Busy being a PT

Turns out I haven't posted anything in probably over a month. I guess working 40 hours a week but not getting paid makes me tired or something at night? Who knows. Yeah, that's right, I am now working full time as a (student) Physical Therapist. I have been working at Orem Pediatric Physical Therapy and it has been amazing. I have learned so much, and it is crazy how different physical therapy is when you are working with kids vs adults.

Some of the things I have learned as a pediatric student PT
1. If adults have a weak trunk, they slouch and it is fixed by doing sit-ups, planks, etc. If kids have a weak trunk they w-sit (sit on their knees with their feet out wide, which looks very painful) and to fix it we bounce them up and down on a therapy ball pretending we are on a pirate ship and we can't fall on the hot lava.

2. If you have a baby that always have their head rotated one way or tilted one way when they are playing, sleeping, etc, go to the doctor! Their muscle on one side of their neck is probably tighter than the other and if you don't do anything about it they will stay tilted their whole life, have vision problems, probably have a flat spot on the side of their head, and their facial features might be uneven. Also if they have a flat spot go to the dr before they are close to a year old, because then it's basically to late to give them a helmet or anything.

3. I hope my children have great imaginations. It makes life so much fun. I was working with one girl who had a pet monkey we had to take through the jungle (running outside in the long grass) and a pet spider we had to build a tunnel for it to crawl through (her doing bridges on her back). It was so much fun

4. The parent's of children with disabilities are without a doubt the strongest people I will ever meet. Just to give you an idea, the kids I have worked with have diagnoses ranging from cerebral palsy to autism, muscular dystrophy to hydrocephalus, torticollis to hemophilia. The parents for these children never cease to amaze me. Whether the children are able to walk, only crawl, just stay in their wheelchair, have already passed away or will pass soon, the dedication and the tears that have gone in to making these children's lives the best they can be, are phenomenal.

5. As much as I love working as a physical therapist, I feel very lucky to be a woman instead of a man. Working part time as a physical therapist sounds so much more appealing than working full. time. for. the. rest. of. my. life.

6. I now notice that I have really had a lack of children in my life. Without any nieces or nephews, and being 6 when my youngest brother was born, I haven't really had the opportunity to interact with babies. Having this internship has been so good for me not only to learn important things about enhancing child development, but it has also been great for me to just be able to play with babies. Hopefully Jake will learn how to play with babies too. It's probably not a great sign when he says "Ages 2 and up, I am golden; but any younger than that are boring because they don't really do anything." Haha.


Here are a few things I have learned in the last month that aren't physical therapy related, but equally important:

1. It's not a great idea to go to sacrament meeting 1 minute late when you are in a small chapel and have 2 baby blessings that day. Because then you have to sit in the choir seats and on your way up there you might trip over one of the steps and fall on your face in front of the whole congregation. Good thing I didn't fall on my face, but it was way too close for comfort.

2. Pinterest is a great place to find awesome new recipes. Such as: homemade wingers sticky fingers, homemade cafe rio pork salad, homemade butterfingers (world's best and easiest treat), banana oatmeal smoothie, buffalo chicken grilled cheese, PF changs mongolian beef, salsa chicken, etc. All SOO good.

3. The new Draper Flow trail is a new favorite addition to our Northern Utah repertoire of mountain biking trails. But I guess any trail that you do after a one month break, when the leaves are changing, and with an awesome view of the Draper temple will easily be put on that list.

4. A fun and easy relief society activity (if you are the one that has to put it on), is a service auction. All you have to do is print out papers for each sister to fill out and get points (points are awarded for if you went to the temple in the past month, read your scriptures that day, did your visiting teaching for that month, bottled jam recently, showered before noon that day, etc). Then you bid on services people have brought or written down (homemade raisin bread, free hair cut, free interior design appointment, babysitting for a date night, desserts, etc). It was so fun!

5. Training for the Provo Halloween Half-Marathon with my friend Shauna has been a lot more fun and a lot less difficult than I would have thought. Hopefully the earlier and colder nights don't put a damper on things.

Well I think that is all I've learned in the last month, or at least all I want to write down right now.

Only one minute left in my brain.

When I'm not working 12 hour days at my internship without getting paid, eating dinner, cooking dinner for tomorrow, or cleaning, I am watching this. Ahoy dehoy!

