YIKES!

Just kidding, the title sounds worse than it was. I have been in Tucson since Thursday night to be Katie's patient to be certified to give local anesthesia. She has been a dental hygienist for a long time, but since she moved to AZ she has found this is an important certification to have. I have never had problems with needles or shots, but a few days before I was her "guinea pig" (I honestly had agreed like a year ago with no reservations) people were making me a bit nervous a few days in advance saying stuff like "wow, you're a GOOD sister" "wow, you must really trust your sister to let her put a needle in your mouth" etc (I'm sure you get the picture). Anyways, we had a long day of nerves. Katie took her written test and passed (if she hadn't, she would have had to go home and failed). Then we had a few hours to spare before she took her clinical exam. When we got back from eating lunch, about 4 of the girls she had known from her review exam had failed and were looking for second patients (who they had to pay an extra $125 for because the instructors were being SO nice by letting them try again). Anyhow, I was confident in Katie but worried because a lot of her peers were failing. Of cours though, she got to her turn, was super confident in front of the instructors, stuck my mouth twice, and we were done! She passed, woohoo, she's done with all this studying! We went home, got ready, went out for sushi, and her and Matt treated me and Adam since I was her patient (Thanks Kate, so unnecessary!)

Congrats Katie! Honestly, I didn't know how hard this test was until I saw how many people were failing. Your hard work and prayers from Ellie (Ellie has been really into Sunday school and prayers lately and wanted to help Katie by praying for her test, SOOOOO CUTE!) really paid off!

Employee Recognition Event

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, there are lots of parties at my work. We had our annual Employee Recognition Event last week at Mission Bay. It's nothing huge-just a day where we take a lot of food and go to a park-but I ALWAYS appreciate getting outside of the office on a work day!

Emily's Visit!

This past weekend my cousin Emily came to visit from Chicago. It was so much fun, I was sad when she left yesterday!

Em got here Wednesday so we just started by taking a walk so I could give her a tour of the whole downtown area. Then we went home, got ready, and went to Pacific Beach for dinner and drinks.

Thursday she and I went walking to get some coffee and to Balboa Park. Next we went home, got our swimsuits on, went for lunch, and ended up in Coronado at the beach where we spent most of our day. That night, I made a 4 course meal of different small plates with wine pairings, haha. I know I'm a geek but I love doing stuff like that and we had fun! Afterwards we went to Prado at Balboa Park where this girl plays music and they have a late night happy hour. It was a fun night!

Friday Emily and I walked Diggs, went up the coast to Solana Beach and Del Mar for lunch and to lay out, then we went home to get ready. Then Robbie and Joe came over for a drink and we met my friend Carissa at this "hip" Chinese restaurant where they serve family style food. Then we went out to J-Bar, which is on the roof of a restaurant. It's a really neat place and to top it off, the fireworks from the Padres stadium were going off when we were there, so that was fun. Afterwards we went to a dive bar and finally realized we had had plenty to drink so it was time to go home. I stayed up way past my usual bedtime so slept late the next day!

Saturday we went to a brunch, went for a few afternoon drinks at Elephant and Castle, then Robbie came over and we all went to dinner at C-Level and to the top of the Hyatt. Sunday we had to get up and take Emily to the airport.

I loved having Em here and I think she had fun too...well enough fun to make her want to plan another trip here for this fall! Yay!

Rest of pictures: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbM3DRi0cuWVL

Staying Home

Since we spent last weekend in Florida and my cousin Emily is getting here Wednesday ( I'm not working Thurs or Fri, woohoo), we decided to take it easy this weekend.

Friday night I made Chinese food, we watched old shows we had DVR'd and went to bed early. We were up bright and early on Saturday morning, so I made breakfast, we went and got coffee, took a walk, I worked out, and we got ready all before 11AM. We then had an exciting afternoon of going to Home Depot, grabbing lunch at the Fishette, then driving around looking for houses off the hidden path that might be for sale. We ended up in a fancy old neat neighborhood and looked at all the places that we wish we could buy :) It is fun to see such neat, unique homes though. That night we just grilled out, had some drinks, and watched some shows.

Yesterday we got to go out on Adam's boss' boat which was neat. Him and his wife have a little 8 month old girl, Hazel, who is super cute. The weather was really nice and it felt good to be in the sun. Then we grabbed dinner and some drinks at a happy hour in Little Italy and headed home. I got a call from my college friend Katie, caught up on the phone with her for awhile, then pretty much got ready for bed. It was a nice day!

I usually think I like to be out and about on weekends, but I really enjoyed having such a low key time. Not to mention the fact that I didn't have to put makeup on once. I'm glad we got some R and R but of course I was still SUPER tired this morning. Oh well, 2 days til Em gets here :)

Spring in San Diego

It's spring time in San Diego and although my allergies are horrible and Diggy's getting itchier than ever, we LOVE that we can enjoy walks in the evening when it's still warm and sunny and see all the pretty flowers blooming.

Diggy got a rocking new short hairdo for the nice weather.

