1200 Miles Later...

What a weekend! Ben and I had such a great time driving to Kansas. Who knew 20 hours in a car could be that great?!
Friday night I got in late and we did a quick drive through downtown Philadelphia so I could get a feel for the city. We grabbed a bite at Cosi (so yummy) and watched a depressing KU basketball game. We decided to spend the night at the dorm where Ben was staying mostly because it seemed unnecessary to get a hotel if there was already accommodation there....and all I can say is big mistake! I'm sure I'm just spoiled coming from BYU dorms, but man, that place was so disgusting. I'm committed to finding Ben some better lodging arrangements for May. No one should have to live in those kind of conditions!
Saturday we drove to Cleveland. It was a pretty quick drive, and we even got to drive through Lancaster County (Dutch Country). It was so crazy, it was seriously like going back in time. We were a little pressed for time so we had to choose....Amish breakfast, or Target. I chose Target. There's always a next time right?
We had a great time vising with Warren, Leanne and their kids in Cleveland. It was so fun to see their new home and to play with the kids. We're so excited for their newest addition to join the family soon. We're planning to see them again at the end of April on our way home...here's to hoping the baby comes early!! (not going to happen, I realize!)
The drive from Cleveland to Kansas City was great. We hit some rain, but were lucky to not run into snow. I didn't get to see much of the city....mostly just the "Plaza" that I've heard so much about!! It was pretty neat, I'm excited to go back at the end of the month and spend a little time exploring.
We are so fortunate that some close Kunz family friends have opened up their home to Ben and are allowing him to spend the month there. It was great to meet the Beatys on Sunday and it was easy to see why Ben loves their family so much. We are so grateful to them for their kindness and hospitality!
The rotation in Kansas is going great. Ben is working with a great attending and resident. He's really enjoying his time and getting some great exposure to their program.
Hard to believe we're one week into his time in Kansas. I'm in Toronto this weekend to visit my parents and as always am looking forward to quality time with family!

The beginning of a very busy month...

Tomorrow marks the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a fairly hectic month! It's hard to believe, but Ben actually finishes his month long course in Philadelphia tomorrow. I have to be honest...it did go much faster than expected. It's all about getting into a routine. It was so great we were able to ease into things slowly, and luckily were able to spend every weekend together, thanks to Ben's willingness to drive 14 hours round trip every week!
Kansas will be a bit of a different story...we won't see each other for about three and a half weeks, but the time will fly, I'm sure. It's always comforting to hear how much Ben is enjoying his rotations and how much he feels he is learning and benefiting from being there. It makes the distance somehow seem worth it.
I catch a flight to Philadelphia tomorrow night right after I finish teaching...and we will leave for Kansas in the morning. The drive is about 18 hours. Unfortunately...I'm a bit of a poor planner, and really wanted to see my brother and his family in Cleveland so we will be making a third of the drive on Saturday....and the rest of the drive on Sunday. Should make for a long day, but it's totally worth it. They have the cutest kids!
We'll get in to Kansas late Sunday and I leave at 6:00am Monday to come back to Burlington.
The next weekend I'm in Toronto to see my family...
The following weekend is Easter...I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll head to Boston....
The following weekend I fly to SLC to run a half marathon with family and friends (most of whom are way more hard core than me and are actually running the full marathon)
I'll spend 6 days in Utah catching up with friends and family, and then fly to Kansas to FINALLY see Ben again, and drive home to Burlington with him at the end of his rotation.
I'm so looking forward to spending a few days in Kansas. Ben loves it there so much...I can't wait to finally see some of the places he talks about and get to know the city better.

And then the month is over!
I'm not sure how I intend to hold down jobs and callings between all the traveling, but somehow it will get done.

Side note...Montreal was great! I especially liked taking a taxi into the city from the temple, and having the old front desk temple guy dressed in his white suit and slippers walk my luggage to the taxi. The cab driver was so confused!

I did it...

I gave Banana Republic my two weeks notice today. It was so liberating!
I've worked there for 18 months now...and it was definitely my time to quite. I make what feels like 12 cents a shift, work with really immature college students with terrible mouths and sell over priced clothing to middle aged women. Like I said, it was my time!
I'm starting to realize the implications of not having my discount anymore though...so I'm hurrying to buy cute baby clothes for my pregnant sisters at Baby Gap for 50% off before I have to give it up. I think a trip to the BR outlet in Cleveland is also planned for next weekend. I feel like this job has ruined me...the thought of buying full price clothes is awful! I'm considering just giving up shopping.

