Life Upate

So I feel horrible for not posting for so long, in my defense I have written a bit in my journal, not enough, but a little. And life has gotten so busy!  I swear I see Jamal less now that I did when we were dating! 

School is kicking my butt. I have major senioritis, and it's getting worse, and this has to be one of the most work intensive semesters yet!  They want us to cram and get everything done this semester so all we have to the last semester is take mock exams to prepare us for the registry.....and be unmotivated to go to clinical.  Less than 5 months left!  It's the only thing that keeps me going....

The good news is that the winter break was amazing!  I got married, moved into our new apartment, succesfully changed my  name to Aunt Bacon Calkins, and we took our honeymoon to San Diego/Palm Springs!  Thanks Billbo and Ellen for helping us with our trip!

Camera Stealers......I'm gonna get you back for defacing our car!

Hotel Coronado on Coronado Island. 

Beautiful beach, there was an ice skating rink set up on the beach!

San Diego Temple

Lookout view from the top of San Jacinto looking over Palm Springs. We had to take an Aerial Tram up there but it was totally worth it!  Wish we would have known you can go snowshoeing or cross-country skiing at the top!

We had to climb a mountain to find any snow!  It was wonderful weather while we were there ;)

We went to the Mormon Battalion visitors center and rode horses....

Panned for gold....

Learned how to wash clothes.... (good for newly married kids)

And learned how to make bricks!

Then we ate!

 Christmas as wonderful!  Adam got up early and made me breakfast for when I got home from work that morning. We waited to open all our wedding gifts on Christmas day, so we had a ton!  Then we went over to our old Bishop's house for dinner.  One last single's ward harah!

Adam's super awesome bedsheet Christmas tree

Other than school and work and work and work, we've tried to go on a date every week despite our busy schedules.  Thank goodness for groupons! 

Jamal won tickets to Monster Jam for his winning announcer voice!

And....I made my first quilt! Don't be alarmed that it's a baby quilt, I promise no announcements are coming soon.  It was just the only thing that could be useful with that size of a quilt. I'm pretty dang proud of it

Wedding!

So December 16th....I got married. no biggie.  Just sealed for time and all eternity to the most wonderful man alive!
First....a couple good friends Amanda and Emily threw me a bridal shower.  I got lots of great gifts, but this one from my mom and Shawsh took the cake.

Yes, that is a full length footie pajama outfit.  Rawr!

 The Day of the Wedding:

Friends and family that attended the sealing

I'm so glad so many of my family was able to come!!  (And Sarah)

I love this picture, I love my parents, We all look so Happy!

I'm Dad's favorite :)

You can go ahead and be jealous of our sweet kicks

My personal favorite. We have a thing for jumping pictures

The future father of my children.....Bouquet courtesy of Welke's House of Roses

I loved our photographer!

I honestly could not have asked for anything better! Everything went pretty smooth, the weather cooperated for the most part (No snow on the ground, but at least everyone was safe) Thanks to everyone who helped make it the best day of my life!

Announcement!

You'll get one too once we find a place to buy envelopes.....but only if I have your address!

Wedding Bells

I'm Engaged!!!!

   Jamal and I are getting married in the Spokane temple on December 16th 2011!  I know it's fast, I know it's soon, but I also know that it's right.

    His proposal was so adorable.  I got off work at 7 on Saturday morning.  We always had this little joke that some day he'd be waiting at my house for me to come home from work so I could sleep in his arms, of course that never happened.  Who wakes up before 7 on a Saturday? But secretly I always hoped he would someday.  As I drove up to my house everything was normal, but then I saw his car in my driveway. It was pretty well hidden by my neighbor's bushes.  Then I looked up over our hedges at our front door and there he was sitting on the front step.  (he had been waiting out in the cold for over 20 minutes just in case I came home early!) As I approached him he told me to take off my gloves, got down on one knee, told me how much he loved me, and pulled out the box with the ring.  It was wonderful.  Then we went inside.....he had snuck into my house (both my roommates were out of town) and made us breakfast!  What a wonderful surprise on a most wonderful morning!  I can't wait for us to start our life together!