Pretty purple flowered trees everywhere!

All in a (few) day's work

Oh man, if ten years ago someone would have told me I would be the minority in many of my daily situations, I would have laughed in their face. Diversity was not a big part of my life, almost everyone I knew was white, raised Christian, and had two parents that had been married for their whole life :) How things have changed!

First, lets talk about my situation at Share the Care. I have one boss who is a Jewish Canadian gay man, an ex boss who was a lesbian Jew from New York, mainly 40+ year old women coworkers, and an office of primarily hispanic and Phillipino Americans (I think there are three blonde heads out of over 100 in our department :). At first some of my coworkers seemed so 'Out there', but now I know so much about all of them and like them all so much and it just makes you learn that you have more in common with people who are "different" than you than you think.

When I started my second job, they told me it was primarily all the same type of patients-lots of low income hispanic women, lots of single mothers, lots of teenagers, most of them eat the same things, very straight forward and easy. "Not a problem," I thought. Nothing I can't handle.

Flash forward to yesterday and diversity/my learning experiences were at a peak. Of 8 patients scheduled 5 show up.

Patient 1: recovering cocaine addict

Patient 2: Spanish speaking women with 4 year old son who translates for me

Patient 3: women who moved from China 2 weeks ago and relies on electronic translator

Patient 4: Ethiopian woman with gestational diabetes

Patient 5: 89 pound Vietnamese woman with very little English vocab.

Needless to say it was sort of stressful, pretty confusing, language barriers were totally there, but all in all, they were a great group of patients who were really trying hard to do good for their baby. In both of my jobs I'm learning a lot about different types of people, which I really like. Even though my coworkers and patients are different than me, I can find things I have in common with almost all of them and try now more than ever never to judge a book by its cover.

On another note, today we had our annual workshop and I did a fun cooking demo with 100 preschool teachers. We hade lots of cute snacks that are healthy. Here are a few picts:

I guess that just takes you all into the a few days in the life of a dietitian in San Diego :)

Florida Keys with the Robertsons

We just got back from a great trip to the Florida Keys with one of my best college friends, Duvy, and her husband Andy. We went to the same place back in college, due to the fact that Duvy's aunt has a condo and is very generous with letting family members (and their friends :) use it. Duvy contacted me earlier this year about taking our hubbies now that we are married, and Adam and I jumped on the opportunity. It's a great place to visit! The water is so beautiful and blue and warm, the weather is really nice, and the local islander type restaurants and bars are super low key and fun. Although this trip was quite different than a spring break trip with a bunch of college girls, it was so just as much fun as I remembered!

Our first day there we just hung around at the condo, laying out, swimming, beaching, etc. Andy and Adam got a fascination with coconuts, crabs, and lobster so they spent quite a lot of time searching for all of these types of things in hopes we could eat them, haha. The first two nights we went and showed the boys all the places we like in Marathon, including our nightly hangout when we were there in college, the Hurricane :) Adam got to try conch, which he was excited about until it wasn't that good. We even found the $.25 peel and eat shrimp and $1 beer happy hour place we were so fond of in college, and our husbands were even MORE fond of this place than us. We ended up here about 100 times.


Our second whole day there we went to Key West. It was sooooo much fun. We had a hotel right on Duval Street, so after we checked in we walked around, had lunch, planned out our night. Then we went to the hotel pool, this music festival on the beach, and the southern most point. Finally, pretty early, we got ready and went out to enjoy the weather and the fact that you can drink on the street in Key West. We did a bar crawl of almost all of the bars there. It was lots of fun because it was a music writers festival, so there were live bands everyplace. The next morning we got up and left, but stopped at a Key Lime Pie Factory on our way out to try the local dessert. Adam was super happy about the fact that he ate a Sloppy Joe at Sloppy Joe's, drank a Margarita at Margaritaville, and ate Key Lime Pie in Key West.



Our next day we spent hanging out by the pool back at the condo. After lots of effort Adam and Andy finally got the coconut they found that had liquid in it open, and Adam made us some drinks with the coconut juice (it pretty much tasted like water, we were surprised). Andy also made guacamole for the first time and did a great job :)

Our last day we spent going snorkeling. It was so neat to go out so deep and see all the blue water and fish around. I wore a wetsuit for the first time and was surprised how well they work. Adam told me it was the best day he had of his life (I asked him where our wedding day ranked in, jk jk).

Our last night we went back to the peel and eat shrimp place, tried a few more places out, and went home early for our early departure. Adam and I dropped Duvy and Andy off at the airport in Miami and spent the morning walking around South Beach, which was fun to see. Finally, we had to start our LONG journey home.

Diggy got to come home, and was super worn out! Robbie had babysat him and took him to the dog park. He was just as tired as we were so we all snuggled into bed around 8 PM! This morning, I was wide awake at 4:30 AM, but Diggy must have gotten used to sleeping in. He did NOT want to get up :)

It's good to be home, but sad when such fun trips are over. Thanks Duvy and Andy for such a fun trip!

Lots more picts: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbM3DRi0cuWU8