I also did something this week that I have never done before....I canceled ALL of my lessons on Friday! I am so excited. My parents are going to be in Montreal for the weekend, and I was already heading to the temple Friday morning with a friend, so I decided to ditch out on work and stay in the city for the weekend. What's even better is that Ben is driving up from Philadelphia to meet us! Week three...and being apart is starting to get REAL OLD. I just get sick of talking on the phone...we never have anything that great to talk about, and it's just a reminder to me that we're not together.
Anyway, I'm thrilled we'll be together this weekend, stoked we're going to be in Canada, and excited to hang out with my family!

One Week Down...Only 15 More to Go

We made it! One week out of the way. Ben had a great week in Philadelphia. He is loving the course he's taking. The Wills Eye Hospital sounds like an incredible facility with so many qualified bright people working there. It's one of the largest educational centers in the country for Ophthalmology so it's really neat Ben has this opportunity to learn from such amazing physicians.
The week seemed to go pretty slow, and the weekend of course flew by, but that was to be expected. It was great to have him home for a day and a half...and I'm already looking forward to next weekend.

I hit a mini milestone in my running yesterday. I ran 10 miles for the first time...ever! It was such a great run. The weather was a shocking 44 degrees out so I was able to run outside. I haven't run outside yet this year, so I was thrilled. Beats the treadmill any day. I did completely trash my WHITE running shoes though! The first 30 minutes of the run I was pretty careful to avoid mud and puddles, but after about an hour it just wasn't worth it. The picture hardly does them justice. They are SO dirty!



The best part of the run was having Lance Armstrong come on my NikePlus at the end and congratulate me for my longest run yet. So motivational!
I've been fighting with management at my gym the last few weeks to make an exception to the 45 minute treadmill rule....but have had no success, so hopefully the weather will stay warm and I'll be able to continue running outside!

The Time has Come

It's hard to believe it's March 1st today. Where does the time go? For months Ben and I have been preparing for March 1st. It's always been so far in the future that it never actually seemed real. And now it's here. And it's real. And it kind of stinks!
Ben left for Philadelphia a couple of hours ago to embark on his 4 month away rotation journey! Sounds more exotic than it actually is. He's in Philadelphia in March working with an ocular pathologist, Kansas in April doing a rotation through their ophthalmology department, back to Philadelphia in May to do eye cancer research (that's the technical term for it!) and then finally he's off to Tucson in June to do another rotation through the ophthalmology department there. We're hopeful the rotations will be beneficial...though there's no guarantee. Who knows with this whole medical school/residency system they have in place. Sometimes it feels totally random and unpredictable! In the end you just have to believe that whatever happens, happens for a reason and that it's going to be alright. Vermont seemed pretty random when we found out about that, and now I can't imagine not being here and having the experiences we're having.

The plan is for Ben to drive home the weekends he's in Philadelphia. We'll see...it will be easier to tell whether that is really an option once he's made the full drive. Our GPS said it should take about 7 hours, but I have no doubt Ben will make it less time than that...especially without his human speedometer sidekick sitting in the passenger seat!

I'm hopeful I can be semi-productive while Ben is gone. He did a month rotation in Bennington last year, and looking back, I completely wasted the month! (Way too many min-eggs and Top Chef reruns, and I don't even like that show) Between working two jobs, church service and spending time with Ben, I've kind of realized I don't have many hobbies. Sad huh. I run, and that's about it. So I'm on the look out for a productive hobby...we'll see what I come up with.

I had this past week off from teaching which was great! In Vermont the kids get a week off in February and a week off in April...my guess is to avoid seasonal depression! Everyone leaves town and heads south to one of two places...Mexico or Florida. We did neither this year (though I did relive our Mexico trip from last February over in my mind several times this week!). Did I mention it was 9 degrees here yesterday?
I went in to the studio on Friday to clean things up a little and to prep for my lessons this week and to my surprise, found I had been visited by a furry little rodent sometime that week. I'm pretty sure it was one of the grossest things I've seen in quite some time. This furry little friend had left me some special "surprises" we'll call them all over my piano! And to make matters worse, he had eaten through a granola bar box and through all of my granola bars! I was so grossed out I couldn't even deal with the mess, so that's what I have to look forward to tomorrow.

Ben and I found a new little breakfast place on Saturday that we'll for sure go back to. From the looks of it you wouldn't expect much (it looks like a total dive from the outside) but it was really pretty good. Finding new unknown restaurants is one of my favorite things to do. I love the little hole in the wall places that you would only go to because someone recommended it to you; the kind of place where they have their usual customers they know by name. Check it out if you live in Vermont....not a bad little spot!


We also stayed at the coolest Bed and Breakfasts a couple of weeks ago called the Inn at Grace Farm. It was the neatest place. I'm not a huge fan of B&B places usually because they're old, cold, and you have to share a bathroom, but this place was brand new. It was this big log cabin with totally modern decor, amazing vaulted ceilings, a beautiful view and the most comfortable king size bed! Breakfast was made by the owners and very gourmet. One of Ben's classmates boyfriend actually helped build the place and that's how we found out about it, otherwise I'm not sure we would have ever found it.
We spent the weekend in Stowe browsing through every little art gallery in town and eating a lot of really great food!



