Roadtrip

Chris and I finally had a weekend that wasn't incredibly crazy so we went to Madison.  It was really great to see Dave and Laura.  Elsie also got to see her boyfriend, Colby (although I think they broke up after she got mad and tried to eat him).  We had an amazing weekend of studying (for me), gaming (for the boys), food and friends. 

Chris and I also were able to stop and see Jacq while she was in IN defending her dissertation (which she passed!!!!)  It was a nice visit and we can't wait to see her, Dan and their little one in November!!!!

Since we were driving through Indy, we had to stop because I really do love Chick-fil-a with all my heart.  Best. Dinner. EVER!

Friendship

Friendship is a funny thing. You make friends based on your current lifestyle and they seem easy to maintain. In college (if you went to a super small school like me:) everyone lived within a 5 block radius so visiting and finding time together is never an issue. The problem is each of you have your own pathway to follow in life. Maintaining friendships across those pathways becomes much more difficult. Dreams change, some paths get closer while others spread further apart. The amount of work required, the divergence of paths and finding time to dedicate to friends is suddenly not as easy as it was in the past.

Keeping up with friends from high school or college changes as your lives change. What you had in common is now the past. Remaining current in their lives requires more information because it no longer coincides quite as much with your life. While this means many more stories (Story time!!!), it also means more time, new people to remember and relationships to keep straight. Within the blink of an eye you find yourself on a whole different path than your friends. The goals you shared have all been accomplished. The new goals set are no longer similar. With changing goals comes lifestyle changes. It is pretty easy to find yourself and your friends in whole new places in your lives that may or may not correlate. Suddenly you find yourself struggling to relate to each others lives.

Relating to new places in your friends life requires time. However, we all are trying to figure out our place in the world and discovering that place requires a lot of time and dedication. Finding time to catch up with old friends can become more difficult. Plus coordinating schedules is a lot harder with the individual commitments, distance, and time changes.

All these factors mean that friendship is suddenly a lot more work than it had been previously. So what do you do? Do you let friendships go? Do you continue to work hard to maintain them?

There are times when you are having a rough week and haven't had time to tell any of your friends about the stresses of that particular week. It's that card that comes in the mail to tell you that someone thinks you are great, that they realize how hard school is and want to congratulate you on being half way done. It is that card that really makes you smile and reminds you why maintaining friendships is so important.

So pretty much this was a really long way to say thanks for the card-it made me smile, it made my week better and made me think about all the friendships I have that are worth the work to maintain.

Wreath Obsession!

With midterms behind me, only the hovering doom of two remaining finals and my summer plans complete, I find myself with nothing to stress about and a lot of down time. Of course this leads to CRAFTS! What else did you expect from me? Yesterday I was quite the crafting machine. After the test I went shopping for a little retail therapy (ok in my case it is mostly window shopping therapy but still equally fun) and purchased a few things to craft with!


The first thing I did was update my holiday frame seeing as how it is no longer Easter. I wanted something fun, bright and fresh to celebrate spring. This is what I ended up with.
The bird house is my favorite part-nice find Jenna!!!

I have been wanting to make a house warming gift for friends who recently bought their first house. A few weeks ago I found the perfect house warming wreath but couldn't find the time to craft. The monogram wreath is the perfect gift since they can hang it on their new front door but also because it celebrates their upcoming wedding!!!



The wreath was really easy to make (although it did require 6-8 glue sticks!!!). I love the contrast with the navy blue ribbon. I made the flowers out of leftover fabric. I really hope they like it (I also hope they are surprised since I haven't given it to them yet and have no idea if they read my blog...)


To continue along with my wreath obsession, I also finished a colorful spring wreath for my house. I love the bright colors and how fun it turned out.



Sorry the pictures aren't the greatest but by the time I finished all this crafting was a little dark outside. The hardest part of this wreath was wrapping the yard around the wreath and pipe cleaners. It took me a good hour and a half (and I had finished 1/3 of it before midterms). Good thing I love the finished product!!!

Passover

Chris, with his theology degree, enjoys learning and discussing religion and belief systems. Since I grew up atheist with some Jewish and Christian beliefs thrown in, I often get to introduce him to religious aspects from my childhood. This time we celebrated Passover with the help of my Grandma who sent us one of my favorite childhood treats, chocolate covered matzoh and some amazing Internet recipes of my favorite Passover dishes, matzoh ball soup and charoset. We had a lot of fun making new food, trying new things and discussing religion. It was was our last night of dates through the program at our church. By making food and celebrating the end of our date night adventures, we got to spend some much needed quality time together.

With how crazy our lives are right now, we are looking forward to summer. We have so many friends and family that we cannot wait to visit! I think Chris and I are both ready for more sleep, adventures and sunshine (ooh and crafting too but somehow I don't think Chris is super excited about that one)!


Although this is Chanukah related, I couldn't pass it up:)

Midterms

So I started blogging fairly regularly. Even though I had many blogs in mind for the last week, I unfortunately spent the days stuck in my vet school world preparing for midterms and only surfaced for a few hours to celebrate Easter with Mom, Gene, Abbey and Zach. Easter was an amazing celebration of faith, love and family.

