Job Hunting

As much as I have loved working at the lovely Olive Garden for the past 4 years, I am about ready for a big girl job now that I'm all graduated and such. I have been looking for a medical job which would allow me to start in the summer most likely. 

I did an internship with Intermoutain Medical Center, and they have an opening, but it's just for 1 year and then I would be back to square one searching for a job. I have looked at some skilled nursing facilities, but I'm not sure if that is the place for me. I love the hospital setting and would love to find a job in a hospital, but it would be really hard to find one, let alone one in which I wouldn't have to work every holiday or weekend. I've been working weekends for the past 4 years and I'm tired of it. 

I've sent in applications to a few school districts, which the schedule is nice, but you don't make nearly as much as you do in a hospital, simply because you are working more hours and more days out of the year than a school SLP. My first interview I had was with Davis School District. I was planning a school district job as a backup option, but as I walked away from that interview, I felt really good about it, which was kind of weird. 

I interviewed with Canyons School District later that week and didn't feel as good about it for some reason. My potential boss was super nice and very reassuring that I would love working for her, but the only option she had for me was working in a junior or high school in which I have little to no experience. 

Even though it may mean working bad hours, I'm still really hoping for the IMC job. Because I was an intern there, I have a really good shot at getting the position, the only problem is that they haven't approved the position yet and it may take a while. The 2 school districts have already offered me positions and are super anxious for me to accept, but I really want to wait until I've interviewed at IMC and they've made a decision. Luckily Ryan was out of town after I interviewed with both school districts so I was able to use the excuse of wanting to talk to him in person before making a decision. 

Decisions, decisions, decisions... I really don't know what to do and could definitely use some divine intervention here in making the right decision. Looks like a trip to the temple may be in order or maybe even a few trips.  

Graduation Day

Wow it has really been forever since I have been on here. I had a girls weekend with one of my old roommates, Jayci, and I got chastised for not writing on my blog enough haha. So I am trying to better about it. Well let's go back almost 6 months to the time I graduated with my Masters Degree. 

I remember walking into my first day of class for graduate school thinking... "There is no way in heck am I ever going to survive this 21 month Masters program... do I really want to do this?" The next thing I knew I had survived my first semester (while planning my wedding must I remind) and my second as a newly-wedded lady. Before I knew it I was a mentor to a first year grad student and then off onto my externships for my last and final semester.

I have to admit that I felt more recognized for my undergraduate degree than this one. We got to sit on the floor in chairs next to the podium instead of in the audience with the undergraduates, but when I went up to get my diploma, I didn't even get to walk across a stage :( . They had 2 lines set up on either side of the stage and they just called names as people walked past the dean to pick up their case for their diploma. It was rather lame to be honest. For my undergrad I at least got to walk across a stage. Oh well, I'm finally done with grad school (well almost I have to finish my last few weeks at my externship first). 

Although I technically "walked" in May, because I wasn't finished my externship until the last week in May I didn't graduate until August 1st. That's ok, I still haven't found a job so I figure I will have a few weeks to have fun and play with no school or work to worry about. Right now I'm really wanting a medical job, but we will see where I actually end up. 

1st year Anniversary

I'm only 2 months behind with this post, but I wanted to brag about how my wonderful husband spoiled me.

I can't believe it has already been a year Ry and I have been married. Time really does fly by. I knew Ry had something planned for our anniversary, but  of course he wouldn't tell me anything. He didn't get home from work until almost 6 and didn't say anything when he came inside. I
asked him how work was and he barely said anything... he was acting so weird. He headed straight for the back bedroom and I heard him rummaging through things. He was in there for almost 30 minutes when he finally comes out and walks out the back door. I heard him get in his car and drive away. Well I thought we were celebrating our anniversary. A few minutes later I heard a knock on the back door. I went to open it and there was Ryan standing there. He asked me if I was ready for our date. He commented on how I had a "nice place," and then escorted me out to his car. He was acting just like he would have on a first date. When I asked him where we were going and what he had planned I realized that we were going to eat at the restaurant we had our first date, The Pie and then we were going to follow up with a laser light show at the Clark Planetarium. It was starting to make sense why he was acting the way that he was. He was trying to recreate our very first date as closely as he possibly could, this included talking to me like he didn't know many things about me or like the fact we had been married and been living together for the past year. He kept this act up for quite awhile and I have to say it was rather entertaining.