Oh Summer, Where Art Thou.

They gave us a month off for the summer.  It's very much bitter-sweet-bitter.  I realize that it's my last summer vacation ever and should be elated, except it's only a month long, and I am sooooo not ready to go back to school this week. At least I lived it up as much as I could this month

Dad let me borrow the jet ski, which really made the vacation.  It was so worth driving the mini-van around for a month!

I got to spend time with the little brothers. They're so grown up !

The RM is a pretty fun uncle...but not the coolest

Went to some sporting events.....really I only show this because we're so dang cute!

We pigged out....in the park.

Went and saw Les Mis with these girls and Ellen....technically I guess this was before summer break, but it was a vacation anyway. 

Rode the carousel for good measure.

Drove all the way to Utah just to eat here....

I mean to see this one get baptized...

Still fun, but still not the coolest....

Got to catch up with my mission mom. I love her!

And I went to the fair and the Rodeo. 

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list of everything I did.  I'm grateful the weather was nice enough to enjoy some camping and hiking and rock climbing and swimming and fun.  Here's to starting the last year of school of my life!!  (Hopefully)

Faith and Healing

Yup, I just noticed that I still haven't blogged about the Florida trip.  I will.  I swear. 

I actually wrote a blog post last weekend (not about Florida) and never posted it, I guess it's still too new and personal to share right now, but it's a good one. 

Things are crazy and busy, and crazy busy right now, and I'm definitely feeling overwhelmed.  Work is exhausting, school is kicking my butt, my year-end clearance is on Monday, I am not doing my best in fulfilling my calling, I started dating a new boy....

...guess I'll need to find a name for him....

and it's summer and all I wanna do is play!  I'm definitely hitting the bottom of my resources barrel right now, so I was looking for a pick me up tonight at work, especially because it hasn't been the most uplifting circumstances here at the Sacred Heart ER....I found these 2 talks that I loved loved loved when they were first given, so I'm going to share them. 

The first is called "Remember Lot's Wife"
       My favorite lines from this talk:
"She doubted the Lord's ability to give her something better than she had."
"Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ is the "high priest of good things to come."

I feel like it's all about perspective. It reminds me of the book "Believing Christ" by Stephen E. Robinson.  Sometimes we can believe in Christ, but do we really truly believe that he has the power to make things better, to heal us.  Which leads me to the next talk

"One Among the Crowd"
"Though buried among the thronging mass, she resolutely and quietly pressed forward with a single purpose in mind: to come to the Savior, having faith that He had the power to heal her, that He cared about her and would respond to her need. In this one thing she set herself apart from the crowd. The crowd came to see, but the woman came to be healed."

What I need is faith. And a blessing. And to re-evaluate my priorities.

Besides this....I am grateful.  Grateful for family (even though they're all together now in Wisconsin without me) Grateful for good trustworthy friends, Grateful for my job, Grateful for school, Grateful for my calling and my ward, Grateful that I am doing well.....regardless of how I feel about myself or my life, it's pretty dang great!

Networking

I've been very interested in networking this past year.  Ever since moving to Spokane it's become a lot more apparent to me how important networking is to being successful, and that's true not just for careers. 

Just this past week when we went down to Florida, we stayed with the most wonderful family, whom non of us had ever met.  The husband was Smiley's father's roommate in college, and they hadn't seen each other in over 26 years. However, their friendship and the networking ended up providing us with great support on our trip.

As far as careers go...I would probably never have gotten my job, or had such an easy time getting into the program here if it wasn't for Scooby and his network he had already created for me in Spokane.

I got an email from the BYU alumni today with an article on building relationships and creating influence.  It's not long, but it's got a great point.  This quote from Dale Carnegie really stuck out to me:

"You can gain more friends in two months by being interested than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you.”

That really struck home to me, probably because I tend to do the latter more often than the former. And I've noticed that those girls in the ward that have no problem getting others to open up to them and create relationships of trust early on are the ones who do that, the ones who are sincerely interested in the other person.  This is something I need to work on for sure, especially if I want to be successful in my ventures next year starting a real career....