Pink Monkey Part Zwei

My second trip was a couple weeks later to Portland Oregon. Marlene Nelson one of my old roommates got married.

My roommate Maria and I got an awesome deal off of Priceline for both a hotel room and Portland and plane tickets from Boise to Portland both ways and a rental car, for less than we would have paid to fly out of SLC!

We obviously went to the wedding at the temple and the reception, which was cool because they had hung fabric in the cultural hall to make it a tent, did some touristy stuff such as visit Multonomah Falls (sp?), but really mostly we did a lot of eating. BowThai, All you can eat Indian food at a place called Nameste, Baby Back Ribs, P.F. Chang's, VooDoo Doughnuts,Moonstruct Chocolate Cafe etc. We had a ton of good food. We didn't really pay to do much besides eat and drive so we got to try some amazing food. Unfortunately my internet connection doesn't like uploading lately so I'm going to give you a link to VooDoo Doughnuts because they were amazing doughnuts! With names you will find no where else. http://www.voodoodoughnut.com/

We went to the Portland Art Museum and saw in person WaterLilies by Monet, another piece by Van Gogh

We went to the Rose Gardens in a city park there and they were just gorgous.

We went to Powell's bookstore which was several floors high and covered a full city block.

We bought a lovely wedding gift that didn't make Marlene blush, and just had an awesome time! It was kinda a sad trip home knowing we had no other future travel plans. Overall an awesome time! The more and more I travel though I've decided that I agree with Saint Augustine when he said "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." We all know how much I love to read, and I think traveling is becoming as big of an addiction for me. :0)

The most cliche lines known to Mormondom...

Well Mr. Guy Friend and I finally had that date he's been talking about since like December. After a million suggestions for dates via text message and questions about random "have you tried sushi?" and "what would you think about this" but never with any actual follow through.

Well finally about a month ago (I know I've done a crappy job updating you, but it's been a busy summer) I got a text me about 10pm asking me one night if I want ice cream. We went to DQ and had some ice cream. And although we touched on many topics including some of his regrets about how he wished that he actually did have something to show for the last 5 yrs since high school, he never breached the topic of dating. So I finally commented on it when he dropped me off. Because honestly this had gone on long enough. I could tell that he was still interested in me, but I could also tell that he wasn't going to ask me in person, I was going to get a text about it afterwards. Seriously!!! We're friends? Am I that intimidating? Well, because we were friends and really I wanted to make this as quick and pain free as possible so I could quickly climb out of the car and go to bed, I somehow I ended up saying a couple of the most cliche lines known to Mormondom. "I think you're a great guy" but "I don't want to get into a relationship because I'm planning on serving a mission." And then I told him that odds are that he'd be engaged to some cute little 19 yr old freshman while I was gone and that he could mail me an announcement. I know not the best way to tell someone you're not interested, but honestly it's the truth. And I think that it's nicer than saying "Well, you're just not really going anywhere right now and I don't want to risk getting into a relationship with someone who'd I'd have to support for the next few years." - Yeah I don't think that would go so well. So I went the cliche route, and I was being honest. I am planning on putting my papers in as soon as I save enough money to go and really comparing the two options or dating him or going on a mission I feel better about the latter.

