Getting ready for the new year

Well, here we are, another year gone by. This year has been long, at least it seems that way for me. God has really been molding me and teaching me a lot. I will write more about that later. Really I just wanted to say that we had a good Christmas. We are thankful to have been able to spend a week in TN, but are thankful to be back home as well. Aaron made a wall calendar for me for Christmas and I got him a devotional book, "Morning by Morning" by Charles Spurgeon. My sister got me a new devotional based on the names of God and I am looking forward to getting into that. I am also reading a great book right now called "Trusting God, even when life hurts" by Jerry Bridges. It is all about the sovereignty of God and it is good. I'm only a few chapters into it, but i like it a lot. Aaron is starting to work on scheduling his rotations for fourth year, which is a major process. We have to have it finished by March. Please pray that God will give us wisdom and guidance in making all those decisions. Aaron starts his Pediatrics rotation this week in Bluefield, which is about an hour away. He has been loving his rotations so far, Praise the Lord. Well, I will try to do a better job posting this year. Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

2 NEW BLOGS!!!

So there is a new blog below this one but i forgot about all the other fun we had in August. The beginning of August Sonya threw a party for me since i finished my 1st 2 years of school. We had a lot of fun and most of my family and her family came up for the weekend.

Caryss and Colton playing together for the 1st time at our house in VA. They might have had a little too much pool water to drink. Or maybe that's just how much fun Aunt Sonya and Uncle Aaron's house is!
Future Thomas the Train swimsuit model.
Here's Gavin striking his glamour shot pose in our backyard pool
My older brother Clint and Granddaddy Jones enjoying some homemade icecream and BBQ sandwiches
Sonya and I with my parents and Granddaddy Jones. We were SO excited everyone got to come up even if only for a day.

MONTANA
So we went to montana for vacation this year and it was beautiful. we saw so much in 6 days and spent a lot of time with sonya's roommate from UT stephanie.

Sorry, there's no time for captions we have a party to get to. a picture is worth a 1000 words so i'll let them speak for themselves!

Back to Blogging

Well the last pictures were from July and last update was over 6 weeks ago, so I (aaron) thought it was time to update! Aug. was filled will a lot of studying and I also took my boards the end of August. I got my scores back about 2 weeks ago and I passed!!! Praise the Lord and thank you Sonya for praying so much. Sept. I was in Geriatrics which was better than studying all day or being in school but I don't think i want to do that as a career! I love the patients though it was just kindof slow as far as learning medicine goes.

October 1st I began Surgery in a small community hospital in Pulaski, VA about 30 min. from our home. It is fantastic. 1st day i was putting stitches in a belly after a gallbaldder removal. Since then i've got to see and do a lot. I've also learned a lot and the hours haven't been bad at all. This tuesday is my last day there then I'm on to ER at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg. It should be a great rotation also. Pray that God gives me clarity on what area of medicine to persue.

Sonya has been working and this year seems much less dramatic than last mostly because her kids are less wild! She has some good kids to work with but is picking up one more that seems a bit of a handfull. She has begun helping out with Awanas on Sunday nights at church and is still doing bible study once a week with our neighbor Brenda. She is no longer leading but still attending the med school wives bible study twice a week... lets see, i'll put some pictures on here for good measure.

Here's Carla, Sonya's sister and the newest nephew Jackson camping in the Mountains over Labor day. We did little labor except for cooking. well i didn't cook i just labored over when to stop eating!

Sonya's parents came to visit us at the end of September and we had a great time. The weather was beautiful and we drove all over SW Virginia! Here we are at a restaurant call the Homeplace. it was beautiful and delicious!

We also had the time of our lives at Mountain Lake resort. Sonya couldn't keep here hungry eyes off me and we realized that nobody puts baby in a corner. yes it's where dirty dancing was filmed. I'm so lame at blogging!

After starting my surgery rotation i realized i have no idea how to really suture so i came home and practiced on a chicken breast one weekend. Sonya had to take a picture. i was going to eat it after i finished but it didn't sign a consent form for me to do that.

I was best man in a wedding Oct. 13th in Knoxville so we headed down to K-town for the wedding of the century. We had a blast at the dinners at Regas and Beaverbrook and the 12 min. ceremony was not too shabby either.

I met this hot girl there. She said she liked my shirt. So i had my picture taken with her. The shirts were our groomsmen gifts. Dusty's a big fan of trucks! Not just any trucks obviously

Of course i busted out some dance moves that most people had never seen before. I was lightening fast as you can see from the photo, my hands had disappeared from sheer speed and J was trying to cool me down.

After the wedding we hung out with my sister and her family, which consisted of playing with dinosaurs and hide and go seek. Gavin likes to roar alot, then beat you with his hard plastic toys.

yet for the pictures he looks so innocent, just like his mom.

Caryss on the other hand is sweet unless you take her braclets, then you feel her wrath.
Then Sunday we went to sonya's family's house for lunch after church. Jackson was protecting his coreas from damage and looking good at the same time. His dad Scott tried to do the same.Colton would ride down the hill on his gator but uncle mikey caused a pretty ugly wreck that made it burst into flames... maybe not that bad but it's all on video. colton only had 6 broken bones which i set and casted my self. um the last sentence was made up!

