A National Treasure...Philadelphia, PA!

It's Independence Hall! After school ended mid June, I took off for Philadelphia, PA to visit a previous roommate and friend, Allyson Merrell. She moved to Philly in February to take a post-doc position at a lab at Penn State. She's a smarty! I arrived early Thursday morning, June 25th and caught up on sleep as I had flown on a red eye from SLC. My adventures included an 8 hour drive up and back to New York to visit Watkins Glen State Park, a gorge with 19 waterfalls! We also saw the sights of Lancaster, PA where the Amish live and then Valley Forge just outside of Philadelphia. We then saw the sights of Philly and finally I ended my last morning with a hike with Allyson and her roommate Hailey to Wissahickon Park.

Watkins Glen State Park, NY, a gorge with 19 beautiful waterfalls! We hiked across the bridge and back into the gorge. It was so green and the power of the water thundering down its carved path was impressive!

Rainbow Falls. I love how the water falls over the greenery, rock and into the pool.

Allyson's favorite flower, the Lily!

Oh the Amish, it was interesting to see their buggies outside of homes and driving down roads with cars flying by them in Lancaster, PA.

Allyson and I took ourselves on a Covered Bridges tour of Northern Lancaster, we followed many directions like "turn left in 0.4 miles" but luckily we found all 5 bridges. This one is abandoned and replaced by a concrete bridge, but still cool to see these historic architectural buildings.

And this is Willow, named after one of Allyson's and my favorite movies! He was so cute and was skittish when my camera chirped.

Liberty Bell! It was so cool to see the crack and learn it was intentionally created to help fix a prior crack. I love Independence Hall in the background.

Independence Hall or as it used to be known as, Pennsylvania State House. The place where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 2nd (not July 4th!) and the Constitution was debated and eventually signed.

Carpenter's Hall, the building where the 1st Continental Congress met while Britain had rule. Independence Hall at the time was being used for political purposes for the British, so the Colonials met here.

Christ Church was founded in 1695 by members of the Church of England. The main body of the church was constructed between 1727 and 1744, and the steeple was added in 1754, making it the tallest building in North America at the time. Christ Church's congregation included 15 signers of the Declaration of Independence. American Revolutionary War leaders who attended Christ Church included George Washington, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross.

Penn's Landing hosted the Tall Ships Challenge, an annual event, which drifts in a three year cycle between the waters of the Great Lakes, the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts of North America. This June, the festival will pull into port in Philadelphia for four days of sailing, sights and more.

The World's 2nd Largest Rubber Duck! Allyson didn't really want to be in the picture but I convinced her it was going to be awesome!

The beautiful bow of this "tall ship"!

The famous "LOVE" statue!

Allyson and I stopped at this cute little shop before we headed to the Museum of Art steps. Federal Donuts, a popular place in downtown Philly! This donut was a Strawberry Lavender cake donut, super good!

The Rocky statue outside the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Rocky ran up!

The stunning view of Philadelphia from the steps of the Museum of Art. City Hall can be seen at the end of the road. I had a great time and only wish I had longer to enjoy the city. Thanks Allyson for the tour!

Wissahickon Creek.

I loved the massive boulders on the trail and the green surroundings! Go Philadelphia!

Last day of spring term!!

You may be thinking...what are they doing?? My pathophysiology professor would always give us hints to test questions and he'd start them out by saying, "I can envision in my mind..."and he'd proceed to touch both sides of his head and act like he was thinking really hard. He took this photo after our last class of pathophysiology and prompted us by saying "do the envisioning in my mind move"! I think we pulled it off well!

Boo yaahhhh!!!

Smiles in NayPyiTaw, Myanmar!

I had the opportunity to join Operation Smile on their first mission to Myanmar! It was my 5th mission! I flew out of SLC on March 11th at 6:30am, stopped in LA for 4 hours, then flew to Tokyo, and then to Bangkok. I arrived in Bangkok around midnight, had some difficulty finding the girl who was picking me up, but luckily I found her. We finally got to the hotel around 2am and I showered and then crashed. We met up with most of the team the next morning and since our flight wasn't until 5pm, we spent the morning and afternoon sightseeing Bangkok, Thailand! I've always wanted to go to Thailand, but my layover didn't do it justice. I guess I'll just have to go back! Our first stop was the Golden Buddha, or the sitting buddha.

Watermarkets!

Beautiful woman sitting outside the hospital as we arrived on the first day!

"Little brother" with his mom and sister, our table to do vitals during screening day was right next to this window, they were our friends all day long!

"Little brother" and sister! These two were so cute! They watched us through a window the whole day performing vitals on other kids, until finally around 4pm "little brother" came through. The main doctor from Myanmar, who helped organize the whole mission, took the first 150 from the 220 we screened, so with "little brother" at the end, he didn't get surgery. :(

Playing with stickers galore...all over the windows!

Emily and I doing vitals with "little brother", sister and mom watching us through the window in the background!

We visited this sweet little girl, with awesome yellow face makeup/paint, at the patient shelters before surgery days started! She had a cleft palate.

This cute little guy had the most "face paint" or make-up on that we screened.

Devin with sister at the window!

Sister, what a cutie! I would hand her stickers and hair things through the window and then she'd give them to her "little brother" who would then put the stickers in his mouth. I put a stop to giving her stickers!

This sweet little girl was just posing by the tree for us all to take pictures!

My little friend, who kicked a ball all afternoon, is being held by his grandma as he looks out the window. It was so hot and humid here, that even with the windows open, the temperatures were not comfortable to just sit still.

The cute monk who received surgery!

We visited Uppastasanti Pagoda before surgery days!

They made us wear wraps on the grounds of the pagoda. It looks like I'm wearing pants by how its wrapped around my legs.

Two cute monks at the pagoda who willingly let me take their picture! I wonder what they're thinking...

And then he ran back into the pagoda!

Stunning!

Cute little guy with his mom or grandma, who's in need of a cleft lip repair.

Sweet little girl, seeing her reflection after surgery. She had her cleft palate repaired, but it didn't matter, she wanted to see herself!

Cute little guy in his oversized, green gown ready for surgery!

Breakfast...yum!! Watermelon, dragonfruit, noodles, pinapple juice and hot chocolate!

I'm headed back to school!!

I was accepted into Brigham Young University's Family Nurse Practitioner program!! I am very humbled, excited, and terrified. The next few years will be tough, but I feel it's where I need to be. I start April 28th, the upcoming spring term! 

Emily's Wedding Day! October 16, 2014

Introducing the newest member of our family...Cory Seirup! Emily met Cory on Tinder (of all places) in February 2014 and for those of you who don't know, Tinder is a dating app. They were engaged on July 27th and married in the Salt Lake City Temple for time and all eternity on October 16, 2014! Cory loves to hunt, graduated from the school of engineering at the U of U in April 2014 and now works at Hill Air Force Base. Emily continues to work as an ultrasound tech in Utah County and they live in Midvale.

She looked stunning!

I'm waiting for more photos...stay tuned!