New Addictions

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Disclaimer: I am NOT GETTING MARRIED.
Proclaimer: I am really, really loving wedding webistes for the newly engaged and wedding photography websites. Allow me to share!

Websites:

Justin & Ellyn--Ellyn was my roommate senior year of college and a dear friend.
Zachary & Michelle--Zachary is my cousin who looks so much like my little brother :)
Aaron & Michele--Michele and I were nutrition major's at Pepperdine, and I love her!
Zak & Kellie--Kellie and I both went to Grace Baptist Church growing up.

Photography:

Kiss the Bride
Colling Photography
Jake Fiehler Photography
Beach Bum Photography

Another obesession of late? Movies about young women starting out in their careers, finding love and discovering themselves. For example:

13 Going On 30
27 Dresses
Bride Wars
The Devil Wears Prada
Legally Blonde
How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days

If you have more of any of these, please let me know!!

Song of the day: "Making Memories of Us," by Keith Urban. A classic love song that I just LOVE.

Homework Stole My Sunshine

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Happy Tuesday everyone! I'm back at Starbucks--le sigh--I really enjoy starting my mornings like this: 6am workout, Oatmeal Squares/almonds/banana breakfast, a tall black coffee, and blogging :) Love it.

So, I last updated you on Friday, so let's talk about the weekend! Unfortunately, as the title of my blog indicates, HW ate my weekend and stole my sunshine :( LITERALLY. It was a glorious weekend in Portland: sun and warmth that I haven't felt in months!! [side note: can you believe that I have been here for 6 months?? I can't...] BUT ALAS, from Friday night until late Sunday night, I was chained to my desk, strapped to my computer, homeworking and Facebooking to break up the time...SAD.

Not-So-Funny-Story: The Friday that Would Not End.

5pm--In charge of correcting, editing, and turning in our research proposal for our research group. Paper is due by midnight. Stress level: 4.

11:55pm--Paper is done! Phew! Save and close to e-mail professor. Stress level: 2.

11:57pm--Paper? Where is paper? Paper no here? Stress level: 5

11:59pm--PAPER NO HERE!! PAPER NO HERE!! Stress level: 8

1:00am--(after searching whole hardrive and all temp folders)...paper...? Stress level: 8.5

1:02am--What do you mean I "must write paper again"? Stress level: 9.

1:05am--(head in hands, groaning loudly, pulling hair) ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stress level: 10.5

1:10am--Biting bullet; tastes like metal. Stress level: 9

2:15am--Neighbors having party? " 'Scuse me? Do you have any tequila? It's an emergency." Ha, I wish. Stress level: 7

3:00am--Paper be e-mailed. Tempted to throw computer out window, claim insanity, declare bankruptcy, and run from the IRS Catch Me If You Can style. Stress level: 5

Saturday...

11:30am--Wake up. Groggy. Day half wasted. More HW. Poop. Stress level: 3.

12:20pm--E-mail from professor: "Your attachment did not send. Please send again." Hate my computer and my incompetance. Stress level: 4.

12:30pm--I spent almost 12 hours editing the wrong paper. FML. Stress level: 5

12:45pm--Text Annie. Need key to computer room at school so I can retrieve correct document that I forgot to send myself. Annie in Salem; won't be home 'til 6. Stress level: 6.

1:00-6:00pm--Researching for another paper due Monday. Grrrrr....E-mail paper I worked on so I can e-mail it from school. Stress level: 6

6:00pm--Get to Annie's. Retrieve key. Get to computer. Sent myself wrong draft. Must e-mail draft from school to home, go back home, and e-mail to professor. Stress level: 6.5

6:30pm--Get home. Sent myself wrong draft from school. Must e-mail correct draft from home, go BACK to school, and e-mail professor. "The tales of your incompetance do not interest me." -Miranda Priestly, The Devil Wears Prada Stress level: 8

7:00--BACK at school. Finally sent correct draft. Quickly edit, and e-mail to professor. DONE WITH THIS FRIDAY THAT HAS TURNED INTO SATURDAY.

7:30--Solid Rock :) God is Grace. Love this frickin chuch so frickin much!

Sunday--HW ALL DAY.

So, yeah, that was my weekend. Boo. And now the sun is gone again. Double boo.

Song of the Day: "Paperweight," by Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk. Also from the Dear John soundtrack. Also awesome :)

Happy Birthday Brooklyn!!

Yesterday, my friend Brooklyn celebrated her 23rd birthday! Don't worry--I called her YESTERDAY even though I am writing to you today :) In celebration of this dear, I would love to share with you a little about her!

Brooklyn transferred to my high school the summer before junior year and joined the varsity basketball team. At our first team practice, she introduced herself and said, "just call me Utah." Well, the name kinda stuck--I've always called her Brooklyn. As the youngest of 6 in a Mormon family, she is full of personality and life! Our two years together in high school resulted in plenty of laughter and really good memories. I am thankful that we have maintained our friendship over the years, through MANY big life changes and tumultuous times. Brooklyn moved back to Utah in October 2008, much to my dismay :(

The young man in the picture is Nick, her fiancé! They met last year and are getting married in 2 weeks! Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be able to go--she's getting married on a Monday and some of us have school. I have not met him yet, and I look forward to getting to know him.