Sorry for the blog lapse

hello everyone, yes, we are still in VA. Just a quick update......Aaron is halfway through med school and just took his boards on aug 30th!! we have to wait 4-6 weeks to find out what he made. but he felt pretty good about it. so now he has started rotations. he is doing geriatrics right now and will be in surgery next month. each month he does something different. i am still doing day treatment counseling in the third grade. i have 3 kids right now, but will probably get a 4th this week. hopefully this year will be a little easier than last year :). our church has a lot of exciting things going on right now and we are excited about that. i'm going to start working in AWANAs at our church with the 3rd-5th grade girls. aaron and i are involved in an outreach ministry our church is starting called GROW. we will participate in that one sunday night a month doing house visits, calls, letters, etc to prospects.
we took a vacation to montana a few weeks ago to visit our friend stephanie. it was pretty amazing. hopefully i can get some pictures on before too long.
aaron and i enjoyed our first "study-free" weekend at home this weekend and it was great! he has definitely earned some relaxation time. well, i guess that's the update on us. i would like to wish my brother-in-law Scott, an early birthday, his birthday is tomorrow. hope you all have a great week, and we'll try to do a better job updating :).

READ THIS FIRST

OK, so aaron spent a LONG time updating our blog, and I don't want anyone to miss out on anything, but it is posted kinda backwards. So, before you read any further scroll way down to the pics of VaTech. Then start reading and keep going up. The end is at the top. Hope you enjoy!

I'm plum blogged out but one more NJ style

So last but not least and not really last since my newest blog is posted first... sonya and I went to New Jersey to visit my sister and brother in law, Sarah and Martin. We left Thursday afternoon and got there thursday night to hear Martin teach the college and career about the superfluidity of naughtiness, it doesn't sound right now that i say it out loud but anyway we had a lot of fun including going to Ocean City, New Jersey on friday to hang out on the beach. Yes that is a jacket you see on sonya, the only reason you see it is because we were able to get the 2 towels/blankets off of her for the picture. It was pretty chilly, like low 60's with an ocean breeze but some how i managed to burn my legs. it was all about the company though and the memories.
So we ate some pizza on the boardwalk, well not ON the boardwalk, we actually had a table and plates to eat on. Yes we ate that whole thing. It takes a lot of energy to stay so warm while at the same time having your legs fried in the sunless UV rays. We also have proof that martin is part amphibian due to his hypoglossal/genioglossal muscle you see protruding in the picture!
Well we also watched martin play soccer friday night, while they didn't win they looked really good while losing. then martin had to work saturday and sonya and sarah went garage selling or shopping rather, and I got a new weedeater (new to me). I studied for my national board exam which was equally fun to me as the idea of going to garage sales. then we met martin in cherry hill to eat at the CHEESECAKE FACTORY. Oh it was a glorious time... over 30 types of cheesecake. sarah doesn't like cheesecake so she got some chocolate cake and it was like Mana from heaven, about the size of a small 9x9 birthday cake. I had dutch apple walnut strusel cheesecake and it was like a party in my mouth with each bite. Then we played some games at their new home which is pictured above.
Sunday we went to their church Fellowship Bible Church. It was a really good sermon on striving to be holy before God without excuses. It took us about 1 and 1/2 hours longer to get home because of stupid toll booths but thank the Lord we made it home safely. Thanks for having us Sarah and Martin we loved seeing you both and getting to hang out. Their house is fantastic. My favorite part about the house is the superfly appliances and the floors and the extra large "comfort" tolet that martin installed himself. Ok all of it was my favorite part.

well that about sums up the last 2 months. I have 1 and 1/2 weeks of school left for this block then a 3 week block then I'm done July 20th with class and then it's nonstop studying for my board exam. Sonya is starting the summer program with her work next week so it will be a busy 8 weeks for her. please pray for her! And pray for us a car. and keep your eyes peeled for a good deal for us. thanks for reading! always feel free to comment!

Family Time

Sonya was on a WELL deserved vacation last week and her mom, Carla, Colton and Jackson came to visit aunt sonya and uncle Aaron. We had so much fun. Sonya had bought this frog pool from the dollar store for Colton to play in and he wasn't sure what to think about it at first but give that kid some toys and he's all over it. even if he didn't enjoy it too much, i know i sure did.
WE LOVE having family come visit so come on up. We now have a pool! (sort of!!!) That is one good looking Aunt!
Here's Jackson giving us his best "serious" face. But you can tell he wants to laugh. He is a cute fella.
Colton likes to give baby brother sugar but Jackson is realizing that he can't focus on objects as close as 2cm. colton usually tries to love on baby brother when he is sleeping. I think it is a ploy to wake up Jackson but he just makes it look like he's being sweet!
I just had to add this picture because Colton's face is SOOOO funny. he's looking at the frog pool like "what did you just say to me". So thanks for coming up everyone, and don't worry about my studying, I told Mary Alice and Carla that it's nice having people around because it's not as quiet when I study and I meant it. I had a test on Thursday and made a 51/50 thanks to them coming up (with a lot of prayer, and help from the Divine, and bonus points). So come one, come all.

