A Perfect Weekend.

I know, it's a big claim to call one specific weekend "perfect", but it really was. Maybe it was part of the end-of-finals euphoria combined with a really awesome weekend, but it really did seem perfect.

Thursday night we had our white elephant Christmas party (as posted about below) and then I got to run over to my very favorite Melissa Alder's apartment to say goodbye. She is one of my very good friends in nursing school, one of those people who is always there for you, gives you words of encouragement when school is driving you crazy. Melissa is serving a mission in Germany and will report to the MTC in Marchand has decided to serve a mission. I'm going to miss this girl!

Friday was our first ski day of the season. With finals behind us, I took a day off of work and Chad had the day off so we headed up to Snowbird for an entire day of skiing/snowboarding. It was sunny for part of the day, but probably the greatest part was the lack of any lines for lifts. I think the longest we waited to get on a lift was about 30 seconds because that's how long it took me to shuffle with my board to the front of the line. Awesome. It makes for quite an enjoyable ski day. Chad's much faster than I am (I like to refer to myself as the "special needs snowboarder"), but he took an easy day and we enjoyed the entire day together. I'm bummed I didn't get any pictures of Chad going off a swee

t jump, but he's pretty much a ski pro.

At lunchtime, we just headed to our car (parked right next to the bottom of the slopes), turned on some Christmas music, and indulged in our packed lunch. It was a great little picnic

After a long day of skiing, we headed back home for a hot shower and a relaxing night at home. We went to this glorious establishment to pick up dinner,

we stopped by Red Box to pick up this movie (which wasn't great, but a perfect red box date night movie),

and then went to bed at 9:30 p.m. Awesome.

Saturday morning, we got up early and went to this place,

On Sunday night, we were invited over to Eric and Sheryl's house for a faux-Thanksgiving dinner. It was delicious. We had deep-fried turkey for dinner and it was amazing.

Apparently Shane loved the chocolate cake.

Perfect weekends are awesome.

White Elephant

Last Thursday night Chad and I decided to throw a little Christmas party with some of our friends from our ward. Most of us were all finished up with finals, and it was a great way to spend a school-free evening.

The Nittas and Courtney (we're sorry you had a final Ben!).

The McQuays and Caldwells.
Getting ready for the white elephant gift exchange with the Newmans.
The Belnaps.
The Virgin family.
Brooklyn was the only child in attendance and therefore had everyone's attention all evening.
Baby clothes or dish towel... we may never know.

The Newman family. Isn't that a cute family pic?

The Belnaps won a framed picture of the Nittas. Lucky.

The infamous sauna suit. Some people just have all the luck.

Merry Christmas friends!

Snow Shoveling

On Sunday afternoon we were heading out the door to a friend's house for dinner and we found two of our favorite neighbors shoveling our driveway for us! How's that for a fun Sunday afternoon activity? As all of those living in Provo know, the snow from Saturday night wasn't truly snow, it was pretty much one giant, slushy slurpie everywhere. Nasty stuff. It's good to know we have neighbors who love us.

Of course Chad had to jump in on the fun...

It must be Christmas...

I love Christmas time.

Molasses cookies with cream cheese frosting. Molassess sandwhiches. Yum.

Setting up Christmas lights on our beautiful house. I talked Chad into plain white lights. He's a giver. Happy Christmas in Provo.

Finals

It's finals time. I don't think there's much more to say. Our lives will resume after this week. As for right now, we spend all of our free time either at the library, with a nose in a book, or talking about how nice it will be on this upcoming Friday to have no homework/tests/projects of any kind.

Here's the Countdown:
Chad-3 finals left
Alyse- 2 finals left (I had a bunch last week)

Wish us luck!

Clinical Closure.

My last day of clinical for this semester was on Thursday and I could not be happier. It's been a stressful semester, with high expectations and endless coursework. Clinical was both fun and overwhelming. We were let out on our own (with a supervising nurse of course) and expected to take care of real people and perform nursing skills that we've only practiced on mannequins and each other! It was a relief to finally be done with our beastly pre-assessments and biweekly drives to Murray. I learned so much this semester; it's amazing to see how far I came and how comfortable I became with taking care of real people. I'm starting to feel like a real nurse!

Even though I'm happy to be done, I am going to miss these girls! I was lucky to be placed with such a fun group of girls (and guy, we can't forget Clayton) who I got to know really well and love to be around. Until next semester, I'm done!

Alesa and I.... (Alesa and Alyse, I know, it was confusing. But she was an awesome clinical instructor, pretty much the best. It was worth it.)

The girls I carpooled with. Love them. We were a little bit giddy, can you tell?

Happy end of clinical!!! ...for now.

My thoughts on snow.

The first real snow of the season hit us suddenly. It was sometime between 11:00 p.m. Saturday night and 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning; I'll probably never know exactly when it happened, it just did. Sunday morning we were greeted with approximately 2 1/2 inches of snow covering every surface it could reach. I just wasn't ready for it.

I'll be honest with you, I looked out our side door to go to church on Sunday morning (it was still snowing) and the thought of walking to church in my heels through the 2 1/2 inches of snow on the unplowed sidewalk made me want to cry. So for the first time since we've lived in this house, I drove the half a block to church. And you want to know what? I didn't even feel bad about it.

Monday morning, campus looked like this:

These are my thoughts. Snow makes everything difficult. Right after it snows (or during), riding your bike to school is near to impossible. Canyon Road is a lower priority plowing street, so it's always covered with ice and is pretty much an icy death trap. I pretty much have a nervous breakdown moment every time I get in car to go somewhere. Then, when you finally get where you're going (in twice as much time as it normally takes you), you then have to walk in it. Now the sidewalk turns into an icy death trap waiting to claim its next victim. If you finally make it to your intended destination without sustaining blunt force trauma injuries from the ground, it's almost a guarantee that you can't feel your hands, toes, nose, and/or cheeks. Now doesn't that sound like fun?

I almost forgot... after all of this and the day is ending and you finally get back to your car (its been sitting in the parking lot for 8 hours), you get to scrape off all of this freezing white stuff off of the entire thing so that you can see while driving home. Sometimes your car may look like this:

... and if you're lucky, it's already dark when you get back to your car, so all of the snow has pretty much frozen in place.These are the thoughts that went through my head. However, I do have to say that the snow makes everything look beautiful. Everything gets completely covered in white and the mountains are gorgeous. I'm especially a sucker for the way the snow perches upon tree branches; every little twig has some outline of white tracing its every twist and turn.

It's also kind of fun to be in the snow at Christmastime. Nothing beats coming home at night, turning on the fireplace, grabbing a blanket/a mug of hot chocolate/hubby, and curling up on the couch. I guess I just need to accept that it's winter now.