New Job!!

On Monday I got a very exciting phone call...I got a job!  The whole story is a little longer than that so here it goes.  A month or so ago I sent my resume to a utility billing company, Conservice, that had a position for a billing manager.  They called me back a week or so later and wanted me to come in and do some skill assessments.  This consisted of formatting an excel spreadsheet, a 10-key number test, writing a response to a letter from a customer, and reading through information about the billing processes and then answering some questions about it.  I thought that I did very well and felt comfortable doing all the tasks.  Later that week they called me back for an interview. YAY!! I was so excited but nervous.

The interview was one of the most nerve-wracking situations of my life because it was me on one side the table with 5 interviewers on the other side just firing questions at me.  But amazingly enough that was the calmest I have ever been in an interview.  I felt comfortable with them and just gave them the best I could.  Here is a little background info--I currently work at a restaurant called the Beehive Grill.  I have worked there since they opened in June 2009.  It has been a great place to work because they were flexible with my schedule and always gave me the time off that I wanted (so awesome!!) The day before the interview my manager at work talked to me about training to be an opening Manager.  I was open with her and told her about the interview I had with Conservice and that if I got that job I would take it because it was full-time with benefits.  

A couple days later I got a call from Conservice while I was at work and they told me that they had filled the position but they anticipated a couple more positions would open up in the next couple weeks.  I called them back and told them to keep my resume and information on file for those positions.  I then talked to my manager at  Beehive to get more information about the manager position.  They just needed someone to start training as an opening Manager and they had one day in April that they needed a manager to work then after that it would kind of a back up position.  I decided to go ahead and start training because it was not a permanent position and would be good experience.  I also figured that if they ended up needing to hire another full-time manager then I would right in line for that position.  I did one day of training the first week and also work just regular shifts as a server.  I still had two more training shifts before the day that I would open as Manager.

Then...I got the call!  Conservice called me on Monday and offered me the job.  They wanted me to start training that next Monday, but would allow me to take the full two weeks if I needed to finish up at my current job.  I was so excited but so nervous to talk to my manager.  It all actually worked out perfectly.  If I put in my two week notice that day then I would still be able to work the Managing shift they needed me to cover for them.  I talked to my manager that night after work (I was so nervous for some silly reason!) and she was so excited for me!! She was just happy that I would be able to finish training and still work that day as Manager.  She also said that she knew I probably wouldn't be there for much longer since I had just graduated and all that.  Whew!! What a relief! So my two week notice was submitted on Monday and I only have two training shifts, two (possibly only 1) server shifts, and a manger shift left!!!! 

I have really enjoyed working at the Beehive, but it is definitely time to move on.  Beehive has been so great to me by always giving me the time off I wanted, which was a lot!! They were so good about giving me the shifts that I wanted and worked with my school schedule.  I always got along with the workers and managers and I was grateful for the opportunity to train as a manager.  They are all sad to see me leave, but are very understanding and supportive which is so great!! I am so excited to start this new job too. I will  be a billing manager and will have my own portfolio of apartment complexes that I will be in charge of.  It really seems like a great place to work with amazing people and wonderful atmosphere.  It will definitely be a change of pace going from waiting tables to a desk job.  I will definitely like the hours better...I will not miss having to close the restaurant or not knowing when I will get done with work.  It will be so nice to not have to deal with annoying people who are picky about everything, or cleaning up after other people's messy children!! 

I am finally truly entering the "real world" now that I have a "real" job.  It will be so great and I have been truly blessed to have this opportunity.  I know that everything has worked out the way it has for a reason and that the Lord has helped get me to this point in my life.  I can honestly say that I LOVE MY LIFE!!! I have so much to be grateful for and can't wait to see where it leads me next! So here's to a new adventure and saying goodbye to a wonderful chapter of my life.  It's time to grow up, I guess. :)

Jackson Hill Climb

This past weekend Andy, Hillary, and I traveled over to Jackson for the snowmobile Hill Climb.  Andy's sister and brother-in-law, Amy and Frank, were going and already had a room so we tagged along with them for the weekend.  We left Friday evening about 6:00 and were ready for a fun-filled weekend of hicks, snow, country music, and snowmobiles.  Saturday we got up and headed over the mountain, which was only about 2 minutes away.  At the bottom of the hill were a bunch of vendors, booths, and spectators watching the hill climb.  We walked around for a little bit then Andy, Hill, and I decided to take the ski lift up the mountain so we could watch it on the way up and also find a spot on the mountain to watch.