"Vege" Day

“You pile up enough tomorrows and you’ll find you’ve collected nothing but a lot of empty yesterday’s . I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make today worth remembering”
-“Oh, so would I…”- Quoted from The Music Man
I whole heartedly agree!!!! I’ve definitely been making anything but empty yesterday’s at least this month.
So Maria and I are currently lounging here watching The Music Man. Today has turned into our “vege” day. You know the day you try to impersonate…. well mimic…. a vegetable such as a couch potato. It’s been a busy couple of weeks… even month…. for both of us. And being busy has been fabulous, but there comes a point where the thought of doing one more thing just makes you want to collapse. That one final thing that turned into the “straw that broke the camel’s back” or that caused Dee to collapse onto the couch around 1 am and say blow it was the thought of leaving before 8am to go hike to Iron Bog Lake. And apparently I’m not the only one that said to blow it. Maria my roommate collapsed on the couch at the same time as I did. Out of exhaustion!!
And when 8am rolled around- out of guilt somewhat, I suppose, since I had been so gung ho about the idea until last night- I texted first Matt who was supposed to go with us- and found out that he was sluffing to sleep as well, and then checked with Emerson to make sure we weren’t going to be sending him off alone into the wilderness- and low and behold he wasn’t planning on going either in fact he hadn’t made it back from working the week in Island Park. He was still sleeping… oopps!!.
So now here we rest watching The Music Man. And I’m going to try to give you a quick update of what I’ve been up to lately. – It’s been nearly a month since I’ve posted last- Unfortunately my internet keeps cutting out too so I doubt I’ll be able to get all my pictures up. (if any… ) but here’s how I’ve been making the “todays” of July worth remembering.
-4th of July weekend typical 4th celebrations plus my roommate and I went to Crater’s of the Moon and did some hiking, up cinder cones and across lava fields etc.
- My friends convinced me to sing karaoke at Applebee’s after FHE
-Survived an audit at work- Not a pleasant week while they were there, nor were the weeks leading up to it
-Walked the greenbelt a few times
-Walked to Taco Time from my townhouse and back with Maria (we figure it was probably close to 4 miles after we were done)
-My mom broke her ankle so I’ve been trying to help out at home and with my grandparents when time and work allow me too
-Was one of the people in charge of a trip to Casper, Wyoming with a group from my YSA branch- we stopped at Independence Rock, Martin’s Cove, crossed the Sweetwater River Pulling a handcart etc. and came back with around 25 mosquito/ horse fly bites
-Had a massive waterfight with some friends followed by a movie night, and had we not had to be responsible and be to work by 8 the next morning we would have gone hot tubbin’ at midnight.
-Had a stake Pioneer Day Celebration followed by Snow cones with friends
-Had a couple of cousins and several friends get married, which unfortunately I was only able to make it to one of them
-Finally hung the pictures that having been laying in our living room waiting to be hung since we moved in two months ago.
-Deep cleaned the kitchen counters and floors and the basement bathroom
-Add in 40 hour work weeks (with the exception of the couple days I took off for the branch trip and a family wedding) Institute on Thursdays, FHE on Mondays, Munch and Mingle, and Break the Fast and whatever other branch activities came up in the month and I’ve been an extremely busy girl.
Here’s to an exciting August and tomorrows to come.

If only!!

So I'm hoping to go on a vacation towards the end of summer with one of my roommates. Currently we're looking for tickets back east. However when I got onto Delta I saw some very attractive deals that would take me to a much more exotic destination. - Well not exotic, but definately amazing destinations! If I were to purchase a ticket by Monday I could travel from SLC to Paris for $469 or $529 for a flight to Tokyo (cost each way mind you) but still for Paris, that would be less than $1000 before taxes, fees and all that additional jazz. I can see me now, standing on the top of the Eiffel tower,

or spending hours in the LOUVRE!or check out Notre Dame

Or just hanging out in the middle of a ton of high rise buildings in Toyko (perhaps with my own camera hanging around my neck like the Asian tourists in Yellowstone).

Well those are going to continue to be figments of my imagination. Here's where the bummer comes in that says no not a good idea. I have a very small window of time for when I can take my vacation. It has to fall between now and August 24. After August 24, Jen the other full time Developmental Specialist will most likely go out on materity leave. Well these tickets unfortunately are for flights after August 29. Probably not the best time to be leaving. Andrea is another D.S. in our building and comes in 2 days a week and Lonna Joy the head tech would still be there, but I know how busy our building gets and it's nice to have at least 2 supervisors there when at all possible. That way one person can be handling the chaos and one person can try to get some work done. (We have well over 60 kids and over 30 adults passing through our building on a typical day.) The days that it's just been me there supervising that many people I honestly feel busy all day, but I don't feel like I got any thing done that I could honestly list out as an accomplishment. So taking a random flight across the glistening oceans to a foreign country, at least at the end of August.. not that wise of an idea.

