Cheese Puffs

Seriously.

They are SO GOOD. What do they put in them?! Aside from cheese? I think I'm going to add "visit a cheese puff factory" to my bucket list so that I can understand this magic...

Pirates Booty
Cheetos
These weird Gaytan Cheese Puffs I'm munchin on now...

They are my weakness.

So is dark chocolate.

And coffee and wine and cheesy pasta.

And snuggling. :)

Is it standard to gain like 10 pounds while in nursing school? and.....is it cool that I've probably gotten a good eight of those pounds out of the way already???

Hippopotamus Heather here I come!!

:)

I just can't stop eating cheese puffs.

Let us transition:
Last year I remember posting about how Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. It still is - and this year things went off with a freakin bang! Picture this:

I was scheduled to work on the Friday after thanksgiving (aka BLACK FRIDAY) - and made plans to leave town that same evening after work, in other words I planned to celebrate Turkey Day here in Idaho, and get my booty to Corvallis just in time to celebrate for the civil war.

Then.  My work schedule changed. :) And I got that Friday off! SO - my family and I started planning a little plan. What if I showed up ON thanksgiving day and surprised mom!? I knew that she was planning on cooking two turkeys anyways - so it's not like I would starve - right?! YES!

Somehow, despite the seven additional people staying at my parents' place in Corvallis (two of them being 10 and younger) - the secret was kept - and my mom was shocked that I arrived just in time to devour delicious food on Turkey Day!

IT WAS AWESOME.

The visit to Corvallis continued with several family meetings and terms like "operation dawn patrol" in preparation for our Civil War Tailgater.

It. Was. Crazy.

My Bro-In-Law says to me - "so...I'm thinking I'll probably have ~15ish people show up at the tailgater - what about you??" My figure was similar, and after getting all the numbers crunched, we came up with an appropriate food and drink plan....something like three tables for the bar, and one for food? Operation Dawn Patrol was a go, and we got to setting up literally before the sun came up on Game Day. About an hour into our setup a bus pulls up to our spot.

No. Not a short bus.

A TOUR BUS. A ginormously largely huge party bus full of ducks and beavers ready to freakin tailgate the crap out of the day. I looked at my bro-in-law - "15 people?!?!!!!!" They piled off, keg in hand, and we kicked it into high-gear. I must admit - we did awesome. The food was good. The company was hilarious. The rain didn't stop us.

Despite the loss - I'll always love my Beavs. Go Beavs! Next year is ours!

Just so you know - I just put the cheese puffs away.

In other news - Noah lives here! It's pretty sweet! No - we don't live together (it's the first question everyone asks, I swear) - but I can see his place from my place - so that's fun. We live one block apart, and are in perfect location of everything. COME VISIT BOISE! Just think - this means, that in the event you want to visit - I just have to bunk up with him (or vise-versa) and you have a whole apartment to yourself!!! How's that for incentive to come? Free housing! Fun place to visit! Dare ya!

To my Corvallis loves that are reading this - I'm sorry if I didn't get a chance to see you on this past visit - it really was a wonderful time for me to see my family. Lets plan something soon though! :)

Here are some pics:

Me and my sweet Hallie - So lovely.

SMILE LAURA!

JD - Amy - Me. :) Pre Turkey!

Laura preparing our squash/kale dish. SO GOOD.

Where would we have been without Eva?! How have we survived every holiday without her!?

Yep. Story-tellin and wine. Pretty much sums it up.

Laura was reaaaallllllly into torching these creme-brulees. She had to refill the butane a few times - it got amusing for the rest of the fam.

Sweet loves.

This is the face I woke up to everyday. Not quite as cute as Noah - but...whatev.

The kids had us write out what we were thankful for on our placemats....this was mine. 

Don't judge me. Sorry Noah. You were just included in the "friends and fam" under God one....sheesh.

I know it's hard to tell - but this was our incredible dutch-oven tailgate food. Strata on the left (SO GOOD) and cinnamon rolls smothered in delicious frosting.....both made in dutch ovens with just hot coals as our heat source.

Our view of the stadium! We definitely fought off some drunkies...

Sometimes I honestly think that Crystal is my soulmate. Her husband won't give her to me. Selfish right?! Here we are, sharing a poncho, loving life. :)

I feel like that's all I should chat about now. I just finished a ridiculous paper. Tomorrow is the end of my least favorite class of this term - pray that I make it through without killing anyone!! :) ONTO NEXT TERM!!!

Love you all - I hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving!!

Song of the week: Some Nights, Fun (I'm sure this is totally overplayed by those who use pandora, radio devices - but I'm well isolated from all that and I just love dancing to it!)

