A day in our life...: The pictures are in

What a day it has been. And it has all been “mostly” good.

As a matter of fact, the only thing that wasn’t good today was the weather! Another cold day. We even had snow flurries again. They say that spring is right around the corner, but the majority of days next week they are forecasting highs in the 30’s. If we could just get up to our average (55 for this time of year)…

But enough about that! This was a good day! The day started out with a trip to buy our “outlive” shirts and pick up our pictures! First, here’s the scoop on the outlive shirts…

A couple of years ago, the University of Tennessee had a basketball player named Chris Lofton (the UT and SEC all time 3-point scorer). He failed a random drug test after the 2007 NCAA tournament. But it wasn’t drugs, the failed test turned out to be the result of a tumor marker. And not wanting any additional attention, he decided to undergo the cancer treatments in “secret” all while playing through his senior season. None of his team mates knew. None of the fans knew. Only his parents, the head coach, and a few university officials knew. He battled – both on and off the court, beat cancer, and graduated on time. Then, last year, he teamed up with coach Bruce Pearl and UT Hospital Cancer Institute to start the “oUTlive” program to raise money for cancer research and screenings. This year (so far), the program has raised more than $130,000 and almost $250,000 since the program started. All we can say is “Thank You Chris!”. We enjoyed watching you play, and we are touched by your continued support in this community. Congratulations on being diagnosed “cancer free” – and we look forward to supporting this program for many more years.

So – we have our orange outlive t-shirts in hand. Where should we wear them? Why to the basketball game against Kentucky! We were there with 22,000 of our friends – all doning our outlive shirts as we welcomed the number 2 team in the country to our town. Kentucky took the early lead (4 to 0) – but that was the last lead they would have. And it wasn’t close for almost the entire game. They did tie it up 65 – 65, but in they end, we pulled away – scoring the last 9 points of the game and winning 74 to 65. And since we won - beating a college basketball dynasty – I’ll gloat just a little. Kentucky is arguably one of the best college basketball programs ever. But which team has handed Kentucky more losses than any other? Tennessee… And this year, today (after Oklahoma State beat Kansas), the number 1 and number 2 teams in the country have combined for 4 losses – 2 of them came from Tennessee.

Now – on to the pictures! Remember that last Sunday, we all loaded up and went to have our pictures taken. We had decided on Megan Parker Photography (www.meganparkerphoto.com) and we absolutely LOVED IT! For those of you in Knoxville – her studio is right off of Calahan Road – about 1/4 mile from the “Bounce House” (for those of you with kids) and about 1/2 mile from UPS. If you are thinking about having pictures made – you should certainly give her a call. And if you would like to check out some of her work – it just so happens that we picked up our pictures today! 47 pictures in all. Which is WAY too many to put here in the blog! But here’s one for you..