Not to mention there are a few other things that I am trying to save for, and I think that it would probably cost a lot more to spend a few days in Paris or Tokyo than it would be for us to split a room in a couple locations on the east coast.

So these are the dreams, I'll let you know where I actually end up.

I LOVE MONDAYS!!

Wow! That's a phrase I never thought I'd say! But I do. I love Mondays! especially now that I don't work on them. Tuesday is far from my favorite day of the week now, but someday has to take Monday's old rap, might as well be Tuesday. To everyone reading this blog, it'll probably seem like a pretty boring day, but considering the contrast that I typically have being at

work for 10 hrs and being indoors Monday was great.

Well I'm done with my class to offically become a Developmental Specialist and I've finished the obnoxious assignments that came with it. I have taken my state test and I'm offically certified. And I now sign my paperwork at work "Deanna J. Taylor, BS, DS"

And now that I'm done with that I'm actually able to enjoy my day off again! Without doing homework.

So I was fortunate enough to be able to sleep in until 9:30 on Monday and then I woke up and my roommate Maria and I did Pilates for an hour. I absolutely LOVE pilates!! Well I LOVE how I feel after I do them. (Even if sometimes I have a pain in my abs afterwards, because that means I'm flattening them.)

And then Maria and I decided to take a little walk for lunch. Well a 4-5ish mile walk to and from lunch. We walked from our townhouse on Woodruff just south of Kearney, to Taco Time (Crossing Hitt on foot- which FYI is being chipped and the traffic lights were disabled that day) where we enjoyed a yummy taco salad and a sample of Mexi- Ice- which is FABULOUS!! - I recommend it. So far we've tried the Berry flavor and the Peach flavor both of which are really good.

After our delicious lunch we walked back. Wandering up and down several of the streets between Hitt and Woodruff and looking at some of the fliers for houses for sale in our neighborhood. There are some really nice houses in our neighborhood, and they are really actually pretty affordable at $139,000 for a 4 bedroom 2 bath and remodeled. I've always loved looking at houses and it was a nice relaxing walk.

Afterwards Maria and I decided that we were finally going to get some plants for our outside our place so it's not so drab. Well we got the plants, but didn't realize how much dirt we were going to need. OR really how much we actually ended up with.

So we made a quick trip to Walmart, where we somehow came out with more plants... and we hurried home and dropped them off at our place and quickly drove to Tautphaus park for FHE.

FHE was a lot of fun. We played 500 which was enjoyable, more because of the company playing than out of my enjoyment of throwing a football. :D but it was fun and then we went and got a snowcones. Which provided some great refreshment as our small crowd stood around and chatted.

Then after the snowcones we went and watched part of a softball game at Tautphaus again with some people from our branch and then Maria and I came home and we dug right in and started planting our flowers.

Well around 11pm we ran out of pots for our flowers so we made a quick run to WINCO and invested in some more new flowerpots. And raced home to finish planting.

By 1am we finally finished planting and this is the finished result on our front porch-



We also have several by our back door but I haven't taken a photo of them yet. But we got a variety of herbs, peas, and flowers including Gazanias, Marigolds, Geraniums, Salvia, Coleus, and Vincos.
Our townhouse is really starting to look like home for the three of us. And it smells pretty good too!

Lions, and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!!!!

So my roommates and I have made a goal of having a life this summer... imagine that. Well our first adventure was to go to the circus. (About a week ago, I've had trouble getting onto my blog and uploading without losing internet signal). Anyways it was a ton of fun. The circus was held at the State Fair Grounds in the arena there.


My batteries died like less than halfway through so I don't have a whole lot of good pictures to post, but it was still fun and it had all of the classic attributes of a circus- lions, tigers, a bear, people in weird get ups (both as part of the act and the audience), except there were no clowns, kinda strange, but I guess kid friendly. According to my roommate clowns are scary.

