January - Now

Alright, Diving in again. Let's finish up this catch-up so we can start in on more fun posts. :)

January:

Happy New Years!!...at work
I would like to tell you that all of December I spent my lunch breaks like this:

Sitting outside in the sunshine with a packed lunch, studying for the DTR. The real story is that this happened one day and then...

With the holidays and extra hours at work during the entire month of December, my time to study for the DTR passed by very quickly and once again I found myself unprepared and needing to reschedule the exam. One small problem, it was a holiday and by the time I could call to reschedule, it would be too late. I realized this on a Monday and the test was on Thursday.... So I had 3 days (all of which I was working) to cram for this test. I think this kind of emergency and panic was necessary for me to get serious about it. So, with the help of an excellent study buddy and Ashley's flashcards, I rolled up my sleeves and dived in. 3 days later...

 WOOOHOOO! I finally did it. After I finished the exam I went over to my sister Kim's and had some well deserved sister time just chatting the evening away. Then I went out to dinner with Roger to catch up and celebrate.

I visited Laura again. It worked out perfectly for me to have a long weekend there standing in for my brother-in-law while he was out of town on business. We had plenty of girl time the whole weekend.

Katelyn called her daddy every night to say goodnight. 

She was also treated to her first In-N-Out Shake. She drank it down pretty easily. ;)

Laura baked some fabulous sourdough and Katelyn kindly offered to help me slice some up for dipping in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. What a big help!

Don't you just love when you try something from pinterest and it's a success?
Laura found this recipe for pineapple smoothies on pinterest and we had to try them out. They were amazing! As soon as I get the recipe from her I have to make them again.

Roger and I planned a hike one weekend but it turned into a small exploratory adventure instead. He directed me to this really cool spot in the mountains where it is perfectly still and silent. A great thinking place.

Then we walked through the fog covered, abandoned trails up in the mountains and discovered some strange and random things like these,

 and this abandoned and torn apart mobile home

and this hunk of wood on a makeshift sled.

 Then we enjoyed making up stories to explain them all away. We finished off the afternoon with a nice warm lunch at Red Lobster. (Which I didn't take pictures of. Can you tell I was out of the blogging habits?)
Good times!

I've really enjoyed getting to know my new Loma Linda coworkers and spending time with my old school buddies. Toward the end of the month we celebrated a coworker's quarter-of-a-century birthday with just a small group.
We have this cute picture of us girls where we excluded the birthday boy and all other males present. (Sorry boys!)

 We got dessert/appetizers at BJ's Bar and Grill and then went cosmic bowling. Despite my insistence that I was really bad at bowling, I pulled some kind of luck out of my imaginary top hat and pulled ahead with a pretty good score. :)

 Loma Linda continued to prepare us for the changeover into a new online charting system with a full day of hands-on training, incessant emails and a meeting to orient all of us techs to the new procedures. Here we are having "fun" learning the ropes together. My co-Diet Techs are pretty great girls! :)

Phew! I think that's everything in January. Now, here we are in February. Tomorrow I will share all of my kitchen experiments with you. I'm excited about one recipe in general that I really, really liked. :)

Still working on applications....

Have a great Monday!