We enjoyed our homemade root beer and Chicken Ranch Pizza at the Pie. It was so delicious! We ended up even getting to go to the 

same show that we went to for our first date, who would have 

thought that the Planetarium would have been playing the same 

exact show that we saw almost 14 months before, but I'm sure glad

that they were. It was fun getting to see the same show and I have to admit that Ryan was right with his original statement on our first date of this laser light show being as close to experiencing drugs without actually using drugs haha. Of course he had to use that same statement before the show started. I think one of my favorite parts of the laser show this time was this little boy sitting a few rows in front of us who was pretending that all of the lasers were coming out of his pretend gun that he was shooting around crazily. It was hysterical, even with the loud U2 music in the background you could still hear this little boy making his own sound effects for his "laser gun." Needless to say it was pretty entertaining. When the show was over we got back on the freeway and began heading south. Ryan had told me that he booked us a place to stay for the night and I guess I had assumed it would be in Park City, but obviously I was wrong. Instead Ryan surprised me by taking to me to this cute bed and breakfast down in Cottonwood Heights.

Ry also surprised me with such a cute gift. He had saved all of our stubs from tickets for all of our dates over the past 2 years. It was so cute! He even kept the ticket stub from our very first date - the laser light show.

It doesn't stop there, after our stay at our bed and breakfast, the next day Ryan had another surprise for me. 

(our cute bed and breakfast)

He ended up surprising me with an hour Swedish couples massage! Boy was it heavenly! I felt kind of bad though because I ended up taking the female masseuse and made Ryan take the male masseuse. The thought of having another guy rubbing my back kind of weirded me out, so I was mean and made Ryan take the guy. It probably wouldn't have been bad, if his masseuse hadn't of kept leaning over and whispering in Ryan's ear every few minutes "How's the pressure?" HAHA I just had to laugh. At least Ryan now has a new funny story for one of his comedy bits. 

Needless to say I am very luck to have such a wonderful husband how spoils me and always has his own fun ways of surprising me! :) 

Night Skiing

In February we joined up with my 2 old roommates Alisa and Amy and their husbands and went night skiing up to Brighton. We had been trying to plan this for almost a year, but it never ended up working out for last winter because of my ridiculous wedding planning, so it got put off until this winter. We had so much fun. Alisa and Brian and Amy and Jordan were all on skis, but Ryan and I stuck to snowboarding. I'm still not very good because a lack a confidence in my snowboarding abilities after last year. The one time we tried to go last year after we got married, I ended up catching my edge on our first run down, falling on a very icy patch of snow and bruising my tailbone. This time I did a lot better, but had a hard time trying to keep up with some of the others on their skis. 

After a great night of skiing and snowboarding we ended up going to the Porcupine Grill to get some amazing nachos and chat. We ended up only getting 2 orders of them for the 6 of us, which was a good thing because they were a big towering stack of them on each plate. We ended up not even finishing them entirely. 

It was so good to visit and ski with two of my best friends and their hubbies. Sadly this may be the first and last time we are able to do this. Alisa and Brian are moving to Idaho after Brian graduates in April and Amy and Jordan are moving to Texas for the summer for Jordan's internship. I'm super sad that both of my friends are leaving Utah, but I guess that just gives Ry and I an excuse to take a few road trips to visit them. :) 

Birthday, Valentines, and the Praxis

I'm 2 months late with this one, but I wanted to share. 

