Happy New Year!

...And surprise! We haven’t completely forgotten about our blog! Though it is true, there were a couple months there where I did forget about it entirely. Either way, here we are. We apologize to anyone who checked back repeatedly only to find the same old post week after week. Needless to say it has been a busy few months, but a really great few months too!

Since there is a lot to catch up on, I’ll start with the wedding. We are officially under five months away! So exciting!! I feel like we just got engaged. There is still so much to do wedding-wise, but I can’t wait to marry Jeremiah, so I hope the next five months goes fast too. Since my last post, we have made many decisions, some big, some small. We have chosen a florist, a DJ, and a photographer. Last time I mentioned that our venue is all-inclusive, meaning they have specific vendors that they partner with that we can choose from. That made the decisions much easier! We are still trying to decide on our caterer, but we are very close. We have done three food tastings with the three different caterer options, so we are deciding between our two favorites now. One big, exciting decision is our honeymoon destination of Cancun, Mexico! We are very excited to go to the beach and have a place to just relax! Usually when we travel we are caught up in seeing all the sights and doing all the popular activities, so we think Cancun will be a nice change of pace from that. We have booked the resort, but haven’t booked the flights yet. That is on our to-do list! We are in the middle of deciding on invitations and also I am trying to get a better idea of some of the details that I want, like types of flowers, favors, jewelry, etc. It is shocking the number of decisions that have to be made. I am trying to just take it one decision at a time, but since I am so indecisive it ends up taking quite awhile! I have so many ideas in my head for the details, it is hard to narrow it down!

Since we have a wedding rapidly approaching, I tried to load up this past semester of school in order to make my last one pretty easy. That way I can still enjoy my last semester of undergrad and plan a wedding all at once. By loading up, I mean that I had two part-time jobs, an internship and four other classes, one of which was my Honors thesis. I was really nervous going into the semester because I wasn’t sure I could handle it. But I really surprised myself! My thesis, entitled “Keys to the Mind of an Elite Pole Vaulter: An Investigation of Psychological Skills and Mental Toughness” ended up going very well. As a quick synopsis, basically I compared “mental toughness” scores for pole vaulters at three different levels of competition (high school, collegiate, and post-collegiate). Mental toughness is a term used to describe a combination of psychological skills such as focus, motivation, and coping. One major finding was that there were differences in mental toughness between high school and collegiate vaulters as well as between post-collegiate and high school vaulters. But nothing significant between collegiate and post-collegiate vaulters. I defended my thesis in front of three professors, my parents, and Jeremiah and I felt really proud of the result. Shout out to Jeremiah for letting me rehearse for him many times before the defense! Also a big thanks to Jeremiah for keeping me calm during moments of panic and frustration in regards to my thesis! It felt really great to have it done a semester ahead of schedule! And now you know much more than you cared to or needed to about my thesis.

The completed paper!

My internship was at the PT office that I was already working at one day a week. As an intern, I was able to focus more on what the PTs were doing and follow them around rather than running around doing my own work and front office tasks. I had intended to get an internship in a hospital setting, but it turns out that is really hard to get! So I ended up in the same place as my job, but that was fine, because once the internship was finished, I went back to getting paid as a tech. I also kept up my job at Gammage, which has always been pretty sporadic, just based around when big shows are in town. This semester I saw Mamma Mia!, Beautiful- The Carole King Musical, The Sound of Music, and Cabaret! My other job was a new one this semester as a First-Year Success Coach! This is a job that I have been interested in since my freshman year and I am so glad I took the opportunity to do it. Essentially I have a load of about 130 freshmen students who are in the College of Health Solutions like me and I set up appointments with them to go over goals for the semester, concerns they have about school/work/life, or helping keep them on track academically. It is such an awesome experience for me. I love talking with all of my students and it has been a great job to continually learn from and get better at. Also, my boss and coworkers are awesome which always helps!

My classes also ended up being really awesome this semester. My functional anatomy and biomechanics classes this semester were so cool, and I really enjoyed the material we were learning. Those were definitely a challenge too, but it was worth it! I think that was it this semester, so it kept me very busy!