Midterm prep however has not been as much fun. Within the last 7 days I have spent somewhere close to 80 hours studying (while still attending 21 hours of class). I wish I could say that this weekend is going to be a nice relaxing time to recuperate however there is another midterm on Monday. Recently I saw a facebook post comparing being a solider to being a student. It said something to the effect of one of these is truly stressful the other is sitting in a library enjoying a $12 coffee drink. Now while I don't think that being a student is more stressful than fighting wars, I do think that the comparison was unfair for many reasons. While I am not worried about surviving, I am however totally stressed out most of the school year. I spend more than 30 hours a week in class then a minimum of 4 hours a day studying. The maximum hours I have spent studying on a day that I also had class is 7 and the maximum on a weekend is 12. School for me is set up so that every 4 weeks I either have midterms or finals each covering approximately 120 hours worth of class material. This has managed to stress me out for the last few years. I also believe that being a solider and being a professional school student are important for very different reasons. While protecting U.S. citizens is really important, without doctors, veterinarians, lawyers and a plethora of other educated people there would be no more society left to protect. Finally I have so much money in student loans that I can guarantee that you will never find me drinking a $12 beverage.
Now don't get me wrong, I am so excited to become a veterinarian and cannot wait for my future career. I do feel that people need to realize that all jobs in society are crucial to its function. Making comparisons like the one I saw on facebook are not only unfair but also making assumptions about something that you yourself have never experienced. With this note I will return to submerging myself in my vet school world. Wahooo Organ Systems Pathology :)

The Family

I mentioned in the blurb about me that my husband and I have two furry children (and a fish!). When I was young my parents apparently played a game of who was smarter their new baby (me) or the basset hound (Darwin) that we had. It might have taken me a while but eventually I became smarter than Darwin :) Recently, I was telling Chris about my intelligence being determined by comparing me to the dog. It sparked a conversation about our dogs and their intelligence levels. When I graduated from college and moved into our new house I lived in Illinois by myself and wanted a dog for company. Chris pick out and surprised me with Elsie as a graduation present. She is a German Shepard mix (she potentially has some greyhound or whippet in her as well). She is by far one of the smartest dogs I have ever met. We call her Houdini. She first figured out how to escape from her cage while we were gone. It took us a while but we finally figured out how to keep her in her cage (turns out the best thing was when we adopted our other dog...apparently Elsie was bored by herself!). Last month Elsie figure out how to jump onto the 2x4 cross beam of our gate and balance (while barking at all the people passing by). Once she mastered that hoping down on the other side of the gate and chasing random people was quite the game!



In October Chris and I adopted Ally who is a pit bull lab mix (??? maybe???) from the animal shelter. She is the sweetest dog. She may not be as intelligent (ok she is nowhere close to being as intelligent) but she makes up for it in enthusiasm. She is always so excited to see us. Every night she starts of sleeping on the floor and every morning she ends up laying with her head on my chest looking at me, just hoping that it is time for breakfast.



We aren't completely sure what Ally's life was like before coming to live with us but when she first came home she was really skittish with Chris and cowered if she got in trouble. We have been working with her a lot and she no longer is skittish around men. While she still manages to get into trouble she no longer cowers on the floor.


This is what an average day in our house looks like...

Another thing about me is that I run on Mt. Dew. I think this is fitting :) Thanks for the idea!!!!

KEEP CALM And CRAFT ON

As previously mentioned I decided that I loved the variations of the KEEP CALM and CARRY ON signs. This version seems fitting for my newest hobby---CRAFTING!

I fell in love with the carry yarn version. I think it is hilarious. It will probably be up year round. I also decided that I needed a seasonal one (that way visitors have to keep coming back to see more :) ).
Thought this was perfect for the season!




They were pretty easy to make. It also was fun to search for creative ideas and create my own.

Vet School Update

The first quarter of this year was rather tough for me. My 94 year old Grandfather was ill after breaking his hip. I spent a lot of time going to nursing homes getting him to eat and not enough quality time with my notes. At the end of the semester I had to take a test, the MILESTONE (it was pretty intimidating so I thought caps would help portray that) over all the material from the first year and a half of vet school. I recently got the results from the test and scored above average with a score higher than this years passing boards rate. I was super excited considering I didn't really have time to study with all of the family complications.

This semester has been much more conducive to studying. I decided I would be more productive if I stayed and did all of my studying at the school since there are less distractions. So far it has been very successful.

Today I found out that I have a summer job! I was offered a position working for the Poison Control Center located in Urbana (only a few blocks from the house!). The Poison Control Center receives calls from all over the country from pet owners and veterinarians about the ingestion of poisonous substances. They provide information about clinical signs of toxicity and what treatment protocol to follow. I am super excited about this opportunity to gain a better understanding of toxic compounds and handling emergency situations.

I also fell in love with KEEP CALM and CARRY ON signs. Next time you visit I am sure they will be throughout the house:) Here is one for the blog!!!

Fitness Goals

About 6 months ago Chris and I decided we needed to begin eating healthier. We both began paying more attention to the food choices we made. This worked out really well. Turns out you don't eat as much junk food when it has more calories in it than you ate for an entire meal. This weight loss plan worked for a while until we both hit a weight loss plateau. After spending a few weeks trying to find a way to use healthy food to loose more weight, we finally realized if we really wanted to continue on our healthy pathway we needed to start exercising regularly. So we devised a plan- 4 hour long walks with the dogs a week, 5 early morning runs (really short ones as we get started but hopefully in a few months they will be longer) and a lot of abs. We are now on week 2 and feeling much healthier. It also is a good way for us to spend time together and talk (only on the walks-while running there is only panting...no talking :) ). The other thing that I have been working on (that comes easier to Chris ) is drinking more water than diet soda. I have been trying to drink 2 18 oz. water bottles a day to counteract the 4 (ish) diet dews a day.

So hopefully in a few weeks I can post again to say that we are 1 month in and going strong.


Since I love having pictures so much here is one of our Magnolia tree blooming for the first time!