It was pretty cool riding the lift up and watching the snowmobilers ride underneath you trying to climb up the steep mountain.  Once we got to the top we tried to find a good spot along the fence so that we could watch them as they got to the top of the hill.  There were a lot of people up there and the only way you could see anything was if you were right along the fence.  Since we were on the top of a mountain, it was pretty steep and covered in snow, so the only way to move down to another spot was to slide.  This was the funnest part of the whole day, I think!  We would slide down a little ways and try to watch for a bit, then slide a little farther.  Amy and Frank eventually made their way up the mountain so we met up with them.  We found a good spot a little farther down the mountain and watched the climb for a while.

The crowd at the bottom of the mountain

Me and Andy riding the lift 

Jackson, WY

Hill found a cozy spot to rest and eat some snacks

One of the hill climbers on his way up

Andy and Hill watching the Hill Climb

The next part was the funnest thing! We had to slide all the way down the mountain, and I mean MOUNTAIN!  It was like a big snowy waterslide because there were grooves that had been formed from other people sliding down and they took you through the trees and down these little drop-offs.  I really wish that I had been able to video us going down the mountain because it was so much fun.  We got to a flat spot and had to walk over to where one of the ski runs was to finish sliding down.  There was a group of people getting ready to race down so we joined them.  It was pure craziness!  It started out fun and then we picked up a lot of speed.  As we tried to slow down, the snow would just spray up into our faces making it impossible to see and freezing our faces.  I was trying to slow down because I was flying down the hill, but I couldn't breathe because of the snow and ice flying at my face.  At one point I had turned completely sideways and was afraid I could just start tumbling down the hill.  Eventually we all stopped and just busted up laughing because our faces were covered in ice and snow!! It was so hilarious and I really wish we had videoed it.

This video was from one tiny little hill that we went down.  Sliding down the whole mountain was way more fun and bigger than this!

After that adventure, Andy, Hill, and I went back to the hotel and sat in the hot tub then got ready to go out to dinner.  We met up with Amy and Frank for dinner at The Merry Piglets.  It's a mexican restaurant and it is so yummy! Sunday we got up and had breakfast then walked around downtown and checked out the shops.  It had snowed that night so it was pretty cold which made walking around outside not too fun.  We headed back to Logan after that and I think we all had a super fun and relaxing weekend in Wyoming!  It is always fun to go to Wyo...even if my friends make fun of it! :)

Moving Time!!

March has been a pretty fun and exciting month so far!  To start is off, Jill and Christian found out that they would be moving back to Wyoming from Nebraska...YAY!!! I immediately made plans to go out there to help them move back.  But before that happened I got to celebrate my birthday a little bit.  My wonderful friends Andy and Hillary surprised me on Saturday with tickets to the Jazz game down in Salt Lake.  Well, they didn't actually have the tickets, but that was part of the fun!  Our friends Channy and Brianna also joined us for a great girl's night out!  We headed to The Pie in SLC for super delicious pizza before the game.  It was at the point that I found out that my camera was no longer working...BUMMER!  I need to get pictures from Channy so that I can post them.  After dinner, we headed to the Energy Solutions Arena to find some tickets.  We had been checking KSL for any deals, but didn't find any that were good enough, so we resorted to buying tickets from a scalper.  That was an experience! We bought upper bowl tickets for cheap and headed to our seats.

We immediately started scoping out some empty seats in the lower bowl that we could move into.  Andy's parents had seats in the 12th row behind the basket with a couple empty seats beside and behind them.  As soon as half time hit we headed right down there and got much better seats! We ended up staying in those seats for the whole rest of the game which ended up being way intense.  It went into overtime and the Jazz finally won! It turns out that those seats originally sell for about $115 and we only paid $15. Booyah! After the game, we went down the court and watched them interview Harris, saw CJ Miles, and I even gave Harris a high-five! Pretty much the best Jazz game!!

