Days 3 and 4..

So, yesterday was our first day at the plasma center.  

Gettin ready for work is the hardest part!  Haha.  

Yesterday I slept through my alarm and woke up like 10 minutes

before we were going to eat breakfast.

So, no shower for that day.

(These were taken today

when i DID shower)

Let me tell you, it's a different experience.

smoke breaks,

cursing,

tongue rings,

and tattoos.

EVERYWHERE.

I live in such a bubble.

But this is such a good thing for me because

i'll probably end up in

West Virginia,

Pittsburgh, 

Philadelphia,

Vegas,

Mesa, 

Alabama,

Etc.

Not Utah and not Idaho.

I am building an immunity to second-hand smoke.

I am not looking at people on the streets.

I will sure miss Rexburg/Idaho Falls,

but it's time to move on

and say hello to the rest of the world.

Day 2

Today started with yummy free breakfast from the hotel that the airline set us up in.  Lots of good stuff.  Then we jumped on the shuttle to the airport (wearing everything "yesterday").

We already had our boarding passes so all we had to do was go through security and find our gate.  Once we got to the gate, one of our fellow passengers informed us that the flight was delayed for 2 hours.  Sweet.  So we pop-a-squat and prepare ourselves for a long wait.  This whole time I'm trying to connect to the internet and it was making me so mad i wanted to throw my computer through the wall.  So we're sitting there and discover that our gate has been changed.  Well to make a long story slightly shorter, 4 hours and 6 gates later, we finally take off.  We end up in Des Moines at 4 pm, only 28 hours after we were supposed to.  Then we get to the rental car place and they tell  us they don't have a car for us.  Great.  We finally got our car (which, by the way, is the nicest car I have ever driven) and headed to the Des Moines center, 2 hours before close.  They basically told us to come back tomorrow after we had showered.  Then we got to our hotel and drove around the block about 6 times because we didn't know which building was ours/where to park.  Then we got to our rooms.  HOLY SMOKES.

I have a dining room table.  Freak this is going to be a great week!

P.S.
Family pictures sneak peek here. Check em.

So, Change of Plans

Turns out our flight to Des Moines was overbooked.  [shocked me]... So we ended up getting kicked off our flight.  This meant that they wouldn't be able to get us to Iowa until tomorrow morning.  We were pretty ticked off.  But there was a silver lining to all this.
1. The airline paid for us to stay in the Hilton in Denver overnight. [$80]
2.  They bought us lunch, dinner, and breakfast tomorrow. [$30]
3.  They refunded us 400% the price of our flight because they couldn't get us on another flight within 4 hours.  So right then and there they wrote me a check for...$1300!

HOLY. SMOKES.

Everyone, PAY YOUR TITHING and you will be BLESSED!

I can't even begin to tell you how much we can use that money right now.  We didn't really know if this trip would really be worth it, but we're beginning to think it is.

The view from up here

I'm currently sitting in the Denver International Airport waiting for my connecting flight to Des Moines IA.  That's right.  Iowa. What am I doing in Iowa, you ask? Working.  The plasma center in Des Moines needs some help, so they're paying for me to come out for a week and help them out.  I know. Iowa.  But it's a lot further away than Logan and Orem.

pictures..

I got my camera AND the internet!  First things first, congratulations to my beautiful sister-in-law! She got married today!

Second: This is my niece Jane.  I can't believe how big she is! She's almost 6 months old!

She's so cute! I got to take care of her last night, and she's such a happy baby.  I want one :)

Remember the craft I was telling you about?  

Craft paper and Mod Podge.

Last thing: YUM.  Cookies and Cream Rice Crispy Treats!

A New-ish Look

I decided the blog needed a face-lift...well, i'm kind of attached to my gray-and-yellow theme, so I just gave it a hair cut and changed  the makeup a little.  Speaking of hair-cuts, i love getting them.  My hair is super thin and fine so it gets damaged easily.  I love getting the  "dead" ends chopped because it makes my hair feel so much healthier.  that feeling usually lasts about 2 or 3 weeks...

So...Brennen has 3, that's "THREE"  more interviews for PA schools!  Two schools in Pennsylvania and our first in the West...ARIZONA! Hot, sunny, dry "AZIRONA" and my good friend Tess calls it. I would love to live there...We're pretty stoked. Brennen applied to like 18 schools, and so far has had 5 interview offers.  We had to turn down the one in Connecticut because it's getting a little insane money-wise.  Can't wait for a call from ISU. Cheapest. Intervew. Of them all. Luckily we are blessed with generous family members. :)
In other news: after 22 years of being a girl, I have finally gotten in touch with my crafty side.

 About time! 

Oh, Porters, you will be the death of me! [or at least my bank account.]  I think went in to buy stuff like 4 times in 2 days.  Shoot. And that was just for one project.  [Pictures to come].  We don't have internet at home [i know, its like we're amish.] and i can never seem to get camera to come with me whenever we go somewhere with internet. I'm determined to take more pictures because, well, a picture is worth a thousand words, and i'm sick of writing 1,000,000,000,000 word blog posts! And you're sick of reading them.  That's right, I know my last post only got one view.  Someday i'll get it together. Someday.

She's alive!

So, yes.  It has been almost a MONTH since my last blog.  Welp.  Can I tell you how INSANELY crazy this last month has been? Well, it has been pretty busy.  Brennen flew out to WV for that interview, and HE GOT ACCEPTED! Yay! We don't really want to move out there, but it's our in-case-everything-else-fails plan.  Right now he is just studying for finals and preparing for his internship.  He leaves in 1 month and 20 days....i don't really want to think about that right now.

 Me? I've been working up a storm at the Plasma Center.  Livin' the dream.  P.A. School interview are 'spensive. I'm freaking out about this PRAXIS test I have to take on Saturday because I signed up for the wrong one...and missed the deadline to switch my tests.  This last week has been especially crazy because I picked up an extra shift at work and then got all my finals and threw my sis-in-law a bridal shower.  She gets married in 2 weeks.  This next week i have a ton of crud due, plus this test.  I have not been able to log into I-Learn for the past 2 days which makes submitting finals very difficult.  I have also started having spider nightmares again. Hooray.. For those of you that don't know, my #1 phobia is spiders.  No matter how small or how big (except for tarantulas, don't ask why).  Recently we have found a few in our apartment, which didn't  happen last year.  One morning I woke up with three bites on my foot and had no idea where they came from.  I thought maybe it was a week-old mosquito bite(s) flaring up.  Then the next night I found a spider resting a few feet from my head.  EEEK. I made Brennen get rid of it. Nights have been tough at our place.  It's been hotter than hades since they cut down all the big shade trees in front of our windows.  We've even used our AC occasionally.  Yesterday it rained all day so that sent the temps to about the 60s, which made things a lot better.  I ended up falling asleep on the bean bag in the living room with the window open.  Around 4 am i woke up to this weird crying sound.  It sounded like a cat doing one of three things: 1] Multiplying and replenishing, 2] giving birth or 3] dying a slow, painful death. It was REALLY loud, and i'm not the only one it woke up, either.  Some neighbors across the street woke up too. It was disturbing, so i sought refuge in my significantly warmer-with-the-window-closed bedroom.

So, ya. there is the month-in-review. Not much exciting going on. Counting down the days until our Disneyland vacation! one month! And trying not to think of Brennen leaving so soon.... :(