The Little J is BACK!

Hello again after many months! This has been the longest hiatus yet, and I blame it 100% on the fact that I can't balance my blogging and school life. I never had a problem with this when I worked full-time in Adelaide, but being a full-time student seems to swallow up the time that I have to write for fun. Instead, I spent hours memorizing notes and charts and writing papers for grades. I do love the things that I learn and am so much more knowledgeable in nutrition than I was a year ago, but TLJ is a passion project of mine that I miss when I spend too much time away from it. This summer, I want to focus on this and remind myself why I love writing so much in the first place. 

I finished up my 21-hour semester on Thursday (May 9), and this is the first summer in two years that I'm not taking any classes. 
YIPPEE!! 

This summer, I plan to:

• blog 
• walk dogs for money (I already do this for free, so I was pretty pleased when I started working for a dog-walking company this morning)
• read for fun
• read academic articles about nutrition so that I can talk about them here and to become a better-informed dietetics student
• laugh, spend time with friends, and get my husband all to myself

Here are some of the fun things that you have missed while I was in hibernation:

Since April 28, I have lived in this swanky new apartment with this view below. 

Alastair is spending his time between Chicago and Napa since his job allows him to work from home, but there are periods of time when I am all alone. June 28 will be the magical day when he officially finishes up work in Napa and comes to Chicago permanently. It will be glorious, but it will be even better when he finds a job here. 

Here's another great event: the first of my friends had a baby. Jessie was one of my bridesmaids at my wedding. She was about two months pregnant there, and only she and her husband knew. They managed to keep it a secret from everybody, and nobody even noticed that Jessie wasn't pounding down wine like everybody else!

Kaylee Paige is one of the cutest babies I have ever seen! Like her mother, she was born with a full head of hair.

Two days after Kaylee was born, my friends Kate and Dan got engaged. He took her to dinner and then walked her across the street to the bar where we were all waiting. Before they walked into the bar (Kate had no idea that we were there), he took her over to the window right in front of us and proposed to her. We got so many good photos of it. Once the proposal was over, they met us in the bar where we celebrated late into the night. 

One of the funniest parts was that I was with Kate for a few hours earlier in the day to meet Kaylee at the hospital, and she said that she thought Dan might propose that night. I asked her why, and she said it was because he was taking her out for a nice dinner. I brushed it off (I had known about it for a few weeks already, and I picked out both the bar and the restaurant for them) and changed the subject. She didn't mention it again, but she sent me a text when they finished dinner that night to tell me that he didn't pop the question. She obviously did not suspect that he was going to do it on the sidewalk across the street five minutes later. It was so sweet, and I'm thrilled that I got to be a part of it!

Fun upcoming events include me getting LASIK surgery in two days (unless I freak out last-minute and don't get it) and a week-long trip to Mexico for my cousin's wedding. I also need to get a couch since the only thing that I have to sit on is my bed or my desk chair. This may not come as a shock, but I am looking forward to Mexico the most and LASIK the least. I'm not really sure why I categorized it under "fun" events. I guess that as long as I don't lose my eyesight or have impaired vision as a complication from the procedure, I'll be happy in the long-term. 

More on that later. 

Now, it's time for bed!