Dad

I really feel the need to express my gratitude for my dad today, especially with Father's Day being this weekend. He does SO much for us constantly, monetarily and otherwise, and I never really sit down to express how thankful I am for all he does and has done for us over the past two years.

For my entire life, my dad has done so much for me. He always made sure I had the things I needed and sometimes the small extras that I simply wanted for school or my activities. He always made sure I had the best of everything I had; you could definitely say he spoiled me. Although my parents have been divorced since I was 4, my dad has always made sure to do everything he could to be present in mine and my brother's life. As much grief as I give him for allowing my brother to get away with everything, as I really look back, I got away with a lot too, he was just more protective because I was his first and only daughter.


While most of the things he's given me throughout my life have been monetary gifts, it still means more than just money to me. It goes so much deeper than just handing me a 20 when I see him. He always watches out for the things we need monetarily. He makes sure that we're not going to sink and that we can still succeed. I suppose that is just the best way he knows how to be a father. He will do anything he needs to in order to send my brother and I through as much college as we want at no expense to us. I have a bachelors degree and am about to get an associates degree soon, and as of now I have no student debt whatsoever, thanks to my dad. While I know it is part of learning and growing to encounter those types of monetary trials, somehow even with my dad's help, we still end up having our own struggles. I guess my dad would rather us be able to focus on becoming everything we want to become than worry about the smaller more tedious things.

I always hate asking him for money and I only do when I absolutely have to. (Like if our electricity is going to be turned off if we don't pay the bill) But there are so many things that are just small extras that he always makes sure we have, if we want them.

For instance, he came to let me clean his teeth last semester even though he hadn't been to the dentist in 10+ years because he hates going. He made the sacrifice 3 times to drive to Tucson from Chandler to help me learn. During his visits, he noticed that my instructors consistantly were telling me to sit up straight and that I have terrible posture. They would always follow it up with the question if I had bought loupes or not?

(Loupes are those glasses with the magnifiers on the lenses like in Grey's Anatomy & ER. They force/allow you to sit correctly and still be able to see what you're doing just as well. Preventing carpal tunnel and all the other problems that can arise from sitting incorrectly day after day for years)


When I would tell my instructors that I didn't buy the loupes when everyone else in the class did because I didn't have an extra $1500.00 laying around, my dad became concerned. He immediately asked if I really needed them and instructed me to email him the rep's number so he could call and place the order. Even though he's not totally hyped on me becoming a dental hygienist, he still felt the importance of the loupes, and didn't want the cost to be the reason I didn't have something I needed.

My loupes arrived today in the mail, and I can't be more grateful to my dad for them!

Over the past two years, even though my dad contemplated disowning me when Danny and I got engaged, he has since:

~Come to the temple, to wait outside and see us come out, even with as completely anti as he is

~Walked me down the aisle at the ring ceremony

~Bought a house for us to live in rent free while I'm in school
~Lent Danny money for his school so he would be able to register and get the classes he needed before the deadline
~Paid a few of our bills when Dan was out of a job for a month
~and SO much more.

Those are just the three things that hit me the most because they were the things that he swore he would never do when Dan asked if he could marry me.

I know there will never be anything I can do to repay my dad for all he's done for me throughout my life, and now for Danny and in the first 2 years of our marriage. As much as Alan & I tease him about having "gas station pizza" & peaches for dinner every night when we were younger and in school elementary school, those are the memories we will never forget. I just wanted to sit and really contemplate and express my love and appreciation for him today and always. I Love You, Dad!


His 50th birthday is coming up in November and I am trying with all my might to think of something wonderful to do/get for him. I want something that he'll never forget, something that will be one of the highlights of his life when he looks back on it. Any suggestions?

A Little Catch Up

A little update as to what's been going on for the past few weeks...

Dan's brother Jared moved back to Mesa with his parents. The situation ended up being much more involved than we knew and it was something we just didn't have the ability to help him with. He needed to be with his parents and get the help he needs from them. I believe he re-registered for his ENG 101 class at MCC, which is good so he can still have something to occupy his free time until he gets a job.

The situation was starting to get rough on everyone and the original idea of the move had been lost track of. So it was better for everyone that he move back home and be around his parents who have the ability to help him get back on his feet and moving again, and then later on if he wants to come back and start his own life away from everything, we'll try again.