Bryce vs The Grand

Last week Jake and I went camping/biking/hiking at Bryce Canyon for a couple days, followed by the Grand Canyon for a couple days. It was a lot of fun, and although I have wanted to go to the Grand Canyon my whole life, I have to admit our Bryce adventure was more fun. (However I do  know that backpacking rim to rim or going to Havasupai would trump both. I just have yet to experience that).

Here were some of the good and bad about our Bryce Canyon experience
-Our campsite was awesome. Bright red rocks surrounded us right when we stepped out of the tent.
-we got kicked out of our awesome campsite because it was a double site and we only paid for a single. The next night we got stuck in a site right next to the road and outhouse with no trees. Complain, complain.
-Biking Thunder Mountain trail was, yet again, one of the best rides I've ever been on.
-We spent $2 for a hot shower (which was so worth it) and it shutting off when Jake was covered in soap.
-"The best 3-mile hike in the world" really is the best 3-mile hike in the world.
-We were always so surprised when we walked by someone that actually spoke English. The entire time we were at Bryce, maybe 5 families were American.
-I saw so many I heart NY or I heart SF or I heart HK. I thought of a new one. I heart HSWW. (.....hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry....)

Good and Bad of Grand Canyon
-We got to stay in Jacob Lake Campground. Next to Jacob Lake Inn where Jake used his credit card that said Jacob Lynn Layton and they thought it was a company card. Jake went along with it.
-Both nights families decided to pick the campsite and set up their tent literally 10 yards away from us, when they had probably 45 other sites to choose from. That site didn't even have shade.
-We made the ultimate smore's. A layer of peanut butter under the chocolate + my fine roasting skills = the best s'more you will EVER taste. "Peanut Butter makes the world go round" -Jake
-We made friends with some Spaniards on our bike trail. Jake fell in love with them and talked with them about European soccer for like 20 minutes (so they thought we were pretty cool). Than they gave us the t advice to start hiking Grand Canyon later, like 10, so when you come back up it will be like 4 and be really shady and nice.
-We followed their advice and started at 10. The only problem is, apparently we hike a lot faster than them because we were hiking back up at noon. Lets just say that wasn't the best 5-mile hike in the world.

Biking Failures

So the past THREE times I have tried to go mountain biking I have failed in some way or another.

Last Friday: My little sister came down to Provo to go on a great trail in American Fork Canyon with us but we had a series of unfortunate events. We woke up late, had to stop at the ATM to get 1 more dollar in cash to pay the entrance fee, didn't know the construction up the canyon would give us a 30 minute detour, and our car was almost out of gas. So by the time we got halfway up we had to turn back around because we didn't want to run out of gas and Jake was going to be late to work. Instead we went on a smaller, but still fun trail, where my sister had to sit down for 10 minutes because she was so dizzy/dehydrated. We failed.

Last Saturday: We went to Snow Basin Resort and paid for a day pass to go up the lifts and ride down the biking trails. It was fun, but a lot more rocky and less flowing than we had expected. Also on the last ride down only my sister and I went, and my bike got a flat tire. We soon figured out that my extra tube had the wrong type of valve; good thing Rachel had a spare. Although my bike failed and the flow failed, we still had a  grand time.

Today: Jake and I tried to go BACK up American Fork canyon to the trail we tried last week. We had no setbacks until we got onto the trail. 100 yards up our tires, chains, and brakes were so caked in mud that our wheels wouldn't turn. I guess it poured up there last night without our knowledge. We had to carry our bikes back to the car, and spend 30 minutes de-mudding them.

I wonder if I should just quit trying. Hopefully tomorrow in Park City will be more successful.

Yosemite

Over the weekend we went to Yosemite park. Because my camera now has a failure to thrive, I had to steal pictures from my family members if I want to document this trip. Thus I don't have many pictures. However, my mom misplaced her new camera right before the trip, and not being able to go to Yosemite without a camera, naturally she bought a brand new and improved one. So if I search her house high and low and find the misplaced one, it's mine! So I know what I'll be doing this weekend.
The trip started off great when we saw Jimmer at the airport and got a picture with him. I will need to download that picture shortly. He didn't seem too excited to stop and get his picture with us, but to quote my friend Shauna "part of me feels like he deserves it for being so good."
The weekend proved to be just as exciting. We stayed in a cabin in the park, went on multiple hikes, one of which was to the 5th largest waterfall in the world, and the other I kept my eyes peeled to find the bodies of the 3 people that went over Vernal Falls last week.
Overall the hikes, playing in the river, car games, and songs (I know, we had to pass the time somehow) made quite the memorable weekend.

