Tony and Paige.com

We did have a great holiday weekend and enjoyed having 5 members of our family come for a visit. Round Rock actually had two firework displays going at once so everyone had a great view and skydivers landing in the park to kick it off. The downside to this is that while it was spectacular, it took an hour just to begin to drive out of Old Settler’s Park! This was our first year and we hope to be better prepared next year. Here are a few pictures:

Yes, if you ask Matthew, the coolest part of the night was that Mom & Dad bought him a light saber. It looks much better in darkness. The fireworks were awesome but I didn’t take any pictures of them. I just wanted to sit and enjoy. Maybe next year.

I just love this picture of Matthew. His Aunt P. took this during her recent visit with us. It just captures his happy face so well!

She can always get a great pic, even when I can’t even get him to look at the camera.

This afternoon will be my second round of prolotherapy injections. I am half looking forward to it, half just wanting to get it over with so I can see if there are going to be some decent results in a week or two. I very much want to reduce my pain medication because it limits my physical activity and has side effects. Too much sun and I get weak, nausea every morning and sometimes during the day, I can be happily working out or in a store walking and suddenly get faint. On the vain side, it messes with my hair texture-yeah, my hair looks pretty bad these days. Did I mention it makes me forgetful? Where was I again? Oh, yeah…

But most of all, I am looking forward to the pain lessening. Dr. Harris says that the majority of his patients see some kind of improvement after the second round of therapy. Financially I am hoping it works quickly since the insurance company won’t pay for any of it. They think I’m crazy. Well, I might be but that isn’t what causes this pain! That really chaps my hide, to put it nicely. Something else that bothers me is that every time I type “prolotherapy” on this dang computer, it tells me that it is not a word and tries to replace it with, among other things, psychotherapy. Great, even the computer software thinks I’m crazy. How funny is that? Do you think the software company and the insurance company know each other? Ha!

Seriously, I couldn’t be luckier. I know I have a lot to be grateful for. I have found a doctor who could diagnose my problem and treat it as well. I am grateful that I don’t have to have back surgery and my treatment is minimally invasive and pretty straight forward. It is still scary that multiple medical professionals misdiagnosed me and I even had an unnecessary surgery trying to figure this all out. I wonder how many folks out there are being misdiagnosed right now. Very scary.

Here’s hoping one day doctors will have that scanny-thingie the Bones had on Star Trek. Take a pill and grow a new kidney…

Breakfast at Round Rock Donuts. Suppose to be world famous and now we know why. Never had donuts like these before. They are a yeast donut made from a recipe that is 90 or so years old and the are orange in color. Awesome and they were still warm when we got them, which is even better. We got there late in the morning and had to stand in line but what was really crazy was the drive-thru, out of the parking lot and down the street. We’ve heard around the holidays the line can take up to one hour!

For lunch, we happened upon a taco shack. Yes, it was a shack but it was packed so we knew it had to be good and we were hungry. It was Sunday so they had a gospel band playing outside in their court yard and when they broke out into “O, When The Saints Go Marchin’ In” a dance line formed complete with folks waving scarfs in the air. It is a great place to people watch and apparently, shoes were optional and dogs where welcome. But what really mattered was the food. Our tacos could not have been any tastier and the whole meal for the three of us was $8.95. Guy from the Food Network had visited the place and left three or four signed pieces that they hung on the wall.

What sealed the deal for me to go back again was when we left and Matthew asked, “Can we go back tomorrow?” Here are some pictures of the place.

The outside:

The inside:

New random picture. We were at a festival where they were doing face painting but he opted to put it on his arm. I think the painter guy said he would do over a hundred of these that day. Matthew really liked it.

We were driving to the library to return some books this morning when we saw a man running down the street for exercise. He was wearing small running shorts and shoes. That was all.

Matthew says from the back seat, “Mommy, he’s not wearing any clothes!” I said, “Well he has on some clothes, shorts and shoes.” To which Matthew replies, “Well, I think he forgot something.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Weekend before last we went to the Pecan St. Festival in downtown Austin. It was several blocks of vendors, artist, and performing artist along with food, petting zoos, and bounce houses. We met up with our friends Goeff & Elizabeth and their friend Stephanie and wandered our way through the maze of amusements to be seen.

I wanted to share some pictures of the street performers we happened across. They were extremely talented and humorous but kept it at a family level. The pictures below are of them: the woman juggling fire torches while standing on the man’s shoulders while he hula hooped and they both simultaneously rotated in a circle. You don’t see that everyday. We left a tip.

And here they are knocking a bread stick in half while in the mouth of an innocent bystander.

…what the woman who had the face transplant is going through, day to day, or what she has already endured. Today on the news, they showed how she looked after 30 reconstruction surgeries before the transplant. That’s 30 surgeries! I’ve had 3 in my entire life, all relatively minor, and loathed them all. The anxiety while waiting, not knowing, and the recovery are all unpleasant to say the least.

She had her face basically blown off by her ex-husband with a shotgun in 2004, survived, suffered through the recovery and I am sure, the stares of countless people. Now she has several more surgeries to go through and has to come to terms with the new face in the mirror. She will never look like the face she was born with. Her identity forever changed by one person’s evil, self-serving desicion.

Her name is Connie and she has two children. Her ex-husband received a seven year sentence for what he did. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Since we bought a decent new camera, Tony and I decided we should put it to good use and have a picture post every week. They will be random and about whatever we like or find interesting. It will be a good way to keep friends and family updated on what we are up to, as well. Not that we lead terribly exciting lives but it will be a way to stay connected with those we miss back in Paris. I am probably not organized enough to keep it on the same day of the week either, adding further meaning to the title “Random..”.

So this first picture is of one of my favorite places to eat since we moved to the Austin area, Home Slice. Best Pizza Ever! It is very much a small, very popular,  hole in the wall place with some inside and outside seating. Very casual, you can watch the pie makers fling the pizza dough high up over their heads from the small and some what dark interior. You can order the entire pie or by the slice, which will mostly fit on the paper plates they serve it on. They have great salads, too. Just be sure you know the difference between the half and whole order. I had the half order of the outrageously delicious pear gorgonzola salad with a slice of margarita pizza and had to ask for help to finish it! Tony graciously obliged. Hope you all can come try it one day with us.

The second picture is of the awesome graffiti outside this place, too.  I love the look of it.

…outside today.

In the rain.

Scratch that. Too much lightning to play outside, maybe we’ll try the library.