HAPPY DAY!!!!!

IT IS OFFICIAL I HAVE MY OWN PLACE:)

This has been a great day. I went and signed the lease and did a walk though. Stephanie came over to check it out. She wanted to see it before and after I move everything in. I went back and forth from my apartment a couple of times taking little things over and I just start smiling when I open the door.

This is the livingroom and front door. This place has a window on every wall. So it lets in a ton of light.
Here is the outside of the fourplex. I am upstairs and on the side the picture was taken from.
This is the bedroom.
This is one of my favorite things even if it is considered old. The stove has push buttons in order to turn each of the burners on.
This picture was taken from the livingroom looking at the diningroom (HA!HA!) Around the corner is the kitchen.

Thanksgiving and more

I figured it was time to update this. Normal life has been happening with a few new things. I decided to be like some of my nieces and nephews and lose a couple of teeth. I had my wisdom teeth pulled couple of weeks ago. To bad the tooth fairy forgot where I lived and I didn't get anything for them.

I had a good Thanksgiving. I just stayed around Salt Lake City but friends and family took pity on me and feed me dinner. I decided to take after my Uncle Kenny and hop from house to house in order to be fed. The question was how much can I eat? :) I actually ended up at my friend Amy's house helping cook and eat a wonderful turkey with all the trimmings. I then left and went to cousin Neil and Cora's house where I had a great time visiting with them and their family. I walked in though and their daughter Stephanie said you must belong to Carol Lynne because you sound just like her! All the cousins seem to think that I sound just like mom. Mom and I don't know about that but whatever.

I have a huge issue with the world and how it treats Thanksgiving. I think that if it weren't for football the world would not even stop for Thanksgiving. That irriates me. I love Thanksgiving because it has nothing to do with presents and it is our time to stop and remember who, where, and what we have come from. Okay I will get off my soap box now:)

So here are a few things I am thankful for:family, friends, work, green grass, flowers, trees, smiles, kids, Wendy's :), temples, testimonies, homes, hot chocolate, music, etc... LIFE IS GOOD!

On Friday I went down to John and Pam's and had another Turkey dinner. John even made homemade rolls from Mom's receipe. YUM! This is the same receipe that I make homemade bread with for those you have tasted some of that; so you know how good it is :)

THE BEST NEWS OF THE PAST WEEK IS THAT I AM MOVING!!!!!!

I am moving into a nice 1 bedroom apartment all by myself. No more roommates!!! You can't believe how excited I am. I move in the middle of December. More pics and updates later on this wonderful subject.

Here is the one picture of the day. It has been snowing here all afternoon. I guess Winter is officially here.

Only doing this for you Carrie

So my sister, if you don't know her, loves doing these tagged emails and activities. On the other hand I am not such a fan mainly because I am not a social butterfly like my dad and sister and I am just too lazy. But I will do this tagged thing to make Carrie happy but I won't inflect the pain on anyone else unless you want to do it then just pretend I tagged you.
For those of you who don’t know how this works, here are the rules:
A: Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
B: At the end of the post, the player then tags people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog for these rules.

1. My somewhat hidden talent is that I can say the alphabet backwards. I was taught by my 1st grade teacher Ms. Payson. She taught our entire class to do it. It is now more natural for me to say it backwards than forwards. It comes in handy when I have to file charts at work.
2. I enjoy working in the medical field and yes I am very morbid and enjoy drawing blood, doing surgery especially the ones where we have "bleeders" and blood goes spurting everywhere. Foreheads and noses are great for this.
3. As I mentioned above I am not a social butterfly. I like small groups over big groups. I rather listen than talk. I have found that you learn so much more about stuff and people by just sitting back and listening to people talk around you.
4. I love music. I love most any kind of music. I think I enjoy it so much because I don't play an instrument and I am in awe when someone is able to play or sing. I think my favorite instruments to listen to is the violin, flute and the piano.
5. I love photography. I love taking pictures. I love taking pictures of nature. I think this is my way of taking a time out and remembering how awesome this world is and how beautiful and divine it is.
6. I love family. I love being an Aunt. I love kids. Someone lately told me that children is what it is all about. I agree. Kids make me smile and laugh and make the world go round.

