a farm dog at heart

We had such a great visit in Iowa. So extremely quick (except the driving through Nebraska part which seemed to take forever) but so much fun! Oliver in particular had the time of his young life. By the time we finally arrived he was glaring at me from his seat perch next to me, ready to not be sitting anymore. All of that was forgotten in the haze of new dogs to meet, new people to lick, new species to confront and new food to munch on. What a farm dog. Mom took him out in the mornings for a few walks along the ditch and reported that he was running all over and smelling ever little thing with his tail wagging at a ridiculous speed. Life is good for that puppy I tell you what. On the human end of things life is good too. Although there was audible resistance to the idea of resurrecting the traditional night time easter egg hunt (I'm looking at you Shawn), we just insisted even louder that it would be fun and soldiered on. It WAS fun, and we even included the adults with hidden plastic eggs among the candy that had lottery tickets. Unfortunately there weren't any big, big winners but it was a nice little twist and the aforementioned candy was of course a welcome retreat if you happened to lose. Now that the shenanigans are over it's back to the grind stone and an exam this afternoon (fingers crossed!), but I will leave you with some pictures of course!

Two Easter bunny sisters hiding candy.

Mom being especially sneaky and hiding candy in the branches!

Hiding spots..


Oliver had some serious hesitations about the horses, which really reminded me of bringing my favorite kid Oscar to the farm for the first time. Aside from the barking (which O did that?) the reactions were surprisingly similar!

Happy Easter!

Oliver and I are going on a little road trip for Easter weekend to Iowa for some family time! I am super excited to let him loose on the farm, introduce him to cows and horses, and to see family that I haven't seen in ages. I will, of course, document every waking moment for you. It looks like 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for seeing people that I love. I just booked my ticket to Minneapolis for the last weekend in May to throw a bachelorette party for my best friend and will be back in July as well for the actual wedding! As the semester winds down a little, well up for exams and finals and then finally, finally down, it's really nice to have some things to look forward to during my three week break from classes! So for now I am incessantly studying (always) and trying to keep the energy up for the last few weeks. I always want to throw in the towel at the very end when it's most important to work extremely hard, so I am doing my best to counteract that urge and just push it on out. I am also starting a new job at the University of Colorado Hospital in the pulmonary department the first week in May and am extremely excited about that. It will be really nice to work just a few miles from home and the new setting is in a beautiful hospital on the 8th floor with gorgeous views of the mountains. In any case, I hope you have a most excellent Easter weekend and enjoy all the things you've been abstaining from for so long! Chocolate, here I come!

you know what's pretty nice?

As you probably know I am gluten-free, and have been for quite sometime. When my mom first came up with the idea that gluten was my whole health/eating problem I initially resisted. Oh did I resist. I don't even think I seriously gave it any thought for a good year. At that point in my life dairy was just not my friend. This has since changed a lot, I mean I still can't really just eat straight up ice cream or milk, but I can eat most kinds of cheeses and really that is all that I need in the dairy section of life. At the time I was pretty much off dairy, which was particularly sad for me because cheese is my favorite, favorite food ever and my family always has the most tasty wonderful choices stocked up in the cheese drawer (my sister even jokes that cheese is her favorite spice, which cracks me up while I simultaneously couldn't agree more). I just could not fathom having to give up such a massive group of other things that I loved (gluten), and so I just flat out didn't even entertain the idea. How unfair would it be if I couldn't eat both dairy AND gluten? I didn't want that to exist and so I just didn't do anything about it. Cut to the beginning of lent five years ago (?). My dear mother had been patiently learning to wade through the sea of the non-glutens for a while by then and once more put out the idea that I might get a lot of benefit from the diet as well. She somehow convinced me to give up the gluten for the entirety of that lenten season. Cue music swelling in the background because it was literally two or three days into lent that I felt so much better than I could ever remember feeling. Ohhh the glory of food digestion, eh? Something you probably haven't thought much about if you have never had food allergies, but let me tell you that it is indeed a wondrous thing. Of course, being the stubborn person that I am and that maybe you would even be if forced to give up THE GLUTEN in your life, I valiantly tried experimenting with "how much is too much" games. I would eat a little bit in the morning and see if that was something I could do, or I would eat a little bit only once a week and in the evening. The logic is something that might seem bizarre to you, but I can almost guarantee that most of us food problem people have done it in some form or another. Because seriously people, I can't eat gluten ever. Ever. The concept of which took my some time to grasp but eventually I did. Once grasped I fairly quickly realized that being a vegetarian was no longer the best option for me as I was reduced at most restaurants to plain salads with no croutons and no dressing. Blech. But this bring me to the entire reason for this post, other than making you rush into your kitchen and grasp onto your delicious crusty french bread that is probably sitting on your counter and give it a hug. Since giving up the gluten things have steadily improved on the commercial front! Every time I go into the grocery store these days, the real grocery store mind you not just when I am at the co op, there is something else on the shelf that is gluten free! I mean seriously, bisquick has a pancake mix that is gluten free and hamburger helper has a chicken stir fry mix that is gluten free too! These aren't necessarily things I would buy, but those are some big ol' brands that are finally getting on the gluten free train! It makes me really happy to walk down the aisles now and see those words popping out on many different items now. It's not just grocery stores either! To my house, to my door step I can have a gluten free pizza delivered from not one but TWO different places! Whaaaat? Yes, yes it's true. And almost every restaurant that I have been to recently has either a separate menu for me or things marked directly on their real menus! For those of you out there that don't really know much about the gluten free lifestyle, this is a really, really big deal. I sometimes, almost, for a very short moment in time forget that I can't eat like most other people around me, and to me that's pretty nice.

oh happy day!!

