One more semester to go, and life is GOOD!

Yo! I feel like saying yo, even though I'm just writing to myself, ha.

So I just finished my 3rd semester in nursing school!! Crazy!! Cray cray! We only have one more semester, and we'll be done! I'm excited for capstone, I think I'll learn a lot and really like it! I hope, anyway. And I'm excited to be nearly done with nursing school, so that I can stop paying tuition and start making money instead (and paying off those dreaded student loans...), but I'm a little sad that it's almost all over. I have really enjoyed nursing school and learning the skills of a nurse, but I have also met and made some of my best friends here in the program (our tight little group is Maryn, Maggie, Elisa, Gabby, Jessica, Cydney and me), and I'm sad that we won't be seeing each other as much, and many not at all.

But life is so good! I am so blessed, I just can't even believe how many things I have to be grateful for, and how many good things are happening in my life, and how many great things I am just blessed with! Among the top great things going on in my life right now are:

-Nursing school. I love it, I love learning, and I'm so excited to be a nurse!

-Training for my first triathlon! I'm signed up for the Woman of Steel sprint triathlon with my friend Heidi (who I love. She's like 40-something, has some grand kids even, but she's so fun and cool and fit!), who is in the other nursing class, who I know through TRAILS. It's in about 3 weeks, and I'm still nervous about it, but so excited! I kind of signed up on a whim one night, after her telling me about it earlier that afternoon at TRAILS, but after looking it up and reading more about it, I felt good about it, so I signed up! Then I found a blog of a woman who did it a few years ago, and read her post about the tri, and then felt like I was going to die. But I'm back to being excited! It's been so good for me to have this to train for, and such a great motivation in so many ways for me! I love having something to work towards, it's so good for me. Not to mention exercise is so healthy anyway, in all areas!

-I'm also now going to be doing a Ragnar! One of my best friends, Wendy, invited me to run it with her team the other day, and I'm doing it! I've wanted to do one for a while, because they sound so fun and it would be a great accomplishment, seeing as running is not my strength or favorite thing. And I love her, and she doesn't love running either, and she said her family are not intense or a fast team (thank goodness), and I feel so comfortable with Wendy, she's the best. I know she will take care of me. Plus, since I was a little leary of signing up after she told me it's $100 per person (on my student budget, yikes!), she is a saint and demanded me to let her pay for half of mine. She wanted me to do it that bad! I am so blessed with amazing friends, I tell ya! So even though that is NOT something I like to do, let people pay for me like that, it really would have been hard to pay that much (I can't even really afford the $50, but hopefully somehow it will work out, I felt good about doing it, so..), so she certainly made it more doable for me. I love her to death.

-I know I've written in here before about this, but I just have amazing friends! I love my school friends, who I've already mentioned, and I love my church friends too (Jamie, Wendy, Liz, Cheryl, Nichole, Holly, etc. etc.). And particularly, Jamie and I went through what felt like to me, a rough patch there, kind of an unspoken one. And I wasn't sure if we would ever be super close again, but when I finally was humbled and realized that I did want to be again, I prayed for help that we could become really close again, and it has happened! I love her to death again, and we are once again really close, and seeing each other more, and back to being closely in each other's lives. I really cherish my relationship with Jamie, and to this day I still am amazed at how much she likes me too. I always have been. She's so amazing and I love her.

-I am totally over Wes! I already wrote about it, but it just feels really good to have that behind me, and to not feel anxious over the possibility of seeing him at stake functions. And that I still feel good about the message I sent him.

-I've been meeting some pretty decent guys lately, especially this last weekend. None have made any effort to pursue anything with me (bummer), but they've been positive experiences, just meeting more guys, expanding my circle (like at Loralie's party on Sat. night, and then after the amazing Institute fireside last night). I feel like at least there are decent guys out there, that I could be happy with, I think.

-My guitar skills are really improving! I absolutely love playing the guitar, and I'm so grateful for the motivation that HF gave me last year, to set the goal of practicing it (or the piano, which I've kind of let go of for now) every day! I have actually done just that almost every day this year (missed probably 2 or 3 times), since last Dec. 31, 2012! I'm really proud of myself, and so grateful for the motivation and perseverance I've been blessed with to keep my goal. But I love playing, and I feel like I can actually say not that I play the guitar. I'm not great, by any means, but I feel comfortable with a bunch of the basic chords, and can transition between them fairly well. It's so fun! My goal is to be good enough that I can play comfortably and confidently at a girls camp around the camp fire one day (as a young women's leader, hopefully..dream calling:).

The only thing that's not stellar in my life, necessarily, is the realm of boys. Not dating anyone right now, there's not really anyone substantial that I have my eye on, so that's sometimes a bummer. But I'm so grateful that I have all these other great things going on in my life to keep me busy and keep me from dwelling on my single-ness.

So yeah, life is good!