On the first day of Christmas...

The first day of December may have only been a few days ago, but Christmas has been in full swing for a couple weeks in the Oprea home. I was so excited to decorate our house this year- complete with a tall Christmas tree! We are also so excited to have a real fireplace that has already gotten plenty of use this season! Here are some pictures for your enjoyment...

Coach K meets Dr. K

Supermodels and Superkids

Children's has a great relationship with Rooms to Go and Rooms to Go has a great relationship with Cindy Crawford; therefore, when Cindy came to town for a store's grand opening and wanted to visit a children's hospital, guess who they called? It was a very full day, but very fun! We had the green room stocked with Pepsi products and ready to go by 8AM. Cindy and some Rooms to Go executives showed up in a blacked out Escalade at 8:05. We already had three news stations set up in a separate room for one on one interviews followed by a press conference with more attending media. After the press conference, we started on our room visits- all 20+ people in the entourage. This is usually when I start to feel a bit overwhelmed because taking this many people through a working clinical environment without disturbing patient care can be quite difficult- especially when we're on a tight schedule. All in all, it was a really great day and everyone had a great experience. The physicians got to meet their dream girl and the kids got to meet a "really pretty lady with a teddy bear". Here's a news clip from the day...

A Very Sweet Video

Just Another Day...

I am excited to announce a new addition to the hospital and my job description! The VOICE at Children's opened on Friday and Ryan flew in to town to do the first broadcast himself. It would be so hard for me to put in to words how cool this new multimedia center is, so hopefully this video can give you a good idea!





Ready for the crowd!


My banner that I made with the kids.


The picture I got kids to sign.






Ryan being interviewed by E! News.


First broadcast!


Ryan flew his production crew from E! news out here to film Friday night's show from the hospital!


The guest of honor

Orange is the perfect color for Fall

The perfect Saturday in October!

"Michael, 5K stands for 5 Kilometers... not 5,000 miles"

Any event that has the phrase "corporate fun run" in it has to be good right? Dustin and I ran in the Kaiser Permanente Corporate Fun Run last week on the Children's team and actually had a lot of fun. The pollen count was at it's highest and we had a code orange smog alert... but we toughed it out along with about 5,000 other people. Anyone that knows me knows I'm not exactly a cross country runner, so I approached this just like I approach any new activity:

I bought some new kicks...


And I've been running about 3 nights a week to get ready for it. Not to sound like an infomercial, but literally- if I can become a runner ANYONE can be a runner. Here are some pics from the KP race last week. I should probably mention that Dustin's shirt is about 2 sizes too big, which why he has it tucked in... that and aerodynamics.

Children's tent before the race...


Waiting at the starting line!


We survived!... and ran the whole way : )



On another note, here are some house updates:

It's hard to believe we have lived in our house for 4 months now. This year is flying by! I can finally say that we are unpacked. Everything we have is now out of boxes and up on the walls. It's still a work in progress, but I'm pretty sure that comes with being a homeowner. For about a month or so, we had a water stain on the wall in our bedroom from some heavy rain. After getting everything squared away with the subcontractors who worked on our roof after we bought the house... the stain was still there and we did not have the same color paint to cover it up. Before Dustin could even finish the phrase "Should we try to match the paint or..." he knew I just wanted to re-paint the whole room. He and a college friend, Chris Kakaras were sweet enough to tape off the room for me and 18 episodes of Friends later... voila!

It's hard to tell in the pictures, but it's a yummy brown called "mocha latte". It was a light khaki color.

One fish two fish...

Dustin's sister, brother-in-law and our nieces came to town a couple weeks back and we took a trip down to the aquarium. It was a hot, rainy overcast Saturday- so of course it wasn't crowded at all... Ok kidding- but we still had a lot of fun. The next weekend, we went to Greenville to celebrate Haley's 5th birthday. I looked for the picture of Dustin and me the night Haley was born to scan it on here, but I can't find it right now. Reason being- Dustin is wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, gym shorts and has a sweet hair cut that is long on the top and short on the sides. His reason for not changing was "we needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible!" I thought it was cute. I hope he maintains that sense of urgency when that time comes. Haley was going to come whether we were there or not, but we made it just in time... to sit around for a couple hours so that everyone else in the hospital could see his outfit. Really though, we're both so glad that we were able to be there that night in September 5 years ago and wouldn't have it any other way. I will leave you with some pictures of our fish fun and Haley's party.



Reese and Uncle Dustin


The sweet Carson family


Can you tell somebody is missing nap time?


It's like the shark in the background swam up to smile for the picture.




Happy 5th Birthday to our oldest niece Haley!


I spent some time entertaining Brooke at the big kids' party


I love this little swimsuit (and the little girl in it!)






The girls love Uncle Dustin!