Memory Lane

I was organizing some files on my computer and came across these old pictures from college. So friends, walk down Memory Lane with me. And if you're slightly embarrassed by any of these pictures, rest assured that I have worse in my possession. You should thank me for not posting those ones. I'll email them to you instead!

Good ol' Fugal Hall

I took this picture with me on my mission, and people found it especially funny because when you want to call someone ugly in Korea, you call them a pumpkin.

Emily & Darth Vader (I mean, the Blind Illiterate Hunchback/Cataract the Cat/Tom)

Do any of you remember Cami, the cutest girl in the world? She must be 11 or 12 now.

I was too short to participate, so I took pictures instead!

Me & the Hobbits

Homecoming 2003

Halloween 2003

I think Ebbie was actually on the phone, and the rest of us were just making fun of her!

Halloween 2004

This picture is especially funny to me, cause 5 years later we actually WERE pregnant together.

Ahh... the Testing Center.

Ebbie, has Andrew seen this picture? (P.S. do you guys remember our Peaches/Boyfriends video? I sure wish we still had a copy of that!)

The Fireplace!

Ebbie's creepy black gloves.

Heather Heights

This pretty much sums up every night of our Junior year.

You can't stay mad at a Pancake Mouse.

Coolest Ice Sculpture Ever.

Thanks for indulging me! I had a lot of fun looking at these pictures, and I hope my old roommates don't mind too much.

Cooking Mama!

Cooking Mama. My favorite Wii game AND a great description of my life recently.

Being a stay-at-home Mama has its perks! I get to make all of the recipes that I've always wanted to, but never had time for. Like bread. I made rolls and breadsticks for the first time in my life!

I'm no food photographer, so please excuse these poor photos. I just wanted to share these awesome recipes that I've discovered lately.

Flat Bread Pizza with Caramelized Onions and Feta

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2010/07/flatbread-pizza-with-spinach-caramelized-onions-and-feta/

Only, I made my own pizza crust instead of using flat bread. I'm so domestic.

And here's a great recipe to help stave off the heat:

Fresh Mango Sorbet with Pineapple

http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/06/fresh-mango-sorbet-with-pineapple/

This tastes exactly like Mango Melon Starbursts. SERIOUSLY. GOOD.

So if you're stumped about what to make for dinner this week, here are some ideas for you!

We just discovered Funny Faces!

Flagstaff

I knew it would happen. And it did. I fell in love with Flagstaff.

My sister and her family just moved to Flagstaff this past weekend, and we drove up to help them unload the truck and get settled.

Ellie and Ada were so fun to watch! They're both walking, running, and dancing now so Ada is definitely keeping up with Ellie. They also both share a love for Yo Gabba Gabba, and got their groove on.

So Flagstaff was about 30 degrees cooler than Phoenix. These next pictures were the view out their windows. All we can see out our windows are parking lots and cars. You can see why I fell in love with the place!

And this is what we saw at IHOP. Who drives this to an IHOP? That's just the way they do it in Flagstaff, I guess.
It was very depressing to watch the temperature rise as we drove the 2 hours back to Phoenix. But we'll see who's laughing in a few months, when they've got snow and we're sipping pina coladas by the pool!

Valley of the Sun

After talking about law school for years, the time has come to begin this adventure together! The move went well. No major mishaps or injuries. Just a small bout with heat exhaustion while unloading the truck, but at 108 degrees that's sort of to be expected.

The apartment itself is really nice. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a killer deal. Can't beat that. The location, however, is interesting. We live in a big city now, which I'm having to get used to. And apartment complexes tend to attract an interesting crowd anywhere. The day we moved in, our neighbors were moving out. Mike was talking to the family and it turns out they'd only been living here for 7 days and their apartment had been broken into. Not really something you want to hear on your first day in a new place. But we haven't had any bad experiences so far. And after talking to several people, including a couple in our ward, it sounds like this rarely happens and it was just bad timing to have it happen right as we moved in. Oh! And the power went out the night we moved in. So it was like 90+ degrees in our apartment. Not very conducive to sleeping, but luckily the power came back after a few hours.

