Good laugh.

oh facebook. but yet so true : )

blah.blah.blah.

It's been a while since I've talked about my obsession with grey's anatomy, don't worry still exists. I'm one of those losers who connect with things and can get emotionally involved easy when I see things I can relate to personally etc... Grey's has always been one of those things.
I've been on a movie buying roll since I started getting paychecks again and Grey's season one was one of the most recent purchases after someone said to me "I'm surprised you don't own all the seasons since you've seen them all." I was surprised too so therefore now I'll own them. Anywho... I've already watched all of season one, or should I say re-watched. Either way that show's amazing now as it was then.

In one of the episodes Meredith talks about being grown ups and adults, and I quote "We're grown ups. When the heck did that happen?" good question Meredith that's one question I find myself asking ALOT lately. When the heck did I become an adult.

I'm a nurse. Still not over the excitement that comes from everytime I sign my name at work the letters RN follow it. I do it so much I almost do it on receipts at stores. I have credentials, I have a career, I'm a grown up.

I talked to an old BYU-I roommate, and good friend Shanno a few weeks ago when I went and visited her cute pregnant self and husband in Payson. We got talking and reminiscing on all the funny good times we'd had and talked about how crazy it is that life went so fast. We then went on to talk about how grateful we are for where we are in life whether it went fast or not. For example: College. We talked a good half hour or more on the benefits of college, how glad we were we did in the times of our lives that we did and that we had the opportunity to go to college. I LOVED college. When I think back to the best times of my life, the 5 years that I spent paying ridiculous amounts of money on classes, books, rent, and living with some great but mostly ridiculous roommates those are the times I think of.

I've really missed college. In fact I think I've talked about it WAY too much that people are sick of my depressing views on grown up life, but after nothing but school for years and years do ya blame me?? haha. I remember last semester hating everything about school. The insane schedule I had, the distance from my family and friends up north, my roommates, friends(that are no longer my friends) drama every time I turned around, not having my own income for all my funds I required related to school, etc.... I was miserable. My classmates got me through that. I've always said college is where you find out who your friends are and it's still true. The pressures I faced with school, and family things happening at the time my classmates were the only ones who could say I know what you're going through, I understand, and really the only ones who really tried to care (outside of a select few up north haha). Basically what all this venting is about how we grew up a lot that semester as we faced grown up world early and more threatening than a lot of other soon to be college graduates. We thought we were ready to be out of there, done with school and on to the real world. boy we were wrong....

There's many things that they don't prep you for in college related to being a grown up. They try to prepare you for the obvious ones like the reality that hits on your first day flying solo at work, or when responsibility is suddenly present and you've got to call the shots. There are so many other reality shockers that make you wanna throw in the towel and go back to the school and classes we once dreaded.

Last weekend I went to Cedar for the Celebration of Southern Utah Nursing, where my class was honored for our pass rate and because of that our school now being the highest in the state. I loved everything about this weekend. It felt just like the old times, and it was so comforting to see everyone again and compare stories of the working world and how all this time we thought we were all alone in our frustrations and fears we are actually still in each other's great company : ) It was like being back in nursing school again but without the stress, and with the paychecks that we could do whatever we wanted and not feel guilty about it. It definitely was not a grown up weekend and I loved it. I not only got to see old nursing school friends but other friends in general; Alan, Stephany & her husband Ryan, and also multiple old co-workers and friends from Emerald Pointe. Many people who reminded me of the good old college days and somewhat days of carelessness.









Making that drive back home Sunday was really hard. Melissa and I rode together and we both expressed how we didn't wanna go back to reality since the weekend had been that great. It was also hard since Cyndi has moved to Henderson and that was probably the last weekend where we'd all be in cedar with her having a "house" there and be able to re-live memories with a little bit of normalcy. We were sad but reality calls and it was time to be a grown up. As we left town I felt myself asking, "I'm a grown up?? when the heck did that happen???".

It's been back to the working world, and it's been more tolerable knowing I'm not alone in the new nurses world and that my friends who became family are right there with me even though we may be all scattered out everywhere. And instead of being depressed, because life really is great don't get me wrong, I focus on these wise words of my sista shields from her e-mail last week post me telling her about the re-uniting:
"Don´t you be sad you have too much to be happy about. You are a very strong person, and its ok to miss your college years, but enjoy this minute:) Enjoy it even when it sucks. Find the good and discard the bad. Sift through the crap and hold on to the tiny flakes of gold you find:) I will be there to hug the crap out of you soon, so smile and dance till your feet hurt:)"

So life happens, and before ya know it adulthood is here. Be sad for a little bit because it's something that I am totally okay with mourning and then buck up and find all the good things there is about it. Realize you always have the good time memories, and that those friends will always be there and when you get lucky enough to re-unite and catch up it's as if time never passed and adulthood doesn't exist.
happy growing up : )

happy hallows.

