

Are you almost finished??

Machine sewing the binding!

It was really late and I was tired but determined to finish.

Whoo hoo!!!!! Completed at 2:00 am!

Beautiful and perfectly imperfect circle quilt! I LOVE it!!!