This is the new play mat we got for Ellie's room. With all hardwood floors, we had to invest in some rugs/mats. Anyways, she loves running around to all the different letters and saying, "A says Ah! The B says Buh!" She's pretty smart.

So I finally understand why they call this the Valley of the Sun. It's cause it feels like you're actually walking on the Sun. That should give you a vivid picture of what it's like to live here in the summer. Or, it's like that rush of hot air that hits you when you open the oven, but it never stops. I'm blogging at 9:39 pm and it's still 101 degrees outside. Bleh!

Here's Ellie eating a free Creamsicle at Costco.

Mike on his first day of school. Here stands a future lawyer!

Mike's school gave us free passes to the Children's Museum and Ellie had a blast!

This part of the museum struck my heart with absolute terror. The Noodle Forest. Kids screaming all around you, limited visibility, darkness, claustrophobia... it was like walking into a horror movie. I was just sure a chain saw-wielding clown was going to jump out at us. Neither Ellie or I enjoyed it very much.
To commemorate Mike finishing his first week of school, I took him out to dinner: Alice Cooper's Town, owned by the heavy metal rock legend himself. Mike was watching the Phoenix episode of Man vs. Food and saw Adam Richman eat a 2 lb. 2 ft. hot dog. Mike, an avid hot dog lover AND an avid food challenge lover, decided he just HAD to try this. The restaurant is actually quite close to his school, so we went after his last class. Mike enjoyed the challenge, and it seems like it was a popular dish because about 5 other people ordered it in the hour that we were there. Every time a waitress brought out the dish, they rang a big bell and everybody yelled.

We also witnessed our first Haboob. Excuse me? That's what I first said when I heard Mike use that term. Anyways, it's just another term for an intense dust storm.
Not the best pictures of it, but it was neat to see. We were driving towards downtown when we noticed it, and found ourselves walking around downtown in the middle of it. But it wasn't that bad. Just irritating to the eyes.
Dowtown Phoenix is beautiful! Ellie loved these fountains. Anything to cool down and wash the dust off!
So far, our experience in Phoenix has been great! I think I'm going to like it a lot more come October when it's supposed to cool off.

Tribute to Transfusion

There's a lot of things that have been hard about saying goodbye to Utah, and one of the biggest reasons (aside from friends and family) that Mike has had to drag me (kicking and screaming) to Arizona is because I've had to leave the best job, and the greatest co-workers I've ever had.

A little over a year ago, we'd just moved up to Salt Lake from Provo, we were brand new parents, and Mike was still working down in Spanish Fork until I could find a job. I was scared to go back to work, unsure of how I was going to balance a job with the demands of being a mom. I saw the job opening in Transfusion (my favorite subject in school) and I thought to myself, "Man! I'm really not qualified for the job, but what the heck, I might as well try!" I remember the job interview was the most terrifying one I've ever had. Before I went in and talked to anyone, I had to fill out a quiz, prioritizing 10 different situations that could occur in the blood bank and then I had to justify my reasoning for ordering them that way. I almost threw my hands up in the air and gave up. A quiz before an interview? Who does that? I realize the value of it now, but it was very scary at the time. I had turned down several different jobs, trying to find the "perfect" one that would fit the needs of our family. And when I was extended the position in Transfusion, I was ecstatic!

Right away, I knew that I had landed an awesome job! I had the most wonderful trainer who taught me everything I'd forgotten from school, and helped me become a more confident tech. And the people I worked with on my shift could not have been more welcoming.

There's pros and cons to every job. Let's start with the cons, to get them out of the way.

Things I won't miss (and sorry, some of these might only make sense to my co-workers):

• Vocera - sorry phlebotomy... I couldn't understand a thing you said.
• "Our tube is beeping but no one called with a security code." Yes we did. We always do.
• Incorrectly labeled tubes
• Safetrace (our computer system) causing problems at really inopportune times.
• A certain hospital (which shall remain unnamed) lying about their inventory so they don't have to give up their AB platelets to save a baby's life.
• Having the saline run out right in the middle of washing your cells.
• Prenatals - ok, ok... they weren't always that bad. But when they were bad, THEY WERE BAD! 5 antibodies, 3 titers, an elution... all in one shift? Nope. Won't miss that very much.
• The exhaust fumes from Life Flight seeping into our lab.

