Lindsey Graduated!!!

Lindsey graduated tonight with a Masters degree in Social Work after a long and stressful year and a half. I am so proud of how much hard work she into the program and her internship, she's a natural Social Worker. It was just so nice to watch her grab that degree, so proud! It was hard for her to say goodbye to all of the incredible people she met in her program, as many of them will be leaving over the next weeks. But, we're off to Minnesota tomorrow morning, stopping in Chicago to see friends for a bit.


Woohoo! Now we need to buy a big frame!

One of Linsey's favorite professors

This was the only shot I could get of her on the stage and she literally broke into a sprint to get off

Harry Shearer delivered the commencement, he was great (voice of many Simpsons characters and also in Spinal Tap)

The Dean

Here are all the graduates


Lindsey with some of her friends before the ceremony

Lindsey and Mandy


Lindsey, Ida, and Karen

Lindsey, Brooke, and Hailey

Lindsey and Calley

Week before Graduation!

This is my professional project group. We have been working for a year on a project in bibliotherapy-which is basically writing books and having discussion as a form of therapy. This form of therapy is only effective if you combine it with other therapy....but the idea began when we noticed that there was a lack of books addressing Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome (highly prevalent with kids here post Hurricane Katrina) and a lack of books that address bullying -from the bully's perspective and trying to understand the bully. For Save the Children, we would go in the schools and lead therapy groups with kids addressing these topics, which usually involved a story-since there was a lack of these books-we decided to write them, have focus groups critiquing them, and then and have them illustrated. Here's us last minute throwing our post together in 2 hours to present our project :)
our cheesy poster (very Science Fairy-like)
Friends Brooke-(she just got back from living in BElize for 3 months with the international social work program) Molly, Mandy and ME
Here's us at the science and fair and with our completed projects. Our professors were THRILLED with our books and they are looking at getting us funding to pursue self-publishing.
Brian helped put the illustrations and writing into a software program before we brought them to the printing press...so he even had a part in the project!
Here's us celebrating at Lisa's family restaurant, which is an Italian restaurant from the 1950's (it was a restaurant originally in Chicago and they moved here in the 50's!)
Sooo good.... chicken, breaded oysters, shrimp, crab salad....yum!
My friend got married and the marriage didn't turn out so well and she's getting a divorce. She was never able to have a bachelorette party-so her sister threw her a Divorce Party-a Back on the Market party and we decided to go out and buy tacky dresses. here are 2 we tried on. Hideous..but I didn't settle on this one....


This is Shea my friend from the program-we ended up buying the SAME dresses in different colors! (don't we look like those fundamentalist mormans?)
This is the group--we had a bag and had people contribute to a Divorce fund. We walked in a Christmas parade in the Quarter-and everyone loved our idea!
I think Mandy had 20 bows on her dress. d

Bri and I have been taking Chinese classes on the weekend--here's our class eating hot pot tonight! So good cause it was cold outside!
Our teacher dishing up!
I graduate this Friday so more pictures soon to come! Then Chicago/Minnesota here we come!

Po-boy fest + Turkey Day

Bri getting crafty w/his guitar.
School of Social Work Boys + Brian on Turkey Day.
My friend Haley, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Paraguay and also a Social Worker, put on the meal.

Char-broiled oysters at the Po-boy festival. YUUMMMMMM

Cochon Delai Po-boy.... Which is a pork po-boy that is super awesome. All of our pictures seem to have to do with eating in NEw Orleans, but the food is so good!!!!

November in N'awlins

We may not be vegan, but this is one of our favorite recipes, Vegan Enchiladas!

Lindsey had a Tulane Graduate School party the other night, so we had the chance to get all dressed up and go out for the night.


Here's Lindsey and all her social work buddies!

Here's the two of us! It was a fun night of dancing.


What you don't see in these pictures is my stellar move I made at the beginning of the night. I was wearing heels (which the binzer does about once a year) and I was trying to fix the heel of my shoe. My ring somehow got caught in the spike of the shoe and I was thrown completely off balance and landed face first on the carpet. It was kinda a long fall and I have carpet burns on both knees to prove it. IT was hilarious in the sense that I was not drinking and just being a clutzy Aysta (which Shelley can attest to) . This only a few days after I attended a conference inBaton Rouge and spilled an entire cup of sweet tea on the white tablecloth at my table. I spent about 10 minutes cleaning it up ...ahhhh jeez.

Happy Fall!

It finally dipped down into the 70's this past week with nice clear skies and a crisp breeze. It was Lindsey's first trip out of the house for awhile so we took the time to go over to the Lake near my school. The fall semester is starting to wind down as well. Lindsey will be graduating in a few weeks and then we'll be driving up to Minnesota for Christmas, with stops in Chicago to visit Peace Corps friends, and then it's off to Nicaragua for a vacation before I settle in to finish my last semester. We are also so excited for our niece who's on the way!

Happy Fall!

Sick Binzer and Pumpkins

Well, Binzer has been down for the count for about 13 days now with mono. She was just sleepy and had no appetite for the first few days but now her throat is really sore and shes been really nauseous. Hopefully she starts to feel better soon. Shes been getting lots of rest but has missed a lot of stuff, I just can't wait to see our old Binzer back!

Just this past weekend Lindsey was feeling a little better so we took her over to Liz and Christian's place to watch the Saints game. Then we went over to our friend Hailey's house to carve pumpkins. I think it was good for her to actually see some friends for a little bit, but she sure got tuckered out.

Here's the pumpkin I carved. I have not idea what it is.


Me and the pumpkin


Pumpkin carving party...I don't know how long the pumpkins are gonna last when it gets back up to 80 this next week...

A little classic street football action after The Saints destroyed The Giants.


Christian made all of the gravestones with movie characters and quotes.

Back to China!...Kinda

Lindsey got me some cupcakes for my birthday...mmmm! White frosting, chocolate cake, in the fridge...best dessert ever.


We went out for my birthday to this fancy little place called Clancy's in Uptown New Orleans. Lindsey had crab and I had baby cow.


Our lunch from the other day. I was so excited that we found Laotian sticky rice at the local asian market along with our favorite curry (second best food behind refrigerated cupcakes). Lindsey also made Vietnamese soup which was equally awesome.


Just last night we performed a scene from a traditional Chinese story from the Three Kingdoms Period. We started taking a Chinese class only three weeks ago and on the first day we learned that we would be part of a play. We're both glad it's over because Chinese classes and play practices every week were getting to be a little too much Chinese. It was fun though and everyone did really well.

Here is Lindsey's costume...真漂亮！ How pretty!

Here we are. I gave an introduction in Chinese and then bowed a lot. Lindsey was a servant and did awesome with her lines and the poem.

Me and the other guys in the class.

Here's out whole class and our Chinese teacher.