Dental Hygiene!!

Wednesday was my first day of Hygiene school! It was so exciting, and I went in being a little more nervous than I thought I would be. But it was all ok. Wednesday is usually my clinic days so we went in and got all of our supplies (2 big moving boxes full), and our instruments (a gallon ziploc bag full of about 75 different instruments). We put sets of instruments together, filled out all of our paper work and basically just got all set up with everything we need in order to start working and stuff next week. But I now have an entire set of around 75 of my own instruments...like these...
The teachers there seem very nice and helpful for the most part. There are a couple that I'm not sure about yet but I haven't seen much of them yet either, so we'll see how they turn out. My favorite teacher so far is there taking over for the lady who usually runs the thing because she is out this semester on sebatical. The fill in lady was one of the original teachers years ago who started the program at PCC and she is absolutely fantastic! She also teaches my lecture on Thursday morning that goes with my clinic. The other teacher, who teaches my nutrition/prevention, as well as my radiography class seems very neat also. We're already kinda friends because her name is Joy and she says everyone calls her Jill; and I let her use my planner yesterday when she messed up some dates on her syllabus and needed to figure out the right dates.

So far, everything has been amazing. It's hard to describe, but I am just so happy there. It is so much work, and I am going to be SO busy; but I am finally doing and learning what I love and am interested in. It's weird to think that the past 3 years that I have been in college (long enough for me to be getting a bachelor's degree in December) has all been for things that I don't even care about. Psychology is interesting, but not nearly as much as hygiene, and I won't ever be a psychologist. So all this time in my UA classes when they talk about "when you're practicing psychology in the field...", I have always thought to myself "I'm never going to practice psychology..." But now that I'm in hygiene, that is what I'm going to do, and because of that I love going to school and learning as much as I can about it; because I know in 2 years when I finish, that is what I'll be doing. I'll be in my own office, with my own patients, and I'll be licensed to work on them because of this schooling I'm in now.

It is weird to explain, but I can't tell you how fulfilling it is. Finally after waiting 2 and a half years, I'm finally doing what I've wanted to since I was a little girl. I love it!

Anyway, I have a ton of homework (3 chapters for 1 class, 6 articles for another class, 1 practice module for clinic, and 3 chapters out of a book for my UA class) all to do this weekend, while we have all of Danny's family down for Labor Day weekend. I still have a bunch of classes today, tomorrow, and next week that I haven't even been to yet. It's crazy, I'm taking a total of 24 credits this semester between hygiene and UA, and I'm so busy and have SO many things to do...but I love it still!

More to come later I'm sure...

Have a great holiday weekend!

Seattle

We got home from Seattle on Saturday night around 10. It was a great trip, and definitely what we needed right before school starts. Unfortunately we didn't end up going to Anchorage, because there was a volcano that erupted there a couple of weeks ago and because of the ash in the air from that almost all the flights were still cancelled in and out of Anchorage. We may have been able to get in, but we didn't know when we'd get home. So we decided to just stay the whole time in Seattle instead. It was actually better that we did too. Dan was trying to decide if he wanted to drive to either Spokane or Columbia River, Washington on Saturday instead of stay another day in Seattle, but we decided we wouldn't have enough time to really enjoy it.

Friday, we got in there around 10 am, picked up the rental car, checked into our hotel and then went to eat lunch at Red Robin. After we finished and rested a little bit, we went to see the Seattle temple. It was absolutely beautiful, except for the work that was being done on the spire. It was covered in the scaffolding so we couldn't really even see the spire. It was kinda sad, we were a little dissapointer, but we'll just have to go back again sometime, when it's done.


Then we took a trip downtown to the Starbucks Headquarters.

We passed Safeco Field, where the Seattle Mariners play, as well as Quest Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play and added those parks to our collection.

Then we went down to the Pike's Place Market and walked around.
We saw the flying fish and lots of interesting people. Danny and I saw a girl with literally neon orange hair. Very interesting.

From there we passed the Nordstrom headquarters, as we walked over to the Monorail, which we rode down to the Space Needle.

We went up the Space Needle and saw all the cool sites from way up there, as well as heard a lot of cool facts about the Space Needle from the tour guide up there.



