"What a Wonderful World"

So life has been pretty interesting as always. With this whole Swine flu outbreak work has been absolutely and completely nuts these past three days. But today was the worst. Such a silly thing has caused mass panic in the Phoenix area and parents are freaking out. I have a lot to say on the subject and the whole media blowing this completely out of proportion. You'd think we would have learned from our mistakes from the last so called Swine flu outbreak in 1976, which by-the-way they confirmed after the fact that it never happened and the shots they developed to prevent the swine flu actually caused more illnesses then the actual flu, which never even happened. Same thing here. The only ones you should actually listen to are the WHO and CDC. So there I'll get off my soap box.

Besides that life is grand. My quilt is coming along great, when I make a bit more progress I'll post some pictures. I'm SO close to finishing the biography of "John Adams" which has been such a great learning experience. What a neat man!! And most importantly I finally finally was able to go camping!! Thursday night Bonnie Jeane and I were sitting in the living room and we've been planning with our friends for months to try and go camping, but something always seemed to come up. So we decided we'd just go. And Bonnie Jeane had never been to Sedona so we thought we'd give it a shot right after work on Friday.

So besides a few setbacks, like leaving a lot later then planned, and BJ leaving her purse at home when we were already 30 min away and so trying to meet up with Jen somewhere in between to get it, and then not being able to find a camping site because they were all FULL!!! So here's some of the adventure......

This actually wasn't a bad camping ground for finding it at 9pm on a Friday night. Yeah for being right next to the latrines. :) But we had a great fire (started by me, thank you very much) and then just chilled, talked, read (yeah we're dorks, but at least we know it) and we were going to roast marshmallows, but granola bars and fruit snacks are so much more accessible.
Sleeping in my new sleeping bag I got for my Birthday!! This was the first chance I had to use it outdoors. That is me dreaming of said fruit snacks.

Cooking chicken and veggies over BJs really cool portable "stove", or oven burner if you will. With our efforts combined we can made some dang good food though.
Enjoying the fruits, of veggies, of our labors.

Just some of the places we ran into while hiking around Saturday....

So pretty!!! I love all the red rock. Arizona does have some things to offer to the lovers of the aesthetics...well mostly :)

Yeah, we're tough, big and bad girls who like to go camping by ourselves...bring on the rain!

Me trying to make it to the middle of the river

BJs amazing balancing skills

Yeah I'm sort of a big deal

And of course we can't forget about Easter!! Jen's Dad was in town and we went to the Easter Pageant at the Temple, which, despite what my friends might have thought, they did a pretty good job. But when we got home I was pretty insistent that we color eggs just because my old roommates and I did it all through college and would have Easter egg hunts. So we colored the most amazing eggs, compliments of our friend Emily, and then Jen's dad hid the eggs in our house Sunday morning. And we spend Easter Dinner at Emily's house, compliments of her wonderful parents!!

Us up and rearing to go with our Easter Baskets in hand. Since I was the baby of the house they so graciously let me go first.

Only the most amazing egg ever. Seriously, you are all better people now for it and can sleep better at night knowing that an Ohio State Buckeyes Easter Egg exists. Life fulfillment worthy.

"Would you like to kiss the lucky egg?!" Anyone...Anyone......

Our very serious and intent egg coloring party. There is some serious fun happening in this room right now.

So of course life is still grand and wonderful and enjoying the beautiful weather before the heat reaches killer levels. Oh Arizona. I do love you!

Living the Dream!!!

So I have been busy these past few weeks, and having a blast of course. I saw two more Operas with Sarah. The first one was Mozart's "Don Giavanni" and then Pucinni's "Tosca". Both very good. It was nice to have something to dress up for and to have an excuse to have Sarah come down from Colorado. And we had a lot of adventures while on the way. I think we have a curse to be perpetually late to the opera or something. It never seemed to work out, but we made it...eventually!! And now you all know how I am even more a dork then you thought. Yes, I love the opera :)

I also recently took a trip to Washington DC to visit my family and go to the DC temple. It was an incrediable experience and it came at the right time in my life. I was able to see my old friend that I knew from growing up in the Kirtland Stake and her husband, Cambria and Sean Neumann. So fun that they live in the same ward with my parents. And then Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Bob came up as well which was SO great of them! And of course it was so great to see President Ed Shultz or "Opa" attend the session with me as well. And then after a few relaxing days of spending time with the parentals and fam, we drove to met Jessica and her man Kelan halfway and ate dinner at Chili's just so I could see my beloved sister. One of them that is. :) But seriously, I think Jessica and I have been banned from ever appearing together in public again.

What else, I yes I think I've finally figured out what I'm going to do with school. I'm going to cover all my bases now. I'm going to move back to DC to live with the fam until I get settled, and now that I'm finally certified I can apply for lots of fun MA jobs in the DC area, and then I'm applying to a few of the schools in the area to get a Post Bach and take more Organic Chem, Genetics again, Physiology again, more Bio Chem, a few more chem labs, things like that while I'm applying for a Masters in Public Health. Then if that doesn't work I'm applying to nursing school AND PA school again since I'd have a wider base of classes taken by then, and then if I do nursing I'll just go the Nurse Practitioner route. So keeping all my bases covered. I'll probably move out there at the end of summer when my housing contract is over.

Oh, for General Conference I also went to Mesa and stayed with Katherine and Michelle and we continued the tradition from college where we built a tent in the living room and watched General conference. We also orderd in Chinese food and Katherine had the joy of her first experience of Chinese Take Out and watching a Chick Flick while in a tent. She was actually just excited that they came in the cute boxes.

I have also been asked by my good friend Robin Cupal from work to be her bridesmaid in October. And the BEST part of the whole thing (yes I know, this makes Bridesmaid #10, if I only had saved all my dresses, then I could have had my own closet of bridesmaid's dresses, 27 dresses watch out, I'm catching on to you) is that she is getting married in M*ch*g*n!! Yes, believe it or not I'm going to be able to stay with Nate and Mari and visit them. And perhaps catch a football game at the Big House. Just for the pure love of football mind you. I'd never ever betray my Bucks.