Hello From PA...

Hey all! So first of all I apologize for being MIA for so long. Things are busy and a little crazy out here in the middle of nowhere Womelsdorf, PA. This is mainly going to be a picture update but here are just a few things I have been enjoying out here on the east coast...

• Watching Disney movies and singing random Disney songs

• Having jam out sessions with my fellow interns

• Having picnic dinners on the back porch

• Eating corn fritters! Seriously... amazing!

• Feeling sweaty!!! ALL THE TIME (humidity! I just can't deal with it)

• Working out at the gym (and injuring my lower back) - then going to a crazy amish chiropractor. :)

• Going on nature walks (I found this seed that had a heart inside)

• Watching the Super Bowl for the first time in like 5 yrs. (with Danielle of course - Patriots fan?)
• Before Patriots Lost.............................After Patriots Lost

• Eating a giant pizza in the middle of scary Reading and almost getting killed

• Getting "Happy" flowers from my hubby!

• Having SKYPE dates with Tyler (watching movies on netflix while Skyping!)

• Decorating my little bedroom with random things I printed on the computer

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• Late and hyper nights with the interns (Ignore the crazy Arianne voice please...)

• Being surrounded by lady bugs and stink bugs! (Seriously they are everywhere!)

• Making green smoothies! :)

• Watching "Jersey Shore" with Danielle!

• Losing 15 pounds!!! I am getting there... slowly but surely!

• Making my own music with all of the incredible equipment available

• Basking in the amazing Eastern green view as Spring comes

Sorry the picture is a little blurry (phone)

• Working with INCREDIBLE adolescents who teach me new things every day (like what "Puta" means in Spanish)

• Doing what I LOVE to do and feeling uplifted and rewarded on a daily basis!!!

Internship: 1st Week

I had originally typed up this whole long blog about my adventures this last week; but I got bored reading back through it. Which means I KNOW that you would all fall asleep. So, here is my week condensed (it is still long, but I tried I promise):

• Friday Afternoon - 30th: Packed up, moved, and cleaned the entire apartment
• Friday Night - 30th: Ty drove me to the SLC airport while I cried like a baby. Said goodbye to the love of my life for 6 months.
• Saturday 12:55 am - 31st: Sat on a plane for 3 1/2 hours with sleeping people on both sides of me and cried (while not sleeping) the entire 3 1/2 hours to Atlanta. 
• Saturday 6-ish am - 31st: Got on another plane for another 2 hours to Baltimore with a small child kicking my seat the whole way. 
• Saturday 10-ish am - 31st: Privately escorted to my 9 seat er plane to Lancaster, PA in which the only people on the plane were me and the pilot. (Surprisingly, it was the cheapest flight available).
• Saturday Morning, Afternoon, Night - 31st: Drove with a friend to Bethany Children's Home while getting a beautiful view of the Amish farm lands and horse drawn buggies. Arrived at Bethany's and cried myself to sleep (finally). I think I may have had phone conversations with a few people in the middle of sleeping - Nanette - but I don't remember these too much.
• Sunday - 1st: Woke up and cried some more. Met the other 3 interns and started feeling a little better after bonding a little with them.
• Monday - 2nd: Sat around with the other interns and laughed A LOT! Cried myself to sleep again.
• Tuesday - 3rd: Officially began the internship. Began a week of complete culture shock with a predominantly black culture. (Can't understand a word anyone says).
• Wednesday - 4th: Learned what the term "Nigga-Itis" means. (In case you thought this was offensive - I definitely did at first - apparently it is a very common term used out here. Just ask me personally if you want to know...)
• Thursday - 5th: Accidentally left an orientation video about gangs paused and open for a few of the clients to clearly see. Which in turn triggered a whole lot of inappropriate discussions by the kids about whose family members were in which gangs and what the different hand signals were. :(
• Friday - 6th: Officially became overwhelmed by being away from my husband again, some more culture shock, and learned that our financial situation is definitely not peachy for the time being. Cried some more.
• Saturday - 7th: Cleaned and organized my belongings and sat around talking with my fellow interns.
• Sunday - 8th: Woke up and attended the weirdest church service I have ever experienced. Sat around some more talking with the other interns.

