Time flies

I haven't updated forever. I've thought about it a lot, attempted a couple of times, haven't done it. So here's the quick version of the last two months.

September (Birthday Month #26!)

-Spent Labor Day weekend at a cabin in Oakley with Jeremy's family. Slept out under the stars with the squirrels (or chipmunks?) and tested out our new cots (awesome).

-MeKelle's wedding in Park City. Congrats Kelle. And you looked B-E-A-utiful.

-California trip. Turned 26 while on a midnight run on the beach with Nick. Couldn't think of a more perfect way to get older. Spent my birthday day at the gym, boogie boarding, playing at the beach, eating lots of greasy food, shopping, went to the Asher Roth/Taking Back Sunday/Weezer/Blink 182 concert in Irvine (thanks for the birthday concert Nick!), met up with Brandon for a late dinner in Newport afterward. Drove home with Nick the next day (peace out USMC!), stopped at the Nevada border to ride the huge rollercoaster at Buffalo Bill's, and had to do a buffet stop in Mesquite. Great trip.

-Lots of birthday breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with the best friends ever.

-Jungle Fever birthday party!

-Trip to Austin to spend some time with Jennifer (who I need to see much more often) and Houston to see Brooke and Brad! Jeremy took a test for school there and I got to play with Brooke (who I still miss ever day!) and enjoy time in my birthstate. We ran the Race for the Cure and running at a lower altitude makes me feel like the best athlete ever (which is far from true).

October

-Worked. A lot.

-Mississippi! Took a last minute surprise trip to Mississippi with my mom, Chrissi and little Ali so the baby could meet all her southern cousins before Chrissi went back to work. Spent time with family I haven't seen in 12 1/2 years and loved it. Lots of driving from Memphis, across the whole state of Mississippi, and back. Great girls' trip, and Ali was a good little traveler.

-Shooting. I hate guns. Always have. Jeremy even bought some dummy bullets so I could learn to load his gun and get comfortable with it, which I refused to do. But on Halloween morning I went shooting with Jer and 3 of his friends and actually really liked it. Still don't want to be around guns in a confined space, but loved shooting them out in the middle of nowhere.

-A little college football and tailgating. Go Utes!

November

-Ali's blessing.

-Happy Birthday Daddy! Still looking hot at 61!

-Happy Anniversary to the raddest parents ever! I think it's 29 years. Still the best Barbie and Ken ever.

-Thanksgiving! Jeremy and I had a double-header and hit both family dinners. Lots of turkey and good food, lots of quality family time, lots to be thankful for.
My list of things I am thankful for is huge, so here is an edited version.

~Jeremy, who I love more than he knows, for being the best addition to my life, for taking care of me, for making me laugh every day, for giving me so much to look forward to.
~My awesome family, for being an amazing support system, putting up with me, loving me no matter what, for being my friends.
~The best friends in the world, all of them, who I am lucky to have and have loved spending time with a lot of you the last couple weeks.
~Jer's family, for making me feel like family from day one, for letting me take a lot of Jeremy's time away from you, and for everything you do for me.
~A job I love, a place to live, a car that runs (most of the time), warm showers, boots, space heaters, candy, my day planner, sunshine, hot chocolate.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Warning: Bad Day Ahead

Some days should come with warning labels. Really. Some days your alarm clock should tell you that you DON'T want to get up. Instead of the annoying beep. beep. beep. it should say "Today is not going to be nice to you. You should probably just stay in bed and go back to sleep until tomorrow." I think that would be more beneficial than waking me up to a crappy day that just gets worse until the second I go to sleep again. It wouldn't hurt to skip a day every now and then. Just a thought.

My sister could kick your sister's ass.

My sister had a baby on August 29th. Pretty awesome in itself. But my sister had a baby NATURAL. No epidural. No drugs. Just her hardcore self pushing 7 pounds 6 ounces of baby out. Oh and baby Alice Teal came out with her hand in her face. So not only did she push that baby out all by herself, she delivered her head, hand, and arm at the same time. Go Chrissi. You're my hero.

Could YOUR sister do that? I didn't think so.

More on my sweet niece later, when I have time to upload all of her b-e-a-utiful pictures.

I got a new job!

I started a new job at Primary Children's Medical Center a couple weeks ago. I wanted this job so bad that I didn't even tell anyone I applied or interviewed until after I got hired because I didn't want to jinx it. For anyone who knows me, you know I've always wanted to work with kids and working at Primary's has always been one of my goals. And for those of you who know me best, you understand why the Immunocompromised Unit is a good fit for me. This is something I've always wanted to do. I don't know how well I would handle it when I have kids of my own so I think now is the perfect time for it.

This is how most conversations about my job go:
Someone asks where I work
Me: Primary Children's Hospital
Them: Oh how fun! Do you love it? What do you do there?
Me: LOVE it. I'm a tech on the Immunocompromised Unit.
Them: What's that?
Me: I work with the cancer kids.
Them: (expression changes from a smile to disturbed) Ooohhh, doesn't that suck? Isn't that really sad? I couldn't do that.