That next Wednesday I flew out of SLC to Nebraska to help Jill and Christian move.  My parents had been in Mexico the previous week without cellphone reception, so they had no idea that I was flying to NE.  My mom was also flying out that same day and I knew that we were going to be in the same flight from Denver to McCook, so I decided to surprise her in the airport.  It was so funny to see her reaction when I found her! Priceless!  We made it to McCook (For the last time ever!!) and got right into packing and cleaning.  They had started packing up their stuff already, but we still had our work cut out!  My birthday was on Thursday and after a long day of cleaning and packing, we went over to their friend's, the Blomstedts, for dinner.  We enjoyed a delicious dinner and then some cake and ice cream.  Friday was the big moving day.  We finished packing everything up and then most of the people from their Branch came over around 5 to help load up the Uhaul.  We had about 40-45 people there helping and it seriously made a difference! They loaded that truck up in no time.

Saturday we made the looooong trek back to Wyoming.  After about 14 hours, we finally made it back to my parent's house in Powell.  That was one of the longest trips I have ever experienced and I was very glad to home.  Sunday we headed over to Lovell to start unloading the Uhaul.  They are going to be renting Christian's grandma's house for now.  Christian's family was all there to help with the heavy lifting and unloading.  Monday I went to Basin to see Mallory before she had her baby and then headed to Lovell to help out with the cleaning and moving.  Tuesday we started to paint the bedrooms. Tuesday night we all went out to dinner for my late birthday dinner.  I was originally supposed to fly out of Cody on Wednesday afternoon, but I ended up getting to stay another day.  The plane was overweight so they were looking for volunteers to not go on that flight and take the first flight on Thursday morning.  I was so excited that I could finally actually do this so I volunteered and ended up getting a $400 flight voucher for Delta.

Mom and I cleaning away

Yes, the cake says Happy Birthday Butts.  Should have seen the girl's face when Jill asked her to write that!

The boys wrestling

Taking a break in Casper and giving Opie a little lovin

Letting them run!

Boxen!

Carson helping out!

So we had this packing tape that was not sticky AT ALL so what does my dad do with it?? Use it to wrap me up, of course!

Using a knife to cut the tape off...little scared if you can't tell!

What a cute little dork :)

Oh how I love cleaning!

Since my camera has decided to die on me, I had to steal pictures from my mom and sister...thanks! I am so glad that Jill and Christian decided to move back to Wyo.  It will be great to get to see them every time I go home and will get to spend more time with them and the boys.  It was a lot of fun getting to spend the whole week with them.

Up, Up, and Away!

On Monday I finally got to go flying with Jabin!  He is now a flight instructor at the airport here in Logan and he took me, his friend Chet and his wife Morgan on an amazing sunset flight.  It was so cool to see Cache Valley, the mountains and Bear Lake from 10,000 feet.  It is such a pretty area and is great to see it from a different perspective.  I had never been in a small plane like this before (even tho I have been on some pretty tiny ones flying to Nebraska or Wyo!) so I was a little nervous but mostly excited.  I can't believe he gets paid money to fly airplanes all day...how cool is that?!?

So, for our flight we headed south then turned east and headed over the mountains.  We came around and flew over the top of Bear Lake and then headed back to Logan by flying over Logan Canyon.  The weather was perfect and it only got a little bumpy as we came out of the canyon at the end.  We couldn't have asked for a better sunset either! It was beautiful anyways, but to see it from the air was spectacular!  I even got to fly the plane for a little while! I thought he was joking when he said I had control and was flying it, but then I took a hold of the controls and I sure was flying! He even pulled some maneuver so we could experience zero gravity...wow!! That was a crazy feeling! This is definitely a memorable day and hopefully something I can do again!

Me and Jabin before our flight

This is one of their "biggest" planes!

Logan Temple

I'm flying!! AH!

Bear Lake

I love flying :)

Beaver Mountain...where I went snowboarding that morning

seriously the best sunset ever!

Old Main on the USU Campus

Back on the ground

A Little Craftiness

I got a Cricut Expression for Christmas along with a computer program to use with it.  The computer program is called Sure Cuts A Lot and it is so amazing.  It allows you to cut hundreds of fonts, shapes, images, and even import your own all without the use of Cricut cartridges.  It is so nice to not have to pay for tons of different cartridges but still be able to use my Cricut! I had been dying to use it and try out all of the cool features.  I made some Valentine's Day cards to send to my nieces and nephews and also some little decor for the cupcakes I gave my roommates. 

This card was my favorite!

Somehow I have just now discovered the art of Distress Ink...and I love it!! You can do so much with it and it adds a really cool effect to paper.