Weekend Fun!

So we have waited 2 years of living here before we started doing fun stuff on the weekends, well at least stuff we have wanted to do. We hiked up to Dragon's Tooth on the Appalachian Trail a few weekends ago and had a great time. It was a 5 mile hike and the last mile and a half had some pretty technical climbs (especially for 2 new virginia hikers). but we reached the top and had a fun time doing it. I was so proud of Sonya. She's not what I would call a "daredevil" but she was all over those rocks, despite the 2 snakes we saw!

A few weeks earlier we went looking for dragon's tooth but couldn't find it so we hike about 3 miles on the AT toward McAfee's Knob but it was a 7 mile hike and we hadn't planned on going that far, so we'll save it for another weekend.
Here we are at the top basically flossing the dragon's tooth!
And here's a another view! it was a bit cloudy but we could still see really far. it was really a great day for a hike.








I nearly lost my life but in the meantime sonya wanted a picture so she could commerate the moment she nearly cashed in on my large life insurance policy.


And finally, we had heard of a little place in Floyd, VA called the Floyd Country Store. It's 3 bucks for a cover charge and every friday night for a long time they have and have had Bluegrass music from all over play there. It was jam packed and then out of no where people would go up front and start clogging. I had brought my dancin' shoes but sonya didn't and the problem is that she has rhythm and I don't but God made up for my lack of rhythm by giving me heavenly dance moves and a personality that just doesn't care.


It was really impressive how on beat everyone would dance in their cloggin' shoes. at one point there were probably 50 people on the dance floor from age 3 to 80. I was glad to see some EMT's there because some of those old folks were really going to town. We ate dinner there and spent the whole night. it was about 30 min. away and only cost $20 for a night of fun. Just like the good ol' days. if anyone wants to come with us just let us know and come and visit on a friday night and we'll head on down to floyd virginia.

Oh Where to Begin

Aaron here,
We'll begin with another picture of our new nephew Jackson and his big brother Colton. This was taken around mother's day I think.

Anyway we have been traveling a lot lately. I'm not sure why other than we just like to get away every now and then and since I'm tired of studying most weekends we just travel. We saw my family over mother's day weekend but poor mom was sick and couldn't even get out of bed. but she's better now. Then we went to Elkmont in the Smoky Mountains over Memorial Day weekend with Sonya's family.
Everyone was there and it was baby Jackson's first camping trip. A good time was had by all. It consisted of the usual. Sleeping, eating, talking, walking, and holding a baby. Here's a picture of me showing off my nephew and my HUGE forehead (my grandmother said it is a sign of intelligence, I think I agree!!). So we were there Saturday through Monday afternoon.

well more to come later! Time for dinner!

Here are some pics of the VA Tech campus and memorial area on the drillfield. There was a little basket of flowers with a flag for each student that was killed. The building pictured is Norris Hall, where the tragedy occured.

Colton enjoyed dying Easter eggs with Aunt Sonya and Momma.

JACKSON DEAN BYRD

Born April 4th, 2007

Oh so cute!!!

Colton was very excited for baby brother to come home! He just wanted to kiss and hug him!

Update

Hello, sorry it's been so long......for some reason I just avoid my computer once I get home, except for a quick email check. Well, first off, we have a new nephew, Jackson Dean Byrd, born on April 4. I will be posting pics soon. He seems to be blond and maybe blue eyed!

Things are starting to be "normal" again, at least for Aaron and I, since the VA tech shooting almost two weeks ago. We were able to go and see the memorials and it was overwhelming. Thankfully, we were not directly affected, but we both know people who knew people who were victims. We are praying for opportunities to share and encourage while so many hearts are open to hear and listen.

So, we found out today that Aaron did not get the CMDA scholarship he applied for, but that's ok. We know that God is in control and will continue to provide for us in other ways. We are praying about applying with Project Medsend. So.....we'll see. Right now Aaron has two weeks left in this block, then he will have a week off. After that his next two blocks are back to back with no break until the end, which is July 20th. The END of CLASSES!! But then he will be studying for boards up until August 30th, which is the big day! Please pray for him to be able to prepare for this big test.

I have 6 more weeks of school left!! I am very ready for a break. Well, I guess that's about it for now. I'll try to post some pics soon. Have a good week.

Pictures

Me & Alicia Alicia's new house

My Handsome husband & Me

The beautiful Bride....Sara Bonner

The UT Gals:Me, Steph, Sara, and Beth

I had a great weekend with my best friend, Alicia, who is "with child"!! And just moved into a new house that is beautiful!! I'm so glad we don't live forever away from each other and can still visit on the weekends :). Here's some pics of us and her house and of sara & wade's wedding. have a good week!