I understand people not getting it. And I know people think it's weird that I've always wanted to be involved with Pediatric Oncology. I know it will be hard sometimes and I'm sure I'll have some bad days, but my motivation to work in that particular field has always been the amazing spirit of that type of kids. I've worked with adult patients for the past 5 years and I have heard them complain about EVERYTHING. And now I work with these awesome little kids who go through hell and can still smile about it. They're fun and cute and happy (most of the time) and I'm blown away by their attitudes.

My first experience with one of these kids was when I was 10. We had just moved into our house in Tremonton and our little 5 year old neighbor across the street had leukemia. Looking back, I don't think I realized what that meant, I just knew she was sick. But she was an amazing little girl and I loved her. I felt like she was my little sister. She was the happiest little girl. I remember hearing her talk about her "line", watching her take meds, that there would be times when she wasn't allowed to go outside, but I never realized how sick she was. My mom and I took Christmas cookies to her family on Christmas Eve and her mom told us she was sick again and it wouldn't be a good night to see her. She died a couple days later. I won't go into the details of the effect that experience had on me, I'll just say that it sparked the interest in what I'm doing now and I'm so glad I'm finally doing it. If everyone was lucky enough to spend time with someone like her or the kids I get to hang out with everyday, no one would ever question why I want to do this.

I made a list of things I want to remember when I have a hard day there, which I know will have to happen every now and then.

May I always remember:
Every patient is someone's child, sibling, friend.
Who I'm working for and why that's important.
I know the amazing spirit inside each of those kids even on the days it's hard to see.
I'm a link to the outside world when they can't be there and a smile is important.
I worked hard to get here, it's important to me, and the experiences that made me want it.
To have empathy for the kids and their families.
How overwhelmed and terrified I was the first few days, and how much scarier it must be to be on the other side.
How it feels to be the student when I'm so used to being the teacher.
This is my job and I see these things every day, but for the families this is scary territory and their world is turned upside down.
And may I never become desensitized to pain, sickness, or death.

I'm happy about this job and I love it so far. Wish me luck.

Big events, little sleep

In the last week: started a new job, got a precious new niece, went to a wedding for 2 of my favorite people, hit up the BE County Fair...

And I'm too exhausted to write anything about any of it. But I will soon. Hopefully. Especially about the cute baby and my kick ass sister. Watch for it.

Ashley's ABC's

One of my friends told me to try and come up with something about me for every letter of the alphabet. Easy. This is me.

A- Ashley (duh), Adventures, Animals, Accelerating
B- Beach, Babies, Barbecues, Boating, Basketball, Bare feet, Books, Blankets
C- Christmas, Cotton Candy, Campfires, Chocolate, Cuddling, Candy, Cereal
D- Dashboard Confessional, Dresses, Daisies, Dancing
E- Elephants, Exercise, Extremes
F- Family, Friends, Flying, Fun, Flowers, Food, Freebies, Flip-flops, Four-leaf Clovers, Fruit
G- Golf Carts, Gym, Giraffes, Gum, Girlfriends
H- Hot Summer Days, Home, Hoodies, Hikes, Hats, Hawaii
I- Ice Cream, Invitations, Icicles, Islands
J- Jeremy, Jeans, Jewelry, Jamba Juice
K- Kissing, Kids, Kickboxing
L- Love, Life, Laughter, Lakes
M- Music, Mountains, Makeup, Movies
N- Nighttime, Notes, Naps
O- Ocean, Outdoors
P- Photos, Pools, Phone Calls, Patriotism
Q- Quite Moments, Questions
R- Road Trips, Running, Rain, Red Bull, Reading, Relaxing, Rainbows
S- Stars, Snshine, Shoes, Smores, Shopping, Saturdays, Sour Patch Kids
T- Thunderstorms, Travel, Trucks, Tall people
U- Underwear, Ugly ducklings
V- Victory, Vacations, Velocity
W- Wakeboarding, Writing, Water
X- X-rays (because I like to look at them and try to figure out what's broken)
Y- Yoga, Yogurt
Z- Zebras, Zoo

Take a hike!

Ahhhh! I am so bad at this. One day I will master both living my life AND blogging about it. But for now, here's my new favorite activity.

I'm still trying to take advantage of the mountains and the good weather. A couple hikes and I'm hooked. It's gorgeous up there and the weather has been great. Spending a couple hours hiking may be one of the most therapeutic things I have ever done. It gives me time to relax and think and refocus. How did I never learn to enjoy this stuff before? And an added benefit... hiking is a great butt workout.

Lake Mary in Big Cottonwood Canyon- beautiful, relaxing, perfect. It's a short hike, only about a mile each way, but it's a good one. There were chipmunks running across the path the whole way to the lake and a couple brave ones tried to get in our bags when we put them down. I half expected to find a little friend in my bag when I got home. There are tons of little fish in the lake and they like the crust of PB&Js, in case you wondered.

My friend Erika and I tried to take a picture with the timer on my camera after hiking the Pipeline in Milcreek Canyon. We're better hikers than photographers.