Also I cut my bangs. Literally, I did. I am proud. 

And Jake got new glasses. 

This is where hikers would have seen 3 people going over the edge. So scary.

Learning to be a girl

So I have a problem. I feel like I need to cut my hair. I don't know if I need to go to a length I have been before, a new length, need to add layers, add real bangs, grow out my bangs, or just learn how to do my hair (I blame this on my younger years when I would never let my mom touch my hair. Thus i don't know how to curl or french braid my hair. So, basically what I'm saying is I don't know how to be a girl). Should I go back to a length I have had before? Or should I do something new?

 I know you can't see this one very well. But turns out lately I don't 

have many pictures of me with my hair down. Sorry.

Is Ron Artest really changing his name to Metta World Peace?

That is not ok.

Southern Sun

In the past month we have gone on two vacations in Southern Utah, Moab and Escalante. My family went to Escalante every Memorial Day to our Porter family reunion all growing up. Although our family has seemed to now boycott the boring reunion, we all still go down, still stay in the Circle D motel, and still find new things to do. This year we went to Hole in the Rock for the first time. We also hiked down to Lake Powell and touched its beautiful waters for the first time. On our drive back home some of us stopped near Bryce Canyon and rode the Thunder Mountain Trail. Really it was one of the most amazing trails I will probably ever ride. It was so cool!

Then just last weekend we went to Moab. Although I love Moab, after going the past 2 years in a row and doing the same thing each year (river rafting on a very mild river and dirt biking), I wasn't super excited about going this time. However, I was wrong to not be excited because it was a lot of fun. The river was pretty high so we got good enough rapids to watch my dad fall out. hehe. It was awesome. Also we went on some fun mountain biking trails. Taking my whole family on The Slickrock Trail might not have been the best idea. The best part of it was when my sister (who is not very athletically oriented, but still wanted to try coming with us) said "Mindy, how do you get on the bike without falling off?" Oh steph. Love it. 

At Dead Horse Point Jake made sure to stay out of camera range so we wouldn't get stuck taking more pictures. 

Too bad for him I snuck this one in.

Festivities

This weekend Jake and I were very festive, just for the wrong cities. Orem and Springville were both having their city carnivals so, naturally, we decided to take part. We got up at 6:45 to run  the Orem Annual Firefighter 5k. My dad was on leave from Afghanistan and wanted to run one with me, but then because he was jet lagged from the long flight he didn't end up coming. Oh well, it was still fun. Some of the highlights of the race were:
-Jake saying "This sucks already" right as we took our first steps
-Both of us passing the Amazon woman (named by Jake) who had socks to her knees that had an arrow pointing up saying "Bad A**"
-Getting a medal for finishing 2nd place in my age group (22-29) and being the 2nd female finisher overall
-Jake making sure he finished before the 10 year old who was hot on his heels.

After resting all day (taking a nap, watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off, playing Dominion -best new game ever- and reading) we were rejuvenated enough to eat at Cafe Rio and then go to Springville's Art City Days with some friends. Because of our great scavenging skills (finding multiple tickets and quarters near the upside-down-going-rides), we went on two rides. Eating Cafe Rio right before was a really bad idea.We almost threw up both of those rides. We both felt sick all night and had to go lay down in the amphitheater and listen to country performers for an hour. It was awesome. However, the fireworks afterwards really were awesome.

It doesn't look like the ride on the right would make you sick. But don't be fooled.

All pictures from here

Back to School

After finishing the last season of Prison Break, sewing my first skirt ever, and forgetting all of my scholastic knowledge over my 3 week vacation, I was actually excited to start school again. However, when I got back to class I found that because of weird scheduling things I only have 2 classes a week or less until the middle of June. Weird I know. So now Jake and I basically have another break from school every morning before he and I start work around 1.

It has been great getting in quality time at the gym, biking, and spending time with family. Last week we took Jake's little sisters to Hogle Zoo. Apparently you shouldn't get there mid-afternoon if you want to see the animals do anything besides sleep. We learned that the hard way. However, the prowling tigers were pretty cool.