That's the no-so-short version of the last few weeks. If anyone is dying to come visit the North Pole in the next few months, let me know...I'll have plenty of time on my hands to play tour guide!

MINT

I wanted to pass along a little tidbit of info that has significantly simplified my financial life these past few months. I've already shared this with most of my friends here....but it's definitely worth hearing again! I've always tried to stick to a monthly budget and to plan ahead and monitor our expenses, but it's really easy to get lazy and stop keeping track, or not really realize where you're spending money, or how much you're spending on particular things. Despite valiant efforts, I feel like I've never really come up with the perfect format for tracking our finances...until now. Ben and I recently started using this website called Mint.com and it is awesome. It allows you to upload all of your financial accounts, credit cards, savings, checking, loans, assets; basically anything that relates to your finances. It then allows you to track every transaction you put on any card or through any account in one centralized location. It breaks down your spending into various trends, has great visual graphs and charts that help you better understand where you money is going, it allows you to set budgets in specific spending categories and then it sends you updates as you get closer to meeting/exceeding your budget. You can easily compare your spending trends month to month, see how much you spend at a specific vendor and they often have individualized recommendations on how you can save.

The biggest issue for us was whether or not our financial information was safe on this website. I have read review after review that goes into detail on the safety of the website. They say the biggest/only real concern would be someone getting access to your password which is a concern on any website, and with that, they couldn't get access to account numbers, they could only see what you see which is basically your account balances and your spending.

Check it out if you haven't already. I was pretty skeptical at first, but I have found we have spent way less in the last few month, simply because we are so accountable. Every single transaction shows up on the sight, which makes you think twice about buying that pair of shoes you really don't need! Not only that, but I've been shocked by what we're really spending our money on! (Lets just say we don't go hungry!)

I failed to mention one of the nicest things about the website...it's free!
Check out some of these reviews to get a better explanation of Mint's features.

Review 1
Review 2
Review 3

Catch Up

It would take way too long to actually get caught up on everything that has happened since Thanksgiving, so I'll just hit the high points!
December was a great/incredibly busy moth, as it usually is for most people. I spent the first weekend in NYC with all my sisters and my mom. We had such a great time together. I highly recommend a mother/sister weekend to anyone who hasn't tried it before! I have to say, we're all pretty different in terms of interests/likes/dislikes/tastes etc....so I wasn't exactly sure what the weekend would bring, but it was just such fun to be together. It didn't really matter what we were doing, it was just the fact we were doing it together. There was lots of shopping, lots of Starbucks, lots of yummy food, a little bit of theater and a little bit of sightseeing. We went to see the Lion King on Saturday night. I wasn't sure what to expect....but it really was fantastic. I was shocked how much I loved it.
My vote is for Hawaii next time we all get together!





The rest of December was filled with teaching, doctoring, preparing for Christmas, and Young Womens, (as always), mixed with some Christmas parties, cold weather and beautiful snow...that is now not so beautiful...and needing to melt. Unfortunately "mud" season doesn't hit till May or June, so we've got a few moths to go.

We traveled to Utah for the holidays and spent it with Ben's whole family. It was a great vacation, once we finally got there. What a headache! All I will say is there were lots of tears, and some yelling....additional tickets purchased, lost bags, and sheer exhaustion! I'm SO glad we made it....it was looking really bad there for a while! We're still fighting with airlines to try and get reimbursed for the new tickets, we'll see what happens, though I'm not holding my breath.
Christmas brought lots of Rock Band, Guitar Hero, scum, bowling, movies, yummy food and catching up with great friends and family! As much as we love Vermont, we are reminded every time we are with family how hard it is to be so far.



January brought NEW BEGINNINGS! That basically consumed my thoughts and time the entire month....and boy am I glad that's over! I also took on two new students, lost four students (the dang economy is killing my business), taught some flute lessons, Ben continued doctoring, we both got the stomach flu, attended the symphony, had a rock band party, moved our bedroom into the living room and got hooked on West Wing. Did I mention there are something like 7 seasons, and 22 episodes in a season. Talk about a commitment!

(I forgot to take a picture at New Beginngings, so an old camp one will have to do!)

(Our "Girls Only" band. We rocked!)

That's the highly abridged version of the last couple of month. For the most part, life is great. We're busy, and we love what we do.

February is Ben and I's last normal month together for a while. Looks like he will be traveling from March through June for school, doing away rotations and ophthalmology research, so we're trying to take advantage of our time together. The spring will be tough, but it's the price we have to pay, we simply look at it as a long term investment!