Our independence, with its quest for power and fulfillment, actually destroys the relationship our hearts long for. - William Young

An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children, He does not distribute Himself that each may have only a part, but to each one, He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.

-A.W. Tozer

Super8

Have you watched that movie??

It seriously cracks me up. Perfect combo of sci-fi creativity, emotional family drama, and absolute hilarity.

I'm currently enjoying my morning cup of coffee......a little mad at myself for not running this morning (it's supposed to be 70 degrees today! I'LL DO IT LATER!.....seriously......hold me accountable!).....but otherwise having quite the lovely morning. I began this blog last night, thinking I just wanted to write a nice little blurb.

Blurb is as follows:
When I first moved here, I became a tidbit overwhelmed....experiencing most of (and when I say most of, I mean all of) the following: Fires. Evacuations. Heart attacks. 911 calls. New job. New school. New house, complete with pipes bursting, and water leaks (which completely ruined my journal!), etc. Combine all those things with the fact that my family, friends, and the guy that I totally love all live a zillion miles (ok, ok....its only 500 miles...but you know what I mean) away. Stressed much? Oh yes. I became the definition of the term Basket Case. Amber and Crystal can tell ya that much whilst enduring sobfests from me via emotional phone call after emotional phone call.

So....did I handle things well?? Not even a little bit.

It's in my nature to be emotionally charged. Sue me.

The last few weeks have been really quite lovely, though. Apparently I'm not the best long-distance relationship partner (who woulda thought, right?!), so when Noah came to visit Boise, my world really improved. :) We explored this lovely little area, ate some delicious food, drank some delicious wine, and made some delicious, (wait.............not the right word) friends.

He's currently home, again....I need to stop referring to Corvallis as 'home' by the way, - Boise is where I live now! Boise is 'home' - feels so weird though!...like an extended vacation or something. Anyhow, Noah is currently back in the rainy valley - working out the kinks on how to move here.......so here we go....round two of transition is in the works! yikes! Definitely keep Noah in your prayers as he is also battling the ever so stressful lifestyle of school, work, and moving to another state because your girlfriend tells you its awesome, type of battle.

It'll be fine.

Right?

Yeah.

Photographical evidence of my life:

There's a cool side-walky area filled with all these lovely quotes inlayed in the concrete - love it.

Naturally, I bought a new knife upon moving here!

Heehee - my new job even gets in the holiday spirit! Funny.

New friend. :) Molly.

Noah and I decided that this would be a freakin sweet sledding spot.............top o' camels back.

 

Reasons why I like this guy: He does the dishes.

 

He makes a mean smoothie....

He hikes all over with me. :)

Isn't that nice?

 The day he left a girlfriend of mine from class made me a vet sweet little cheer-up gift. Thank you Ashley!

 Found this in the credits bin at work. It made me laugh.

 Tried my hand at making my OWN smoothie. Pumpkin pie smoothie = so freakin good.

 Another crazy work find. We are a huge pediatric hub at St. Luke's here...this is the tiniest little rib spreader I've ever seen! I know, it's sad they have to use it - but cool we can help tiny tiny tiny humans.

For those of you reading that were in my Dox home group - check out what I made for our Halloween party last night! For those of you who have never eaten these.....the next step is for these little creations to be dunked in chocolate.
Yes.
I know.
I just gained 5 pounds too.

 Speaking of Halloween...........

I went for the bearded look.

It's fine.

I'll end this post with a little recipe. I made this just for myself so it's just enough for me to eat dinner, and a left over lunch or two - but you could easily make the recipe bigger to feed more.

Ingredients:

Two boneless/skinless chix breasts

About 25 cloves of garlic, skin left on

1 1/2 C. Dry white wine

A few sprigs of rosemary

A few sprigs of thyme

Some handfuls of spinach

One whole sweet potato

Preheat oven to 350.

Peel potato, and chop into large bite-sized chunks. Toss with some olive oil (sorry, not on the ingredients list), as well as salt and pepper (also not on the list...I suck at this). Not too much oil, I think I used just like a teaspoon to be honest. Spread out evenly on a baking sheet and throw in the oven (Ok - don't really throw it....you know what I mean).

Add a few lugs of oil to a nice pot with a tight fitting lid (I used my little baby le creuset dutch oven that I absolutely love), and let it get nice and hot. Meanwhile season your breasts (ha) with salt and pepper. Once the oil is feelin fine, sear your chicken....browning well on all sides. Just place it in the pan, and leave it for a few minutes.....it'll not stick to the bottom once it's all browned and happy.

Once browned, remove from pan. Add another glug of oil, and add all those garlic cloves (with skin on still!). Saute a few minutes, smell the love, and take a sip of wine....

