M.I.A.

i have been mia lateley! it's been busy in these parts the past few weeks!

i finally finally moved in to my new office, yay! i feel much more efficient and like i'm getting more done now. i also don't have that people looking over my shoulder feeling anymore. so wonderful. and i get to move a few more boxes from the apartment to work which is nice. i love love getting rid of boxes. it's nice to have a nice office to decorate too. i feel very grown up there. i'm looking forward to hanging my pictures from my different adventures.

this weekend and conversations with various friends has made me think back over the past 10 years and realize how lucky i am. so i hope i don't bore you in the next few paragraphs but i'm going to recap the last 10 years :)

in 2001 i was a college sophmore at mary washington college. i lived with rissa in ball hall, a beautiful old building with a spiral staircase right as you walked in. i got to know some of my best friends for life that year. we studied some, partied some, took winter and spring break trips. i went to miami for the first time with sea turtle friends. we were reminded many times that year how lucky we were to be alive. that summer i lived at home with my family and worked for a sea turtle stranding program where i rescued lived animals and performed research on dead animals, mainly involving animal autopsies called necropsies. i met another lifelong friend at work. we have many crazy stories from our time together!

i went back to school in the fall of 2002 and worked for res life in a freshman dorm as a head desk aide, oh what a debacle! i was so glad when that job was done. i also realized freshman are sort of clueless about life, haha. i became even closer to my friends and took my first trip out of the country to the bahamas with a great group of people :)  that summer i went back and worked with my friend at the stranding program again. i wish i had known how lucky i was then! living with my wonderful supportive family and doing a job i loved. it was great. right before i started work two of my friends and i took my rickety car (WHY we thought it was a good idea to drive from va to tn in it i will NEVER know, haha!) to graceland :) it was a great trip and solidified our friendships even more.

the fall of 2003 was my senior year! i lived in an apartment with 2 people who are now close friends as well :) in fact one is getting ready to have a baby and the other in living life in d.c. but i just got to see her when she came to the beach for vacation! i had the best senior year ever. i took great classes and went to the bahamas again. i wish i could go back to senior year! we had the best apartment and i lived within walking distance of all my friends. i went to school in fredericksburg, va and that year i truly came to appreciate the beauty that was the area. i always thought i might live there one day. not yet but you never know!

the summer after my senior year i moved to naples, fl and worked on a sea turtle nesting beach! it was great fun. my great grandmother got extremely sick and died of a brain tumor that summer though. i came home for a few months in between my internships and lived at home and enjoyed my family. i went back to florida after and my sister came down and we did disney and sea world together. that was an amazing experience. i loved working in florida but i will never want to live there, i need my seasons! working on the nesting beach and watching hathclings come out of nests was magical though. really makes you see our world for the amazing gift it truly is.

i moved home for a few months after and started a job search. it was tough times but in the winter of 2005 i moved to massachusetts to work at a marine mammal stranding group. it was the hardest, toughest, scariest, most amazing experience i have had to date. i wouldn't take it back but it was not for me. i loved the people i worked with but i would never go back to that work. it takes a special person to work in that field and it's not me!

in the winter of 2006 i moved back home and took a job in a totally different realm of marine science,water quality. who knew i would end up at the same institute as my turtle years but working in a new lab! i worked there for 5 years and learned SO much about myself and what I am capable of while there. i made some more lifelong friends and in december 2008 i met my husband :)

we met online and agreed to meet at a bookstore. i should have known he was a keeper then ;) we fell in love quick i knew he was the one after not too long. we dated for two years before he proposed and were married :)

i am SO lucky to have lived the life i have lived and to have my family, husband and friends at my side. everyone goes through trials in life but not everyone is lucky to have a great support system and i do. i have the best support system that every existed. i have people that would be at my door asap (some would take awhile b/c of distance but they would be here as soon as they could! :)) and have my back no matter what happens ever. they love my unconditionally. that's something that i feel blessed to have.

so i hope you take some time this weekend or week to think about the blessings in your life and your great experiences. it's always easy to focus on the negatives and the bad parts but when you write out the good things you find that those hard times don't matter as much as the good times. and the people in your life are what matters most. call them, hug them, tell them you love them. remind them what they do for you and how much you appreciate them in your life :)