Spring Training

     This past week Ryan's mom and brother (Jordan) came down to visit us over Jordan's spring break.  He is a senior in high school right now and pretty sure he is the funniest kid that I know.  While they were down I had to work, but I was able to get a couple of days off to hang out with them.   MLB Spring training is huge down here in Arizona.  The Cubs, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Padres, Mariners, White Sox, Angels, and some other teams all have spring training complexes down here in Maricopa County right where we live.  We have a stadium right by us called the Peoria Sports Complex, home of the Padres and Mariners.  So we decided to catch a game.  The weather was beautiful, had super close seats, and ate some amazing, greasy, DELICIOUS HOT DOGS!!!

We watched the Mariners vs White Sox

Ryan with his Chili-Cheese foot dog and Jordan with nachos

Enjoying the game and sun!

     It was such an awesome day!  Ryan and I will definitely be hitting up more of the spring training games next year and the years to come.  The tickets are super cheap, great food, and watch some pros play ball.  Oh that reminds me, since I work at Texas Roadhouse, which is just across the street from this Complex I have been able to serve a couple of MLB Pitchers from the Padres a few times and the Mariners.  It is pretty crazy!   I would say that life down here in Arizona is treating Ryan and I pretty good!

     Also on great news!  I start school in about 8 weeks! YeeHaw!! I am so excited.  Ryan decided that it was time for me to upgrade my dell computer to a Sweet, New Mac Book Pro....and I LOVE IT!!! It is so much nicer then a Dell!

     Don't be hatin' on my nasty picture, I had the stomach flu the day before and was still recovering.  On that note, Ryan has just recently been able to experience what it is like to be a nurse haha!  Early Sunday morning I woke up not feeling good at all and didn't quite make it to the toilet in time, so as I was trying to not throw up everywhere I had a hard time getting the toilet see up and pretty much projectiles FLEW EVERYWHERE except the toilet.  I started to clean things up and then my amazing husband came in and told me to go back to bed and he finished cleaning up my mess.  He is the greatest husband ever!!!  I told him I was just preparing him for when he is in his Intern year as a doctor and has to do all the "pee-on" stuff he will be ready.

Viva El Peru

     Some would wonder why I am reminiscing about Peru, but believe it or not it has been exactly 1 WHOLE YEAR since I was down there last year at the end of March.  Ryan and I have been a little sad lately knowing that Idaho Condor (the humanitarian mission group) is down in Peru since Saturday and we were not able to go this year.  Due to school and having to have to be responsible, we couldn't find a way to go.  Hopefully within 2 years when we are both in rotations and on the same schedule we will finally be able to go back to our "Falling In Love" country.  Peru has a place in both of our hearts and has definitely taught Ryan and I our love to serve others.  We both can not wait til we are done with school and will be able to go to Peru every year and all over the world to travel as a Doctor and Pharmacist to help others.
     Ryan and I were just friends and barely new each other before we went down to Peru.  Ryan had been recruiting my friend Ashley and I to go down to Peru to run the "Farmacia" in the cities we went to visit since we were in pharmacy school.

The Pharmacy was always placed where there were bars or a barrier or otherwise the natives would try to rush in where all of the "goods" were at.

     The pharmacy was a new division for the group.  We have a surgical team that stays in Lima, Peru and does facial reconstruction surgery and then the dental and medical teams go to Cusco, Peru which is an hour flight away from Lima. Ryan started the medical team division last year so having an actual pharmacy was new. The doctors and dentists wrote "recetas" aka prescriptions and the people would bring them to us to be filled.  It was so AMAZING to see how the Peruvians were so thankful for a bag of Ibuprofen for their aches and pain or some simple Omeprazole for heart burn.
     Last year the rainy season was very hard on the cities.  A lot of the cities had been washed out and lost everything.  It was a very humbling experience to see people literally living in "Tent Cities."  We were able to help over a couple of thousand people and go to 5 villages.  Peru will always have a place in my heart.  It truly taught me the REAL meaning to Serve and Sacrifice.  Here are some pictures....