Now on to Jeremiah’s semester... This was his first semester as a full time Masters degree-seeking student. He had a few very challenging classes! Seriously, he tells me about the homework and exams and I just wonder how anyone passes these classes. In his Linear Algebra class the first exam had a class average of 54%! I will brag for him and let you know that Jeremiah got an 84% on that exam. How talented is he? He definitely works hard for the grades though too! His other big thing this semester is that he was working as a TA for an intro to engineering course. His primary role was helping in the lab portion of the class. He really enjoyed helping first-year engineering students and having the opportunity to be in a more teaching position. Though I know that he did not enjoy the seemingly endless load of grading! Now he also has only one semester left at ASU.

So we have covered wedding and school… In between all of that we have somehow managed to do many other really great things!

I travelled to Rochester in October for a family friend’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and awesome weather! I was really excited to be in Rochester too, because I didn’t get to go there over the summer. We stayed in my aunt and uncle’s lake house on Lake Ontario and got to see most of our extended family in just the few short days while we were there. We also were able to have a joint bridal shower for my cousin and me! It was all family and close friends of our family. I can’t remember if I mentioned it previously, but my cousin is getting married just a couple months after me and we are both bridesmaids for each other! How cool is that? We have been having fun planning alongside each other and asking questions back and forth! So anyway, our moms and my sisters planned a very beautiful shower!

At the bridal shower with our moms!

A group photo from the wedding! Self timer was used, hence the slightly awkward angle.

Jeremiah didn’t join us in Rochester because of his family’s annual October Disney trip. It is a big trip for them (even though, yes, we do go to Disney rather often) so he was really happy to be able to do that with them. I know they had an excellent time and ate lots of delicious food too!

Speaking of Disney, right after the semester ended we took a quick trip before our annual passes expired. We stayed in an Airbnb that was a quick 5 min drive to the park (we used Uber for the first time to get there). A little different to be in Disneyland just the two of us, but we had a great time!

Our last time on the Tower of Terror!! So sad because it's my favorite ride. We are thinking "Why??" in the picture. 

In early December Jeremiah and I joined my family for our annual Beaver Creek Ski Trip! Because of school and work schedules we could only be there for a couple of days, but it was just great to be there with everyone! My birthday landed on the one full day we were there, so it was an incredible birthday. Skiing, family, and the Grotto (the amazing spa area in our hotel). Jeremiah was much-improved in his skiing abilities this year too!

Both the Rochester trip and the Colorado trip were even more special this year because they included my sister and brother-in-law who are now official residents of Philadelphia, PA! It has definitely been an adjustment to not see them as often, but luckily we have seen them every couple months so it hasn’t been too bad. I definitely miss having them and my niece and nephew close though!

We have definitely been much better about spending time with our friends over the past few months! We even took a trip up to my family’s cabin with a group of friends over Thanksgiving weekend. We pretty much just played games the whole weekend, but we had such a great time with everyone! We have gone on quite a few double dates and had a number of game nights with our friends Tommy and Emily. Been to many group get-togethers with a group of our friends who call themselves “The Fellas.” We have a weekly small group with church friends, which has been great! Lastly, we have made many friends in the church college group, which has been a great community to be a part of.

A couple photos from our cabin trip!

I will end with some big updates:

1.     Jeremiah accepted a job offer with Stryker, where he interned last summer. He plans to start in early July and is really excited to be in the Research and Development department! We are feeling really blessed that he has such a great offer with an awesome company doing something he enjoys!

2.     I was accepted to Midwestern University’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program in Glendale, AZ. The program would start in June! I am feeling very fortunate to have already gotten in somewhere, but I am also waiting to hear back from other schools and am hopeful that I will have some options.

3.     You may be wondering, are they definitely staying in Arizona then? Or maybe you already assumed we would be staying here. Yes, that is likely, but I did apply to a few schools out-of-state! So if I get into one that I really want to out-of-state, Jeremiah and I will determine then what is best for us. But he knows that it would mean he would have to look for a different job. We are just waiting to see what happens!

4.     We welcomed my newest nephew just yesterday! His name is Preston Reece Warren and he is so so cute! I love him so much already! Also, Brian and Terrisa allowed me to be in the room during the birth. It was so amazing. I had never seen a birth before and I was so in awe! It went really smoothly and I couldn’t help but think about how great God is throughout the whole process. I can’t wait to watch him grow up alongside my other nieces and nephews!  

I am sure there are things that I am missing, but I think I have typed for long enough today and my goal is to have another post in just a couple of weeks so that I can catch up on even more!

Happy New Year everyone! We are so excited for everything to come in 2017 and hope you are too!