Checking in

Wow.

So much has happened since my last post.

I guess I should catch you up in a way that doesn't turn this post into a massive wall of text though.

So.

March 7, 2015
Chris and I were married at the Chapel on Tinker Air Force Base
{That was a whole fiasco in its self like most weddings}

I took my two board exams that week right before the wedding and passed both.

School was starting to pick up with clinical rotations at the Dental school and everything was in general moving along quite quickly.

Now for big news #1.

Chris is being stationed in Japan for the next few years. As in the country Japan.
Totally excited and now begins the process of getting all of my personal ducks in a row so that I may go with him. I had doctor appointments and other legal responsibilities that I had to take care of in addition to continuing my school schedule which was making everything else harder to accomplish.

Big news #2.

I got really really sick.
I lost weight really quickly, looked like I had never seen the sun in my life and could barely stand straight for any given amount of time.
Yup, as the older generations used to say "I am with child".

Not going to lie, I have wanted children since I was 19 but Chris and I had already discussed that we were going to wait until after we had been a married couple for at least a year. I was scared and happy all at the same time.

So, lets count this up shall we?

1-Still in school
2-Got married
3-Husband {and I} will be moving to Japan in the near future
4-Going to have a baby

I think 2015 is turning out to be a damn good year for us and it is barely half way over at this point!

Fast forward a bit and I am currently writing this post from Japan, my baby bump is becoming more and more obvious by the day, and I have completed my Dental Assisting program and passed all the Board exams that make me a Certified Dental Assistant.

Granted I have only been in Japan for three days and am still adjusting to the time difference {14 hours ahead of Oklahoma} but I already feel extremely blessed to have met my wonderful husband and to be exploring the world with him {I never dreamed I would actually get to leave the country and look at us now! We are living in Japan!}.

I intend to pick up this blog and my photography blog very soon and am looking forward to sharing our adventures with you again!

Here is a little sneak peek of what is to come!

Finally got my toes in the sand and water! Got to work on my tan, those are some pale legs I've got there!

Stay tuned!

School is rough, ya'll

Sorry I haven't been posting much well anything, really.
School is crazy with lectures, tests, essays, competency evaluations, guest speakers, and outside of class requirements that are taking up nearly all of my sane time. By the time I get home, I can barely think about what to make for dinner much less anything else.

PLUS!
I'm getting married soon. How soon, you might ask?

wait for it...

wait for it...

March 7th.

As in 18 days from now!

Yup so I have completely lost my mind to anything except school and wedding details.

Luckily, I have had my Mom to help keep me from pulling my hair out and on track and Chris' Mom will be in town the week of to help me with any last minute stuff while I am taking class exams and board exams.
Yup, BOARD EXAMS.
As in "if I don't pass these I can no longer continue with my program and will curl up the fetal position and cry myself into a stupor" board exams.

Why did I do this, you might ask? Why did I plan to get married in the middle of my last semester?

Well, I didn't intend to... it just kind of worked out that way to my chagrin.

Originally, they (the teachers) told us (the students) that our board exams would probably take place during spring break which would have fallen two weeks AFTER my wedding.
I was cool with this. Then we were contacted by the board informing us that we would be taking it the week OF my wedding.
Lovely. 

So! After I had a near meltdown at my parent's house and profusely apologizing to Chris if I bite his head off in the next two and half weeks, I realized that this was just another test.

Yes, it is a very important test, but a test nonetheless and that I should treat it as such.
Since I have come back to school in 2012, I have had straight A's so clearly I am doing something right. I know how I learn and how I study for tests so I need to stop freaking out and put my big girl panties back on.

Anywho! That is where I am at right now.
I have so much stuff going on and sooooo much news to share but they will all have to come to light at the appropriate time and not a moment sooner. :)
{Even though I am DYING to spill the beans about the AWESOMENESS that is about to be bestowed on us!} You will just have to wait! ;)

Realizations...

So it is a typical Tuesday for me so far.