Happiness.

Speaking of wine....deglaze pan at this point with your cup or two of white wine. Stir around all that lovely garlic. Add your chicken back to the pot. Add your fresh herbs. Get everyone all nestled in and happy and place your lid on. Turn the heat down to low, and let the chicken simmer a good 20-30 minutes. I occasionally flipped the chicken breasts for even garlic coverage, etc.

Check those potatoes! Don't forget! Stir them around.

After 30ish min. Take the potatoes out of the oven. 

Toss a few handfuls of spinach into your garlicy-winey-chickeny love, and cover with lid again. I JUST let my spinach wilt, then promptly removed it to a serving dish. Topped with a chicken breast, and some of the yummy sauce. Topped with sweet potatoes....and voila!

Dinner. Is. Served.

Ok.

Love you. Eat well and be happy with life.

Favorite song right now is: Home by Phillip Phillips (stupid name, I know - but the song is good).

Experiencing God's grace in our brokenness reminds us that His love never fails. 

I'm working on it...

I know.

I KNOW.

I haven't updated my life.

So here's the thing: I purchased this really amazing lamp today....my living room needed one (no overhead lighting...I hate that!)....and I found my lamp soulmate....she's toDIEfor....

Brought it home, so excited and eager to hang it up!....ripped it out of the box.......AND!!!!!!!!

....

It's just the shade.

Let down. :/

Ugh. This lil dummy strikes again! The rest of the pieces will be here on Monday for me to finish my masterpiece and then my life will be complete........with light and everything.

Until then - I'm going to shmooze along and be selfishly lost (no - literally....so lost ALL THE TIME) in my own world...studying away and cleaning my place. SLOWLY decorating it....(so so so slowly)....and NOT blogging. :)

Ran up into the foothills today for the first time. Boise's views are incredibly breathtaking. Fall colors at their finest. Thanks for showin off for me!

Collage that Amber made me for my last day in Corvallis. AHH I cry when I look at it.

FALL IS HERE!!

So I made a hat.

COME TO BOISE AND VISIT ME! It's sooo fun - you'll just love it....I know it. :)

I'll do a real post, with real pictures, that aren't just instagrams later on when my life is more organized....as of right now whatcha see is whatcha get. :)

All my love.

You deserve someone who would jump fences to be with you, not someone who is on the fence about being with you.

Boise Adventure Thus Far..

WARNING: This is an outrageously long post. Proceed at your own risk........

So...last week we packed all my stuff into a U-haul and began the journey to Boise...the plan was to get in around 4pm, unload the truck into a storage unit, pickup our rental car and hit the town for some dinner.

That plan failed.
Like. It exploded.

Sometime early afternoon in our drive, Noah and I were on our merry way (I was driving) when the truck made that dreaded "KAJUNK!" sound......a sound no one wants to hear whilst traveling 65 (ok ok 70) mph on the highway...

I was totally calm.

"So....Noah."
"Yes?"
"Something happened."
"...........ah...yes?"
"We are no longer accelerating......................thought you should know."

I'm not 100% sure he believed me at first.......but after pulling off on the side of the busy highway and trying the tried and true trick of turning a thing off, and then back on again, we ran into the the same issue a couple of miles down the road...

We managed to pull off into this delightful little gem of a town called Hermiston.

Heard of it?

Apparently they're famous for watermelons. Lucky for us! Wait........neither Noah nor myself actually like watermelon..........at all.

SO after having an awkward session at the A&W where we opted out of ordering anything after staring at the menu for a bit, we wandered around the bustling truck stop while we awaited our knight in shining armor, aka Joe, the mobile auto-mechanic. He arrived in a timely manor (somewhere around 90 minutes after I called in the complaint to U-Haul that we'd broken down)....and proceeded to assess the situation. Thankfully we didn't have to take out ALL of my stuff out of the back, but we did have to unload a little bit of it for our new friend Joe to be able to access the fuel-pump that apparently needed replacing.

Remember how I said we wanted to be in Boise by 4pmish? We actually had some deadlines to meet (like, me signing all my paperwork for the storage unit).

Thankfully people in Boise are very kind. Michelle (the storage unit lady) agreed to meet us at her office whenever we finally arrived in that grand capitol city (aka after going home from working all day, she sweetly obliged to come BACK to her place of employment just to help a sucker like me out)....Noah and I promptly bought her some incredible one of a kind gifts at the truck-stop in Hermiston (who wouldn't love an Oregon coffee mug filled with Hershey's kisses!? SERIOUSLY).

