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!

The Beautiful Arizona

Only one week left of summer! Where did the time go??

I feel like I am always saying that, but in this case I am pretty excited about the time moving quickly because that means that our wedding will come faster! T-minus 10 months!

So first things first- wedding plans. Last time Jeremiah wrote we had just decided on a date and venue which was a big decision, which we are still very excited about. And since then, we’ve made a number of smaller decisions. The one that I’m most excited about is that I picked out my wedding dress! I obviously can’t describe it because Jeremiah reads this blog and I am leaving it as a complete surprise. But I absolutely love the dress! I went to about 5 different stores to look, and found some other nice options but kept coming back to this one (which I tried on at the second store we visited). On top of loving the dress, the store we went to, Uptown Bridal, was a really great, no-pressure place. They were very helpful and very patient with my indecisiveness. We have also decided on out colors (not sure if that was mentioned previously) of gray, navy blue, and sage green. I picked out my bridesmaid dresses already too! This decision needed to be made pretty quickly because my sister-in-law is pregnant with baby #3! We wanted her to be able to try on the dress and find her size so she knows the approximate size she’ll be after she has the baby in January, rather than having to guess or wait until just a couple months before the wedding to order. So I am very pleased with that decision as well. Finally, my sister Emily took our engagement photos and I made save-the-dates that I just got in the mail. They are so cute! We’ll be sending them out in the next month I imagine. Those are some of the big things we’ve done and so our next steps are booking our photographer, DJ, and florist. Our venue is all-inclusive so they have these vendors that we can choose from, so that shouldn’t be too hard. We are also looking into honeymoon locations, which has been really fun. Especially after this summer where I have not left Arizona much, I am itching to travel! We are focusing in on Maui, HI, Mexico, and a couple other places in the Caribbean. But if anyone has any other suggestions or tips about these places, let us know!

Sneak peak at one of the engagement photos my sister took.

Outside of the wedding planning we have had a pretty eventful summer despite having not travelled much! For one, the detail I briefly mentioned in my last paragraph- my brother and sister-in-law are pregnant again! YAY! Paisley and Parker are getting a new sibling in early January of 2017! This will be my fifth niece/nephew and I can’t wait. On the flipside of this, my family has some harder news too… About a month ago we found out my sister and brother-in-law are moving to Philadelphia, PA. They are moving for my sister’s job with General Mills, so it is going to be great for their family… It’s just hard for us here in AZ! I have loved having Heather and George close by and I won’t get to see Madeline and Luke as often as I’d like, but it’s a new place for us to travel to and there will be plenty of occasions to see them still. They leave this Saturday, the 13^th, and I can’t think about it too much yet or I’ll get too emotional!

Luke! Almost 6 months already!

Jeremiah is in his last week of his internship at Stryker Sustainability and has really loved the experience. They have kept him super busy with multiple projects so the time has flown by for him. Even though he is really busy, he is enjoying all of the work as well as the environment he is working in. Maybe he will work there in the future at some point too! Who knows? For now, he is gearing up to start his official last year at ASU as a Masters student. Along with the required 12 credits he will be working as a TA for FSE 100, an intro to engineering type class for undergrads. This is a highly sought after job that he will be so perfect in! He has always been an awesome, patient tutor for me and is really great at explaining concepts. So I’m excited to see how this role goes for him.

This summer I have been working at a physical therapy office, which I started back in February. It has been going very well! I really enjoy meeting so many patients and it has been an awesome experience to learn about physical therapy. I have also been taking an online Physics class, which I am sooo ready to be done with. I’ve got a few more weeks… I can do it! The class is especially annoying because I am only taking it so that I can apply to certain PT schools that don’t take high school AP credit. But that’s okay; it will be worth it!

Something fun I have done this summer is a lot of hiking! I have always loved hiking, but have never gone very consistently. Luckily, my friend Jess helped me change that! Jess is a friend of mine from ASU who is a very avid hiker. She invited me on a hike back in June and we went once a week until she went home to Tucson, but I kept it up either by myself or with other people I recruited to hike with me here and there. Arizona is so beautiful, and it is really awesome to get up and active so early! In order to hike here in the summer, obviously it has to be early! But Arizona doesn’t get more beautiful than the Grand Canyon, which I hiked in July! Jess and her mom and a few of her mom’s friends had planned for quite awhile to hike the Grand Canyon in July and luckily a spot opened up so that I could join them. So amazing! We went and stayed on the South rim on a Thursday, hiked down South Kaibab trail starting at 4 am Friday morning, stayed at Phantom Ranch at the bottom, and out Bright Angel trail on Saturday. It was hot but it was worth it. The canyon is spectacular from the top, but truly a different experience to hike down into it. At the bottom, as I said we stayed in Phantom Ranch which has cabins and campsites. We stayed in a cabin (with AC thankfully!) and hung around the grounds playing games, swimming in the creek, napping, and enjoying the delicious beef stew and cornbread that the Phantom Ranch employees prepare. The hike out was 9.5 miles of gradual, and some parts steep, uphill. It was a little daunting, but we took it slow and steady and the whole group made it up pretty close together and without any injuries! I loved getting to experience the hike with Jess and the other ladies I went with were so much fun. We also met a girl from France on our way down, Camille, and spent a good amount of time with her! How brave to travel across the world and hike into a huge canyon by yourself! I made a GoPro video of our trip, so feel free to check that out too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zZsh8Va5BY

Isn't that amazing??

We made it out!

So that is what Jeremiah and I have done individually, but together we’ve done many other fun things! For one, we travelled to Kansas over the 4^th of July weekend! Some of his extended family live in Salina, KS so we were able to spend time with them. One of the days we were there we went to a nearby lake and spent the day jet skiing and tubing! So much fun!! I love jet skis. We also went to a fireworks show, tried a cute little burger place called the Cozy Inn, played a lot of ping pong and other games, and enjoyed the company. We flew out of Wichita and one of my friends (and a bridesmaid), Stephanie, lives in Wichita so we were able to stop in and see her and her husband! She made us the cutest brunch all red, white, and blue themed since it was the 4^th of July. They also had just recently gotten two kittens so I got to see and play with them. Another small trip we made was to the Grand Canyon for a quick visit with Jeremiah's family. We stayed in a cute little house in Flagstaff and then took a train to the canyon. The train ride was really nice, and a great way to beat lines to get into the national park.

We forgot to take a picture before Kyle had to leave for work. 

We have been really lucky to be able to spend a lot of time with friends this summer, including tubing down the salt river, going to movies, doing an Escape Room, and other miscellaneous get-togethers. We’re lucky to have so many great friends! In fact, Jeremiah is moving into a house with three of our friends this weekend! The house is in Tempe and he is really excited to make the move. But he is also cherishing his last few days at home too!

This semester I have a very full schedule with 15 credits, which includes finishing my Honors Thesis and working 10 hours a week at my PT job which will count as my required internship for my major. I will also be working 15 hours a week as a first-year success coach. I am really excited for this new job! It is something I’ve been interested in for a long time, so next time I post I’ll let you know how it is. So it’s going to be full, but should be really great!

The summer had no spectacular Europe trip, but we still managed to make it a great one.

I randomly won a helicopter ride from an Instagram contest. It was SO cool!

A view from the helicopter!

Jeremiah and I took Paisley on a date night of dinner and bowling. Can't believe she started Kindergarten last week!!

-Hannah