“It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, life is on a stroll.” 

 -donald miller

Emotions of change...

I am terrible at updating this lately! For those of you that did not know, one month ago I accepted a job offer as a Global Health Specialist with APHL (The Association of Public Health Labs). I have been very excited to get back into the global realm of public health, after working for PAHO. Thursday was my first day and thus far it's been great! I really miss the girls at UDOH (aka the "Beaver Dam") and teaching sex ed and risk reduction type of stuff, but I am excited for what is ahead of me!

That being said, what an emotional couple of weeks! I never thought leaving Utah would be so emotional for me. I have found myself breaking down in tears left and right for the past 3 weeks! For the longest time, majority of the reason I wanted to leave was because I didn't have any really close friends that were single, which meant I rarely had anyone to go out with. I've always had a group of close friends, but they have been spread out, living elsewhere, or have been in serious relationships. Within the last month or so, about the same time I was offered a job in DC, all of my friends have moved out of their boyfriends' places and my other close friend moved back to Utah. I have also reconnected with a few old friends and met a lot of new, great people lately. I know most of these friends, especially my girlfriends, will always be around and will always be there for me, but it has still made for a very difficult and lonely move! Thankfully to my best friend, I am very mobile right now, with my flight benefits, and can always make a quick trip back to Utah to visit...which I plan to do on a variety of occasions throughout the summer!

Tonight one of my best friends (who I met in grad school) called, out of the blue...it was a little bit after midnight my time, but was my saving grace for the night, right as I was feeling a bit down. I stayed in tonight and was feeling lonely and bad that I wasn't out and about, prowling around town with my best girlfriends. How she always knows the perfect time to reach out to me, I'll never know...but I love that girl and am so glad that she will always be in my life! Can't wait to make monthly visits to St Louis to visit you, Miss Scarlett!

The other really hard part about leaving Utah was leaving Grandma! The night before I left, we just hung out in her bedroom, talking and crying. It was hard to leave her, knowing how lonely she's been feeling lately. I think springtime has been hard for her, with the nice weather and not having Grandpa to sit in the yard with. I look out the window occasionally and see her sitting by herself in the front yard. It breaks my heart and I wish I could do more for her. She told me before I left, how much I will be missed; we've been through a lot together the past 2 years - her ER visit, her surgery and recovery, Grandpa's illness and passing...lots of raw emotions. She has really appreciated having someone in the house, even though we don't always spend the time together when we are both there, but it's been nice for her to feel less lonely and like the house isn't as empty. It made me feel bad I was leaving.

Onward and upward though, right?! Ugh...how can something that is supposed to be so great leave me feeling so blue :(

To a New Year!

1.1.11

"We will open the book. It's pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." (Edith Lovejoy Pierce)

HERE'S TO 2011...HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Spring Madness!

Here is my SPRING madness update!

MARCH was full of loads of fun, as it should be! I love the spring time, although, being in Utah at this time of year, generally means a taste of spring, followed by my spring fever being smashed by a few big snow storms. I can't wait to live somewhere where spring actually happens when it is supposed to. None of this winter during the spring nonsense!

Well, my little sister left on her mission, so the beginning of March was spent with family. The weekend before Karen left, we did a girl's night with just my mom, me and my two sisters. We went to dinner at the Pizza Factory, followed by a little shopping at the Gateway and a movie, Valentine's Day. We never do anything like that, so it was fun to spend time with just the girls!

The following Tuesday evening, Karen was set apart as a missionary after we ate dinner and we all then said our goodbyes. I wasn't overly sad she was leaving, because I am in DC so often, so I feel like I will be seeing her in a few short months. Is that horrible? It sounds terrible, but isn't meant to be! I will miss her, most definitely, but again, am sure I can take her to lunch next time I make a stop in DC.


Then there was St Patty's Day. I decked myself out in green, as much as I could last minute and ran to meet up with friends. We had a great time celebrating in our green, but had even more fun people watching and observing all the crazy green outfits!



HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
I have such great family and friends that threw me all sorts of great parties! My good friend from high school, Angie, came over and had dinner on my birthday with my family. Ang has yet to miss a birthday since we were 16 years old! We only see each other about twice a year - our birthdays are exactly 6 months apart, so that is always are excuse to make sure we see each other at least the 2 times a year. I then was able to meet up with a few other good friends following dinner. What a grand day! That weekend, my good friend, Marina, threw me a happening birthday party! We had such a great time and even had a pinata! Unfortunately, my camera was stolen or somehow misplaced during all of this and I lost all the pictures :(


I'm so happy to have such a great birthday helper!


In addition to the birthday parties and birthday frenzy, I purchased myself an expensive birthday gift. I wish I could say it was a cool trip or something like that. Unfortunately, I made a trip to my annual eye apt, just to find out that my left eye is slowly beginning to fail me...just enough that I had to purchase my first pair of glasses - EVER! Had I known this was going to happen, I would have added an optical plan into my insurance! Oh well, at least my new specs are cute and I only have to wear them on occasion!