For my graduate program we have to pass a Praxis test before we can graduate and get certified. Well I had been dreading this test for a very long time. The Praxis is fair game to test you on anything you learned in any of my speech therapy undergraduate or graduate coursework. Luckily you only need a 600 which roughly equals a 60% to pass. The test is 120 questions and you have 120 minutes to complete the test. I hate timed tests because I feel so pressured to finish in time! I ordered a study book with some practice tests. I took one practice test first to see how much I knew on my own without studying and I ended up barely not passing. This made me pretty nervous though because this meant that I would have to put in some major studying time if I wanted to pass. I could always take the test again, but I didn't want to spend another $120 to take it. I studied a little here and there, but it was hard to find the motivation to study when I had to study for an online class, was working at my externship at the hospital 30+ hours a week, and working my job another day a week. I ended up having the day off before I had to take the Praxis, so I spent all day cramming as much as I possibly could. I studied a little more the morning of my test and then went to take it. My score popped up when I had finished the test and for a minute I forgot what I needed to pass. I was just expecting it to say PASSED or FAILED along with my score but it never did. Luckily I did pass. In fact I did a lot better than I had anticipated! 

So to celebrate Ryan took me to one of my favorite restaurants to celebrate the next week... Benihana. We technically were celebrating 3 things - my birthday, passing the Praxis, and then Valentines day (because I was scheduled to work on Valentines day). It was so yummy! Ryan definitely knows how to spoil me! :) 

Now I just have to finish this online class, finish this externship and my next externship and then I will be done. Well at least with school, then I have to put on my big girl pants and find a job. 

Christmas

I know I'm about 4 months late, but I had to share about our first Christmas together. 

We were lucky enough to get a Christmas tree from Ryan's sister and brother-in-law. It was their Christmas tree they used when they were first married and it was just the right size for our living room. My mom also gave us a couple other smaller Christmas trees to use as well. Needless to say we had a Christmas forest in our living room this year. 

 One of our Christmas traditions we started this year was going to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights (I know just about everyone has this tradition, but it's a good one). One of our favorite things about the lights at Temple Square is all of the bags that are lit up with tea lights and have Christmas greetings in various languages. Ryan's favorite is finding all of the Polish ones.

I have to admit Ryan's parents definitely spoiled us for Christmas this year. Ryan's dad works as a sales manager at a piano store and whenever one of his kids gets married he gets them a piano. Because Ryan and I both play the piano he let us pick out a little nicer one. :) I was on cloud nine! I have been wanting a piano for years now and was so excited to get this beauty for Christmas. Boy does it sound great and it fits perfectly in our living room.

Another Christmas tradition we started, is going to midnight mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. We waited outside in the cold for about 2 hours before it started. It was a good thing that I bundled up or else I would have froze to death! I had to admit it was very... different. Not like any sacrament meeting, stake conference, or general conference I have ever been to, but it was interesting to compare and contrast the practices of Catholicism to our religion. The one thing that was very different was the incense. Mass ended up being a lot longer than I had originally anticipated, so we ended up getting home after 2 am. I was pretty darn beat and tired by the time we got home.

Ryan had told me that he had thought long and hard about what to get me for Christmas and a couple of weeks before Christmas he told me that he couldn't think of anything and so he was just going to get me some gift cards to some of my favorite stores. I kind of thought this was lame, but I didn't really believe him at first I knew he had something planned but I didn't know what. For weeks I had been complaining about how we had very limited seating in our living room and wanted some accent chairs to go in our living room for when we had company over to visit. We had actually looked at a few at RC Willey when we were there with my brother and sis-in-law looking at furniture, but they were pretty pricey. I had showed Ryan a few at Target that weren't as expensive. Well my wonderful husband went out and bought me these 2 very cute accent chairs to go in our living room. After we got home from Midnight Mass, he waited until I was asleep to sneak downstairs where he had hidden my chairs and brought them upstairs and wrapped a big bow around them to surprise me for Christmas morning. I was very surprised and overly ecstatic! I was so proud of him for picking out the chairs because not only were they just cute by they matched our living room perfectly!

Now that Casey, Savannah, and Brody had moved out downstairs we had a whole lot of extra room that was just empty. Ryan and I had kicked around the idea of buying another couch to put downstairs, a sectional of course. So before Christmas we went out and bought ourselves a very large and comfy Christmas present. I was so excited to have our couch for Christmas so we could sprawl out on it while watching all of the movies we got for Christmas.

Needless to say we were very spoiled for  Christmas this year!