Things I WILL miss:

• My co-workers - they really weren't just co-workers, they were friends.
• Antibody workups - using my mad detective skills to discover different antibodies people had made. Like the guy who looked like he had a warm-auto, and did have one, but had also made like 4 other underlying antibodies and it took me about 9 hours to finish his work up. Very satisfying at the end of it all.
• Trauma Ones: I never thought I'd say this, but by the end, I actually enjoyed going up on traumas. The very first trauma I went up on was a self-inflicted gun shot wound to the head, and they came in doing chest compressions on her and needless to say, she didn't make it. I thought, "If they're all like this... man... what have I gotten myself into?" But they weren't all that bad. I enjoyed feeling like a part of the Trauma Team.
• The days we would all bring in foods that started with a different letter of the alphabet. And then having so much food it would last us the entire weekend.
• "Faxing things up" - Emily :)
• MTPs: Mass Transfusion Protocol. I know, I know... it's a weird thing to miss, but if and when the patient survived, it sure gave you a good feeling inside knowing that you helped save a life.
• Baby aliquots - something to break up the monotony of the regular type and screens.

Some of my favorite Trauma moments:

• A gun shot wound to the arm. The funny part was that he'd been seen in the ER a week earlier for a gun shot wound to the head. Some people have horrible luck.
• The rock climber who fell off a cliff and came in perfectly fine. He got himself off the gurney and on to the bed himself and was incredibly embarrassed that 2o+ people had been called to the trauma bay to fuss over him when he was fine.
• The guy who had been stabbed in the chest and refused to get off the stretcher until he could smoke. Trauma Doc: "Sir, you have a hole in your chest." Patient: "I don't care. I need a smoke." And he was wearing a fanny pack, which also made me smile.
• The gun shot wound that turned into an MTP where the OR orderlies were coming down every 2 minutes for a new MTP pack. The plasma wasn't thawing fast enough, so Emily H. was throwing half-thawed plasma at the orderlies and ordering them to break up the ice chunks. It was awesome.
• Emily B. stuck up in the ER because they'd put a tongue in our blood cooler.

And now here's a few pictures of my co-workers. I missed a few of them, but here's the majority:

Me & Stuart (pulling teeth is easier than getting this guy in a picture!)

Jason & Hugh - Jason said he's making that face cause he's sad I'm leaving. Or maybe it's because we had to throw that blood away.

Me & Audrey (who's having a baby in 3 months!)

My Going-Away Party

Best party EVER: they brought foods that started with the letters in my name. I especially like that L stands for "Layered dip, seven".

John, Emily, Becky, & Lisa - who have been really awesome supervisors & mentors

Maryanne! I'll miss hearing about ghost stories and Sir Winslow!

Amy (who stopped by just to say goodbye my last night, so sweet!)

Nancy! (Don't worry Nancy, I'll show Ellie your picture so she won't cry when she sees you next.)

Jana! (I'm glad she came back from maternity leave so I could see her again!)

Lauren - "It's 3 o'clock!" I'll miss the crazy faces you made at me across the bench.

Lauren & Emily - There was probably 80's music playing in the background, cause that's the way Emily H. and I roll!

Bryant & Emily - the night crew! I'll miss the laughs, you guys! And if I'm ever stuck on Sporcle quizzes, I'll probably have to call you.

And this was my view of the hospital on my last night. That bottom row of really bright lights are the Trauma Bays, and the next floor up was the Cafeteria. I always wondered what people in the Cafeteria would think if they knew what was going on right below their feet. Lose their appetite?

And as promised, here's some more pictures of my co-workers in a better setting (The Melting Pot - yum!), where we're wearing nice clothes instead of scrubs and lab coats.
There. The ramblings of an unemployed stay-at-home Mom. As much as I'm THRILLED to be able to stay home with Ellie for awhile, it's still hard to say goodbye. Thanks for the good times IMC Transfusion!