That was torture:) Carrie I think I should consider this your Christmas present:)

Update on my crazy world

To try to recap what has been happening in my crazy life I will start with going to this great musical event. It had over 3000 violins, 142 harps, 50 cellos, 12 basses, 10 grand pianos that 40 different kids played, several kids who played the organ, 200 flutes, and many more that I can't remember. It was in celebration of the 30th anversary of the utah association of the suzuki theory. For those of you who know music this probably makes sense but for me this was my first time hearing of the suzuki theory. I was able to go because Dr. Powell's oldest Emily plays the violin using the suzuki theory. All of the kids playing the instruments are between the age of 3 and 18. It was amazing to listen to and see all these kids play insync with one another. Here is a picture taken with my phone in the conference center right before it started:

Next I had a great halloween. The night before I went over to my friend's house Blakelee and we carved pumpkins and ate tons of candy. Here are the two pumpkins I craved.

Blakelee helped do my hair and makeup so I could be the Snow Queen. I had fun. Everyone at the office dressed up as well. We all had fun and I think the patients enjoyed seening us as well.
Me being the Snow Queen
Blakelee was a skunk, Sharon is the one with the backpack she is a hiker, and Barb and Laurie just got out of bed. Christy being a cowgirl wearing my hat. See I am wearing off on the staff. Pretty soon they will all be cowboy fans:)
Being pregnant was the popular costume at the office. This is LC on the left and Nicole on the right. Nicole was the best because she was making fun of BYU being a sophomore in collage with 2 kids on her back and 8 months pregnant. Everyone loved it. Even Dr. Powell who is the office BYU fan. I was going to take a picture of these two with Amanda who is actually 8 month pregnant to see if anyone could guess who was actually pregnant:)
To update everyone on work is that all the new girls are doing fabulous and I amazingly get to have my Tuesdays off again. It feels kind of weird to be home today.

Sorry It Has Been Awhile

Sorry that it has been awhile. Every time I sat down to update something would come up. So now I have a task of trying to remember what has happened in the past couple of weeks. The big update is that we have 4 (can you believe it 4) new people at work. 4 people and they are working hard and learning on a very quick scale because they have no choice. But the long hours are not over for me yet because first we have to get them trained so they are able to work independently. I will continue my long hours for sure the next 3 weeks including working on my day off but hopefully after that I can go back to only 40 hours a week.

Last week was a highlight with mom and dad coming over and we went to the Saturday morning conference. We were able to see President Hinckley "knight" President Eyring. That is a moment I will never forget. Then we went and ate at Goodwood. It is an amazing BBQ place. We ate, ate, and ate some more. Then headed down to Spanish Fork to see John and Pam and have cake and icecream for mom's early birthday. Conference weekend is always a great weekend. You are able to watch it from home and bring in that spirit right into your home.

Yesterday was Mom's Birthday. Mom is great. I called her yesterday and ask if they could make a trip back over here to probably help me move in the next month and she said that was possible. Mom and I are alike in that we like our alone time but she is much more willing to give up her time then I am. One of the nice things about being single. I can still be selfish:) I know without a shadow of a doubt that if we need OUR MOM she will be there. If we need anything at all she will try to give it to us. I love you MOM!

Here is Justin and Kaylynn's (These are Carrie's and JL's kids) turn at my okay try at scrapbooking:

Book Club

So last Tuesday the childrens book club I go to started up it again. I hadn't realized how much I missed it during the summer. The book club is unique in that we don't read the book and talk about the deep meanings. We invite the authors to tell us how they came up with the idea to write the book and how they went getting it published and if they always knew that they wanted to be a writer. What is interesting is writers have a different way of thinking and it is cool to be let into their thoughts. The other thing about this book club is that it has been going on for 70 years. The lady in charge is 90 and she is great. No one is too important to ask to come and speak to us. The author we had come this time was K.L. Fogg. She has written Serpent Tide and Widow's Revenge. She lives here in Sandy. She was very interesting to listen to and how the hard part about being a writer is remembering to do the normal everyday things. She said that she gets caught up in a story and she has to set a timer or life will just past her by.