Kids were lined up ALL over the streets just to earn a "Sole" for a picture

People waiting in line at Triage

Beautiful Andes Mountain Range, we were about 13,000 feet up

The kids were precious and loved the balloons we brought

     Many of the younger locals spoke Spanish, but a lot of the older people in the village were Incan descendants so they spoke Ketchua which is the native Incan language.  There were very few Peruvians who could speak Ketchua because it was becoming a lost language in Peru.

     This pictures is of one of our dentist checking the teeth to tell her what station to go to, but this lady is a what the older women would look like with long braided hair, tall top hats, skirts, and she spoke Ketchua.

Dental crew setting up

      When we went to the cities, they were very gracious for us coming to help so they would put on a performance with their kids and the Police.  One city put on a show for us with their police dogs.

Here is the city band performing for us

     Along with traveling to some cities, we were able to do a lot of site seeing as well.  The group usually goes to Machu Pichu every year for a few days, but this year we decided to go to Lake Titicaca in Puno, Peru.  It was so much fun!  We took a LONG boat ride to a huge island in the lake and we were able to see the man made floating islands.  The people that live on the Islands are super super short.  I'm talking like barely 4 ft. tall.  Here are some pictures of their houses/islands.

Our Sweet Rides down to Lake Titicaca from our hotel

This is a design that the Islanders make on the way to their homes out of the Weeds that hold the islands together

This is how they travel island to island

Their homes are super small!

This weed grows at the bottom of the lake and it holds the island in place.  Also the Islanders eat the weed to clean their teeth because it has fluoride in it.

     So, at the beginning of the trip, Ryan and I new very little about each other.  But by the end of the 10 days we were a lot more curious about each other and our friendship had grown a lot.  So the pictures towards the end of the trip have a lot more of us in them.

Lake Titicaca behind us, on an island where the locals fed us a traditional meal of fish and soup

     While we were traveling to cities at the end of the day we took a couple of hours to see some sweet agriculture sites.  This place was my favorite.  The Peruvians are amazing farmers.  All of the farm land is up on the mountain sides. The sides are so steep that you would never be able to get a John Deer tractor up the mountain to harvest it.  They are brilliant people when it comes to agriculture.

I found some corn.  It was raining on us.

     Another interesting place we were able to stop at was the Salt Farm.  There were over a 1000 families who work here.  This is how they get their salt for their family and sell some as well.  The river that flows through here is pure salt, hence why they can farm it.

Once the water evaporates the wells will be white with all the of the salt to harvest

     There was so much that we did in the 12 days that we were in Peru and thousand of pictures to pick from.  It was the best experience that I have ever had.  It has changed me as a person and taught me the true mean of serving as well as being humble.  From helping people who lived in tents because their houses had been washed away from floods to the locals who live over 13,000 ft up in the Andes to preserve their heritage, I learned the true meaning of what family should mean to me.  I am so very thankful for my husband.  It was in Peru where I learned what kind of man that I wanted and found.  I am so thankful that Ryan is a man who is always thinking of others and loves to serve.  Even though we are extremely sad that we are not in Peru right now, trust me, we will be back as soon as we can! And hopefully we have found many friends here in Arizona who would love to go and serve the Peruvians as well!

Guinea Pig is a delicacy down there, so here is my first time eating it....trust me it is not a delicacy to eat!!!

So long Peru....we will See You SOON!!!!!!

Spring BREAK!!!

     Wahoo!!! That's right! It's Spring Break down here in sunny Arizona!  Who would have thought that in February/March it would be a sunny 75 degrees?  Well first off lets just say that my Hubby is Awesome! He finished his second quarter of Med School and finished it strong...lets just say if someone can get two 98% on their finals and also get A's on the other ones as well, someone is just ridiculously smart...haha!  He did so good and I was very proud that he survived 6 tests in 5 days.   So to celebrate the end of the quarter and spring break we decided to hit up SIN CITY aka LAS VEGAS!!!!  It was a trip much needed for the both of us and only a few hours away.  While we were down there we stayed at the Monte Carlo....

