A light at the end of the tunnel

This gruelling semester is almost over people!!!! Only three more actual class meetings left in my entire formal schooling career! As a reward for making it through alive (which has been challenging to say the least) Ant and I are going on our first cruise! The week after school ends we will be in the Bahamas, baby!

Real women sweat

A lot of people assume that I am the type of gal that is constantly cold and doesn't sweat, just perspires gracefully. Nothing could be farther from the truth!! I am almost always hot and I have to use man-deodorant (like old spice) because girl stuff just doesn't cut it. I also sweat like a champ, both from nervousness and exertion.

To illustrate: on Wednesday I went to the gym to work out and spent a good amount of time there. When I got home, Anthony looked up from the couch, confused and said, "Is it raining?" No. I just sweat like a man.

Moving On

It is official, our house is on the market! We have had a whirlwind month getting everything ready, painted, and fixed up and now the challenge is to keep it clean for potential buyers. We are trying to be optimistic without getting our hopes up (now how do you do that exactly?). We are definitely moving in August, but we are hoping that we won't have to end up renting. Even though we are losing money, we both figure it will go a long way towards our peace of mind to not have to worry about it. Here are the pictures that will be in our listing so far. Eventually it will have our upstairs bathroom that we completely remodeled ourselves and are very proud of :)

Perfect Example

I came across a perfect example of how I've been feeling lately with school/intership:

Yep. Confidence seriously compromised by reality :)

I took the plunge!

I've been thinking about selling Pampered Chef for a few weeks now and today I took the plunge! I am officially a consultant(doesn't that sound funny?). So, I am going to be having an Open House at our place on March 5th and you are all invited!!!

I was kind of nervous about having an open house, because I don't want anyone to feel like this is going to be a get together where I try to strong-arm you into buying something. (If you know me at all, you know I am NOT that person:) It is more like a get-together/celebration of my new fun hobby! We are going to have good food, games, and lots of visiting. I'm thinking about having a mexican fiesta theme complete with sombreros...

So, if you want to have some fun, visit, and eat good food, then let me know. It is going to be on March 5th at 6PM.

Evil Sickness

So, we've been cursed by the plague at our house. I was in-bed-want-to-die sick for about two weeks and am going on my third week of lingering cough/stuffiness. Ant just started to get sick at the beginning of this week and I feel so guilty!!! I've been trying to be very accomodating and I even cooked dinner twice this week :)

Life update
Me:
I've been suffering through school and practicum with my sickness, and I haven't been seeing too many clients since I don't want to spread my germs. It is nice to feel like I am moving towards being done with classes, but I have started to get overwhelmed with insecurity. After getting some critque from one of my professors, I just started to wish I had chosen a profession that wasn't so personal. I bet insurance agents don't have to spend large amounts of time trying to be self aware and improve interpersonal skills. It's exhausting. Anthony assures me that I'll feel much better when I don't have someone offering me critque on everything I do, telling me what I should have said and making me feel stupid (not in a mean way, but still).

I don't know if I blogged about this before, but a few months ago I got called as a Relief Society teacher. I was genuinely excited about the calling, but I still find myself nervous the day of. I'm working on it, and I don't feel like I'm bad or anything. I just have issues being center of attention of a large group. In addition, I just got set apart with a Stake calling!! I sort of thought only older, more experienced people got stake callings but I was sorely mistaken. I am the new Stake assistant music specialist. Cool, huh?

Ant:
Ant is studying REALLY hard for one of his classes. Seriously, it takes up quite a bit of his time and I am proud of him but also worried with him. His teacher has never taught this class before and doesn't really know what he is doing. He started out being too lenient and now has swung to the other end of the spectrum and has ridiculous expectations. All prayers for him to pass would be appreciated :)

So that's us. We're still working on selling our house and crossing our fingers to move to Tampa in the beginning of May. If not, we will stick around in Gainesville at least until August until Ant starts clinicals. Know anyone who needs a condo? :)

30 Day Shred Results

I finally finished my 30 day shred by Jillian Michaels! I took a little bit longer than 30 days... Sometimes it was just too much to do the exact same workout for the ninth time! I definitely like circuit training. It gives you more workout for your time, which is a good thing for me lately. Not much really changed measurement wise, but Anthony says he can definitely tell a difference in my muscle definition. Official results: Lost 1 inch off of my waist and 1 inch off of my hips. Body fat percentage went from 22.3% to 20.3%.