Last week I also went over to Dr. Powell's house and they were getting ready for the weekend where their stake had decided to pretend that they had no electricity and they had to sleep outside in their tent. This way they could see how prepared they would be if something were to happen and they actually had to use their 72 hour kits. I just think it is a very cool idea. I think it is also great that their kids are being taught young how to act if a disaster were to happen.

It is officially fall here in Utah. The first snow hit the mountains last night. I was thinking today if I liked spring or fall better and I really can't decide. I love spring because everything is turning green and babies are being born, it is the re-birth of things. I also love fall because of the colors and there is just this crisp air.

I have this new program that I am playing with where you can make collages. I seem to do better at scrapbooking on the computer. I started with Jason and Melissa's kids. So John and Carrie calm down I will get to your kids and post theirs. Hope you enjoy them.

Made it

I made it through another week. This week was not as tough as last week. I was able to come to some understanding about some people and I was able to let go of most of my hurt feelings by realizing that some people don't get or don't care how their actions and what they say may hurt other people.

I had to work on Tuesday again but they were able to work it so I could have Thursday off which I needed just to recharge. 2 of the girls I work with turned in their 2 week notice. Their last day will be around the 28. I was asked if I was sad to see them go and I told them I was but I am not going to cry over their leaving because it is what they want or they wouldn't have found other jobs.

Friday was nice because all the doctors went to Idaho for the Intermountain Dermatology Conference so it gave all us MA a break. For part of the day I was the only one there and I was able to get a lot of those little things that just keep being put off. It also gave time for some of the girls who are relatively knew to ask question about things and I had time to teach them instead of having to rush through an explanation. I also got a great compliment from my nurse manager on Friday. She told me that she appreciated my positive attitude and my hard work. It was great to hear after questioning several things at work.

Friday night I went to dinner with Blakelee and Mackenzie. We then went to Blakelee's house where we laughed and laughed and had a ton of fun which is what I needed:)
So today I helped Christy and Matt take part of their roof off. Can I tell you how sore I am going to be tomorrow! Just so some of you feel bad for me I will let you know I have 6 blisters on my hands.
Sorry no pictures I will try to get out and take some this week:)

Tough week

It was a very tough week at work. To much drama. To many of us have been stressed for to long because we are short staffed. To little trust or understanding on peoples part. Sometimes when I have a week like this I wonder if it is worth building friendships with people you work with. Because then things get taken personal and work doesn't remain work. Then the people you thought you could trust use your personal life to stab you in the back at work. Don't get me wrong in that the true friendships I have developed I am thankful for and I guess this kind of stuff really lets me know who values my friendship as well. I remember a poem which most of you have probably read as well talking about the different types of friends. We all have friends who come into our lives for a short while but make an impact, but for some reason we part ways. Then we have the true friends who once are made are always there for else for the rest of our lives. So enough unhappy things.

The happiest part of my week was on Friday when I babysat the Powell girls and I totally got blamed for taking the girls to a pet store last week for them now having a hamster as a pet. I helped the girls build a playground with toilet paper rolls for the hamster. We just had a blast playing with it. The Powell girls just make me smile and that is exactly what I needed after a not so fun work week. The other couple of nice things was that my sister FINALLY updated her blog:) and then a great friend I had growing up but haven't seen or talked to since we became adults I now have her email and we are going to get caught up with each other lives. Everyone use to call the twins. My grandma still talks about the two of us.

I don't have any new pictures so here are some misc pictures that make me smile:)

My brother giving his kids a rough ride in the video

Labor Day

Let me tell you how much I love having most holidays be on Monday. It gives everyone a nice 3 day weekend, but for me with Tuesday's off I normally get a 4 day weekend. I say normally because I have to work tomorrow. We are just to short staffed for me not to work. Oh well, I at least get the 3 day weekend.

So last week we were told that they had finally hired someone:) but as I was leaving Friday Kara told me the girl had just called and said she took another job. That seems to be our luck in suite 160 because everywhere else is getting people hired. We have been the ones to be short staffed for over a year. It gets frustrating. The good news is that every once in awhile we get a student needing to do an externship. Danna starts her externship on Wednesday and she is looking for full time work after she is done. So hopefully she does a great job and we can offer her a job. Cross our fingers.