Sporadically through all of these days, I have also had spurts of the following:

• Listening to the loud train that drives by Bethany's every hour.
• Improvising on instruments with my fellow interns while rapping and laughing.
• Teaching the other interns how to play Twinkle, Twinkle on the violin.
• Trying to organize all of my projects and assignments.
• Cooked lots of yummy food with D-Love (fellow intern).
• Sat on the couch doing leg lifts while interns make fun of me.
• Acting like a bipolar crazy person - laughing, crying, laughing, crying... AH!!!

THE END!

Whew! That was crazy! Maybe that wasn't fun to read at all. Sorry everyone! It was a pain to write it all too.

Next week.... PICTURES of all of this! YAY!!!!

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my goodness! I absolutely cannot wait!  

Kelli... I am thinking of you! If we are even in the same vicinity during the opening of this PLEASE can we go together??!!!

Summer/Fall Update Finally

Ok everyone! I have finally gotten my act together (and pictures) and am doing one giant summer/fall update! I apologize for how long it took me to do this! :) Not going to lie, part of the hesitance to get things updated is that I gained a lot of weight this year from all of the stress of my previous emotional job   and other random stresses in life. However, I have decided that I just need to realize we all have our ups and downs in weight and soon (now that I have been running and exercising on a regular basis) I will be back to a comfortable healthy weight and proud to look back at these pictures and see how far I have come! Anyway... here we go folks!

SUMMER

Summer was filled with A LOT of fun! In the past, Ty and I have always been so busy with school and our 2-3 jobs each, that summers have not always been so great. However, Ty cut back to one job and I quit my job and was unemployed for 2 months this summer, so we had time to have fun! 

Ty and I on the Carousel at Hogle Zoo

Our first adventure was taking a trip down to Provo and Salt Lake to see my sister Carlene. Ty and I went to Hogle Zoo because we are 5 yrs old, and we also went with Ty's family to Lagoon. 

Ty thought it would be ironic since I HATE spiders!

We had such a blast, and I got FRIED since I hadn't seen the sun in ages!

 Erica and I waiting for the Ferris Wheel

The next adventure was Ty participating in Logan's craft summerfest this year! Neither of us had ever done anything like this before, and although it was slightly (ok, maybe more than slightly) stressful, it was still a lot of fun! Here is a picture of some of the flowers Ty made... 

The star making some more flowers at his stand. 

Some of the flower fun. I helped paint them! YAY!

The next adventure was something Ty completely surprised me with. He literally woke me up one day and just said, "We are going on an adventure! Pack your things!" Well, secrets don't sit well with me because I tend to have to know everything! So I finally got it out of him about halfway through the drive where we were going... FLAMING GORGE!!! 

This was probably one of the most interesting trips I had ever been on. Tyler had not booked anywhere for us to stay, so when we got there it was hilarious trying to find a hotel. Then, we spent a whole day just sitting on a little fishing boat that we rented with our puppy in the middle of the lake talking and having a blast! Honestly, it really was a fun and adventurous trip! I didn't get too many pictures, but here are a few:

Ty found this on the side of the road! HA!

The rest of the summer consisted of trips to Bear Lake, A LOT of fishing, and hanging out quite a bit with our friends Kristen and Richard Christensen. Here is a last view of the summer fun...

Kristen and I at Bear Lake! SO FUN!

I caught a fish! (Don't look at my nasty fat arm)

Kristen and her husband at Bear Lake. Aren't they cute!

This sign is a REALLY long story! But every time I look at it... I can't help but BUST up laughing!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ok, the last thing that I am going to add to this MASSIVE blog are a few pictures of this beautiful fall! Seriously, Fall makes me so happy!



Here are a few pictures of my crazy fall decorations! YAY!

Ty made an AMAZING pumpkin soup, and to doll it up he turned these little pumpkins into soup bowls! I thought it was so clever! AND YUMMY!!!!

Anyway everyone, that is the end of this long overdue update! Hopefully the upcoming holidays will be blogged in a timely manner. Ha! Love you all! 