In all my fall festivities I forgot to mention my halloween activities. I worked halloween night so I celebrated early.
Saturday night myself and fellow zombies made the drive to Logan. The howl was that night and most importantly Cartel was playing. We'd been looking for a Cartel concert for a while and we SO excited to find them in Logan that it made the drive totally worth it.
the howl on the other hand was a wreck-I thought for them having the biggest reputation and such that it would be more organized. Crazies everywhere and we fit right in, especially when we got lost trying to find our will call tickets and ended up short cutting through the bushes. 3 zombies appearing out of the bushes with people everywhere...
Cartel is amazing. I have loved them for years and this was my first time seeing them in concert, and won't be the last.






Sunday my family had a halloween party. We decorated and ate spooky halloween themed food. Not to mention everyone had to dress up. I went with a simple cowgirl seeing as how I was pretty much bald after combing out the zombie rats nest that morning. We also had a water girl, basketball players, coach, scare grow, fortune teller, and a chinese geisha. Basically I think my family is pretty great, and the food was awesome.









long live halloween.

festivities for fall.

I'm a summer girl and I love my sun more than anything but I'll admit that I do enjoy the fall enough to watch all the color changes take over the world before the ugly dreaded cold/snow takes over. With being in the UC for a change this fall I have tried to embrace it aka cold by doing something festive everyday/week depending on work. Some activities have included but are not limited to the following:

Cornbelly's!! first time to this place ever, it's a party! and even more of a party with Jeni, Nichole and Crystal. Don't worry we did every event/activity just like all the children there. It was so fun, and followed up with a hot chocolate and early breakfast at Denny's.











Dinner with Brynn. What was going to be a dinner date get together turned out to be an adventurous evening! We ate and before we knew it we were attending some extravagant halloween party at a rich kids house, not dressed up of course seeing as how we were not originally planning on such a party. Next thing we knew we were lost in Salt lake which of course was opportune for a photoshoot.






Pumpkin carving and caramel apple making. such a joy of fall! and nothin better than ending the night with a late night domino's and diet coke run to finish off the pumpkins : )








More shopping. Fall shopping. no picture accompanies this activity because it would have to be of obnoxious receipts and I feel the need to keep that secret. However, we'll just say it was with my new roommate Becca who has amazing taste and likes spending money as much as I do, and leave it at that.

Lastly, I'm in love with Willard, I mean the new Footloose re-make. It's amazing and seriously Willard and I were made for each other. Don't believe me, go watch it for yourself and you shall see...

fame continues.

as already mentioned I was on the front page of the SUU website. Celeb status. well now it turns out I'm an even bigger celebrity then I thought. let me explain...
my brother who's currently a senior in high school has been starting to deal with the lovely decisions of where to go to college. This decision means meeting with recruits from schools and hearing all about what they have to offer. While I was at my parents house a while ago I saw an SUU brochure sitting on the counter in a pile with other schools and being the good sister I am I began to harass him about it and inquire which school he's thinking about. I picked up the brochure but never really looked at it. subject was later dropped and everyone went on their merry way until I came across it again and I was curious enough to glance in and see what SUU is selling to their prospective students. flipping through the pages I started laughing, I soon informed Tanner that his sister is a celebrity! and I proudly showed him this....

now look closer...

turns out I not only am a face for the nursing program but now for athletics : ) haha. I find it hilarious. My brother not so much.

dream job.

Nothing like a REAL bad week at work to make you question your dreams, wants, passions, talents, etc....
Returning home from vacation to have 3 terrible twelves lined right up in a row makes for one unhappy RN here.
As students we used to always wish for 2 words in our hospital rotations: Code Blue. That meant we got to make good use of all the money we spent on Red Cross by beating on someones chest doing CPR and getting the adrenaline rush to save someones life. It doesn't help that Grey's anatomy makes it look so easy and carefree, what they don't show is the after effect...The chaos, the trauma, the clean up.

My first experience of doing CPR is one I'll never forget, as already blogged about months ago it was an awesome and almost indescribable experience. As I would excitably re-tell my experience to person after person they would all respond with "so they lived??" nope. Only I saw the excitement, rush and experience of it all, they only saw the death.

I got my second experience with code blue last week, my first night back to work from vacation. I mostly work the rehab area lately and with being gone 6 days the patient turnover was such that there was a few recent admits I'd never worked with before. We only had 7 patients that night(normally 12, 14-16, and sometimes 18) and I was supposed to go home at midnight due to low census and all the patients being of low enough acuity that the other nurse would take over the keys for the rest of the night and we'd trade schedules the following evening. The patients were low acuity which means stable. or so we thought....
My patient was fine for me and had no complaints of any of the problems that I was told of in report that he/she had struggled with that morning. That remained true up to a half hour before I was supposed to go home for the night.

Less than an hour later: "code blue room ***" was heard through the building. Crash cart, check. CPR initiated, check. 911 called, check. So many things went right, but there was this one thing that kept us all, as in all 5 nurses in the building, EMT's, aides, and respiratory therapist, puzzled. Particular bodily fluids kept coming, and was everywhere.

We were in a zone, calm and collected but in the rush time flew by and next thing we knew time of death was called. EMT's left and as I got off the phone with family members and went back into the room, I saw the scene they show on TV, and haven't felt the same since. He/She was my patient, he/she was dead. I was no longer the innocent nursing student who got to go back to class and tell how awesome it was and what a learning experience I had and watch as all my classmates practically drooled over jealousy. It sucked. I didn't sleep that morning when I got home and as I went back to work that night everyone was talking about the code, the mystery's of it all and the rush many got to experience. The roles were switched in this experience and for me this time, I only saw death.

