Chicken Nugget Girl

We had our first visitor in Virginia, Chance's good friend Nicole came to see us on her Fall break. It was nice to have some company and get out and do some exploring for a few days. Tim was also very very excited to have a guest. The kind of crummy thing about our rural location is that there is nothing close by to do, but drive a couple hours in any direction and you are in major cities, so besides having to drive a lot of hours, we had a lot of fun! Nicole was only here a few days, but we tried to cram a lot in. It is kind of a funny story how Chance knows her, maybe I can talk him into sharing that story on his blog, it's a good one! I met her for the first time last year when she came to see us in Hawaii, but I got sick and that sucked real bad. This time I got to hang out with her more and it was great to be able to gang up on Chance for a few days :)

Some things we did during Nicole's visit...

•  Went to beerfest, and sampled local microbrewery beers along with national beer companies
•  Drank too much at beerfest, and Nicole informed Chance that she did not want to be a 'chicken nugget girl'. None of us ever figured out what that meant, so we just laughed about it all weekend. 
• Went to Ocean City, MD and had Thrasher fries on the boardwalk and $6 lemonade.
• Nicole got to put her feet in the Atlantic for the first time :)
• We had a failed attempt at making snickerdoodles, they turned out like muffin tops. Weird!
• We tried really hard to cram DC into one day, but it was a rather failed attempt. We did make it there for a bit though.
• We saw the Lincoln Memorial, The Monument, The WWII Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, the empty Reflection Pool, The White House, and 'Occupy  DC'. 
• Antique shopping on the Eastern Shore. 
• Watched Halloweentown and Hocus Pocus
• Became utterly disappointed when finding out that Zachary Binx is in fact Thackary Binx and pretty much our lives have been a lie for the last 18 years. 

It was great to see her, and we look forward to her next visit! Thank you Nicole for coming to see us :)

Hot or Not? :)

Chicken Nugget Girls

Ocean City

The Lincoln Memorial

Occupy DC

Chance's Mom, Carrie, arrives Tuesday! Looking forward to that visit as well :)

Breath Of Fresh Air

Yay!!! I got a new job, and it is in a hospital, and kind of exactly what I wanted. The day I interviewed I had to meet with a woman from human resources and then the manager of the hiring department. Interviews always make me nervous, no matter how confident I am in my abilities to do the job, but I stayed mostly calm. The managers name is Tamey, and well she sort of filled my heart with a great amount of joy from all the nice things she had to say. She made me feel completely natural, and started pulling the confidence back out of me. She was so surprised that this was the ELEVENTH position I had applied to at the hospital, and the first I had heard a peep about. She told me that she was not about to let the hospital lose me to someone else, the position I am currently in is only on-call/part-time. Tamey though, she is the breath of fresh air I am referring to.  Tamey has been advocating for me since I left the interview, she hardly knows me, and yet is willing to push for me to stay there and get on full time. It is nice to know that there are people out there, that still do kind things like this. She owes me nothing, and if anything I owe her for hiring me for the position, but it does not stop her from emailing her colleagues and making phone calls on my behalf. After my two day orientation I walked in to my new office which I share with four other woman. Tamey took me on a tour, and right away pulls up openings in the hospital and says a new one is posted and she thinks I would be great at it, and she would be meeting with the manager of that department to talk about placing me in the position. I kind of love her already! I mean how could you not, she is willing to fight for me, without hardly knowing me. I officially started last week, and I am loving it. The position is for the operating room scheduling department, booking and managing 16 OR's plus 6 Endoscopy rooms. Some of it is stuff I know, I feel there are some things that I can teach them, and there is a lot of new knowledge for me to gain from this position. I am in the works of getting back in to some classes by next semester and most likely pursuing a secondary degree in nursing. Chance and I have decided to use our time in Virginia to finish school/gain work experience.

It is so nice to be working, and the positive of the on-call position is that while our three different sets of guests come this  month, I have most of the days off that they are around. When I got home from the first interview Chance had a huge smile on his face and he says to me "my girlfriend is back" I did not know whether to laugh or cry or smile, because I knew what he meant, but I also felt horrible that I had lost myself in that time. He missed my glow, and I am sure he is happy to have my happy self back, because I know I sure am!


My biggest point of this whole post is that I am so very thankful for the people like Tamey in my life, who I know have been placed there for a very specific reason.