APRIL
Happy Birthday to my Grandma Staley! If she was still alive, she would have turned 90 years old on the 1st! I thought about her a lot that day. Her birthday is quite easy to remember, seeing how it is on April Fool's Day. As I drove to work on Apr 1, I was thinking about how someone can be gone for so long, yet you can still miss them SO much from time to time. Today (and while I was thinking of her on her bday), I miss Grandma a lot. I had such a personal relationship with her. I was her oldest Granddaughter and feel lucky to be one of only five grand-kids, because I was able to have a lot of quality, one-on-one time with her. I sure do love her and sure do miss her so much!!
EARTH DAY 2010 fell into the month of April. I was going to do a posting about this, but completely ran out of time! So, you may link to my posting from 2009 instead :) Happy Earth Day!!

April was a month full of some fun concerts! I took Jessica to her first concert, ever! The tickets were cheap, so last minute, Heather, Jessica and I grabbed some and decided to go! We went for a quick dinner, missing half of the show, but made it just in time for TRAIN to perform! It was kind of funny, cause Train was popular when Heather and I were in high school, but then dropped out of the loop for awhile. They recently have made a comeback and now are popular again. So Jessica knew all their new music, while Heather and I jammed out to all the old music.

Train was a lot of fun...and followed by another fun night: Michael Faranti! Woot woot! This man is incredible! I met him last year at the CARE International Conference. I only recently made the connection that the song I was loving on the radio was from the man I met at the conference. Anyway, he played at the University of Utah a week or two ago and it was SO fun!

Catchin Up! (Dec-Feb)

Ugh. I have to say that I absolutely HATE when I get behind on my blog. As I have said so many times before, I don't do a blog for others, I do it for myself and if others happen to want to read it, more power to them! I am behind though! I also have a brain so full of thoughts and things I have done that I would like to write about, but then get wrapped up in other things. I guess I will do my best to do one rather LARGE posting with one BIG update! So here we go, starting back and moving up to the present!

Yikes, I am more behind than I thought, after looking at my last "life" blog post. The last thing I wrote about was all the holiday parties. This puts me back in December, so here we go!

DeCeMbEr:
My big brother, Steve, finished grad school, much to his relief, as well as his wife and son! I am proud of him. We both finished both our undergrad and grad school within 6 months of each other (yes, of course I had to add that, since I am the younger and finished first). We didn't go up to his graduation, since it was in Moscow, ID, but we went to dinner to celebrate!!

December also brought our family's annual Gingerbread night and Christmas (of course). We all get together and make gingerbread house each year at some point during the holiday season. I was just not in the mood this year though, for some reason. It just seemed like SO much work and I was in such a goofy mood! However, Mom, bless her heart, too my hand, as if I were a child, and helped me out! Our house turned out the best, in my opinion :)



Christmas gets more and more different each year, as we all get older. It's a little sad, but just how life goes. Me, along with my three sisters and parents, spent the morning enjoying each others company and opening presents. Steve, Heather and Jackson joined us late morning and Niki and Jason later into the afternoon.




December also brought my "last" day at the hospital. I am still working Sundays there, however, I no longer work any weekdays. It is no longer my source of income...Sunday money is just a little extra for bills. I have worked between LDSH and IMC for more than 8 years now, off and on. I am sure if you count all the times I have been gone and added them up, it'd take a good year or two out of that 8 years. It was such a great school job for me and I have made some really good friends there; some of my best friends. They will always be a family to me; my hospital family - I really miss seeing some of my favorite people on a daily basis there, but so happy to be able to move on! In lieu of my "last" day, a party was set in place (thanks to Heather). They bought me a cake and gave me the kindest card! Wow. It almost brought a tear to my eye; however, I think I was just way too excited to move on!

JANUARY and FEBRUARY
Another year of the Sundance Film Festival, which is always full of good times and fun in Park City, as well as good documentaries!

My old roommate, Ali, also got married. Me, Katie, Marie and Allison made our trek to the wedding up in the middle-of-nowhere-Idaho, but had so much fun! It was a cozy little ceremony in a cabin, with a fire and good food. Ali and Josh looked radiant and happy as could be! I sure do love these girls and miss living with them, so so much!

These months also brought loads of cold weather, but also some really beautiful spring days - and some beautiful pictures (I hadn't gone out and played with my camera in a long time! So I was able to do that and also play in the snow with Jackson, while I had him for a day).



While we celebrated spring during winter, the East Coast got hammered with more snow than they knew what to do with! I was lucky to somehow still catch my flight to DC in February to visit friends. I somehow was able to slip on my plane and still get out, right before SLC got a bunch of snow and into the WDC area right after their second big snow storm that left nearly 3 feet of snow throughout the area!



Night out at Froggy Bottom for food with my old PAHO crew - even the big wigs came :)



Paul's Valentine's Day Soiree - my cuz sure knows how to throw a party! Too bad I was not informed that it would be formal until AFTER I had landed in Baltimore!

And my Valentine's date the next afternoon...Mary, my old roommate. We went and enjoyed amazing Latin food!

And more to come...this is already far too much!