Even though it came to conclusion there was nothing we could have done differently, no warning signs, no nothing! It's still makes for those questioning moments where you're the hardest on yourself and will continue to be for such a time.
The joys of getting your dream job....
I still love being a nurse and while I know I'll see this all the time and it happens, the first has been hard. just another callus to the ol health care heart : )

Now that it's a totally depressing mood I'll perk it up with this awesome picture that I took up Sundance. I finally went on the drive up alpine loop that I've been wanting to go on and snapped a shot on a whim and this is what I got : )

smile. be happy. live everyday, because we never know when we won't get a tomorrow.

west coast is a long post.

Friday October 7th I found myself leaving this freezing cold, rainy weather and on the road southbound with my good friend Candice. Such began the roadtrip...



We stopped in Cedar to see my second mama Cyndi. Next stop St. Geezy where Candice's grandma was nice enough to take us out to eat at the yummy Don Pedro's. We stayed at her house that night watching movie after movie until the early hours. Saturday was the main reason for stopping in St. Geezy, Camille a girl from candices nursing class got married that day and we originally planned on going to the reception that night but decided to just hit the luncheon and take off to cali as opposed to driving all night. Small problem turned out the luncheon was at 11 and we thought 12 so we missed it but good news was Brynn happened to also be in St. Geezy for the weekend and so we got together at the Rio and caught up over lunch.


after lunch it was back on the open road again, until just outside of vegas there was no open road and we found ourselves victims of construction in one lane traffic for over an hour. We were pretty irritated that you can't go any where without construction these days but we got over it by having a pretty awesome photo shoot...




way too many hours later we were in Los Angeles taking exit after exit and freeway/highway/road after road to get to our beloved hotel. We finally got on Wilshire Blvd which is the hotels street but we were soon in awe struck that by bypassed the hotel and began driving down the miles long wilshire blvd looking at the atmosphere of beverly hills and trying to find a place to eat that would let our roadtrippin attire selves in without a dress code. We ended up finding ourselves in a bit of trouble...


jk. but seriously we had to take detours because there was no getting around what ever was going on there. We finally settled in with Mr. Pizza and the asian gang(not racist but seriously all Asians, even Asians in the menu...)They brought us a lovely appetizer of pickles and shredded lettuce, then we ate our not too bad pizza before checking in to the lovely Beverly Hilton. We spent the rest of the night exploring the hotel, and busting out the lovely iPhone to google six flags and psyched ourselves out ride after ride trying to find out what we were in for the following day.

ps. please note our personal pool side DJ behind my head there...





Paparazzi greet you upon arrival through the self parking elevators.

Day uno in Cali: woke up and got some breakfast before drove to Six Flags for an adrenaline filled day. IT WAS SO FUN!! we were so scared since we had gotten ourselves worked up the night before but man Superman and Tatsu were my favorites and 2 of the scariest. We left with wind blown hair courtesy of thrill rides and with no voice also courtesy of the thrill rides. I loved it and even though I'm sure I'll go back again, I think this was the best time due to never going before and not really sure what to expect on a ride. It was a party.













We were so tired that night we didn't even have the energy to drive around beverly hills to find a place to eat let alone get presentable enough to be able to eat there. So we did the classy beverly hilton thing and ordered from the closest Domino's for delivery of a large pizza and coke and laid in our wonderful beds ate our hearts out and watched an $18 dollar movie courtesy of the hilton: The Help. Which quick note it was amazing. seriously fantastic movie.

Day Dos in Cali: Slept in and the drove out to the beautiful Santa Monica Pier! It was beach day and it turned out good we went early because it got cloudy quick and by the time we were leaving it was pretty windy/chilly. We took plenty of pictures, spied on our beach eye candy biker man, walked the pier, and got a yummy lunch before headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up.







beach towels courtesy of Beverly Hilton's bath towels...





candice the litter bug queen left this for the cali world to receive

That night we went to Hollywood and walked the blvd. since neither of us had ever seen "the stars". We ended up getting ambushed by sephora for a make up make over and next thing we knew it was past dinnertime. We ate at Rock Sugar Pan Asian Kitchen which was delicious. We decided to do a sampler sorta thing which would allow us to try multiple entrees, rice's, desserts, appetizers, etc... There was so much food!! our whole table was covered and we looked like pigs, even the men at neighboring tables weren't eating as much as we were. It was delicious though and we didn't care. We drove around that night jamming to music, admiring more of the pretty homes/mansions and went back to the hotel to chill before the long drive ahead of us the next day.



did I mention we did some shopping...
first casette I ever had...

post makeup makeover...



the ritzy waiting area in Rock Sugar



incognito celebrity looks....blend right in if you just put on your shades and act like ya own the place....

Candice had to work Wednesday morning so our short but sweet trip came to an end Tuesday morning as we checked out and hit the open road yet again. Thanks for the good memories and great times California, we love and miss you!!!!