Family Picture

Waahoo!

As of this evening I finally have a job offer to work as a MA. June 20th I will start training. The position is full time at the Snohomish Walk-In Clinic. I am really excited, I loved WIC during my externship. It does require working every other Sunday, which I'm not excited about, but I think I'm okay about it. Waahoo!

Sink and Destroy

You Twilight fans out there will remember the part in New Moon right after Edward leaves where for like five or six pages, all that is written is the name of the current month. That is kind of how I feel lately, not the comatose depression, but the feeling that each month is completely unremarkable from the next. Anyone who follows my sister Julie's blog will get a picture (literally) of what the fun part of my summer entailed.

The month of august I think has been designed to make me wish summer was over and I was back in school. BTW I took a class this summer and did GREAT! I got an A!! We'll see how next quarter goes, it is the quarter before extern where you do the phlebotomy and medication administration (read lots of needles) and I have been really excited to learn about how to do all of that. The concern is that you have to have proof of immunity documentations in before the quarter starts or they drop you. My conflict exists because I couldn't get my third Hep B shot till 8/23, and then you are supposed to wait a month and get the titer (a blood test that proves you are immune). School starts 9/20, I think you can all see the problem here. I have sent an email explaining the situation and am hoping for mercy.

Back to wishing summer over; our house was painted four years ago, but it has been apparent for at least the last year that it would have to be repainted this year, or we would suffer the consequences. So after much deliberation over colors, we began the work of proper preparation before painting. First we power washed (one day), then we scrapped loose paint (about 4 days), then we filled holes, cracks and imperfections with wood fill-three kinds (9 days), then we started sanding the wood fill and discovered that the fill we had used for 2/3 of the house was like cement to sand- I strained my wrist for a week hand sanding one day. To make matters worse, we discovered after test priming a patch, that we really didn't like the look of the patched areas and have ultimately decided that we should have sanded most of the areas we filled. By this point my poor mom, who has borne the brunt of the fill/sand labor decided that we would buy two cheap orbital sanders to ease the labor. With their help we only sanded for about 3 1/2 days-completely burning out the motors on both sanders and moving to dad's nice sander in the end. So with all of that done we finally started priming yesterday. After 9 hours of both mom and I priming, we had completed about 2/3 of the house. Of course it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow and part of Tuesday, but dad plans to take Wednesday and Thursday (before the temple) off so we might actually get most of the house painted before they have to leave for Utah Thursday in order to help clean out Grandma and Grandpa's house.

I forgot to mention that part of the prep work for painting has included nailing down any siding that is loose. Sounds easy, right? Well the reason so many boards are loose is that it seems whoever put them up originally did so without regard for stud placement. Now even I can figure out that the boards will stay on the house much better if they are actually nailed to something other than more siding. But apparently there wasn't anyone as construction savvy as myself present when this job was done. As a result, watching Dad try to nail the boards went something like this: Pick a spot that should have a stud, nail, nail, nail-nothing. Pull it out, move over 1/2", nail, nail, nail-nothing. Pull it out, move over another 1/2", nail, nail, nail-nothing. You can see why after a short time I commented that it looked like he was playing "Battle Ship"- A12-miss, A10-miss, B11-hit! Never knew that Hasbro knew so much about building houses.

First day of school, here I come.

The Advantages of Being Poor and in School

So I still really have nothing big going on, work, school, church, school, work, etc. But I did recently file my tax return and because I am a) Poor, b) in school, and c) old, I not only get all my taxes back, but the government was also kind enough to give me an additional $1800. Not too shabby. It might make up for the fact that I can't work next quarter due to class being scheduled in the middle of my work shift. But now no more complaining, I have been well taken care of.

Wallace Falls

So for Memorial Day we went hiking to Wallace Falls. We took it pretty easy, stopped to take pictures of everything. It was great. I love hiking in WA, everything is so beautiful. I didn't want to go through all the pictures, did I mention Mom, Dad and I all had our camera's and took lots of pictures? But I thought I'd post one of Middle Falls. It is gorgeous.

And since I took one, how about a video of the Middle Falls too? FYI I am not a great camera person, even if I did work as a cameraperson for KBYU.

The End is in Sight...Sort of

So I have only 2 weeks left of this semester before finals start. I'm not super worried, one's a take home, one's online and one isn't comprehensive. That's the good news. The less exciting news is that I still have like 18 mos before I am totally done. I'll survive, all I can say is I better be able to find a job now!
On another exciting note, I started WeightWatchers like 8 weeks ago and I have lost 14 lbs so far. In practical terms that is the weight of a 3 month old, 3 sacks of sugar, or 14 boxes of butter. Just imagine those strapped to your waist and it gives me more motivation to keep going.
So, yeah, nothing earth shattering but I was feeling guilty for the lag between posts.

Nowhere near as clever as my sisters

So apparently my blogging rate is once every other month, which doesn't seem so bad but is not even as close as most people. I was telling my mom about facebook- many of her friends and even her aunt, yes that would be my great aunt, have now joined facebook and so i was explaining the difference between blogs and facebook- anyway i was saying that i like to use facebook just to see what everyone is up to, but i don't usually comment or post about myself. I paused and then added that i do the same with blogging. She laughed and told me i have the same philosophy with phones. So just to update everyone who doesn't already know, technology in my world exists to serve me when it's convenient and i have no problem ignoring it when it's not. this doesn't mean that i don't read or appreciate other's updates, in fact i love them, but i rarely update myself. i apologize for this but lets face it those who know and love me realize this will probably never change.

i actually have an update on my life adventure today. Monday i started a second job, i now work 15 hours a week at Starbright Early Learning Center, basically as an aid. I work with 2 1/2 year olds which are a challenge but have always been one of my favorite ages. Also on the 30th I start school again. I decided against Everest College that i talked about previously and have elected to attend Everett Community College for basically the same program. The disadvantage is that it will take a year and a half verses 8 mo, the advantage is that it is about half the cost. (Everest was $14,000, EvCC $8,000) To save my sanity-which can't survive a year and a half without a real job- i plan to certify in phlobotomy concurrently (it requires the same classes as Medical Assisting, with one extra internship type class). So i will finish phlobotomy in december and hopefully get a job while i continue to study for Medical Assisting. Oh, phlobotomy is drawing blood.

So I think everyone is offically updated on my life, weird I almost typed love life, which for me takes one word- "nada"- unless you want to get fancy and pretend you can hear crickets chirping...

So um, yeah, love you all!