   
     After we walked around for a few hours and got some great 1/2 priced tickets for an amazing show (see later) we got all beautified and went and ate at an AMAZING buffet.  Now usually I am not a fan of buffets because I think the food just isn't good, but this one was different.    There was ENDLESS prime rib, crab legs, shrimp, all types of beef, all flavors of chicken, stir fry, and more meat!!! If you didn't all know, I love meat!  When I go out I never order a salad, it's a steak please!  So after we stuffed our face with endless plates of food, we had to stock up on dessert.  So we got a sample of almost everything...

     We had coconut cream pie, ice cream, chocolate covered apple, chocolate dipped strawberries, cheesecake, eclairs, strawberry shortcake, and anything else you could image!

We were so stuffed!!

     We could hardly walk after we got done eating, but we were ready for our main event that night......

     It was so GOOD!  I love musicals, but this is probably one of my favorites! I grew up with my dad always listening to the cassette tapes of this musical on road trips and have loved it ever since.  I would recommend this show to anyone!  The actors, the stage, chandelier, and the best part of all was the orchestra were terrific!  They had the orchestra underneath the stage and added in a little bit of electric guitar. The music was fantastic! We also had amazing seats and got the tickets for 1/2 off.  It was definitely one of the best shows ever!

Waiting in line to go into the theater

    
     Also something that was way fun was it rained on us the whole way while we were driving to Vegas and I loved it!  I miss seeing all of the storms come in and just pour or snow in Idaho, but while we were driving I was just loving all of the heavy rain clouds and hearing the rain.  On the way out of the show that night it SNOWED on us in Vegas for just a little bit!  It was hilarious to see all of the girls wearing their skimpy outfits being terrified cause it was snowing, needless to say I was laughing pretty hard.
     Our original plan after going to Vegas was to head to St. George on Sunday and see my grandparents and then go hiking in Zions National Park but due to the bad rain storms... that didn't happen.  So Sunday we woke up and took our time driving back and saw some cool landmarks like the....Hoover Dam.  They just got done finishing the new bridge in October, so we took some time to walk around.  It is just simply amazing the engineering that went on to build everything.

Sorry for how scary I look, I didn't want to get ready to sit in a car

     Since, we didn't go to St. George, we decided to still go hiking!  There is a pretty big mountain/hill in Scottsdale called Camelback Mountain and since Ryan and I have been into trail running we went and tried it out.  It was a pretty awesome hike and a lot of fun rock climbing.

If you squint and then tilt your head you can see it looks like a camel...haha

     We climbed up to the very top!  It was an awesome work out and a lot of fun.   There are HUGE homes all around and up the mountain. 

Doing some rock climbing

     There was a pretty nice trail about half way and then to get to the top was just climbing through some good sized rocks like the picture has.  They had blue dot marks painted on the rocks and there were a few times that we were climbing and couldn't go anywhere because there were just drop offs on both sides due to us not following the paths....it was pretty funny.

Ryan pointing in the direction we live

We found a lizard in between the rocks....it may not look like it but it was pretty big!

It was so nice it let me take a pic with it...ps do not look at my cheesy/nasty smile

     It has been a great few days of vacation!  Sad to say I must go to work to pay the bills, but we can't wait for this weekend!  Ryan's sister Tiffany and her little family are coming to visit us for the weekend! We are super excited!

     Oh  and some more great news!!!  I start school up in 3 MONTHS! I am so excited, you have no idea! I miss school and can't wait to get back to learning!  Also, we celebrated our 7 month anniversary!!!  Pretty crazy how time flies while you are going to school, working, and playing in the sun!