But it was a fun night out with the girls. And considering we had buy one get one free tickets, we actually were all able to go for cheaper than what it would have cost to go to a movie at Edwards.

And it appears impossible for my internet connection to upload more than one picture at the moment so please feel free to imagine all of the incredible acts at the circus.

On to a better month- HOPEFULLY!!

So yeah I have some complaints about May.
-First off- have you tried moving while you work 40s+ a week? In addition to working 40 hrs also be doing incredibly stupid and mostly mindnumbing assignments to get another Credential from the state of Idaho that allows you 1st off to sign the paperwork that you complete at work rather than have someone else sign it that has completed this pointless class instigated by the state of Idaho to basically soak up tax dollars and reteach you everything that you learned in college. And to force you to take something that you normally do, but to reflect upon it and think about it and basically just B.S. about the purpose of why you write this document and what the document really means... which honestly I just want to say that I write these documents this way because in order to meet the pointless rules and laws that have been written by legislatures that really have no idea what happens in a DDA I have to include this information and this information. So summed up I write an IPP or a PIP or a Developmental Assessment based off of a SIB-R because basically those are the general hoops that Medicaid (sp? I don't care to find the correct spelling at the moment) and the state Legislator have decided all DDAs need to jump through. And as if that stuff is not annoying enough, every couple of years we'll come through and audit everything that you do and make sure that you've dotted this i and that you've killed about a million trees to get a copy of every single document that's been created in the last year with Client A's name on it. Documents including reports from outside services that will generally only be looked at once and that will be glanced at occasionally throughout the year just long enough to make sure that the date is still current and that you don't need to rerequest. But if you forget to sign this by this date, or you forget to request one of the items or have a current physical for one of your clients we might just will take back a lot of money that we've paid you.- Well there's more to it than that, but general idea....
Sorry back to why I don't miss May at all- so yeah working 40+s hours on salary so I get paid the same whether I work 40 hrs or 50hrs (thankfully it hasn't technically been that bad)
-I'm doing homework again, like 3 or more assignments a week that take a fair amount of time to day and completely blow my days off of work and that unfortunately have caused me to have to refuse a date because I have homework I have to do. How is it I made it through 5 yrs of college without having homework interfer with my dating and now when I should just be working then homework rears it's ugly head? And so you spend the night you could be on a date doing a crap load of homework and you think you have all of the assignments done and you go to submit them by email and your internet doesn't work. So you take your "trusty" jumpdrive to work to email them, and you find out that 2 out of the 3 assignments haven't saved so you spend the day redoing what you've already done!!!

And after the homework is done and I finish reading a lot of dry information on assessments, child development, behavior, data collection, etc, usually 30-60s a week, then I end up sitting through a couple hours of lecture once a week all so that I can take a test this month that will allow me to sign documents at work "Deanna Taylor, BS, DS." it will be worth it, but geeze, what a pain in the butt now!!!

-It's been raining and snowing like more than I care to think about lately. Which completely ruined most of my plans for moving on the days and times I wanted to. And instead I ended up doing random, it's not raining better move some crap, moving sessions.

-I had to finish moving/ cleaning out my old place this weekend and
-I got food poisoning the night before we had to be out. So I'm throwing up all through the night and then the next morning I'm expected to wake up and have a spotless apartment. Well I did it, but I DO NOT RECOMMEND it!!! This also ended up being when I ended up turning down a date to do homework and then having it not save!!

Sorry I've been blowing off a little bit of steam, the last couple of weeks have not been fun. And you add a little bite of relationship drama *see previous posts and you have a month that has been a complete pain in the butt.

JUNE BETTER BE FANTASTIC- the whole opposition in all things- you have to experience the crappy stuff to appreciate the excellent stuff. SO A WHOLE BUNCH OF GOODNESS better be coming my direction!