We got into town around 8pm and the night ran on from there. Thankfully the rest of the trip really went without a hitch. We had a BLAST meeting some wonderful people and exploring a small part of town. We flew back after one full day in Boise, and continued on with our busy lives in the Valley.

Sunday (the 16th) - I jumped in my car with a few BRAND NEW friends from Bend, and we made the 5 and some change hour drive to my new home. After dropping them off I headed up the hill to crash at the Mellen's ranch house ~45 min outside of Boise. This was always my plan. Rick and Anna graciously have opened their home to me while I try and find a place to live. Sadly our world got somewhat turned upside down when some 18 year old jackass (sorry) decided to light the hill on fire near the neighborhood these wonderful folks live in.

On my 1st day of work in my new hospital I got a fantastic call from Anna explaining (as calmly as she could) that we were being evacuated from their house as it was endangered to burn down.

We kept our heads held high - checked into a hotel and proceeded to have a girls night (Anna and I). We made the best of a bad situation, cracking jokes about the things in our cars that we saved from the fire (old pictures, laptops, etc)......but by day two of evacuation it wasn't very fun anymore. Boise was hosting some five separate events (one of them being the BSU vs. BYU game where 80,000 were expected to attend). All hotels were sold OUT. Anna finally found one we could share a bed in after making approximately 40 phone calls (no...I'm not exaggerating), while I stressed out at work.

Getting frantically ready for school/work in a hotel in a city you've only spent three days in isn't really all that fun...all the while trying to keep track of all your things (new books, clothes, a freaking toothbrush!, etc)........

Insert nervous breakdown here.

I had a rough morning to say the least as I was getting ready for school. When I got to work on my third day things started to spiral out of control. My new hospital is huge and I literally cannot, for the life of me, FIND THE EXIT. It actually made me laugh last night as I was clocking out of work............"ok. heather. Think. just think..............HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF HERE!?"

I had to ask for directions. and I will have to ask again when I work on Sunday.

As I began to implode, I reached for my trusty Oswald Chambers daily devotional and read the FIRST thing on the first page I flipped to: "Do you continue to go with Jesus?"

Ha. Are you kidding me?! My life is so crazy how can I think about anyone except myself?!

Wait.

Did I just think that?

Yes. Yes I did.

So I prayed. And read. And thanked God for the trials.......and now.......I am perfectly excited. I am content. I am whole. This is an adventure - and I'm happy to be on it! Things are looking up up up - and I'll continue to post about the ups as they come. For now, I'll express gratitude for being back in our home....in a familiar bed. I've got several house options headed my way - and my job has been nothing, but understanding. I've met a few awesome girls in class - and I'm excited for the next step. God is faithful and life is GOOD.

I'm glad our house didn't burn down. :)

Here are some pics of life:

My sweet Clover got me this incredible necklace as a going away gift that I literally wear EVERYDAY. SO SO kind......I love it.

Candace and I on my last day! Wearing my grand finale hat.......argh I miss her so much. :/

Clockin out at Good Sam.......thanks to Ed the policeman for snapping this shot!!

Directly after my last day of work I drove straight to Hood River to celebrate KELLY! Bachelorette weekend - YEAH! Cheers!

Where we tasted lots of wine......Kelly and Katie being so cute...

Sweet Megan.

Kelly got a little sassy.............but thats how I like her.

What do you do when you break down at a truck stop????

Have a picnic with a poop splattered truck behind you of course!!

Fix our truck JOE!

WE MADE IT!! We celebrated accordingly. Noah with his PBR and me with a nice rose champagne...

Oh snap.

A morning stroll for coffee before our flight.....yes please.

My last night with this handsome man for awhile. :( I'm sure he's staring at the water pondering how in the heck he's going to handle life without me........ ;)

I had to take a picture of this...they're posted ALL OVER my new OR - and I can't tell you how funny it is.............no literally, I can't. But it cracks me up every time I see one...

Welcome to Boise!!!! The hill you live on is on fire!! This was before it broke through the invisible line and they lost control of things........there hasn't been blue sky since.....seriously.

When they lifted the evacuation this was posted at the front of the neighborhood - so so nice. How do you even begin to thank someone for something like that?! So freaking awesome.

Apparently this house has all the best grub....there were at least 30 elk on this person's nicely manicured property......clearly this sweet lady knew when to pose for a pic!

MY FIRST RACE IN BOISE! Woooooo! 

ok. I don't need to get too excited - it's just a 5k.........

Annnnnd...that's my life in a nutshell right now. I'm looking at a few places within the next couple of days so I'm realllllly hoping and praying that one of them work out! Send me some good juju! :)

Been listening to the third Wheel of Time book on my long drives in and out of town and really loving it......such a nerd....love books on tape...........

Love ya.

How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.