 I know this is blurry (I hate my camera), but Anna is just too funny in this picture to not post it

I have also been busy lately planning a 5k fundraiser for a family that lives in Orem. They are trying to raise money to adopt a 15 year old girl from a Ukrainian orphanage. She turns 16 this year and she will be sent away from the orphanage where many in her position end up in prostitution. Because this family has a 7 year old son who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, heart and lung disease, and is legally blind and deaf, a lot of their money is lost in his medical expenses. This adoption it will cost them over $32,000 for all the adoption and travel fees, and they are looking for any way to raise money to help them in this cause. 


We are only in the beginning stages of planning, but we are really excited about it. If anyone wants to run in it on July 16th  let me know! It's going to be great.

CA Trip: Redwood State Parks

 This is called the Chimney Redwood. From a 40-year smoldering fire the entire insides were burned from bottom to top. In this photo I am standing inside the tree at the bottom and you can see the opening in the top

 Blur Master

 This tree was called the Father of the Forest because it has the widest trunk. It's estimated to be 2000 years old.

CA Trip: Santa Cruz

We went to downtown Santa Cruz to go shopping and to dinner. We wanted to go to the boardwalk too but it turns out it doesn't open until Memorial Day. So we only got to look around. Too bad.

The show at Kianti's is always fun to watch. But the best part was looking over at Jake, who was there for the first time, and seeing him watching the Celtics vs Heat basketball game on TV instead of the pizza twirling.

CA Trip: Giants game

Friday night we got to go to the Giants game with my aunt and uncle. That day it was Willie Mays' 80th birthday so they brought him in and we had a big party for him before the game. For me it was cool to learn who Willie Mays was; for Jake is was cool to see him. The game was so cold and boring until the very end. The Giants were down from 3-0 almost the whole game and then they ended up winning in the bottom of the 9th. Those San Franciscoans sure love their Giants.

As told by my aunt Andrea: This is best stadium in the major leagues. What other stadium do you find the ocean right next to it, a beautiful bridge lit up crossing the bay, and an LDS Temple in the distance.
I would have to agree, it was pretty cool.

 Here is my sweet action shot of Brian Wilson pitching in the 9th inning.

This is an even better shot of the awesome lady loving every minute of the game. Not gonna lie, she reminds me a lot of my grandma.

CA Trip: Mountain Biking

First we went biking in the Soquel Demonstration Forest. It was really pretty here biking through all the redwoods. Because of mudslides on the road we had to park our car about 2 miles away from the trailhead and bike down into the valley. Which wasn't a big deal, until we had to bike 4 miles back uphill to the trailhead and then the extra 2 miles back uphill to the car when we finished. (which might make us sound like weaklings but in our defense we started out with a 5 mile climb followed by a really steep and bumpy 5 mile downhill. Thus never getting a rest)

 After riding back up to our car I am very tired and mad at the mudslides

 We were quite disappointed in ourselves for how tired we were riding back up to the trailhead. But after eating our Clif Bars we were full of energy. For reals, it was weird.

Our next ride was at Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz. We both thought it was a lot more fun. Some parts were in grassy meadows, some in redwoods crossing streams, and others right on the edge of the bluff overlooking the ocean. It was so pretty. However, I soon remembered how Jake hates stopping to take pictures of us mountain biking. Because I want to take at least some pictures of our biking excursions, we compromised on taking action shots instead. Which is cooler anyways. Hopefully my not very good camera will cooperate. Here are some pictures of what we saw but weren't able to document.

from here

from here

CA Trip: San Francisco

After driving for 12 hours and sleeping in the car at a rest stop (note to self: either never do that again or remember to bring blankets) we arrived in San Francisco. Jake has never really been to a big city like that (he says Vegas doesn't count, i agree), so we decided to be the typical San Francisco tourists for a couple of hours.

First we stopped at the Antique Arcade Museum at Pier 39. My favorite was the old gypsy ladies in a box who told your fortune. Apparently Jake is arm wrestling the same man that was in Princess Diaries? We aren't sure, but that's what we have been told. Also we found the Bimbo-Box that just had Phantom of the Opera-like monkeys playing music. I am not really sure what that means...

Next we went to Fisherman's Wharf and got a little bit bored with walking past shops and looking at sea lion's. However it was interesting to see a man in jeans doing sit ups on the pier in 85 degree weather. I couldn't help but notice a bowl next to him, maybe he was trying to get money? I'll never be sure. This was a picture of part of the wharf with the city and Coit Tower in the background.

Next we drove over to Chrissy Field to have lunch on the beach and ride our bikes around the Golden Gate Bridge.