It's May! YAY!

We are just about three weeks out from the wedding now! 22 days, but who’s counting? ;)

We have come a very long way in preparation since our last post! We have pretty much everything ready to go; we just have some final meetings and details to iron out before the big day. So we have figured out all of our song selections, food selections, did our cake tasting and decided on cake flavors and design, ordered a bunch of miscellaneous items, sent out invitations, ironed out order of ceremony, the list goes on! There are so many details to consider and luckily we have a crew of people helping us get ready! For one, my parents have been a massive help. We have weekly “wedding meetings” in which we go over where we’re at, who needs to do what still, questions we need to ask vendors, what needs to be purchased, etc. These have been very necessary for staying on top of things! I also have a few of my bridesmaids working on some tasks for me, and am always getting people offering to help in any way they can. It is so nice to have that help!

We have a final meeting with our photographer tomorrow and a final meeting with our venue and coordinator next week, I also have my hair and makeup trial next week, and a few other miscellaneous things! I am currently preparing gifts for the bridal party and writing out a very detailed timeline of events and things to remember day of to hand out to everyone in the bridal party. I am having way too much fun with that, but what can I say, I like to be organized!

            So another big event that is happening next week for Jeremiah and me are our graduation ceremonies!! As of today (for Jeremiah, I finished Monday) we are both done with our degrees! For me, a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology and for Jeremiah a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering! How cool is that?? It hasn’t really sunk in for me fully yet, perhaps because I am going back to school in August. But I can’t wait for the ceremonies next week, because I am sure it will feel real then! Jeremiah is done with school forever (or at least for the foreseeable future) and I am so proud of all of his hard work and accomplishments! Yet again, he managed to maintain a 4.0, which is just incredible. All the while, maintaining a TA job, looking for jobs in Denver, and helping with wedding tasks.

            I am very proud of how I finished off my time at ASU, both GPA-wise and otherwise. Looking back on my time in undergrad I am really amazed at all that I was able to fit in the four years. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone on multiple occasions and tried a bunch of new things, and that really helped shape an amazing four years. In my four years, I was part of the Leadership Scholarship Program, I tried out three different clubs (Devils Advocates- 2 years, Honors Devils- 2 years, Nutritional Health Awareness- 1 year), I worked at Gammage for 3.5 years, I worked as a Community Assistant for one year, worked as a PT Tech for just over a year, worked as First-Year Success Coach for one year. I also studied abroad for a semester, backpacked Europe, road tripped from AZ to FL, attended a ton of ASU football games and a few other ASU sport events, worked in a research lab for a semester, and completed an Honors Thesis. And even with all of those things, I am sure there are things that are missing; all of the day-to-day things that I did that I am going to miss. All in all I am so glad that I chose to go to ASU, but more importantly, I am so glad that I decided to make the most of my experience in undergrad. I tried things that I didn’t like and I tried jobs that really tested me, but I learned from each of them, and found new experiences to try! I am so proud to be graduating as a Sun Devil!

            I’ll wrap up with some specific events of the past month or two. Last Friday I attended my senior banquet for the Leadership Scholarship Program. My parents and Jeremiah came with me and it was such a great night. The committee did a great job putting the program together, we had some great speakers, a fun senior video, and we all received graduation stoles as our parting gift! LSP was one of the experiences in college that shaped me the most, primarily because I met some really incredible people who were with me all four years.

            This past Monday I went to a luncheon for Gammage’s graduating student workers. I started working at Gammage during my freshman year thinking it would likely just be a short time, but three years later I was still working there! I just had my last shift last week and it was a sad day! My boss was seriously the greatest, she is so funny and just really helpful. Plus my coworkers were all so nice and fun to work with. And who doesn’t love getting to watch Broadway shows for free? The lunch was a really nice end to my time working there, my boss Virginia said some nice words about working with me, and we all got a really nice Gammage mug. Grateful to always be part of the Gam Fam!

            I pick up my wedding dress on Monday and can’t wait to see it with the alterations completed! YAY! The day is getting so close, but still feels pretty surreal!

We're Moving?!

WE’RE MOVING TO DENVER! I can definitely say I never thought those words would actually come out of my mouth, but here we are! So you may be wondering, what on earth happened since your last post? Jeremiah had an awesome job lined up in AZ, I was well on my way to staying in AZ for physical therapy school, we’d stay close to family and friends, our future was perfectly planned! …Well, God clearly had a different plan for us.

            Last August I began the long, tedious process of applying to physical therapy school. I chose three schools in AZ to apply to and three out-of-state. The out-of-state schools all looked like good, interesting programs, in states that I thought would be great places to live in with good prospects for mechanical engineers. But the whole time I was thinking, there’s no way I’m actually going to move out-of-state for grad school, besides for as long as I can remember I hoped, visualized, and basically planned to go to Northern Arizona University’s PT program in Phoenix. I submitted all of my applications regardless and waited to hear back about interviews. In December when I was up in Colorado for my family’s annual Beaver Creek ski trip we drove through the campus of one of the schools I applied to called Regis University. It was a beautiful campus; pretty close to the airport so we thought it would be fun to just drive around the campus. As we were driving around passing some really cute homes close to campus I literally joked to my parents and Jeremiah, “Hey, we could be living in one of these cute houses next year, Jeremiah!” and I laughed about it. Turns out that was a very accurate statement because next year I am going to be starting physical therapy school at Regis University in Denver, Colorado and I am so excited.  