This weekend was nice in that I was able to be lazy and watch tennis and football. GO WYOMING!

Back to Normal

I am back in SLC. Went to work yesterday and it was nice to be back to the normal routine. But tons of catch up work to do so it was a crazy day yesterday. It was also hot. I do miss that nice weather in Portland. I don't have to work today!! Which is nice so I can get caught up on the other stuff like laundry and studying:(

Here are just the few remaining pics from my trip. On Friday after work I went down to the Portland temple. Very beautiful.

The Portland Temple is right off the Interstate but hidden behind these trees.

They have this beautiful reflection pool

Have I told you how much I love my camera. I actually took three shots of this because I could not back away far enough to get the entire picture of the temple. I then was able to "stitch" the pictures together to end up with this . Very cool!:)

Thursday Adventure

Today I was able to go to Mount St. Helens. I really figured that I would spend an hour driving there, an hour there, and then an hour on the drive back. So I planned to due other things today as well but instead I am just getting back. I ended up spending 5 hours up there. That is not including the driving time. It is crazy. It is just a mountain but it captivated me:) I took a million pictures and listened to the events that happened over and over again. It completely bring into focus that every minute does count. And that in a minute things can change people's lives.


I have loved my camera since I bought it but today it really got a work out. The closest I was to Mount St. Helens is 4-5 miles at the Johnston observatory. I was able to get awesome pictures. So hope you don't get bored but here are a ton of pictures:)


This is such a cool sign! Can have so many uses:)

South Fork Toutle River Valley the main flow of lava

This picture is taking from about 15 miles away

Another bridge:) I am standing at the edge of the blast zone looking back towards mount st helens

South Fork Toutle River Valley

Picture taken from about 6 miles away

It has been 27 years and you can still see the trees knocked over by the blast

Picture taken from about 48 miles away

This was taken from the Johnston Observatory which is the closest point you can get about 5 miles away

Here is where I really put my camera to the test. This is the part inside the volcano that is re-growing mount st. helens

This is Spirit Lake which increased in size after the eruption. All the tiny things sticking out of the lake are dead trees.

Inside the crater

Love this sign as well :)
Truely had a great time. It is a must see if you ever get the chance and plan to spend some time there. The other lucky thing is that the guides said today was the best day they had had in 2 weeks. Good timing on my part:)

Wednesday in Portland

So today I did more patch testing. Once again Holly and Dr. Storrs have been great. Dr. Storrs is so funny. She will say Crystal tell Doug "this or that; by the way does he have this book. This is a great book or and he needs this one. Oh! make sure he has this book. Really you can never have to many books." I just laugh:) The other thing I told Holly today is that it is very strange to watch how Dr. Storrs and her act with each other and the conversations they have about patch testing because I feel like I am watching Dr. Powell and I have the same conversation. The other great thing about coming to Portland is that people are truely unique but at the same time they are the same. We have the patients who like to talk, who don't like to talk, who are rude, who are kind these same people exist in Portland as well. I feel like I have been home working except that here they have a bigger office, better view, and it has been a nice 75 degrees:)

So yesterday I was able to go to the zoo and the international rose test gardens. Very cool! Highlights of the zoo is that it is placed in the middle of a forest it feels like. The zoo felt more open so you felt like you were closer to the animals than the zoo in salt lake. The one thing I wanted from the rose garden is a way to capture the smell. What is interesting is that I spent over an hour there and I never got a headache which you seem to get when there is too much fragrance in the air. It was more a refreshing smell and I just wanted to bottle it up:)

Here are more pictures of Portland, the Zoo, and the Rose Garden. They are all mixed up so you don't get bored with one place:)

This is the view from the Rose Garden looking at downtown Portland


They have this saying as you leave the Rose Garden and I liked it:)

I have decided I like pictures of bridges


This is the view of the lower half of the zoo. See what I mean by it being located in a forest.




Cool picture if I do say so myself:)



Tall vs. Small