Anyways, happy birthday my love. I am so thankful for you ♥

In other news...
I got a chance to talk to Amber last night, FINALLY. We were on the phone for over an hour, catching up on this latest, biggest event in her life! It was so good for me to be reassured of our friendship, and that she still considers me one of her closest friends. It's funny, because as much as Words is not my top love language, being away from my friends and family makes me crave the affirmation of their love for me. I am very afraid that it will change for them, and they will no longer consider me important. This is one of my longtime insecurities: I can remember being 12 and asking my dear friend Brittany 6 times in one night if she was mad at me. She finally said, "I'm not mad at you! But I'm going to BE mad at you if you keep asking me!" Yeah, I struggle with it...

I guess we all just want to feel like we are the most important person in the world to someone. In my case, since I have never had that reassurance from a boy, I become a little bit obsessive about it with my friends. I think this is the part where I miss the physical presence of Jesus. To think that once upon of time, God WALKED side-by-side with humanity to be in perfect companionship with us, blows my mind and makes me really excited for heaven. In the meantime, I've got that "heavenly homesick" feeling. It doesn't help that I've got that "friends and family" homesick feeling too. Ergo, I apologize to my friends if my need for reassurance is irritating.

Finally, I watched 27 Dresses last night. Ok, if you don't know me, you just need to know that I AM JANE--Katherine Heigl is even my celebrity look-alike! I chose it last night for 2 reasons: 1) At my rotation yesterday, "Benny and the Jets" came on the radio and all I could picture was Jane singing to Kevin (GORGEOUS James Marsden♥♥♥) and getting lyrics wrong:

Jane: She's got electric boobs...
Kevin: BOOBS!?

I was laughing all by myself. 2) The influx of weddings has me feeling a touch like her right now. Ok, I have to run to work! BYE!

First Comes Love...

I haven't blogged in one month! I'm sorry for being a bad blogger.

There. I said it, and that is all I am going to say about that.

But I have spent the last two mornings catching up on the 100-something new posts of yours that I hadn't read. I love it! There is such serenity in being able to sit in Starbucks in SE Portland, with the SUNSHINE STREAMING THROUGH THE WINDOWS, sipping a hot cup of black coffee (how I'm taking mine now--I know, I'm so hardcore), and catch up on the wonderful world of all of my friends :) I wish more people had blogs!

As far as where to begin? I will start with today and move forward, catching you up on details as they present themselves.

I woke up this morning reeling from the shock of some HUGE news I got last night: AMBER IS ENGAGED!!

Let me tell you briefly about Amber: we met my sophomore year at Pepperdine (she is one year younger, and therefore a freshman when we met). We were both nutrition majors and we had a couple of classes together. She is one of those people that you meet in life and you instantly click! From the time we met, she became my everything buddy--my study buddy, my shopping buddy, my running buddy, my driving buddy, my do-nothing-for-a-whole-day buddy, my beach buddy, my venting buddy, my movie buddy, my laughing buddy, my crying buddy, my EVERYTHING BUDDY! Seriously, there was nothing we did not do together, and I have been completely blessed by the depth of her love for me.

Anyways, I love her to death: she is one of my best friends. And I bet you are wondering about her fiancé, Allen? Allen just finished his service in the Army and is from Kansas (where Amber is from as well). They met over the summer when Amber and our friend Alicia were out one night. I was able to meet Allen at Thanksgiving, and I really like him :) He spends time with her family while she is at school (Amber number 2 out of 5 kids, who mean the world to her) and he ABSOLUTELY adores her!

I'm definitely in shock! I think the hardest thing is that this relationship developed when I haven't been around to watch it grow and so I had no idea it was coming so quickly! That's why I'm in shock...I'm totally, just, wow...!

I think it hit me super hardcore last night because when I jumped on Facebook, there were a couple more engagement status' that popped up. February is beginning to rival December for number of engagements in one month! My mom says it's because of Valentine's Day; just a TOUCH cliché, but it's all good! So here you go February: you've got 2 weeks left...what else you got!?

In other news, while I try and recover from the...shock...

My internship is really going well! My very first clinical rotation was Renal, meaning that I worked in a dialysis clinic for two weeks caring for people who had kidney failure. I can comment more on that later.

The next two weeks, I will be in Geriatrics at a nursing home in SE. This rotation is definitely a lot less intense than Renal was. It has made me think a lot about my parents getting older. God-willing, they are still 30 years away from this kind of life. It's really sad to see how sick these people are and for many of them, they spend their life bedridden and alone. I can't dwell on the emotions because it will prevent me from doing my job. It makes me even more in love with the Savior who came for me, to rescue me and to walk with me all my life and into eternity--thank you Jesus! I never want to see my parents end up alone like this. If we have to someday put them in a home, I will be sure someone goes to see them everyday. Hopefully, Brooke, Stevie, and I will live close enough to be able to do that.

Speaking of STEVIE (my youngest sibling is 5 years younger than me--a senior in high school this year and a phenomenal basketball player)...

His team had their first playoff game last night against Highland. It was supposed to be an easy win--Highland was a wild card team. Valencia ended up winning by just a few points in overtime!!! And guess what? MY BABY BRO HAD 4 THREE-POINTERS!!! So proud :)

That should hold you over until tomorrow! I'm back baby!!

Song of the day (I have so much to share with you!!): "Think Of Me," by Rosi Golan from the Dear John soundtrack. One of the reasons I love it is because I can picture Jesus singing it to me. It is good to have a God who is the lover of our souls ♥