Traveling man *updated with pic*

So while Natalie is back home studying her little heart out, I am spending her entire finals week in Washington DC for work. I get to travel quite a bit for my job, but I don't often get much time to see the sights at these cities I visit. There have been a few exceptions, like when I took Natalie to Boston and Baltimore, but those have unfortunately those have been the exceptions rather than the rule. What usually happens is I spend 2 days in a city, I fly out of Phoenix early early the first morning, spend the rest of the day slumming around the hotel, spend all the next day working, and go straight to the airport to fly home. Not too exciting, let me tell 'ya.

This time though, I have almost 4 full days in the DC area, and I only have to work for about 6 hours total in those 4 days. I'm really excited because I've never been to DC long enough to walk around and see all the monuments and museums. I even get to go to the DC temple! I went down to the National Mall this afternoon and saw the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veteran's memorial, I had to sit through almost 2 hours of downtown rush hour traffic to get there, but it was totally worth it!

On a side note, we bought this totally awesome new digital camera... which I didn't bring on this trip. I didn't even bring out older, cheaper-but-still-better-than-my-cell-phone camera, so all I have are a couple of blurry pics which I'll post when I get home.


The Lincoln Memorial was a lot different than I thought it would be. It was really simple, I was expecting a full Smithsonian style exhibit about his life and especially death. All it was was a long marble staircase up to the seated statue of Lincoln. On the left wall was the Gettysberg address, on the left wall was a speech I didn't recognize, it looked like an inaugural address from his reelection, and that was pretty much it. The Vietnam memorial was really cool, but I really liked the Korean War memorial. I started tagging along behind a tour group listening to the tour guide, she was telling all kinds of stories. The Korean memorial is really similar to the Vietnam, but instead of carving all the names of casualties in black granite, they put portraits and pictures of the fallen soldiers.

It almost doesn't seem fair that I'm touring the nation's capital while Natalie is at home studying for her ridiculous number of finals, but I think she'll actually get more done if I'm 3000 miles away, and so far it seems to be working. Four finals down and only two more to go! I'm going to get home just in time for the celebration, as of Friday, Natalie is officially a second year PA student!Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Monument looking across the reflecting pool at the Washington monument (I believe the Jefferson monument is the domed building behind the Washington)

Not too bad for a cell phone camera!

New Camera!!

Dallas bought a new camera yesterday and I love it!! It takes awesome pictures!

Now I just need something to take pictures of...come on vacation!!!!

This is all I could find to take pictures of.
We went for a walk into our backyard out through our complex. I found some really interesting things to take pictures of. My favorite is the giant tree in someones backyard that has outgrown it and is lifting up their fence trying to get out.

It's going to take me awhile to learn how to use it!

......2 weeks!!!

And this is why I want to go into Pediatrics!


I have two more weeks full of hardcore studying!
Wish me luck!!

Favorite Things!

#1 on my list right now is my little backyard. Dallas has put so much work into it! I love it! Everyday I get to eat breakfast on my cute white swing and watch as my flowers, strawberries, and various herbs get bigger and bigger. I love watching them grow! It's my little retreat away from school!

#2 on my list is my bike. I've started riding it to school consistently in the last few weeks. It is so much fun. The weather is getting a little too hot but not too bad yet. I'm going to keep it up... until I start sizzling that is!

ROTATIONS

I have officially started a countdown! (I hate countdowns they just make your goal come so slowly!!)
Unfortunately everyone around me is counting down and so I can't help it! It's too much fun to wake in the morning and say 3 MORE WEEKS!!

That's right everyone! I am done with my didactic(sitting in class all day and taking tests all day everyday) year in 3 weeks. I get one week off....any great vacations ideas???...then I have one week learning how to be a student on rotations. I then go on rotations June 8!!

It's really crazy that I'm already done with the hard part. I felt like it was never going to end. The truth is that I don't mind sitting in class, I just don't really like taking tests. I have an average of 2 tests a wk, last semester it was more like 3! Now I'm just complaining.


THE WAY EXCITING NEW IS....
I got my rotation schedule today! I'm starting my rotations in Show Low (Family Practice then OB/GYN!) I'm staying with my parents, kicking my little brother out of his room, and ditching Dallas:) I feel a little bad about that and I'll miss him tons!
Overall I think I'll be doing around 4 rotations in Show Low! (At least I'll be out of the heat for the summer.) The rest of my rotations will be here in the valley. Kinda crazy!!

The truth is I should be in bed. Unfortunately I can't sleep because I'm worried about this dumb test that is at 8:00AM tomorrow morning, not even a big deal, except I don't know the information well enough. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure I've taken one test in PA school where I've felt prepared.
Why am I worried now? It's no different from any other test...I don't know! Probably because it's late and I'm tired.

I should be asleep but instead I wanted to say HI!

Home improvements

We have been spending a lot of time working in our little backyard lately; you've seen our grow box, and now we've added a porch swing! It took pretty much all weekend (and then some), and my fingers and knuckles are all mangled, but it's finished, and it looks pretty sweet if I do say so myself!

As soon as we got it up, we went and sat out on our porch for almost 2 hours just hanging out enjoying the weather!

We had a few... setbacks... namely one of the support beams broke in two while I was hanging on it, trying to see how strong it was. Apparently, it wasn't very strong! It was pretty scary because I was hanging directly underneath an 8-foot long 4x4 which came crashing down right next to me!

Our grow box experienced a little setback of its own; I thought I would go and do a good deed and put fertilizer out there because some of the plants weren't looking so hot. Well, apparently you're not supposed to bury your wife's favorite in steer manure, I guess they don't like that sort of thing. So yeah, a bunch of our plants died, especially the flowers. Natalie was very sad, and I got in big trouble! Thankfully, our food plants survived for the most part, and now we have a few little green strawberries growing in our back yard!