Thankful

Sorry, no pictures here. I have a wealth of them waiting on my camera but for now this is what you get because this is what I need: to count my blessings.

1. I am grateful to have a job that I can get home from and feel like I've helped someone.
2. I am grateful just to have a job and feel productive.
3. I am grateful for sisters. Especially when they call just because, or just to tell me to look at pictures of their new little baby, or when they talk to me when I call just because.
4. I am grateful for my mom who is my best friend and is great at keeping my company on the phone during my long drives home.
5. I am grateful for the view from my front porch. Our trees have been the last ones to change colors and I love holding on to the brilliant colors of fall before the BROWN takes over everywhere.
6. I am grateful for my ward family and that they think to make sure we have a place to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
7. I am grateful that I am able to fly home to Utah for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
8. I am grateful for finding new friends.
9. I am grateful for all the friends that do so much to let me know they still care and work to keep our friendship strong, across all these years and all these miles.
10. I am grateful for Facebook and having grown-up chat conversations with my niece Kasadee. I can't believe she's a freshman in high school!
11. I am grateful for all the technology that lets me feel close to those that are far away.
12. I am grateful for finding new favorite place to eat and fun local things to do.
13. I am grateful for our little house. It couldn't be in a better location for my work and Dustin's school and all the little details are just so cute!
14. I am grateful for my health- being sick for awhile makes you realize just how great it is when you feel good. (I'm still getting over a bad case of bronchitis and a sinus infection)
15. I am grateful for my 9 nieces and 1 nephew and all the joy that they bring to my life.
16. I am grateful for my education and that I'm done with school!
17. I am grateful that I still find joy in the little things, like finding therapy toys on sale, and that I have friends who understand my excitement.
18. I am grateful for my wonderful husband who makes me feel beautiful on my most blah days, who sees challenges as adventures, who helps me to see the glass half full, who is patient when my emotions get out-of-control, who I can be silly and goofy with, who is my best friend!

Okay, now I need to get back to my pile of paperwork. To be continued...

New Toys!

So I had quite a bit of free time when we first moved to North Carolina and I spent a good part of it surfing the internet. I started looking for some used toys for my work with kids- a habit passed on from Todd Houston, my boss/professor/friend. He would always show up with a toy he had found at a yard sale or on sale at the grocery store. So one day I hit the jackpot on Craig's List and found a Fisher-Price Little People farm and dollhouse, complete with all the animals/people and lots of fun extras! I had to drive an hour and a half to pick them up but I only paid $50 for all of it! (A find I think Todd would be proud of)

Here's some pictures of my goodies and a little tutorial on sanitizing used toys:

1. Wipe off with Clorox wipes or just soap and a rag.

2. Mix Clorox bleach with water according to directions on clorox.com : 3/4 of a cup of bleach to 1 gallon of water.

3. Place toys in liquid for 5 minutes (I flipped them over to do 5 minutes on each side)

4. Rinse off bleach

5. Let air dry

6. ENJOY!

Some of my other favorite toy finds are:

• A pizza listening game (came with 2 pizzas and a bunch of pictures of different toppings)
• Japanese erasers- I don't actually use them as erasers but they have ones that look exactly like small versions of food, animals, vegetables, and school supplies. Kids love them!
• A bowling set for $1 at Wal*Mart
• A Build-a-Bear with a set of boy and girl clothes-courtesy of my nieces. This is great way to hit language targets I would would work on with a doll but playing with a bear makes parents of boys less nervous than when I want them to play with dolls.
• Foam stickers found at Wal*Mart or Michael's.
• Wind-up toys! Seriously I think I use these in almost every single therapy session.
• Books: I have way too many of these according to my husband but I never feel like I have enough. I try to incorporate a book into every session I have so I can introduce children to literature and instill an early love of books. My personal favorites are anything by Mo Willems but I'm quickly finding that more repetitive books such as "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" are easier to use with my littlest clients

I don't know if anyone other than my "speechie" friends will enjoy this post but I just get so excited about finding the perfect toy to help children learn to listen and talk that I just had to share!

Projects

Here are some projects I've done over the past couple of years and just have never gotten around to posting.

Allen Sign

This is the one that started it all. What started out as a little shopping trip with my friend Keira, turned into a full day craft project. Love how it turned out and can't believe how well it matches in our new place. I made another one like this for my friend Brittani's baby but didn't get any pictures of it before I gave it to her. It makes a great wedding or baby gift and the price was pretty reasonable. We made 3 different projects out of a pice of wood that cost $3.

Halloween Sign

My obsession with Modge Podge continued with this project. Jessie and I worked on this one as a release from homework. I printed the paper from one of the kits from Summer Driggs' Kit "Fangs for the Memories." (Just a tip: Let printed paper dry for at least 24 hrs before doing modge podge to keep it from smearing)

Ornaments

I made these for my friend Marinda while she was on her mission. Jessie and I made a set for ourselves too. This one was from Summer's "Winter Wonderland" and "Giving" kits.

"LOVE" Scrapbook

I made this for Dustin for Valentines day. I think it still needs something. I want to put some smaller rings on it and maybe some ribbons. I started with a chipboard album then I scanned it into the computer to get the measurements for the design right. Again, I used one of Summer Driggs' Kits- "Fathers and Fedoras" the alphabet and ribbon came from her "Relax" kit. Not sure where I got the tag because the file name was erased when my computer crashed. Dustin gave me a hard time for making him a Valentines Day present that was for myself but I think he secretly likes it.