This is the inside of the Be Mine card.  I listed the 10 things in the space below.

I am excited to try out new things with my Cricut and see what else I can create.  My next project will be to get caught up on my scrapbooking...oh boy!! That will be a massive project!

Hawaii: Part 2

DAY 4: BEACH DAY...AGAIN!!! We love Hapuna Beach so much that we headed back there on Monday.  Eric came with us, but Mindy stayed at the resort with baby Kacey because he was sick. :(  The waves were A LOT better on this day and we all got tossed around a little bit!! It is always so much fun to go boogie boarding even though it wears me out! It takes so much work to get out to the waves just to get pummeled by them! But boy is it loads of fun!! One piece of advice...wear a swimsuit that you know will stay on! I made the mistake of wearing a new swimsuit that did NOT stay in place! Let's just say some lucky beach-goers may have gotten a little show! Oops! Besides the wardrobe malfunction, it was another fun-filled day at the beach!

Eric and Christian

He thinks he is tough...ha!

Me and Jason catching a wave

showing off their "muscles"

 After the beach we went back to the resort and went swimming.  We had wanted to go down the water slides so we found them and had a ball! My mom has all the pictures of us going down a bigger waterslide.  I think the guy on duty at the slide probably thought we were crazy because we kept going and going and going...but it was so fun! We were posing for my mom as we went down the slide and everything!  I'll have to get those pictures from her.

 That night we all went to dinner at Roy's. It was pretty good and marked a milestone in my life. I ordered fish for the first time ever!! I decided to branch out a little and actually order a seafood meal...I was kind of disappointed.  But I can now say that I have ordered and eaten a seafood dinner. Yay me!

Adorable Campbell

Isabelle...I love this girl's smile :)

me and Gretchen...I'm so short that she had to pick me up!

me and the madre!

DAY 5:  ISLAND ADVENTURE.  The Big Island is almost two times bigger than all the other islands combined.  It is quite diverse in its landscape too.  The Kona side is the desert side and is not what most people think Hawaii would look like.  It is mostly just black lava rock.  As you travel around the island towards the Hilo side it gets more green and luscious.  The Hilo side gets a lot more rain and is also home to Volcanoes National Park.  We all wanted to see the volcano, so we decided to take the day and drive around the island to check it all out.  We got a late start on the day and it takes about 2 hours to get over to Hilo then about another 15 or so to get to the National Park.  That side is definitely more green and reminded me more of what the other islands look like.  Driving around the island was great because we got to see the diversity of the island and how beautiful it is.  Since we were driving, I didn't get any pictures of the trip.

We had to get back to the resort for the luau that night so we did not have much time to check out the volcano and the national park.  We were able to drive to the steam vents, see the crater where the volcano collapsed in on itself at one point, and more of the island.  I would have loved to hike around the park or even see the recent lava flow, but we did not plan our day very well! Oh well, next time right?

I think they were using the sulfur vents as a way to release some gas of their own without everyone noticing ;)

That night was the luau at the resort and all of the people with the AFS group were invited to go, so we headed back to Kona for that.  The luaus are always fun and they always have different dances which is neat.  They had a big buffet dinner with delicious Hawaiian foods.  It was quite an enjoyable night.

Grandparents and parents doing some hula dancing

Me and Sha

YEAH BABY!!

G-ma getting some action too

DAY 6:  FINAL HOORAH!! Wednesday was our last day on the island.  Our flight didn't leave until almost 10 that night, so we still had all day to play. My parents were actually staying for a few extra days so even though we had to check out of our rooms, we could still play in the sun and have a room to shower and freshen up in before heading to the airport.  This was very nice because normally we have to drive around with our suitcases in the car and didn't want to get dirty or wet.  We decided to hang around the resort and play in the lagoon again.  We had talked about having kayak races the whole trip, so of course we had to do this! After soaking up as much sun as we could, we got ready and hit some of the shops, then headed into Kailua-Kona for dinner before heading to the airport.

One of the turtles just chillin by the lagoon.

kayak races!! Christian cheats, by the way.

run, run, run!

We found another waterslide. Let the easy entertainment begin!

LOVE these flowers!

I just love this picture! What a dork!

Dinner at Bubba Gumps on our last night.

Thanks mom & dad, Associated Foods, and Destinations for another fun and memorable trip!!! I had such a great time and Hawaii truly is my favorite place to be! ALOHA!!