Spring is in the air!

 Literally! Its warm (ive already gotten a sunburn), and it smells of blossom trees outside...

Especially in out front yard seeing that we have at least three blossom trees. Oh and I guess I should preface by saying I'm obviously in St. George. I believe it is still snowing this week up north so thank goodness Im down here. Anyways - I finished up my days of work this week by Monday morning. Kind of nice when my "Friday" is on Monday morning haha. I slept a little bit then headed south. The plan is to commute each week back and forth for work (up north on the weekends) and clinical (every tues-thurs down here in Stg). Well Ive also accumulated a lot of sick time so I plan on using some hours to save me a trip up north every once in a while (Im using sick time this weekend). 

Lots of good stuff this week including going to the temple multiple times. Tuesday morning mom and I did some initiatories while Thursday night I did a session while mom and dad were working. They are veil coordinators so they decided to make it work to where mom presented me at the veil and dad was my receiver. It was super cool. I got to hang out with them and help them clean up for a little after the session. A good week spent in the temple. 

Thursday was my first clinical shift with Dr. Wooley. I was pretty nervous. Mostly just for being in a new place with new people. I figured I wouldn't be doing too much that I wasnt comfortable with - I mean I am in no way comfortable with diagnosing or treating patients, but Im very comfortable with assessing and getting to know the patients. That's one thing that is nice about NP school is I already have a base of how to communicate with patients because I do it every day. The day went well with Dr. Wooley. I mostly just watched, listened, asked questions and did a lot of learning from him. There was one patient that I went into the room before him to assess and chat with her. The hard part is these patients literally come in with every problem in the book it seems. And I feel as though a lot of the problems are not fixable - maybe that's terrible of me to say, but I want to just say "well you're 88 years old dude... you might not be as steady on your feet, use a cane" I just feel like even though its medicine its a completely different world than what I deal with at work. Im excited to continue to learn and develop new skills over the next few weeks. Starting this clinical rotation also means I started a new class - its been a pain trying to log into everything for this class, but other than that its same old same old papers and discussions - so fun. 

This week has also consisted of some pretty good runs. It's nice not being in pain and being able to be active once again. 

Also some good runs for Jackie - first track meet of the season, snow canyon, and jack raced the 1600 on Friday and the 800 on Saturday. He absolutely crushed it. 

He raced a practically perfect 1600m  - starting in the middle of the pack and with each lap knocking people off. He placed second in his heat and was able to nudge out some of the seeded boys with his time. He ended up 15th overall with a PR and state qualifying time of 4:25. Pretty rad and not very common to start the season with a PR or already being qualified for state - but I guess that's just how prepped jack is for this season. 

We celebrated and crashed mom and dad's date night at Longhorn Friday night. Saturday Jackie raced the 800m. It'll be tough to state qualify, but he still hit a PR with a 2:01:04. 

Saturday was a beautiful day so we spent some time outside by the pool - not in the pool quite yet, but that time is just around the corner and Im so excited. It's been a super fun week and the weeks to come will just get better. I can feel the seasonal depression melting away. Hallelujah.