Pinterest-ing

I have in the last month become slightly addicted to this website called 'Pinterest'. It is a virtual pinboard where you can follow people you know or don't who find things on the web that appeal to them and then pin it to their own categorized boards. You can find great recipes on there, home decor tips, ways to make life easier around the house, craft ideas, fashion ideas, and the list goes on. It has become kind of a joke because about once a day I tell Chance of a story of something I saw on pinterest. Well, his favorite dessert is Key Lime Pie, and I am not much of a pie fan, but I found this recipe on there and he LOVED them! They were quite simple to make and really yummy/not too sweet! I thought I would share the recipe, there are also 32 others listed here.

Enjoy! 

Summer Funk

I seem to be trending on a every two month major blog update, but my goal is to not let that happen. With the holidays coming up and family visiting, I think I will find more to talk about. Besides I was in a 'Summer Funk' the kind of funk where you would just rather not talk about it, because there is not much to talk about. Chance and I got to Virginia in the middle of June and the summer was spent adjusting to our new life, needless to say, it was not easy. It is very easy to wake up everyday in Hawaii and be happy. The Eastern Shore, well it does not quite have the same effect on me.. yet.

It seemed like every couple of weeks there was a new obstacle I felt I had to overcome, while the entire time quickly becoming discouraged about finding a job. The majority of my summer was spent hanging out with Tim, and trying to find a job here in the country. It is a very rural area, and the biggest town is about 45 minutes north and still only about 30,000 people. Not working and being busy all the time is really hard to me, I get down very easily doing nothing. I started to miss my friends and family more than normal, wishing I could live closer to them. Chance was quite the trooper all summer though, not only did he take excellent care of me, but he put up with me being a bi-polar pain in the rear end. Some days I tried really hard to be 'happy', but he was not buying it. Other days I did not hide it and I would let my horns show. I felt trapped, with Tim still being such a puppy it was even hard for us to go out to dinner because travel to get anywhere takes about 2 hours round trip, and Chance started working evenings so then I was home at night alone and it was just not a fun situation. I just wanted to find a job and start having a routine, but it felt like it would never happen. I applied to positions every day and yet, I never received phone calls... talk about lifting your spirits.. Chance was very encouraging and tried to keep me positive.

So blogging about being kind of depressed for the summer just did not seem appealing, but I am in much better spirits now and hoping for a happier fall. Some things that happened in the last two months..

I got another year older

We survived a hurricane with minimal damage

Tim has learned to open the doors in our house and his favorite items to snag are toilet paper and socks

We got to explore Ocean City, MD finally

Tim has almost tripled in size since we first got him in July

and as of last week I got a job! :)

Date Night in Ocean City

Timmy All Tuckered Out After Playing

I have always LOVED Summer, but this year I am very excited for this change in seasons...Mostly the change of season in my spirit! 

Puppy Training 101

Tim has been around for about two and a half weeks now, I had no idea puppies were so cute, yet so destructive. I am currently reading two books on how to train this puppy the right way, some stuff works with him and some stuff does not. Overall he is a great dog, and just like a baby he pretty much eats, sleeps, poops, plays, and repeats. Most nights he wakes up at about 4am to go to the bathroom then he goes right back to sleep. He has been a real challenge at times though, it is just an adjustment getting used to a new body in the house, and a very needy one at that. Pointer's require a lot of exercise so my current days consist of long walks/jogs with him, running circles around the house, trying to get him house trained, and then sneaking around when he sleeps so I do not wake him.
He is really smart though, he already sits and lays down on command (usually because he gets a treat). He loves people when we are on walks if he sees another person he just wants to run up to them and play, so I am working on him trying to calm down a little. He gets distracted very easily, and loves to chew on EVERYTHING. We bought some bitter spray and it seems to be helping. He still thinks that peeing in the house is okay, so that is our biggest challenge as of current. He also freaks out if he thinks we left him, he has separation anxiety and it is bad.
The first 20 weeks of his life are the most crucial for the kind of dog he is going to be though, we are at week 12, so another 8 weeks of puppy bootcamp to whip him into tip top shape. He certainly knows right from wrong he just does not always choose correctly.

We took him to the beach this past weekend though and he loved it! I just can not get enough of his sweet face!

He loved the sand!

He kind of loved the ocean