Till next time...

Hard Changes and Autumn Time...

I apologize for being non-existent for awhile. There have been some changes in the Despain family that I honestly haven't wanted to think about let alone blog about. :) As I have mentioned before, I have been given the opportunity to go to Pennsylvania for a music therapy internship. Originally, the plan was for Tyler and I to uproot and start anew together in Pennsylvania. However, Tyler has had no luck with trying to get a job in Pennsylvania and the economy there is slowly getting worse and worse. We also used quite a bit of our savings for some unexpected struggles in our life as of recently and we would have to use the rest to get us and our things moved to Pennsylvania. After a lot of crying, praying, and talking to our families... Ty and I have decided that what would be best for us financially as well as what would be best for Tyler's future schooling would be for me to go to Pennsylvania alone (which would allow me to live at the internship site with EVERYTHING paid for) and Tyler to stay in Logan working and saving money for him to start school in September 2012. 

I honestly can tell you that this decision has been extremely emotional and hard. I love Tyler and cannot imagine seeing him and being with him on a daily basis. However, Tyler and I (no matter how much we hate the idea) feel right about this decision. 

Anyway, that is the newest of changes in our lives so far...

On a much more happy note, AUTUMN IS HERE!!! Fall is by far my favorite time of year; and Halloween is more fun for me than Christmas! :) As of today, my house is officially decked out in fall and Halloween decorations! Yesterday was the first day it really felt like fall. It rained all day in Logan, and that evening the air smelled so fresh and crisp. I seriously went to bed last night with a GIANT smile on my face as the breeze from my window kept hitting my face. 

I am FINALLY working on one big giant summer overview blog! I promise it will be here soon. I will leave with a picture of my darling puppy Griff...

Isn't he a cutie... :)

Till next time...

Having A Blast Doing Nothing...

I promise I have A TON of pictures and updates coming soon... but for now, I wanted to let everyone know I finally was able to get a job! I am working as a Utility Processor for Conservice. Probably none of you  have a clue what that means... but basically, I get paid to sit and type the same thing over and over and over. Ha! Honestly, it was exactly what I was looking for after the high stress of my last job! Anyway, YAY CONSERVICE!!!

The last thing I am going to share in this blog is the wonderful adventures Tyler and I created together tonight. Ha! I love that we can be doing absolutely NOTHING and yet still have the time of our lives! I have this noodle spoon (the ones with little spikes around the edge) that I use as a back scratch-er (No I don't use it on food anymore...). Well, while listening to a bunch of different movie theme songs, I got pretty hyper and started hitting Tyler with the spoon to the different rhythms of the music. HA! Well, after laughing about the annoyance for awhile, Ty finally got sick of it and decided to get me back...BY LICKING MY FACE!!! EEEEWWWW!!!!! Basically, we ended up on the bed hysterically laughing while our dog tried to lick us and eat us because he had no idea what was going on... 

BEST NIGHT EVER!!!!

Book of the Month: The Book of Lies

Technically, my husband bought this book for himself thinking that it was a book based on the history of Cain and Able and whatever happened to the world's first murder weapon (he is into historical and informational books, unlike me...ha). Last night, after not being able to sleep, I pulled it off of the shelf and read the description and realized that it was actually a fiction novel based on historical facts (much like The Da Vinci Code). I was intrigued and began reading...

11 hours and only 3 hours of sleep later, I finished this incredible page turner in awe of this author (Brad Meltzer). WOW!! I would recommend this book to ANYONE!!!!

Here are a few highlights:

"Wouldn't it be great if we could live life backwards? You start out dead and get that out of the way-- then you wake up in old age and feel better every day. With each passing year, your illnesses disappear, and you get more hair, more handsome,  more virile-- and best of all, you keep getting younger, finally ending life as a fantastic orgasm!"

HA HILARIOUS RIGHT!!!! Here is another one:

"There's the life you live and the life you leave behind. But what you share with someone else-- especially someone you love-- that's not just how you bury your past. It's how you write your future."

I think that is my favorite for sure... 

Anyway, there is my rant for the day! I know that I will be reading more Brad Meltzer in the future!