All Grown Up

I guess it's about time someone updated our blog. It seems like Brandt and I have been on this never ending roller coaster since the beginning of 2009.

As far as highs, Brandt and I both graduated in May! I thought that day would never come. It was a great day for us. The night before ISU's graduation, we had a ceremony for us dental hygiene graduates where we received our professional pins, our expanded functions certificates, recited the dental hygiene oath (yep, there's an oath! kinda funny), and received awards. I was the recipient of the Western Society of Periodontology Award. I usually don't win anything so I was excited, especially because Periodontology was one of my favorite classes (Brandt says that makes me a nerd; That's probably true).

It was fun to have my family come up and support us. That night after the dental hygiene thing we went to Grecian Key to celebrate. They have the best gyros and steak fries ever! Brandt and I love their food. Anyways, we were all talking and eating, etc. when Kate just started screaming. We thought she was mad because Linds made her sit in the high chair and she wanted down but then we looked at her and she had fry sauce all over her face, and she was not happy about it! No idea how she managed that but it was so funny I had to take a picture of her. Funny girl. That night, my mom and siblings and Kate all had a sleepover with us in our lovely one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. You can imagine we had some good times crammed in such a little space.

Brandt was a bum and decided he didn't want to walk for ISU's graduation; instead he opted to sit in the stands with my family and watch me walk. It was fun since nearly all of my hygiene girls decided to walk so we all sat together. One of the girls brought electronic Tetris so we would pass it down the row and each take a turn with it to help pass the time. We had a good time. I'm going to miss those girls. They are all such good people and good friends. No one truly understands the living hell that is the ISU Dental Hygiene program unless you've gone through it.

So after graduation, I had to take my clinical boards in June. That was tons of fun :) Thanks to Bryan for coming up and being my board patient. That particular day I left the house and the weather was totally fine, but not ten minutes later when I got to the school it was literally raining cats and dogs (ok, not literally but it was raining really hard). The closest parking spot I could find was three blocks away and I had to carry this huge box with all my tools, so running was out of the question. So by the time I got there I was soaking wet. It was great; you gotta love Idaho weather.

Two weeks later I found out I passed my hygiene exam and on July 9th I got my license! I'm official now: Danielle Hines, RDH. Now comes the crappy job hunting part so we can pay back all those loans to Uncle Sam. It feels like I have been unemployed for forever, but technically I've only had my license for three weeks, but I still feel crappy. There have been so many hygiene schools popping up that everywhere is pretty much oversaturated with hygienists so it's been difficult even finding jobs to apply for. And then those that I do find of course want someone with experience or someone who speaks Spanish. I've never applied for a job and not gotten it before, and in July I was turned down for two. It's not very fun. I've been in and out of this mild depression for several months now (ok lets be honest, I've probably been mildly depressed since I got into this dang program :) But I keep praying that things will work out the way they're supposed to, so I think I just need to have more faith and be patient. I have so many good things in my life and I try to remember that when I start feeling sorry for myself. I've got a great husband and great family and friends. Brandt may not have his dream job with Lowe's, but it pays the bills. Life is really pretty good.

Brandt is also struggling with figuring out what he wants to do with his life. He spent the month of May working with some friends in New York installing security systems for APX. We had hoped to make enough money to help with our student loans, but with the economy in the crapper things didn't work out so well. So when APX asked for volunteers to go home, Brandt volunteered and thankfully he was able to get his job back at Lowe's. At least he got some good stories out of his time in New York; I think he's working on a post to vent about his experiences, so stay tuned for that (You would think that he would be over it by now, but we hung out with some friends the other night and somehow Wyoming got brought up and it brought all those repressed feelings right back to the surface; anyways you'll have to read it to understand:)

So that's where Brandt and I stand at the moment. We're all grown up and graduated. I feel like such an adult now :) Weird. Hopefully we're on to bigger and better things!