Next project: Making the Cut by Jillian Michaels. This is 30 day shred on steriods, with lots of circuit training mixed with high intensity interval training. I'll keep you posted on how this one goes :)

Weird Wildlife

Anthony came and got me today while I was working out so I could see this strange animal off our back porch: An albino squirrel!!! In the wild!! Here it is trying to "hide" from Anthony in a tree. Doesn't work so well when you are pure white with red eyes.

So here is a tally of all of the animals that have lived in or visited the Lagana Zoo: a ball python, a cat, three mother stray cats with their five kittens, a crazed opossum, a ferret, two stubbornly cute miniature dachshunds, a maltese-spitz mix, a 60 pound basset hound, and now an albino squirrel.

My new favorite pictures

My oh-so-talented sister took these pictures of my parents over the christmas break and they are my new favorite pictures :) I mean, I want to frame them and put them on my bedstand kind of pictures! I love this picture of my dad, I think it is one of the best ones he's taken in awhile. I just love my parents. Aren't they cute?

Back to School

This week was our first week back to school and it went pretty well. I feel a little strange going to class since I only have two classes (my last ones ever!!!!!) and all of my classmates have more. It feels like I am coming in the middle of something when I show up on Thursday afternoon having had two days off :)

Ant went to his first class of the semester on Tuesday and his first comment to me is that it is going to be hard! The class is pathophysiology and on the first day they went over 30 pages of the textbook, so he knows that it is going to be intense. I am proud to say that he has made himself a study schedule and has already locked himself away in our office for hours to try to catch up for next week. Who knew I would ever see that happen?

I started my practicum at Shands and even though I don't want to jinx myself by saying this, I love it!!! The people I will be working with are wonderful and helpful and the patients are great. I hope by the end of this I will have a better feeling of what exactly I want to do when I grow up :)

Fishing Adventures

This past Monday Ant went on a 24 hour fishing extravaganza with his fishing buddy, Jason. Since Ant hates to drive, they made a deal that Jason would do the 6 hours of driving to a primo fishing spot (6 hours total= there and back). These guys are hard core about their fishing! They brought a canoe and ended up paddling over 10 miles in the course of the day. Jason caught the biggest fish, a 42 inch redfish: Now that's a fish you don't have to exaggerate about!
Ant's biggest catches were a 33 inch redfish and a 37 inch redfish:
Of course, the trip wasn't without some hilarious mishaps! First, it was pitch dark when Ant and Jason were paddling back to the truck and they accidentally disturbed a herd(?) of sleeping manatees. They got so spooked they almost capsized the canoe and managed to get Anthony and Jason soaked! Anthony said it was like an instant shower over his entire body. The manatees also put enough water in the canoe that they had to get out and bail the water out. After that, while they were paddling back Anthony and Jason decided that manatees are not docile and slow, but evil bloodsuckers with black hearts.

Second, while driving home on the interstate a strap on the canoe broke and the canoe went flying off the truck! So, at 11:30 pm Anthony and Jason were racing across the interstate to retrieve the canoe and then spent some terrifying time on the side of the road trying to tie it back on somehow without getting hit by a car. Anthony told Jason that if he starts screaming to run for the trees because a car would be about to hit them. Pleasant. In spite of everything, they were pretty lucky. The canoe wasn't that damaged and it didn't hit anyone behind them, it just kind of skidded into the median. Needless to say, Anthony was exhausted when he got home!!

A Fillon Christmas

My parents and my brother got to go up to Ohio to visit with my sister and her family for Christmas. I am so jealous that they got to have so much fun with them, while I am on my third night shift in a row :( Luckily, my brother took pictures of christmas morning, so I got to see my niece and nephew open our gifts. Here is my nephew Savino opening the present we got him, a toy steering wheel with lots of buttons and noise makers. According to my mom, the toy went over great! Look at those curls!!! Here is my niece opening some of her gifts. My dad looks like he raked it in in the stocking department :) That looks supremely comfortable. Apparently the dogs think so too. I would like to proudly point out that Savino is still holding our present!