Corn Husker Territory

Big changes have been happening in the past few months! After leaving my job at st. Luke's, I took a month off to relax, play and spend time with friends and family.  

I did a couple of half marathons

 did some crafts

 lazed around in the sun and spent a lot of time with friends and family before heading out to tackle the Midwest! 

My parents drove here with me and we spent three days seeing the sights in Omaha.  There are surprisingly a lot of things to see here! 

We spent a day at the Zoo and Aquarium

Visited the Mormon Trail Center, Temple and Kanesville Tabernacle at Winter Quarters. 

I started my new position as a resident at Creighton and the past three weeks have been a whirlwind of new people and places and filling out form after form after form! It's been fantastic.  I'm constantly learning.  It's been crazy settling into a new city and job, but I'm really excited to see what they both have to offer me over the next year!

Happy Birthday to me!

I can't believe another birthday has come around!  I love birthdays so much.  

This year I went to dinner with a friend from school

And treated myself to a show!

I always get myself a birthday present.  This year I got a ticket to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular!  With the Rockettes! I'll have to wait a couple of months of course, but I'm so excited. 

Then my first video chat date with my new nephew!

Here's to 27 more awesome years to equal the last 27!

The Next Step

  Next week I will have been at my job for one year! I can't believe how quickly it has flown by. And it's been awesome.  But there comes a time, you know what I mean? I knew it would be temporary and that I really wanted to do a residency.  So I applied and ...

I was offered a position! Starting August 1st, I'll be a pediatric resident at Creighton University! I'm so so excited.   I'll be moving to Omaha, Nebraska in July! This is an incredible opportunity for me to learn and grow in my career and will open so many doors for me! I'll be sad to leave home again, but I'm really excited for a new city and new people.

A Year

I said that 2013 was going to be my year.  And it was! I can't believe how quickly it went by, it seems like just yesterday I was still in school! But it did go by, and man was it good to me!

 I kicked off the year by graduating! 

Followed by a family trip through the sights and sounds of Philadelphia, New York, Washington DC and Gettysburg. 

 Then I left dear wonderful Philadelphia...

 And made a cross country drive with a good friend to finally made it home to Idaho!

I started my first real job, with benefits and everything! 

Being home in Idaho meant I got to spend lots of time with people I love, going on hikes...

 Going to Women's Conference at BYU

And climbing a mountain! 

I ran my first, 

 Second,

And third half marathons, 

Got to spend an awesome weekend at Disneyland with my three favorite people, 

And finally got to spend Christmas with my wonderful and amazing family!

These are just a few of the highlights of my year, but really the things that made this year great are all the little things I got to be part of and the people I got to share them with.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I Am Blessed. 

Who knew that 2013 would turn out so incredible.  Ok, I had a hunch.  And I'm glad it turned out to be right! I'm thankful for 2013, but I think 2014 is going to be my year too, so stay tuned :) 

Happy New Year!

The Flood

Last weekend I got new upstairs neighbors.  And though they are children of God, they are the types of people who make me want to skip all of my future plans and just get my own house! They are always loud and they have a couple of kids who are always crying or running back and forth across the apartment.
On Tuesday morning I woke up around 5:30 to their truck starting outside my bedroom and I heard pouring rain outside.  My first thought was "Oh man, it's going to melt all the snow!" And then I thought "It wasn't even supposed to rain today."  Then I heard that unmistakable sound water makes when it drips onto the carpet.  I got up, turned the light on and realized it was dripping from the window.  Then I turned around and realized it was also dripping in the closet.  I started listening to the heavy rain outside and thought it sounded strange.  I went out into the living room and realized suddenly that the rain I was hearing was not outside, it was inside.  I open the door to the second bedroom, turn on the light and see that water is not dripping, but streaming down from the light fixture and random spots in the ceiling.  I go in the bathroom, same thing.  The laundry room is the worst spot, it's pouring down.  Seriously, the amount of water that is falling from the ceiling is unbelievable!

That is the sound if it raining in my apartment

I called the maintenance guy and he asks me to go upstairs to see if anyone is home.  I hate to make judgments about other people, but the man who answers the door is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed. The first thing I notice is that I have the attention of only one eye. The other seems fixed on a spot on the ceiling.  I don't even have to say anything, he knows why I'm there. He immediately begins to tell me that they hooked up their washer and dryer last night but the hose kept popping off. They hooked it back up this morning and turned it on, but the hose came off again.  But don't worry, he's going to get some duct tape to try to stick it on.  As if that's what I came up here at 6:00 in the morning to discuss.  And it's only been on for like half an hour. Really? Half an hour? Judging by the amount of water that's flowing into my apartment in every room, I think you're lying.  Well, to make a long story short, everything in my apartment had to be moved to the one outside wall that did not get wet. Everything had to be taken out of my second bedroom, the carpet in every room was pulled up and three giant fans were put under the carpet to dry it out, houses were sucking water out of the bathroom, and a huge dehumidifier is sitting in the living room right in front of my beautiful Christmas tree (along with a huge pile of all my stuff).

So after a couple of days in a hotel, things are finally back to normal.  All my stuff is put back in it's normal spot and miraculously nothing of mine was damaged. And the story has kind of a happy ending.  Those annoying people who were my upstairs neighbors are no longer my neighbors at all.  My new upstairs neighbors will be missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Hopefully a significant improvement over the last tenants :)

My Tannenbaum

As soon as I moved into my own apartment in June, the one thing I was looking forward to the most was having a Christmas Tree! And this weekend, it finally happened! 

Mom and dad came up to Twin and as the snow fell, we spent the day Christmas shopping and picking out my first Christmas tree! We went to this great little family owned tree farm and I found the perfect little 4 foot tree. 

My family has always had a fake tree and this year I wanted a real one and I love it!

I also made most of the trimmings.  I made little faux gingerbread ornaments

Added some bells

And a popcorn garland

My favorite part is this star. I got it three years ago from an Amish family shop in Pennsylvania. It's just been sitting on a shelf since then, but now it finally gets to be where it was meant to be!

An early Christmas present.  I love that I have a nativity set!

All I want to do now is just sit and look at my beautiful tree! And as I do, it just reminds me of how incredibly blessed I am.  I have no right to be living this amazing life that God has given me. How did I get to be so lucky!? I don't know. But for as long as I am, I'm going to keep doing my best to live up to it and use my blessing to bless others. 

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was full to the brim of my favorite things, running, family, friends, games and food! In fact, I was so busy enjoying all these wonderful things, I didn't take any pictures of anything other than the running!

Thanksgiving morning I ran a half marathon, the Thankful 13.  It was the greatest.  

This time I got to do it with a friend! It's always more fun to do these things with people you love!

 It was a beautiful morning! Perfect for running. All along the course were signs of things that the runners are thankful for.  I didn't see any of the things I wrote down, but it reminded me all along the way of how blessed I am!

The whole family was there this time! 

David and I did the half marathon and Chanae did the 5K.  

This was my best race. I beat my best time by a full 9 minutes! I feel pretty good about that :)

The best thing about running a race on Thanksgiving morning is that you can eat as much as you want at Thanksgiving dinner, and I defintly did :) We spent Thanksgiving with my aunt, three uncles, 5 cousins and a handful of grandkids. We had such a great time cooking, eating, playing games, checking out Black Friday deals, and catching up.

I love Thanksgiving. I love that there is a holiday dedicated completely to being thankful. We need more of that in this world!