Winter break

It's pretty hard to believe everything that has happened since I finished finals on the 17th of December. My sister and I drove to Vermont and spent a week at home, then Evan and I got engaged. Now I am enjoying the last week of freedom before my final semester of nursing school. It is crazy how quickly this program has gone by, and I am excited for the last semester.

I've decided to try and keep this blog a bit more current, at the encouragement of my mother and sister. Here are some memories from the holidays and break!

This is Julia, Susanne and I after our pediatrics final, getting ready to enjoy a few beverages!

Hitting the open road! Starting to see SNOW!

We were lucky enough to have great weather on the drive home. After spending a day with my father we headed to Woodstock to spend a couple of days with my mother. To our surprise, she wanted our help picking out a puppy!

Mom & Gunnar the puppy!

I was thrilled to wake up to SNOW on Friday the 19th. We really don't see much snow here in DC, so I was hoping for white Christmas, I was NOT prepared in terms of snow boots though!

Little Man doesn't like his collar!

 We spent most of our days working on a 1,000 piece puzzle my sister brought, and drinking good VT beer!

Jeff imitating the puppy!

After spending a few days with my mom, celebrating Christmas we drove to Southern VT to spend some time with my Dad and his side of the family.

Christmas Eve Day

My dad usually has to work on Christmas day, so we typically do the holiday celebrations on Christmas Eve. This year we went to my Aunt Pat and Uncle Tim's house for dinner and a yankee swap.

Dinner was AMAZING!

Sadly I didn't get a picture of everyone, but here is Amanda, Jess, My Dad, Lisa, Uncle Bob, Jeff and Jill. Pat, Tim and Lucy are sadly missing!

We had a blast seeing everyone on Christmas Eve, something that we hadn't done in a long time.  On Christmas morning Jill, Jeff and I got up and headed to to mountain to join my Dad and Jess and spend the day skiing!!

Jeff looks really excited to be up and in the cold!

Jess and Jill waiting to ride the bubble!

Jeff, Dad and Jess!

 The skiing was fun, although Jill and I were out of practice! My brother had to head back to Boston, so we spent the last night in VT at my Dad's house. We got up early on the 26th to drive back to DC. There was a storm rolling in so we were concerned we would hit bad weather. Which is exactly what happened in PA. The normally 9 hour trip took almost 12, but we were glad to get home in one piece.

Jill and I have spent the last few days running as she is preparing for a ten mile run. I'll post more on that another time!

I'll end with a few more engagement photos!

On the shuttle bus

Walking towards the waterfront. No idea what is about to happen!

The fireworks in this photo are AMAZING.

The cross street where we got ENGAGED.

I think we are both excited!

ENGAGED!

So I haven't actually kept this blog going at all. But it is a great place to share some of my favorite memories and photos from the night Evan proposed. We spent New Years Eve with Corinn and Ray in 2008, and 2009 and were thrilled when they moved to DC in December. My first thought was returning to the tradition of spending NYE with them! We made plans to go to dinner at Dave and Busters, then Evan wanted to check out the celebration in downtown Alexandria.

Corinn, Ray and Evan were so laid back on the trip to Alexandria that I had NO idea what was happening. The metro ride was longer than anticipated, and we almost spent the stroke of midnight on a shuttle bus! Thankfully we were able to get off and walk the final few blocks to the waterfront. Alexandria was all lit up with Christmas lights and was so beautiful.

We made it to the bottom of King street with a little under ten minutes to spare. As we stood there chatting, I still had no idea what was about to happen. Then at the stroke of midnight, when everyone yells "Happy New Year" and the fireworks start, Evan asked me to be his wife!

There were fireworks! But we were pretty oblivious!

And lots of kissing!

Then lots of hugs and FREAKING OUT!!

And phone calls (even though it was late), and oogling at the ring!

When the fireworks ended we took some more photos and started the walk back to the metro. This may have been when I got a bit silly..

There were lots of laughs, smiles, and squeals. Evan may have created a bit of a monster!

For the most part we kept our celebration under control...

Closer to the metro station was an adorable little park with a Christmas tree, so of course we had to take some more pictures!

(You'll note the ring is on my middle finger in this pic! It is a little bit large, so I had it on my middle finger to be sure I didn't lose it!)

We had to head back to the metro, because we didn't want Corinn and Ray to be stranded in VA if we missed the last train. We ended up running down the platform to get on a waiting train. As I ran past the conductor who was looking down the train to be sure everyone was on I yelled some sort of "Thank you!! We just got ENGAGED!!". To my surprise she wished us Congratulations when we started moving, and the whole train clapped!

And we got some pics of the ring in the light!

The side stones were a pair of diamond earrings that were my grandmothers. My amazing Aunt Pat told me a while ago that they were available for an engagement ring. This ring will always remind me of the love between my grandparents. I'm so excited to be marrying my best friend! It was an amazing night, and we are overwhelmed by the messages of love from our family and friends! There are about 90 more photos, and we may post more here in the coming days! We can't wait to share our lives together!

A HUGE HUGE thank you to Ray for capturing the proposal SO beautifully! We will treasure these photos for the rest of our lives!

 Love,
 Jen and Evan.

New beginnings

Okay. New Beginnings.

I had a blog three years ago, but I didn't keep up with it. I've found myself really enjoying reading the blogs of my friends and family over the last few months. It's like a unique way to stay in touch with each others lives. So here is mine.

I'm starting this blog and also a challenge that I read about on my cousin's blog. I am joining the 3,000 in 35 ab challenge! I've been focusing on increasing my physical activity with a 8 weeks to 5K challenge for the past few weeks, and I think I'd like to try a team challenge for support!

So we are off and running! I'm excited to share some other new beginnings as they come along. but for now I'll end with my favorite quote:

Yes, we still live in an imperfect, suffering, hurting world. No amount of love will ever do away with the pains of rebuke, frustration, ingratitude, misunderstanding,malice or plain stupidity. But the difference is that, with love in our hearts, these miseries will no longer be overwhelming; we will have learned to swim in the moving, salty, treacherous but exalting sea of mankind, to love it in spite of everything. And if we ever do come to perfect wisdom, we will love it because of everything, for we will be able to see the striving behind the sin, frustrated hope behind despair, failures of love behind acts of malice, and infinite mercy covering them all. -Jose de Vinck