Oregon!

Brent took us to this amazing waterfall in the Gorge. We are little dots on the bridge on the right.

My dream house and life....have my cute little family and husband and live in a cute little cottage on the Oregon coast.

Katie and I made it to the top of Mount Hood!!! A proud moment. I sat on the curb and ate some good peaches and bagels to all of oregon. We took a little snooze and then left Katie at the top...then we drove Brent an hour to where he would meet up with the second van on his team.

After the race! I'm such a proud friend! They ran so well. The altitude difference let them soar on their runs. Katie averaged 7 min miles, Brent 630 min miles. Amazing.

Gotta love oregon surfers!

Katie Squires, Brent Friess, and I took a road trip to Oregon last weekend so Katie and Brent could run the Hood to Coast race. It is the longest running relay race in the world...180+ miles from Mt. Hood to the Oregon Coast. We left at 6pm on Friday night and drove straight through the night 13 hours.

Started off the trip right with some Arbys....Brent and Katie preferred Subway. We divided and conquered. I was homeless for a little while on the curb til they came and picked me up.

We drove off into the Idaho night. Halfway through our Idaho drive, we encountered a MASSIVE wind/lightning storm. Huge sagebrush bushes began blowing across the freeway! They looked like little animals scurrying across the road. We died laughing. Successfully navigated the sagebrush.

I fell asleep for an hour or so and I woke up to the car sputtering....Brent has a worried look on his face. He says we are out of gas and still 5 miles outside of Boise. So we pull into a rest area and knock on the window of this truck and asked this man for gas, instead he decided he would follow us into town. So we jumped back on the road for amazing 20 minute coaching of the poor little car! We kept him going at 20 mph on the freeway needing to start and restart him over and over has he crept his little way up the hill that then descended into Boise....and we pulled in miraculously to a gas station just as the car died! Amazing.

I drove from 12am to 4pm and had a little dance party with myself clicked into Katie's ipod while Brent and Katie slept.

Katie drove from 4am to 7am and safely brought us to our destination at Mt. Hood. It was so beautiful when we arrived. The night sky gave way to the early dawn giving light to the millions of pine trees lining the backroads to Timberline Lodge. We rounded a bend to see this.....

Ah it was a beautiful site!! I screamed!

While I was sitting on the beach in Oregon I kept having these thoughts about life and where I'm going, what I want to accomplish, where I want to be in 5 years or so. I have been feeling so blessed that I had the opportunity to get an education and have a good job so I can go and see places like the beautiful Oregon coast. I feel so blessed that I live in America, that I have wonderful friends, a wonderful family, the gospel....because of where I am at in my life I feel like the opportunities are limitless. Life is a blessing and a gift, there is so much to do, so much to learn, different phases of life, moments of change, new understandings.

Since I've graduated I've had moments where I've begun to understand life and see it in a way I didn't know I could before

Each person has this infinite potential in their soul....it is an honor to work in the hospital and connect with patients on a very personal and intimate level as they come in during moments of great need

My life is the only chance I get to work hard, learn as much as I can, overcome my weaknesses, enhance my strengths.

Life is only lived in today. If I am doing what I need to do today, the future takes care of itself.

The Lord lets me make mistakes and try again the next day.

So many people have blessed my life. And looking back on college and now looking to what is in the future....I realize I could never have come as far as I did without the people that are in my life. My family is a huge strength to me. And thinking about my friends and all the people i've met and loved in school and even now we still see eachother....

Jenni Gasparrini

Ashley Cole Tucker

Katie Vargo

Caitlin Reese Johnson

Chelsie Campbell

Michelle Myers

Layne Watson

Katie Squires

Aubri Root

Sarah Chaves Tranter

Andrea Whitaker Garnder

Kerri Hart

Karen Boyer

Christina Jemison Mack

Megan Zitting

Katie Powers

Alexa Kohl

Jane Leavy

Megan Robinson

Megan Cutler

Laura Clyde

Morgan Anderson

Elissa Urban

Hilary Davis

Whitney Francom

Shaughnessy Ryan

Tawni Jensen

Allen Knight

Clayton Pratt

Austin Hackett

Paul Moyle

DJ Dorff

Ben Myers

Ben Tingey

Chris Florence

Tyler Hales

Spencer Rowan

Steve Dent

Scott Stevens

Chase Ellsworth

Danny Ellsworth

Dan Ash

Paul Stevens

Benjamin McGrath

Taylor Jones

Mike Lemon

Mike Barber

Tyler Lemmon

John Hill

Dave Blackwell

Shea Owens

Mike Hanks

Jacob Sohn

Jim Kohl

Karen Lundberg

Shelly Reed

Deborah Himes

Vickie Anderson

Ron Uhlberg

Renea Beckstrand

Catherine Coverston

Troy Carlton

A quick funny

I was dead tired from a road trip to Oregon last weekend. We partied hard and then I came back to a shift I needed to work at the hospital. I pulled up to work with 15 minutes to spare and decided to take a snooze, windows down, cool breeze....ultimate relaxation. I slipped into the depths of some good zzzzzz.

zzzzz.