Recently in my life I have been working really hard to make a big change. I feel so incredibly stressed out and so crazy moody and just up and down with the anxiety and the worry and bunches of feelings that kind of just pop up like the numbers in a big ol' bingo wheel and I just don't want to live my life like that. I'm just not happy when I am being controlled by all these negative feelings! UGH! So I have been working on letting things go. Just letting things be what they are and taking the time to feel the feelings that are happening and then moving forward instead of all this dwelling and mental towel wringing that I have been doing lately. One of the things that I realized I could change was my attitude towards school. I have been putting in really long hours working on mastering the intricacies of substitution/elimination/addition reactions in organic chemistry. When I say long hours I mean loooooong ones, six hour study sessions with Mason almost every day for the last two weeks long. There were still days when I would be coming home beating myself up over how frustrated I was and how hard the material was and how I would never amount to anything if I fail this class and blah blah blah. Then I just decided to STOP WHINING and just recognize that even if at the end of six hours studying I was frustrated and felt stupid that there just was no possible way that I hadn't learned anything in that time! No possible way. So I just smiled and accepted that it was hard but that I was doing everything I could to do well and that that was exactly as much as I needed to be doing. It felt pretty amazing to just breathe and be able to take time to hang out with JP and the pups and not feel guilty, to indulge in some TV shows at the end of the day and just relax without fretting about this or that. I know that this kind of mind change takes a lot of practice and time and patience, but I really want to be able to show myself that patience and give myself a little bit of credit for how hard I do work. SO, that is one of the changes I am working on making in my life. I feel lighter already and I know my boyfriend more than appreciates not having to deal with the crazier portions of my sometimes obsessive personality! All of this said, I took my exam yesterday and am not letting any worried thoughts creep into my brain about the outcome and am instead taking this gorgeous Colorado day to do a little gardening and play with the little ones out back. I hope you are finding changes in your lives too that you are proud of or working towards. So often changes for me coincide with the changing of the seasons, so spring must be almost here, right?!

When I was moving the bag of soil I found two little worms (which you probably can't see in this picture) and I popped them right into my emerging herb garden!

An herb garden for the backyard.

We even have some pink flowers that just came out yesterday amidst the gloomy cloudy weather!

plug, plug!

Shameless plug here for my big brother Joe who just released his second solo album! Many of you might have heard or even have a copy of his first and now you can listen to and own another part of his musically history here! My unbiased opinion rates it as exceptionally supreme, so give it a listen eh?!

As long as I am plugging away, you should really check out my incredibly talented sister's website too. She's got links to her blog there which has some of her new stuff, and on the website you can find many of her illustrations, paintings and drawings! She is quite amazing (in many, many ways) one of which is clearly her artistic talents!

spring break '011 come and gone

I am just so blessed. I just have the most amazing family, and I am so fortunate to be able to share time with them throughout the year even though we live far apart from one another. Spring Break '011 was a complete success!! Em came a few days before my parents did and we got right down to it by eating some cheap tacos that were super tasty and then indulging in some girly time with massages and pedicures! She even let me get the same color as her on my toes, aww. We packed in the activities and every night were exhausted just from hanging out and talking and shopping and dog walking. It was perfect. Next we all met up at a cabin that my dad had found in Estes Park. It was short but sweet spending time in the mountains although our day hike was a bit snowed out when we drove up the mountain but we fixed that by driving back down about halfway and having a creekside picnic instead. After Emily departed Mom and Pop still had the whole weekend to spend with us and no plans so we went to an art museum, took the denver bike share bikes out for a little cruise, browsed a book store, checked out a few thrift stores and of course scooted about (even mom! even dad!). It was a really, really great visit that came at a good time for me to help rejuvenate me and get me ready to finish up this semester with style (errr maybe determination).

It's always hard to say goodbye, especially when we live so far apart from one another these days! I love being in Colorado, and I know it is the right place for me right now, but I still wish I could live in a secret little pocket of the US where we could all be separate but very close. I'm just going to project into the future and hope that both Emily and I get accepted into schools that are closer to each other than Colorado is to Maine in our next round of schools. It would be lovely to spend even just a year or two in the same state as one of my siblings again! Fingers crossed I suppose because applications are approaching fairly quickly and acceptance rate for my program of choice is around 5%!

But enough blithering, because after many unsuccessful attempts I have finally uploaded pictures from this spring break '011 and can share them with you all!

We made it! After (maybe) locking my keys in my car and general confusion we got to Estes before sundown!

Our little hike was a bit snowier and icier that anticipated so it was a very little hike in the end!

Oliver got his first taste of adventure in the great outdoors and did really well!

Mom angles for the best picture of the gnarly trees.

Same day, down the mountain with no snow and sun....that's Colorado for you.

Back in Denver everyone tried out the scoot. Mom threw her scarf over her shoulder in the Red Baron's signature style and even managed to drive one handed while waving to her fans!