HAPPY ANNIVERSARY (sort of)

Tomorrow is our 4 year anniversary. To celebrate, I brought Derek with me out to San Antonio for the national PA conference. I had to attend this year as a student because I am the Vice President of my class student society. As such, I represented my class in the student PA Assembly of Representatives. It was a fabulous few days of parliamentary procedure and voting on resolutions pertaining to the PA profession and student education. It was interesting enough for me, but also a little too formal for my liking. I prefer to be able to shout out my thoughts in normal English whenever I like which doesn't fly with parliamentary procedure. But, you'll all be happy to know that I played by the rules this weekend. I also got to attend a bunch of workshops on various helpful topics and mingle with fellow PAs and PA students from across the country. I'm pretty sure that Derek is stoked that for years to come many of our anniversaries will be celebrated wherever the AAPA conference is held. YIPPEE!

Although, most of my days were spent attending various conference meetings, I spent all the evenings tromping around San Antonio with my husband. San Antonio is a very cool city! It is almost more like two cities in one. There is the city up on the street, and then, the city down below on the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk is this quaint area full of shops, art stands, and restaurants. It is set up all along the San Antonio river which is lined by paths on either side and has bridges going across the river every few feet. It was really a neat thing to see. The blurry picture above is Derek and I eating dinner on the Riverwalk- we did this almost every night. You walk along, and all the menus are posted. When we found one we liked, we'd stop, eat, and then walk along and look at all the art stands and shops. Kind of fun. Here is a picture I found to give you an idea.

One night, we took a boat ride through the entire Riverwalk, and the guide told us all about the history and architecture of the Riverwalk. That was probably the thing we enjoyed the most. We also saw the Alamo. My history geek of a husband actually went back to the Alamo a second day while I was in a meeting and did an hour long audio tour around the Alamo grounds. He loved it of course, and I, wasn't sad to have missed it.
One night, we stayed in this totally cute little Bed and Breakfast on the river. I had to take pictures to show all my girls that are into interior decorating because this place was so neat. Here is the picture of the place from the outside:
Here is the bed:
The sink in the bathroom which I thought was so fun:
And, our view from the balcony off our room which is sort of hard to see because it was dark. We went out there one night to eat some ice cream. It was so hot in San Antonio (97 degrees and humid- yikes!)
Anyways, it was our first B&B experience. But, it was so fun, and we loved it! At the San Antonio airport, I had to take a picture in one of the rocking chairs. They have them all along the walls of the terminals. I loved the bit of Southern flare they added:
On the way home, we had a 2 hour lay over in Denver. Well, they over-booked our flight and were offering free round-trip tickets to anyone who offered to give up their seats. Derek and I jumped at the opportunity. It was still early in the day, and rather than sit around the airport all day, we rented a car and decided to see what Denver was like before we had to fly out at 9:30 pm later that night.

Of course, the first place Derek wanted to go was Boulder because he wanted to see University of Colorado's football stadium. I honestly didn't see what could be so exciting about a football stadium, but I went along with it because he was good enough to wait through all my long days in conference session in San Antonio. So, of course once there, Derek insisted on taking a picture with the Buffalo:Then, I convinced him to head to the Pearl street mall which is really just a ton of cute shops down the streets of downtown Boulder. We decided that Boulder was similar to Eugene only with mountains and clean/trendy hippees rather than the dirty ones that really could care less about anything here in Eugene. Of course, I couldn't resist a pic outside this shop:
Then, we went to nearby Chautauqau Park. I was dying to hike around on some of the many trails in the park, but of course our bags were on their way to Eugene while we were still in Denver, and I was not really wearing the best shoes for a hike. I settled for some pictures of the gorgeous mountain range in which Boulder sits:
We then left Boulder and drove to Red Rock Park to see the famous Red Rock amphitheatre where many well-known bands have played. It was really pretty neat to see. And, they have a little museum where you can go see all the famous people who have held concerts there. Here there were also all kinds of trails you could hike...that is, if you were wearing proper foot gear.
This was along the road on the drive up to the amphitheatre:
Then, we drove to downtown Denver and walked around the capital building:
Then, after this whirlwind tour of Denver, we were off to the airport again to fly home to Eugene. I decided I absolutely loved Denver with all the mountains, and the green, and the hiking trails just minutes from the city. I am totally pulling for Derek to get a job there after the NY adventure comes to an end.

We got into Eugene at about 11pm which was 1 am San Antonio time. We had woken up at 5:30 am or 3:30 am Eugene time to catch our flight that morning. So, we pretty much drove home and quickly passed out on our bed. Anyways, it was a great and very exhausting way to celebrate our anniversary. I think tomorrow, for our actual anniversary, we will be quite content to sit at home, relax, recover from our jet lag, and go to bed early. Sorry this post is so long, but since I don't scrapbook and actually took some pictures, I figured I better document them somewhere.

She/He Did it!!!

Today, Derek graduated from law school! He is officially done. And I, finished my last day of my last rotation on Thursday. We have Derek's parents, his sister, and our 19 year old nephew all staying in our 2 BR/1 bathroom apartment until Monday. EEEK! Hopefully things will quiet down around here then so I can get reacquainted with all your blogs.

