visitors!

We are so excited to being having visitors starting tomorrow until we come for the long weekend! Well, I'm excited as I get pretty bored chilling out at home alone. Chris has an exam on Friday, so I hope we don't distract him too much. :)

Sarah is coming tomorrow! For her birthday in May, I bought her tickets to see Ray Lamontagne here in Phoenix. Little did she know, I was just luring my best friend up here to visit me. She comes tomorrow and spends the night. I miss her very much, so I'm so excited!

Then: Dad comes home from his 8 week class in Ft. Rucker and is flying into Phoenix on Thursday (if the Army doesn't disappoint... unfortunately, I'm prepared for this also). He has never seen our house and missed the move entirely. I am SO excited to see him. I miss him very much. He'll stay till we go down on Friday.

And to make things that much more exciting, Megan and Kyle are coming on Thursday to hang out, spending the night until Friday. I don't know where we're sleeping everyone, but we'll make it work. I love filling the house with people.


I spent all day scrubbing the house and I think it's ready. Although, now that everything is clean, I don't want us to even sneeze the wrong way. I think we'll try a new restaurant in Phoenix tonight, Tee Pee Mexican Food. We got a Groupon for it earlier this week. What is a Groupon, you ask?! Well, you go to THIS website, sign up for their email deals based on your city, and get a daily coupon offer for restaurants, entertainment, and other local goodies. The Groupon we got for Tee Pee was $15 for $35 worth of food and drink. Since we've been in Phoenix, I've seen Groupons for tons of restaurants, horseback riding, rock climbing, massages, and kids activities, to name a few. Check it out!

Happy Tuesday.
Ash

more serious business, i suppose.

I suppose if this is going to be a life blog, I should catch those of you we haven't seen lately up on the latest and greatest.

Christian: Medical school is going great! Busy, busy, busy, but good. They're packing semesters worth of knowledge into one or two lectures and he says it's rough. He had his first exam a few weeks ago, thought he did poorly, and did great! Hopefully he knows better what to expect, as his next exam is this Friday. He can sign up to take them either Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, but so far has chosen Fridays so he has the weekend to veg. He's met a few friends and has a little study group he likes to meet with. They seem like a bunch of smarty pants and, so far, the right kids to study with. He also started clinical anatomy last week, where he meets at the medical examiners office for some special time with his cadaver (George, I believe, is what they named him..?). He loves it (besides the fact that it's just more to memorize) and besides the occasional formaldehyde headache, he's had no problem digging into a dead guy in the name of science.  I'll let him chime in with a more specific (and probably more accurate) med school post soon.

Me: Unemployed. First and foremost. I'm constantly on the hunt, and constantly (try weekly) being rejected by hospitals throughout the valley. For what it's worth, the climate is affecting ALL new graduate RNs, regardless of degree, age, school, etc. With money being so tight for everyone, hospitals included, they can't afford the extra cash it takes to train a new nurse. Plus: when so many experienced nurses are coming out of retirement and moving from part time to full time, etc., hospitals don't even really need us anymore. If you were in charge, why would you hire a newbie over someone with years of experience?? It just isn't in the cards for us right now. I'm looking at lots of alternate options, I meet with the volunteer coordinator of a teenage pregnancy outreach program on Thursday, hoping I can find something to do during the days that helps someone out (and allows me to strap on my RN title). I will continue to diligently bother every nurse recruiter in this goshforsaken city and will delightfully inform you when I find success. It takes a toll, all of the rejections and applications, the entire process. So, if you know a new grad nurse in your life...BE NICE TO THEM. Chance is, they need a hug (and a job).

So, that's the skinny. For now. Hopefully, things will continue to get better (AHEM...economy...that was directed at you...) and the job market will turn around. Also, hopefully, Chris will continue to be successful in school. He's made of all the right stuff, and I'm sure he'll be fantastic. He usually is. :)

Sorry to all of you who know these things already, but this was to update those I haven't had the pleasure of speaking with lately (Grammy, Aunt Kerry, K.P.) So now you know.