Went to Radiography lecture this morning, had lunch with Chris, picked up my bathroom bag from his house and went to my parent's house to stay the week while I am in school. I was working on homework and studying {sort of} for an exam tomorrow in Dental Anatomy. Mom and Dad went for a walk {to get their beach bodies my Dad said} and I found myself walking around the house.

First I went into the spare/storage room to establish how many of the boxes left were mine and it hit me.

I am moving out of my parent's home and into my boyfriend's and I was experiencing mixed emotions.
Now this might sound silly since I was married previously so it is not like I haven't lived with a man before. Instead what hit me was that I was moving out of my Parent's house and into another person's house instead of my own place. I have done that already, obviously, and it would not have been a big deal more like deja vu really.

I am happy because it means that I am moving forward with my life and starting a new chapter.

I am sad because I came to enjoy seeing my parents every day and spending time with them.

I will miss having coffee with them in the mornings and talking about so many different things.
I will miss having my Mom ask for my opinion on a project she is working on or going on walks with her and Rudy.
I would be lying if I said I wouldn't miss my Mom's cooking, everyone loves their mother's cooking and I am no exception. 
I will miss having arguments discussions with my Dad over anything and everything.
I will miss hearing my Dad blasting his music and singing along, oblivious to the fact that I am trying to study. He always sounds so happy so I never have the heart to ask him to stop.

These last two years that they have supported me and helped me get back on my feet have been so special to me and have made me realize how much I took them for granted and didn't appreciate them in the past. I was so ready to be away from them as a teen and now I know how much I will miss them when I move out and they eventually move much further away.
There are days that I wish my parents were the kind that called their kids up and annoyingly stayed in touch but I also know that my family is way too independent for that and that they are at that point in their lives where what is happening in my life is not their main focus. This is the time when they get to rediscover themselves as individuals and as a couple. They worked hard to raise my brother and me and now they can sit back and enjoy some quality time together.

I love them with all of my heart and I will forever.

Sterling 47 Photography Blog

Well I finally did it! I started a separate blog just for my photography!

I had decided to call it Sterling 47 because 47 is the atomic number for Silver {get it?} and it is also the number of games that OU won in the longest running winning streak of a college football team TO DATE that my grandfather was a part of in the late 1950's.

So any who, I made a thingy at the top that will take you right to the new blog in the same way that you could go to the Random About Me or the Random History pages. :) Hope you like it!

School Daze...

Ah yes, summer school. The classes that we take for various reasons; whether to get through college faster, improve a previous class grade, or keep from working every single hour of every day.

My reasons are a little bit of all the above mentioned {to be honest}. I had taken an Intro to Sociology class when I first moved to Oklahoma and didn't receive a very notable grade {made it out with a C}. Turns out that that class is the only one on my program application that was a low grade and the director encouraged me to retake the course to bring the grade up, so I signed up for it to take this summer.

Now just for a little bit of background, the first class I took the professor told us on the first day that he had suffered from some medical malpractice that caused some neurological damage and that he would be heavily medicated some days. Great start, right? So we did not get very far in the class without multiple distractions and deviations from topic by the professor. We were asked to perform and take part in different sociological projects that usually involved some highly questionable behaviors on our parts in public. I had some issues with the class, projects, and the professor that unfortunately garnered his attention {and not in a good way}. By the end of the term, he was trying to fail me {I managed a last minute extra credit paper} and I was somehow unable to fill out my evaluation of the professor {I was the only one who seemed to have this issue}.
So needless to say I was not too keen to retake this particular class {I actually waited until the last minute to even register for it}.

