Summer Potpourri

Summer has come and gone. Gosh I hate that. It always seems to go by way too fast for me. Although, it's not so depressing this time around because usually with the end of summer comes back to school...but not this time! ISU started school this week and thankfully Brandt and I had nothing to do with it. So even though technically summer has come to an end, I won't be sad about it until the weather changes and it gets cold. Here's a recap of some of what we were up to this summer:

Lindsay came to visit in May! She was here for almost a whole month, so I lived in Burley during that time (one of the perks to being unemployed, you can do whatever the heck you want!) It worked out great, because that was when Brandt was in New York living the dream with APX, so I just "moved" to Burley for the duration. It was so fun to see her. Here's me with my sistas at Olive Garden. Yum! (I'm not sure why I look so much shorter than them in this pic. Hmmm)

Kate and Zac playing on the rocking horse

This girl is so funny. Right before I snapped this pic, she decides to pick her nose. Classic.

Me, Sam, and Kate at Chili's

This video is just funny. This was on the way home from Utah and Kate kept throwing her sucker at Syd. I'm not sure if was on purpose or not...p.s. The quality of the video isn't the greatest; we're still trying to figure out how to upload them without lessening the quality.


Sheena (Brandt's sister) had her baby in June. This is Brandt with our newest nephew, Kye. It was great to see them and attend Kye's baby blessing in July.

Of course we had to go see the new Harry Potter movie in July! We were much anticipating this, but as with the rest of the HP movies, it did not measure up to the book. It was still fun though.

Shane (my cousin) got back from serving a mission in Mexico at the end of July, so of course a bunch of us met him at the Twin Falls airport with our signs to welcome him home.

An honorable mention also goes out to my other cousin, Kyler, who left on Wednesday to serve his mission in Texas. Go Kyler! :0)

I had to post this pic more for the story that goes along with it. This is my cute mom who was taking the picture of all of us at the airport. As she was leaning back to try and get all of us in the pic, she leaned against the "Emergency Exit Only" door and set off the alarm! Which, by the way, is REALLY LOUD! It was super funny, though the guard on duty didn't think it was as funny as we did.

We bought this rope for Rex (my family's dog) at Wal-Mart for 97 cents and it was totally worth it. He loved it! (for the whole three days he had it before he buried it somewhere and now can't find it.) This pic represents all the time we spent in Burley in the month of August. A hygienist there had an accident and broke both of her legs, which is bad news for her...but good news for me! :0) I was able to fill in for her and get some great and much needed experience. I was able to live with my mom for the duration to cut back on travel (Thanks Mom!) so Brandt and I spent a lot of time in Burley in the month of August. We were able to go to the Cassia County Fair while we were there, which is always a good time. We went to the rodeo with the Moultons and we also got to see a bunch of friends from high school. We had a great time in good ol' Bur-town, but it's also good to be back home.

After my first day of work, I came home to flowers, a poem, Freschetta pizza, popcorn, and Redbox! My favorite things! (Note the TWO bags of popcorn; we're piggies) Brandt had rented "The Soloist" because we had both been wanting to see it, and I surprised him that same night by renting the same movie! It was funny. Good movie, too, by the way.

I was so exhauted after that first day of work, but I'm getting more used to it. That first day in private practice was a bit of a culture shock for me compared to school. Everything was so different, in both good and not-so-good ways. But I'm glad that at least for now I'm enjoying what I do. In a couple weeks I will start a full-time job in Idaho Falls while their hygienist goes on maternity leave. I love it there, so I'm super excited to start.

Looking back on it, I wonder where all the time went, then I remember that I had the nightmare of Boards in June, and after that another month and a half of looking for jobs, making hundreds of phone calls, going on interviews, etc. But even with all of that, it was a good summer and I'm sad to see it end. But fall is fun too; I just hope this warm weather holds out for at least another month; I'm not ready for that to go.

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!