From there we went to dinner at a place my dad had recommended from all the time he used to spend in Seattle on business. It was called Il Fornaio, italian and delicious.
That was about it from the first day, by that time we were all dead from being up since 3:30 am, sitting through a 2 and a half hour flight, and by the time we finished dinner it was almost 8 pm. So we went back to the hotel and crashed. Danny and I went out later to get a few things from Target, which was where I bought my new favorite addiction... :D
(For hating to read, I am already through 110 pages and 5 chapters, in just a short time of having the book and not having a ton of time to read it yet.)

Saturday morning we got up and had an amazing free breakfast at the hotel. We got ready and went to do a little exploring. We drove through the Microsoft headquarters which was across the street from our hotel.
Then we went to find Bill Gates' house. We found the garage of it, but we couldn't see the rest because the front is on a lake and the rest is covered in huge trees and bushes. There was an attendant at the garage though, which was funny. Then we went to a huge mall and went shopping for a couple of hours. We finished up, ate lunch and went back to return the car and then headed over to the airport.

It was overall a great weekend, with very smooth travel. We flew stand-by both on the way there and on the way back, and luckily we got on both flights we were trying for and were all able to sit together both times. So much fun, we'll definitely be going back sometime. We definitely recommend it to anyone thinking about heading over there!

Twilight Books

We're in Seattle, and because we're going to be on the plane for another 3 hours tomorrow, and in the airport, etc. I decided to see what all the craze is about.

I went tonight and bought myself this book...

I'm excited to get into it and hopefully gain back an interest in reading.

More to come about our trip in a couple days when we get back home to Tucson!

Dan's Birthday Celebration

His birthday actually isn't until Saturday, but we'll be in Anchorage then, and I wanted to celebrate with him before so we could just celebrate together and I could give him his present.  He has been having some pretty rough times at work this week, so when he got home on Tuesday, I was all ready and said "change your clothes, we're going to celebrate your birthday tonight!"  He was pretty surprised because I had built it up that I didn't know what I was going to get and that I still didn't have a  present for him.

So he did, and he chose to go to Texas Roadhouse for dinner.  We had a very big, filling dinner and then went to pick up my wedding ring from Kay from being cleaned.  We went home, and he thought the night was over.  Hahaha...I told him to sit down on the couch and I brought out his gift.  With my textbook money that I had gotten from selling all my summer school books back, I managed to get him a brand new, never opened, still in shrink wrap iPod Touch from Craigslist.  A guy had gotten the same deal I did, and got it free but already had one.  My sweet husband was so surprised!  I loved it, he sat and played with it for around 2 and a half hours; he was like a little kid at Christmas.  "This is wicked cool!" he'd say.  It made me so happy to be able to see him smile again.  It was almost as if he had forgotten about everything at work for a little while.  

I was debating on whether I should give it to him before we left for Seattle so he could get it all ready for the trip first, or if I should wait and give it to him Friday night in Seattle.  I'm so glad I decided to do it the way I did!

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

I Converted...

A couple of days ago, I was talking to my dad and was telling him how my computer was running really slow and that I was thinking of getting a new one sometime in the near future when I could save up.  He asked how much Mac Books were going for and I told him that they were having a sale right now because school is starting back up again.  Needless to say...yesterday, I drove out to the Foothills, to the rich mall and bought myself one of these babys:

and...I got one of these for free because I bought that...

Very exciting.  The only weird thing is that it's a Mac lol.  I just need to get used to having a Mac instead of a PC now.  But, our internet has been out since early Tuesday morning, so I have been trying to connect to the neighbors as I can, so I haven't gotten the FULL feel of the new computer yet.  But it's coming.  I'm going to take it to Seattle and Anchorage so I'll have a reliable internet source in the hotel.

I'm very excited about my new toys!  I do recommend the MacBook if anyone is considering getting one.  I've always had a PC, this is the first Mac I've ever owned, and it's so much better. 

 Have a great weekend!  Talk to you all when we get home from our trip!

Wedding Weekend #2 Continued...

I just had to add a few more pictures from Aubrey's wedding here for everyone to see. Some of the professional pictures of us came out really good and now that Aubrey got them and sent them to me, I can share them here! Yay! So here you go. Enjoy!