            By mid-December I had heard that I had been offered a spot in Midwestern University’s PT program in Glendale, AZ. I wasn’t particularly excited about the program, but was excited to have secured a spot in an AZ school and in any PT school at all for that matter! By mid-December I had also found out I received interviews for both NAU and Regis! I was really excited about both, but a little bit nervous as well of course! My NAU interview was first, I prepared quite a bit, and was feeling pretty good. I usually do pretty well in interviews. The interview at NAU was structured as a group interview, so I was interviewing with two other girls and being interviewed by three people. When the interview started, quite honestly, I am not really sure what happened. I got in my head, was too focused on the other girls’ answers, and comparing myself to them. It was not good and I was SO disappointed in myself. This interview was supposed to go perfectly so that Jeremiah and I could just stay put in Phoenix. I had some good answers toward the end of my interview, so it wasn’t a complete bust, but when I went back to meet with Jeremiah I basically fell apart because suddenly the future seemed really scary and uncertain. But God was watching over me the whole time, I just know it, because just two days later I flew up to Denver for my interview at Regis University and the interview couldn’t have gone better.

            The interview at Regis University was a full day event and was extremely organized. There were so many people there for the interview, so it was just a little bit intimidating! But I was feeling strangely calm. Luckily, I was in the first interview group of the day. This interview was also structured as a group interview with two other people and being interviewed by two people. The interviewers were so kind and friendly, the three of us being interviewed played off each other really well and it was just very conversational. I was smiling the whole time. After that, the rest of the day I just had a great feeling about the school. Everyone I interacted with was so welcoming and felt like they wanted me there. We were able to tour the campus, sit in on a second-year class, get a quick lesson in the anatomy lab, ask questions of a student panel, and have lunch with faculty and current students. They talked about their commitment to service, developing leaders in the field, and built up our excitement for pursuing a career in physical therapy. It was also the highest ranked program that I applied to! Simply put, I had a great feeling after my day at Regis. Yet at the same time, I was scared to be excited because I couldn’t honestly imagine how it was going to work. Making a move to Colorado, and having to make Jeremiah start over on his job search, leaving both of our families, it was all not in my plan.

            By the end of the week I received an email from NAU telling me that I was an alternate for their program… Once again, I was extremely disappointed. Being an alternate meant I could still get into the program, but I could be placed on their Flagstaff campus, which Jeremiah and I had decided we wouldn’t want to attend because of few engineering prospects, and I wasn’t a big fan of the campus. Then a few days I heard back from Regis University with an acceptance into their program! It felt so good to see the congratulations! Then a couple days after that I heard back from NAU, saying I was off the alternate list and was offered a spot on the Flagstaff campus. At that point, Jeremiah and I both really felt like God was leading us to Denver and Regis University. Of course, it wasn’t just a simple, okay let’s move! We talked about it a lot, talked with our families, prayed, and ultimately decided that we were excited to take the opportunity. So, we are moving to Denver!

            Now, to fill in some of the details… We don’t know exactly when we will move, we just know it will be some time this summer. My program starts at the end of August. We also don’t know exactly where we will be living. The campus is in Northwest Denver, but both timing and location will depend on where Jeremiah is able to find a job. This is perhaps one of the best parts of this crazy experience is Jeremiah’s unconditional support. Despite having a job that he was incredibly excited for in AZ, he was behind me 100% and even excited about the opportunity. He has been reaching out to his network to try to find opportunities and has been applying here and there. Just a couple days ago he spoke with his boss for the job here in AZ that he had already accepted to tell them that we are going to be moving. We are hopeful that an opportunity just as exciting for him will come through and know God’s got a plan for him no matter what! Jeremiah is incredibly qualified and hardworking so I am very confident in him!

            We are excited to start our married life together establishing ourselves independently and exploring a new state and new stage of life together. Of course there are a ton of nerves and uncertainties as well, but we’ve got each other to get through those! I have a lot of other updates on wedding planning, school, etc. but I think this is enough to read for one day! Hopefully I will get another post up in the next week or two. We are down to 11 weeks to the wedding! So crazy and exciting!!

A beautiful picture of the campus!

Resolutions 'n' Such

These may be the quickest back-to-back blog posts since we traveled to Europe! This time it's Jeremiah writing; I just wanted to put in my own two cents on things since my last post.