I started my 5 week summer clinic the day after Memorial Day/Our Anniversary. It's been rough. I am officially a 2nd year/Senior and therefore I work with the 2nd year instructors who think like 2nd year instructors. It's been a LOT of information and learning VERY fast, which has been good; but sometimes they forget that we haven't been second years for more than a few weeks and we're not totally familiar with how they do everything and their expectations. One of the instructors told some of the girls that if you're not going to make it through the program, this 5 weeks will be the semester that breaks you. Just to give some feeling as to how important these 5 weeks are. It is much more stressful finding patients since it's summer and there isn't a lot of time to finish them. Luckily somehow, I've pulled through. I don't want to jynx it yet because I still have 1 more day of clinic and my last patient to finish, but I think in the end it should all come together for me. Hopefully it will for all the rest of my girls too!

We're trying to save up a little money to go spend the 4th of July in St. George, UT with Wes & Tiff Webster. We owe then BIG TIME for all the times they've come to see us, and we've missed going to see them. It's WAY past our turn. We're excited for that trip, it'll be a nice little weekend getaway with some of our best friends. We miss them so much and can't wait until we live close so we can hang out all the time!

Lately it's felt like we have been in this rut that we just can't pull out of. I know I'm not being very patient, and that I want it to all be fixed just like that, but it seems like we were doing well even with having so little, and the past few weeks it just seems like we've hit a road block and can't get past it.

There are so many things we want to do in the next very short period of time (which also adds to the stress). Some of which are:

~Save for our 4th of July trip to St. George
~Sell both of our vehicles
~Buy a new vehicle that we can both drive
~Buy a house
~Save for our trip to Minneapolis in August
~Buy simple things like textbooks and school supplies

I suppose it's just discouraging because we have always been able to do the things we want to, even if it takes a little while to save up, etc. we've always been able to do the things we put our minds to. But with these things, many of them are so big that we're not able to do them right now with our financial situation.

It was rough for us when Dan dropped down to working part time to focus on school, and I wasn't working at all. So right now we're just trying to catch up on bills and everything else. But I guess the problem is that we wanted to do so much this summer, when we had time to focus on it and really work on it, and it doesn't look like we'll be able to do too much before school starts again.

Hopefully though, as long as we can get ourselves back on track this summer, we can minimize the stress of when we actually do have to some of the big things this fall.

Such is life I guess. I just need to suck it up and keep going!

I have started writing a journal recently! I always wish I would write things down, but I just never have time, and I hate handwriting everything. I always feel like I have so much to write and my hand gets tired so I start cutting things out. So, I've started typing my entries, and I will print them and add them to a 3 ring binder Journal I bought years ago. I'm trying to go back to at least when we were married and catch up, while I write about the current happenings as well. It's been a fun project and something I look forward to continuing for a long time.


I also watched the movie Twilight...finally!! It totally got me hooked back into the series again. I have fallen out of reading since I started New Moon and Edward LEFT! I was SO angry that I read a few more chapters and then quit, and that's where I've been for months. But now after watching the movie I am totally getting back into it and hope to finish it and Eclipse at least by the end of the summer. Ultimately I'd love to finish the series because once school starts again, my spare reading time is over and it's back to reading textbooks... we'll see what happens, I'll be sure to keep you updated on how far I get!

Happy 2 Years!

Memorial Day weekend we celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary! We had a great weekend reflecting on everything we've been through in the past 2 years since our wedding. There has been a lot of things both good and not so good, but they have all made us so much stronger. It's amazing how much stronger our love for each other has grown. We didn't think that we could get any closer and love each other anymore than we did when we got married, but man were we wrong. It's been a great 2 years and we're excited to see what the next year holds!

We celebrated by going to stay a day and night in the Marriott Canyon Villas in north Phoenix. We looked at a couple of houses on that side of town while we were over there. We were able to visit with family and our friends Wes & Tiff while they were in town from St. George also. It was overall a great weekend and a nice short break from school and work and the other cares of life!





Check out the photo book Dan made for me!
(It's now a tradition, I made the first one last year, and he made the 2nd year's, so next year it will be my turn. It's interesting to see the difference in perspective based on who makes the book each year. What a fun tradition!)

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