We started out the day with a visit to Eugene's Saturday's market to give Derek's family a true taste of what it means to be a Eugenean. Taylor (our nephew) was quite interested with the tie-dye toilet paper. (That's right, the hippees in Eugene even tie-dye their toilet paper.) Then, after deciding to skip the food at Tofu Palace and listening to a girl on the soap box talk about how we should make love and not war he kindly asked if we were glad to be leaving this place soon. To which I honestly replied that I was actually very sad to be leaving. I mean where am I going to get my tie-dye toilet paper in NYC? And, though it was like 90 something degrees and I was wearing a skirt and heels I still managed to take free hippee hoola lessons.
Then, we got some lunch at Wendy's which seemed a much safer choice to my nephew and headed to the Hult Center for Derek's graduation ceremony. The ceremony was very nice except for one speaker who felt it his time to time take 30 whole minutes to tell us exactly how he felt of "this presidential administration." I believe he said something like Thomas Jefferson would be thoroughly disappointed and Benjamin Franklin would take off his spectacles in disapproval of this presidential administration. Whatever that means. I was ready to take of my spectacles (or maybe my shoe and throw it at him) in disapproval of his well over 45 minute speech.

After the ceremony, it was the boys' photo shoot time. They were all sweating bullets in their velvet gowns (or dresses as Derek referred to them). We had a hard time rounding up all the boys, but this is who we did manage to pin down. Some did not leave their gowns on long enough for a picture as you can see.
And the girls...
Post-graduation ceremony the whole fam headed to Red Robin for Derek's graduation dinner celebration (his choice of course). Then, we came back to our place for some cake. Here Derek's graduation cake courtesy of his Mother and Sister Steph.
As for me, I survived another 6 week rotation at Salem Hospital. I am officially done commuting and so glad to not have to do that hour drive up and back any more! This was a rotation filled with delirious elderly patients. My favorite story was one of an old lady who honestly thought there was a fire in the hospital one night and tried to pull all the other patients with their unstable gaits out of bed and rescue them to safety. Then, there was this little old lady who liked to strip down every five minutes. You'd help her get dressed and not 5 minutes later there she was on her bed lying buck naked again. There was another poor woman who had no clue where she was. She thought people had accused her of stealing at the nursing facility she lived in and that she had been taken away to jail. When I asked her if she was having any chest pain, she told me she had never been in trouble with the law before and would like to talk to her lawyer. And lastly, I was thrilled when a little gypsy lady we took care of told me where to find her palm reading shop in Salem and said that because I took such great care of her she would read my palm for free.

Anyways, just wanted to let you all know that we did it! And, now we'll hopefully have more time to see what you all have been up to.

Mini Miracles

First off, I'm so sorry I've been neglecting my little blogging sphere as of late. I have two weeks left in my last rotation of PA school and it has been busy! I am writing all kinds of papers, preparing for this lesson I have to teach for enrichment on women's health this week, trying to get my house cleaned before the in-laws come in for Derek's graduation, and this just in playing bridesmaid all weekend! I promise to catch up on all your blogs after I survive the next few weeks.

The weekend was fabulous!!! On Saturday, my very last roomate from college got married in the LA temple. Pictured on the left is the beautiful bride (Debbie) and the amazing groom (Carl). All five of us roomates who are still pretty close traveled from pretty much all over the country and got together as bridesmaids for her wedding. We left our husbands and kids who weren't breastfeeding at home and took off for sunny Southern California.

We all squished together to sleep in the same room once again and stayed up late talking and putting together wedding stuff every night. I don't think I got much more than 2 hours of sleep each night. It was a time of sleep deprivation, remembrances of the good ol' college days, and creating wonderful new memories together. We had a blast over all and left vowing to get together like this more frequently in the future.

I wanted to share some mini miracles (in my book anyways) that occured this weekend:

1. I functioned on very little sleep cruising through the weekend in a constant state of sleep deprivation without biting anyone's head off! My husband and possibly Ashley can attest that this is indeed a mighty miracle.

2. I, the girl who spent her entire childhood running from my mother who would chase me arround with comb and detangeling spray in hand trying to make me look at least presentable though I myself really did not care, got up at 5AM on the morning of the wedding to help the bride "do" or should I say glue her hair for the wedding. Debbie, who has the cutest short hair cut right now, just finished at the Dallas Roberts hair academy. She decided she wanted to have long hair for her wedding, so no big deal she just put in some extensions. Or, (back to the miracle) I put in the extensions for her. That's right I glued in hair extension for the bride the day of her wedding. That took tremendous faith on Debbies part, but I think they turned out ok. I really wish I had a picture to prove this acutally happened.

3. I, along with an assembly line of others, put together bouquets for the bridesmaids. Flower arranging by Chelsea is indeed a miracle. The birdesmaid bouquets were one thing, but then we needed to somehow decorate the top of the piano and who was it that put together this little ensamble...that right miraculous Chelsea. And, this I did take a picture of for proof.

4. The three girls from out of town got up at about 4:30am to head to the airport this morning. I miraculously was able to pack a breakfast surprise for us as we raced out the door. The girls were thrilled for my huge Costo muffin stash that I brought for them when we arrived at the airport and dropped our jaws at the price of what buying breakfast there would have cost us. But the real miracle occured when I, Chelsea, who spills more than a kindergatener, was the only one who didn't leave half her muffin in the form of crumbs on the airport chairs!

So, those are the miracle recaps of the weekend. Here are a few other pictures from the event.
Deb got all 12 of her bridesmaids these shirts and together all of us in our pink labeled shirts (Bridesmaid, Mother of the Bride, Mother of the groom, etc.) went for pedicures. It was a sight to behold! Pictured above are the 5 of us roomies who got together from all over for Deb's special day.
I had to document this because I thought it was the cutest idea that Deb came up with for her reception party favors. She had all these glass dishes with different types of candy and little scoops set out. Then, there were little sacs with draw string that you could scoop the candies of your choice into. Loved it!
The beautiful bride and her roomies +1 at the reception.