22!!

22 is my lucky number, it has been for a long time. I don't really know why 22. It just is. April 22nd is especially cool. It is my niece's birthday, love that little girl!! She is 3 years old today.

This picture was taken at mine and Julie's first meeting, she was 8 months. Love at first site :)

I graduated from BYU on April 22nd last year. Yep, today was my one year anniversary of graduation. I can't believe how fast it's gone! I feel like I've learned more in this one year of nursing than I did my 4 years in school. It's been an awesome experience!

I enjoyed my time at BYU but I can't say that I miss it. I have loved being out on my own in the real world!

One year older and wiser too...

Speaking of being a grown-up, it's my birthday week. I am now the grand old age of 23!! To be perfectly honest, I'm not a huge fan of birthdays, I've had some miserable birthdays the last few years (long sob story, you don't want to know). But this year's was good. I worked, but it was still enjoyable. Friday and Saturday my roomies and I went to Park City, which I had never been. We went to a fancy dinner at Ruth's Chris, a yummy steakhouse. We spent the night up there and got 6 inches of snow. It was so pretty in the morning, I'm one of those weird people that don't mind snow in April. :) It was a fun getaway weekend. Sunday I worked and I wasn't going to tell anyone it was my birthday, because I didn't really care. But someone found out, and ran to Costco and bought a cake. Everyone on the unit was happy it was my birthday, it was very yummy cake. I came home and my roommates had made me cake too. So as is accustomed on birthdays, I ate lots of sugar, but it was delicious!!

:::PICS:::

My steak at Ruth's Chris. Mmmmm!!!

My cake at work. I forgot to take a pic before we cut it, oh well.

23 candles on my cake with the roommates :)

Being a Grown Up

I feel like I'm starting, but really only starting, to become a grown-up, with grown-up responsibilities. Every time something "adult-y" that I have to do comes up in my head I find myself singing the Huggies commercial, "I'm a big kid now!"...which is a true sign of maturity. Here's a list of my recent encounters with the real world.

1. I got in a car accident last November and had to deal with insurance companies. This debacle is still not over since the case has gone to an arbitrator to decide who was most at fault.

2. I went to the eye doctor last week because I didn't want my benefits that I'm paying for to go to waste. Learning the lingo of insurance is very grown-upy. And if you think because I went to nursing school, I know stuff about health insurance, you're wrong.

3. Paying bills. Yuck.

4. Taxes! Ok, I'm not actually doing my taxes, since I have someone who loves me a lot that does them for me, thanks Dad :). Also, it's not cool how many taxes comes out of my paycheck every pay period. Not fun.

5. Visiting the DMV to register the car and dealing with all that paperwork.

Ok fun stuff of being a grown-up:

1. I have my own paycheck, of my own money, that I can do what I want with (with what's left after taxes).

2. Since I am a single adult, I don't really have any responsibilities to anyone but myself. Meaning: I don't HAVE to stay home a cook every night. I don't have to keep my room clean. I don't have to go to bed and get up at normal times of day. But of course, I'm perfect and do all these things anyways. Anyone who knows me, knows my room is always impeccably spotless, and am definitely a morning person.

Being a grown-up isn't all that bad. It's just a lot of new information to learn. The moral of the story: Money makes the world go round.

New Plates

I registered the car in Utah this week. So now my car is a Utah resident as well. I think I'll kind of miss the Connecticut pride...

Also, it only took me 10 minutes to get my contacts in this morning. A significant improvement from yesterday.

Contact Lenses

Every time I write a post, it seems like I tell myself I need to be better at blogging....Well I'm really going to actually try, for reals. Even if it's little things. So here's something little that happened today.

This post is about contact lenses. I'm trying to take advantage of my insurance since it's coming out of my paycheck. Well, vision coverage is included and I haven't had my eyes checked in 3 years. So I went in today to update my prescription and give contacts a try. Well, it took me about 15 minutes to get them in in the office. I kept the contacts in for a few hours and them took them out at home. I can't get them back in. :( I'm not really scared of touching my eyes, but eyes are scared of being touched. I can't stop blinking!!! It's frustrating. I know I need to keep trying, but I'm debating if it's worth it.

I'm going to stick with the glasses for tonight :)

Schniekerpies, Ghostbusters, and Pumpkin Carving

I was on call tonight, but there weren't very many patients on the unit so I was let off the hook. Michelle and I seized the evening!!!! We made schniekerpies first. We made these a few months ago and decided to name them that for no apparent reason, just because we were loopy that night. Now they are forever known as schniekerpies: deep fried tortillas with honey and cinnamon-sugar on top :). We sat down to carve pumpkins and watched the ridiculously awesome 80's movie, GHOSTBUSTERS!!!

SCHNIEKER PIES!!! yummmmm

Who you gonna call?!


THE FINAL PRODUCTS:

Michelle's masterpiece

We then proceeded to clean a very untidy apartment while having a awesome dance party :)

YAY FOR STRESS FREE NIGHTS!!!

...yep it's 4am, I'm not tired...night shifts this week, sheesh!!

Catch Up

The girls in this family that have blogs need to be better about updating them, Janelle and I. :) I'm sorry I haven't been better at keeping things posted here's what's happened in the last few weeks. I took a trip down to Zion's National Park with some friends. We have made this fun tradition of going down twice a year in April and August for the last couple years. Here are some pictures from this year's trip. It was a really fun group! We hiked Angel's Landing, watched a meteor shower and splashed around in the narrows :)

Michelle and Heidi and I have moved into a new apartment and it is ALMOST settled. It's going to be super awesome when it is all together and I will post pictures of it :)

My job is going well. I am still learning so much!! Sunday was my first day off of orientation, I had my own patients all by self (cue Huggies commercial, "I'm a big kid now!"). It was an interesting first day. So much happened and it was overwhelming. It brought a whole new meaning to the phrase: "throw them to the wolves" or "out of the pot and into the frying pan." Luckily I work with some super smart people that know a lot more than me and were a great help. I come into work nervous everyday, that I'm going to miss something and something will go wrong. But I work with some really good people that aren't going to leave me high and dry. I do really enjoy working right now and being out of school and on my own.

Other news, football season started!! Even though I'm not a student anymore, I still bought an All-Sports pass and am going to all the games. I'm working a lot of Friday nights so it will be sweet to always have Saturday's off so I won't miss the games. This past Saturday we has some sweet seats on the end-zone in rows 3 and 4. Here's some pics.

The half-time presentation was pretty cool. LaVell Edwards with all of his All-American QBs were there to present a new scholarship fund to BYU for their QBs. Jeffery R. Holland (not a QB but still awesome), Steve Young, Jim McMann, Ty Detmer, Robby Bosco, and a few others were all there. It was pretty neat.

More pictures to come of the apartment!