Graduation Clipboards

I got this idea from a user forum on twopeasinabucket.com. Since us Speech-Language Pathologists are always needing a clipboard I decided to make one for everyone that I graduated with. I like the way they turned out, even though I never wanted to see a bottle of Modge Podge again when I finished (it took 2 small bottles and 3/4 of the big bottle to finish all of them). All of them came from Summer Driggs kits (I swear she's going to start charging me for her kits when she sees how much I use them). Here's the list of the kits starting at the top from left to right: "Year to Shine, One Year Older, Happy Mother's Day, Fathers and Fedoras, Inspiration, Apples and Almonds, Relax, Gratitude, Owl Always Love Spring, Sweet Springtime, Golden Sunshine, Limeade, and Winter Wonderland"

Baby Callilyn's Sign

I made this on for my friend Ashley's baby. It was super simple to make. I just painted the blocks and then found these cute chipboard stickers. Love how it turned out!

Cards

These were my latest project. I got a little carried away but I was just a bit bored and I had a bunch of scraps from another project.

Took me long enough to post all of these! Hope you enjoy!

Life in NC and Our House (before)

I know, its been a long time since I posted anything. Life was a little crazy while we were moving, but things have slowed down now... way down. I was supposed to start working July 1st but I've had some issues getting my license as a Speech-Language Pathologist in North Carolina so I won't be able to start until August. In the meantime I've been meeting some of my coworkers and some clients that I may be getting from them. I've also been working on putting together and decorating our cute little house. I still have a little ways to go before I want to take pictures of it but here's the pictures we took when we first looked at the house. It's in the middle of now-where but we're loving the area, our ward, and the beautiful views all around us.

The Front of Our House

(yes we have a sliding door for our front door,

kind of weird but it's not too bad)

Views from our front porch

The Kitchen

The Living Room

The Office/ 2nd Bedroom

The Bathroom

Our Bedroom

While we were visiting to look for houses before we moved we went on a little hike around the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here's a couple of my favorite pictures. It was so gorgeous! Dustin was making fun of me because I would take a step, then take a picture, take another step, then take take another picture. I couldn't help it!

The Allens are Moving...

I have a job! It's in... (are you ready for this?)... North Carolina. Someone who knows all the people I worked with at the implant center at UNC wants to hire someone to work in an area where kids with hearing loss aren't getting any services. Everything has just fallen into place and I can't believe it! Dustin found a school in the same area that had his specific program and he just found out that he got accepted!

Here's some more of the story:

I had been looking at the job in North Carolina for awhile, but everything was on hold until Dustin found out if he got into school out there. In the mean time, I had sent my resume into another job in Georgia and was surprised when they wanted to do a phone interview and fly me out to see their center. I was having a hard time deciding which of the two jobs would be better because in NC I would be working all by myself which made me nervous, also I would be working with all children needing early intervention in the area and in Georgia I could specialize in just those children with hearing loss. But, I wanted to live in NC more than at wanted to live in Atlanta. So on Saturday I flew out to Georgia for an interview. From the moment I got there it just didn't feel right.

I got there late Saturday night and then went to church and got a tour of Athens Georgia from some relatives of my cousin that I am living with here in Provo (only 1 1/2 weeks left of my last internship!). Every time they would show me something I would think or say, "Oh we had that in NC." The school out there that Dustin was thinking of applying to is in Athens and while I was there looking at it, he found out that he couldn't get into the school there. But, being the ever-supportive husband, he said he could find a technical school or something like that if he couldn't got to school anywhere else and if I decided I wanted to go there.

On Monday I went to the interview. The center was amazing but I was still not feeling like it was a really good fit for me. I watched some therapy sessions and the therapist that I was really impressed with was one that was trained in NC and had interned at the same center that I had. So everything was pointing towards NC. And then when I was in the airport Dustin told me that he had found out that he had gotten in at Appalachian State University in NC. I was reluctant to give up Atlanta because of the amazing facilities they had and the security of working with a more experienced therapist down the hall. But, the center was not impressive enough to warrant making Dustin put school on hold.

So I emailed the lady from NC to let her know that Dustin had got into school and asked her some of the same questions about the job that I had found out from GA. I was so happy to hear her response and I just felt like she really wanted me to be there, which is not the feeling I got from the other center. Then I talked to her on the phone and we discussed benefits such as an 11 month salary scale so I will have time off to come home, health insurance, retirement, setting my own work schedule, etc. So we set up a tentative start date for July 1st. I still can't believe this is happening!

Now I just have a lot of packing, organizing and planning to do!

Needs and Wants

I have so many things I need to update on my blog, but for now I only have time to do a quick list:

Things I need to do:

• Study for the PRAXIS
• Finish my last exam of graduate school
• Prepare more for clinic so I look/sound like I know what I'm doing
• Laundry
• Clean my room
• Unpack
• Repack to start moving things back home (been living in Provo for almost 2 months)
• Make a decision about jobs
• Loose weight
• Start working out again

Things I want to do:

• Move back to Logan right now
• Take a vacation
• Start a new craft project (pictures of past ones to be posted soon)
• Update my blog
• Spend more time with family and friends
• Go to bed and sleep until noon
• Eat some chocolate
• Get a manicure/pedicure
• Have a life outside of school!!!