It all happened so fast.

"WOOOGGGAAAA WOOOGA WOOOGA!"

I screamed so loud at Juston, one of my coworkers, who thought it would be hilarious to scare the living daylights out of me.

"Don't EVER do that again to me you hear??!!!!" And then he walked off.

We had a good laugh once I walked into work seeming that I couldn't fall back asleep. I was working for one of my favorite nurse's Stephanie who said she had had a similar experience with Juston. Except that Juston had jumped in the back of her car after her shift. She was ready to go when Juston jumped up behind the driver's seat. Looking back, he says he might not have done it foreseeing Stephanie screaming and then stepping on the gas and accelerating straight into the hospital!

Wise Words

Right now I'm finishing my clinical rotations in the ICU at the Veteran's Hospital in Salt Lake. Needless to say, I LOVE it! I have never before worked with such amazing people. The nurses and doctors recognize that it requires a team effort to restore these patients to full health. They are so willing to impart information and help with the learning process. They are always looking out for me too making sure I have ample opportunity to take stool samples, empty catheter bags, dump chest tube suctioning contents:) Most of the patients are war veterans who served in WWII, Korea, or Vietnam. They have some great stories to tell!

The patient I took care of on Friday was amazing! Two hours out of surgery and the man was cracking jokes. He had all the nurses and doctors rolling! I thought...how great that despite his ailments, he was brightening the day of those taking care of him. I went into his room to say goodbye and this is what he said to me...great words of wisdom. I think he shared the secret to life. We all know it. It just seems so much more validated coming from someone backed up with 88 years experience. And he said it full of emotion that it really moved me.
You have your whole life ahead of you! So I want to tell you some things I have learned from my life. The worst thing you can have is a closed mind. Always have an open mind. Always keep your mind busy. The greatest thing I learned to do was to work hard! I feel that principle is lost in your generation. Your generation is turned inward. Everything becomes all about me. So make sure you keep your body busy, your mind busy, continually serving others. I think I lived in the best generation because you know how many moms it took to raise a boy? At least eight. I hope the same for your generation.

The man giving the prayer in church said something funny. Maybe I shouldn't laugh...no it was too funny to not. He says, "We are so glad to come listen to men of God (giant pause)...and women." He sat down and died laughing.

These are just thoughts I've had recently:
So it seems to happen to me more often than not...I'll be getting a drink at the taller drinking fountain, only to see someone in my peripherals waiting for my fountain completely aware there is a shorter fountain right next to me. So then the question, do I smell? Do some people have massive personal bubbles? Does alot of the world have back problems that limits them from stooping a few inches lower? Maybe I'm unaware that the taller fountain is in some way glorified...who would even think of using the shorter fountain.

I love driving down the freeway and watching the cars on the other side of the freeway zip by. I'm still watching the road...just with one eye. So I'll be watching the cars with my other eye and then all of a sudden...a massive gap....no cars. What? Weird! What happened to the cars? And then I look in the distance to see hundreds of cars driving tightly together in V-formation. Wow, those cars must really love eachother. And then upon closer examination I notice the mother duck. Yes, the cop car. Proudly leading its entourage of ticket-fearful drivers! Makes me laugh everytime!

I drive alot commuting back and forth from the hospital or Logan. On one occasion I was so annoyed with the traffic due to construction. It usually doesn't bother me, but on this particular day I was close to just coming to a screeching halt in the middle of the road if I saw one more orange cone. But before I caused a pileup, I tried to change my mindset. And it was really cool to think about how the road system can be related to life. The road system is huge! So much good has come from our road system. We are connected to almost anyone, anywhere. Everything we ever needed, we have because truckers bring in products to the stores. We can get from point A to point B lickety split. Such is our life. It is a road system, with much good coming from the road system. But how do we grow into a great road system? Construction! We are continually in a state of construction in the gospel. If we weren't in construction to grow in different areas of our life, our roads would be vulnerable to the elements, to snow, rain, traffic. We always have to strive to make our roads better, a little improvement here, a lane there. We have lots of resources to help build our roads, the gospel, friends, family, books, the scriptures, church, the temple, the Lord, prayer. And with continual improvement to our roads soon enough we become an amazing infrastructure of roads going every direction. These roads can be compared to the lives we touch, the things we learn, the people we meet, the experiences we gain, the lessons we learn, the talents we develop.

All too easy!

I did it! I did it! I created....yes....a blog. Today I should be at the hospital right now doing a preassessment on the patient I'm taking care of tomorrow, and here I am getting caught up in another technicological time sucker. But...there are benefits to this blog thing as opposed to dishing out 500 texts a month only to get the bill. This is free! And not just that, I get a chance to document my life, my story. I spent two hours this morning writing in my journal and only pumped out 4-5 pages. Ah the freedom of typing. So I'm making a goal to do this thing twice a month!