Okay. Too much blogging for one day.
Love, love, love.
Ash

recent fun domestic moments on monroe street.

Recently, some specifically fun domestic moments have been occurring here at our house. Of these events, only a few were caught on film. Or...err...digital....okay. Few were captured. Here's some of the highlights:

First: Casserole madness. For some reason, we realized my mom had given us a stoneware casserole dish and we were obsessed with making a casserole in it. I was thinking of falling back on mom's classic chicken casserole, but we decided to be daring and choose a recipe we found online for something called 'Texas Casserole'. I don't see what was texas about it at all, but we had fun making it and it tasted pretty good. I think we might tweak the recipe a bit next time. And by we, I mean Christian. FYI: that adorable original ancient gas stove works like a charm, believe it or not. Had that casserole cooked up in about 40 minutes.

Next: Fix the empty wall. That wall, that I decided from the beginning would be our main picture wall, happens to be a block wall. :/ In lieu of ruining the freshly painted walls, we found these crazy 3M wall stickies that act like super tough plastic velcro strips. Those bad mama jamas have been holding up six decent sized Ikea frames and the precious memories within. I'm so happy they're sticking! We used the 3M wall hooks at first and had two different instances of pictures falling off the wall and shattering on the floor (once while no one was home, once while Chris was home). After sweeping up lots of glass and bumming over my broke frames, we decided to double up the hooks on the big frame, but use the velcro dudes for the smaller ones. So far, success. I have another print on its way in the mail. I'm looking forward to finding it a perfect spot.  

Next: We have a cat friend. Well, four cat friends to be exact. Christian's family kind of adopted (ie: started to feed) these two wandering neighborhood cats who now are super friendly and hang out at the Dameff's all the time. Christian saw a cat wandering around our house like the third day we were in the house and decided to do the same. My only problem is, he has an owner...right across the street and one house down. I watch him sit on the porch and let the owner pet him (which he will NOT let us do). Regardless, we've been having fun feeding (occassionally) and hanging out with these adopted, responsibility-free pets. The one in the picture is BMB (Broken Mew Box, he meows like a broken kid's toy). Then there's a tough, grey cat with one eye (One-Eyed-Willy), and a tan one and an all grey one (unnamed). 

Porch Before

Now: Best of all, and most recently... we bought a vine! I know, not horribly exciting to some, but Christian's folks have beautiful vines all over their house and we used to have vines on our old Mary Drive house (Uncle Mike and Aunt Veronica's house) and we both loved the idea of getting vines to grow along our front porch rail. So we went to the Moon Valley Nursery today to pick up a vine! We did a little research and the nursery guys were awesome. They really knew their stuff and helped us pick out a carolina jasmine vine. We planted the little guy and hopefully it will lay out and grow the right way pretty quickly. The guy said it grows fast and blossoms pretty yellow flowers in the spring. We're really stoked and had a good time getting it situated.

One-eyed-Willy

the finished product

Hopefully, it grows into a beautiful vine and makes our porch smell like jasmine. 

Whew. And that is the domestication of college graduates. We plant vines now. 

xxoo,

Ash

Hi guys!

Hello everyone!!! So...Christian and I have been up to some adventures lately. Well, since it's just the two of us now and we get a little bored and lonely sometimes, we've been up to LOTS of adventures: exploring a new place and learning how to live together for the very first time. We know we can't chat with every one of you every day and we miss our hometown family (and everywhere else family) being a part of our everyday lives. We thought we might start this little blog as a way to keep up with what we've been up to without sharing every little detail with the 500-or-so odd Facebook friends we both have. I'm sure I will be the usual blogger, with the occasional guest piece from my best friend and roomie when he can take a few minutes away from his studies. I suppose it will give me something to do/keep track of while I'm playing my recent role as (gulp) stay-at-home fiancée. :D

Love you all,
Ash