Hannah mentioned last week that one of the biggest things about my grad school year is my Teaching Assistant job. I only have 9 credit hours of coursework per semester, but that job keeps me very busy. It's a lot of fun, too! Last semester I TA-ed for three Intro to Engineering classes. It was fun to work with the freshmen who had no prior engineering experience, and to show them how great engineering is. It was also good experience for me, since I've always thought it might be rewarding to teach professionally after I retire from the industry.

The class I'm TA-ing for this semester is even cooler, in my opinion. It's called Build Your Engineering Future, and the goals are to help freshmen develop an "engineering identity," give them a better idea of what real industry jobs are like, build a support network of peers and mentors, and help them intentionally "design" their future and the path they can take to get there. Really everyone should be doing this, but it's especially important for retaining students that might otherwise drop out of school altogether! So I really like the mission of the class. And because it's a brand new course, I'm actually heavily involved in planning the curriculum. That's pretty uncommon for TAs, so I feel really blessed to be where I am!

Some of you may be wondering how [voluntarily] involved I've been in our wedding planning process. Though Hannah's certainly taken on more work than me, I'd like to think I've actually helped a lot! I don't have a lot to offer as far as the smaller details go, but I've definitely helped when it comes to determining some of our bigger-picture things, like venue, caterers, photographer, etc. And let's be real - there's no way I'm turning down the opportunity to go to those catering tastings. That food is GOOD, and tastes even better when it's free!! Lately I've been figuring out what we're doing for suits, and I also helped pick out our invitations. It's been fun! Looking forward to creating a playlist for our DJ, too.

Speaking of weddings, seems like we've started to hit that season of our lives where lots of friends tying the knot. During the holidays, two separate friend-couples of ours got engaged! Both have been a long time coming, so we're really excited for them. Meanwhile, another couple friends are getting married in just a few weeks. This past weekend was the bachelor party. We went up to Hannah's family's cabin in Pinetop for a couple days of skiing/snowboarding, football (How about that Packers-Cowboys game??), poker, and good company. It was great!

This being the start of a new year, I'd be remiss not to mention a few of the resolutions / lifestyle changes we've made recently. One of my big ones is to resist turning productivity into an idol. That means being willing to postpone productivity to live in the moment and make more time for fun with friends/family, or just relaxing. And less tangibly, it means not letting myself worry/stress when I'm not as productive as I'd like. I have this awful habit of literally calculating how much time I "waste" when things take longer than I expect them to. Doesn't that sound miserable? I finally realized how ridiculous it was, and even just over the last couple weeks this change has felt really liberating.

Meanwhile, Hannah's been picking up running and killing it! She's been on track since October to run a half marathon in the next week or two. I've been running with her once a week as best I can, but her endurance has definitely surpassed mine. We'll see if I can keep up during the real thing! Either way, I've been really impressed not just by her fitness but by how committed she is to this goal. I hope I can do the same in my own fitness goals this year!

In addition, her whole family's starting to adopt a new lifestyle of "minimalism". Basically the idea is to get rid of everything in your life that doesn't provide value. For some [extreme] people, this means only owning a handful of outfits and very little furniture in their homes. For others, like us, it's more of a healthy mindset to adopt so we live more simply and avoid turning consumerism and "things" into idols. It's financially responsible, too! Through this lens we can better determine whether we really should buy whatever it is we're considering buying. Hannah's sister is leading the charge, challenging us to sell, donate, or throw away X items each day of January, where X = the day of the month. So yes, that would mean eliminating 1 item on the 1st, 2 items on the 2nd ... all the way to 30 items on the 30th. Crazy, right? Hannah and I don't really have enough stuff to carry that on the whole month, at least not without going to extreme levels, but we're doing our best!

I think that covers all the big stuff... so here's some pictures from other things over the last several months. Hannah already covered some of these things in her last post, but it's fun to include my own pictures, too!

We had way too much fun registering at Target and Bed Bath & Beyond!

ASU football games were fun, despite an underwhelming season. Here's a shot of us with my brother... being photobombed, of course. What a poker face. Guy's a straight up G.

Nathan and I finally cleared 300,000 points on the Toy Story Midway Mania ride during my family's October trip to Disneyland! #lifegoals

My beautiful fiancé proudly displaying her signed-and-approved thesis paper! We celebrated with a delicious lunch at Chop Shop.

After much begging and pleading, Hannah agreed to ride Splash Mountain with me during our December trip - twice!! No one else was in the log because it was a chilly night. The first photo accurately displays our respective levels of excitement.

Also on our December trip we said goodbye to one of our favorite rides: Tower of Terror. They had a nice little montage set up for pictures in front of the ride. It was a cathartic moment.

Hannah had a bridal shower last week! I'm sure she has many more pictures of it, but I like this one of her with our grandmas. (Bonus: in the bottom right corner you can spot one of the first pictures of Hannah and me together. It was from her sister's wedding almost six years ago!)

Happy new year, and good luck in your own resolutions and lifestyle changes! Er, not that I'm assuming you need to change your life... I'm sure you're doing just fine, thank me very much.

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!