I have been in this second sociology class for two weeks now and I am having the same feelings towards it as before, honesty. I seem have bad luck because this professor is recovering from a stroke that has left him slow to finish sentences and string together thoughts. We had to write a paper but he failed to tell us what he wanted out of the paper and left most of the class at a loss as to how to write it much less what to write about. I decided to write about my divorce {thinking that it would be relatively simple since I experienced it first hand}. As I was writing it I started to realize that if I had been able to separate myself from the emotions of being in love and all that warm mushy stuff, then I probably would not have married in the first place. It was a very hard thing for me to go through looking at my relationship like a scientist under a microscope and write about how we were doomed from the very beginning due to our differences. It was after writing that paper that I decided that I would do my best to get a better grade in this class but I would not put myself through any more unnecessary emotional stress in order to get an A.
This may sound silly or even childish but at the end of the day this class should be about learning and understanding why people do the things they do, not about how you screwed up your life and that you should feel ashamed for not helping people who don't want your help to begin with. Both teachers are following that same line of thought and teachings, "your way of thinking is wrong and you should be ashamed for thinking that way". 

Luckily, since this is a summer class it will be over relatively quickly and then I get to focus on more important things like the program courses that are going to teach me the skills that I will need in my future career.

{Bleh, end rant}

Flower Nursery

I love flowers, so naturally I love really pretty flower nurseries as well.
Here in Oklahoma we have a nursery called The Greenhouse and one of my favorite things about it is that they have several arrangements with fountains and benches to give you an idea of how you can pair flowers and other plants.

They have a HUGE Koi fish pond with HUGE Koi fish that I always love looking at. {Some of these fish are the size of award winning Big Mouth Bass!}

 

I am a sucker for ornate fountains, too and they have several throughout the grounds.

They also have a lot of yard art, including but not limited to statues and benches. There were four really cool statues where the main body looked like a square-ish pillar with ornate Romanesque busts of different women. They were probably made from concrete but stained to look like stone and they were a thousand dollars each. I thought they were absolutely wonderful. {If I had four thousand dollars I would have bought them on the spot!}

Anywho, I love all of this stuff and I hope I can have a beautiful yard to look at when I get my own home.
{Preferably with a husband that loves to do it or a husband that is okay with me hiring a gardener!}

It has been a while...

So I haven't posted lately {mainly because I forgot about this blog while being caught up in school and program drama} and then something made me think of it. Not really sure what, but I hope it happens more often.

I came out with several really good pictures from my spring break trip to Florida but I haven't gone through them all yet {I had to get right back into school when we got back}.

Here are some of my favorites so far though!

Okay, so these are all from the first full day that we were in Florida.
Our first stop was Pass-a-Grille, which is a little town on one of the gulf "barrier" islands which bares the same name. Mom had been told about this beach, that there would be shells galore and great food as well.

Walking up to the beach was a great sandy path at the very end of the island and a bench that gave you a beautiful view of the sand and water below. {These ladies knew where the best seat in the house was!}

 I loved walking along the beach and seeing kids playing in the sand; building sandcastles, burying their younger siblings {hoping to leave them behind, possibly?} and teens and adults lounging on their beach towels, enjoying one of life's simple moments that only a beach can give you.

 The town had several rental houses, condos, shops and restaurants along the middle of the island so when we were starting to feel a bit peckish we strolled along the sidewalk towards the restaurant that Mom had heard about. Such fun and eclectic sights presented themselves to us; bronze beach bums in skimpy bathing suits, biker chicks with Mohawk helmets and this row of bicycles {some old and some new}, chained and rusting in the salty air.

 Ah, at last we reached the restaurant amply named The Hurricane. It was a beautiful building, my untrained eye thought it looked rather Victorian but sturdier to better withstand those rough gulf storms. We sat out side on a quieter side patio enjoying the cool breeze and people watching the public park that was across the street. We ate conch fritters, fish tacos, and crab cake sandwich from a 1940's family recipe. The food was wonderful.

 Along the inland side of the island we came across a something that I presume was the remains of an old dock or wharf, perhaps. The sun-bleached pillars now supported resting Pelicans and other sea birds and boy were they a sight to see. This particular beauty was just letting the wind run under his wings, not going anywhere but enjoying the sensation of flight {or at least that is what I imagined}.

There are so many more great pictures from our trip so I hope to post more soon. :)
Oh yeah and we did end up finding A LOT of great shells on this beach, but not on this day, so that is for another time!