Sunday November 27, 2011

The last few months have been really busy with all the exciting changes we have been experiencing. I really like my new job in medical sales. Learning all the foot anatomy, surgical procedures, and products has been a little overwhelming, but it is starting to sink in. It is a fun job where no two days are the same. I love being out and about and building relationships with the doctors. I also like the challenge of going out and finding business. Leaving corporate America was an awesome decision and it would be hard to go back.


(This is what our products look like in a patient)

We closed on our house and moved in on September 30th. It has been so fun making the house a home and trying to figure out how the heck to decorate it. Since moving in I’ve been busy building the fence and gate to keep the dogs from running the neighborhood. I guess I did a good job, because they haven’t got out yet. After a couple coats of stain and the fence looks awesome. Buying and hanging blinds was the most enjoyable of all the projects [insert sarcasm here]! I’ve also installed some overhead shelving in the garage and made easy access to all of our camping and surfing stuff. Lesley and I painted two bedrooms and my office. We are still in the process of filling the dead space on our walls. We need more cool pictures on the walls.





We have learned that buying and filling a first home is stinkin’ expensive. Everywhere you turn there are more things to buy to barely be functional. I have also learned that you can’t have everything all at once. It comes over time and as the budget permits. Luckily we had enough $$$ to fill the house with new furniture, or we would still be sitting indian style on the floor to watch TV.

Our new ward is awesome. We have been called as ward missionaries and are excited to be apart of the work again.

To change gears, Lesley and I have an announcement to make. Lesley is PREGNANT!!! All of our family and friends all said “It’s about time!” We are so excited to expand our family and raise children. Lesley is 22 or 23 weeks pregnant, so a little over half way. We found out a few weeks ago that she is having………….drum roll………..a boy!!! Yes, a little Parker to run around and stir up trouble. Lesley is excited to have a boy first because she wasn’t quite sure how she’d raise a little girl. We don’t have a name picked out yet, but Lesley has some in the works. I have limited veto power if the names get too funky. Anyway, she is due on April 4th.









Well, the only other exciting thing is I finished school. I finished my last class for my MBA on October 11th. What an awesome feeling to be done and no longer have homework. Boredom has hit me pretty hard and my pacing the floor is driving Lesley nuts. I have been thinking about what hobbies I can pick up to fill my time. I know I need to continue to read books and scholarly material to keep fresh. It is the wrong time of the year to find an outdoor hobby because it is always rainy and pitch black at 5pm. So we’ll see what I’m inspired to do. Let me know if you have some good suggestions. One thing’s for sure, I have more time to keep up on the blog. (We’ll see if that happens ☺)

Last but not least, my little bro Chanse returned home from his mission in Argentina. We're excited to have him back!

Sunday August 28, 2011 7:07pm

So it has been since April's Hawaii trip since I updated the blog. We have been on lots of little weekend adventures and a big Utah trip. In addition to fun trips, there are also a lot of changes going on with our jobs and living arrangements. I will get to those shortly.

There was a time that we went surfing every weekend for three or four weeks. We found a new surf spot at the very tip of Washington State called Cape Flattery, Neah Bay, or "Hobuck." This place has a nice clean beach void of huge driftwood (compared to La Push). The waves are typically more clean and predictable than other places on the WA coast. I can't wait till the Winter, hopefully the surf will be a lot bigger. The only downside to surfing there is that it is about four hours away from home. It is a beautiful drive along windy roads on the coastline. A couple weeks ago, we camped out of the back of our car and had a fun trip. Other than that, we haven't busted out the tent to do any other camping. We may go camping with some friends the weekend after Labor day.

In July, we headed down to Utah. I was able to take a couple days and spend it with the folks. We went to the cabin for a couple days and were accompanied by my sisters family including my two cute nephews. It was awesome to be at the cabin without any worries in the world. It was fun relaxing and playing games. I also enjoyed playing with my parent's dogs.







The second half of the trip was spent at Lake Powell with Lesley's family. The weather was beautiful (hot and sunny). There was a lot of driftwood in the water because of all the runoff from the melting snow. The water was higher than usual and rising at about a foot per day. The funnest part of the trip was wakeboarding and tubing. My wakeboarding was not as good as previous years.





On the flight home to Seattle, it made me realize how blessed they are in Utah to have so much sun. Immediately upon flying into Western Washington, there was nothing but clouds. We had to fly through thousands of feet of dark rain clouds until you pop out of the clouds with just enough time to touch down on the runway. If I had my choice, I would have turned around and gone back to Utah for another couple weeks.

As far as work goes, three months ago Lesley got a full time job working in Tacoma as a radiation therapist (what she went to school for). She has made some good friends and is able to work with a lot of the girls she went to RT school with. I have recently changed jobs as well. I was working at UoP as an enrollment advisor. I now work as a sales rep for medical implants (not boobs). I was given the opportunity because of a close friend from my mission. His brother runs a distribution company specializing in lower extremity implants such as plates and screws. I will be mostly working with podiatrists as they use our product and I sit in on their surgeries. It is something completely opposite of what I was doing previously. I never thought I could stand there and watch a surgeon cut somebody open and watch them drill and saw through bone. Believe it or not, I have not passed out and consider myself very comfortable with being able to be a short distance from the action. My first day on the job was a conference in which doctors lectured each other and practiced procedures on cadaver feet and ankles. One of the LDS docs who I met previously literally handed me this foot and told me to do the procedure while he instructed. It is a wild job and will be a good experience for me to practice the principles I learned in business school. I am now self-employed and am loving the fact that I no longer have to sit behind a desk from 8-5.

Other than the new jobs, we are set to close on a new house mid-September. We have been waiting for the right time to buy and now it's here. I was up late one night searching the internet for houses close to where Les and I will be doing most of our work. I found a killer deal in a place called Gig Harbor. It is a beautiful area and the house is in a new neighborhood. It has been a learning experience as we have worked through all the loan details. If everything goes according to plan, we will close on September 14th. Once we close, I'll send out the address so you can all come visit.

Other than that, I will be finishing my degree on October 11th. Hallelujah!!!!!! I can't wait to be done with school. The timing couldn't be more perfect because my brother will get home from his mission in Argentina almost a week later. We will head to Utah to hang out with him. He has done an awesome job and impacted many lives, including his own. He is training a greenie right now and enjoying the responsibility.

On another note, Lesley and I will celebrate our 3rd anniversary Sept 12th and General Conference is just around the corner!!!

Hawaii 2011

4/3/11 9:18 PM

Hello again family and friends. I wanted to quickly update you on what’s been happening with us over the last few months. Nothing much has changed with me. Still working at UoP in Tacoma by day. I’m still a student by night. I’m half way through my masters. I finish in November! I’m so excited to be done with school. I can’t even begin to explain what a great day graduation will be.

Lesley is getting bored at home all day. She is getting a little stir crazy. Her Friday per diem job has been very slow and have not even needed her on some of the Fridays. She needed a vacation very bad. So I got a text on a Thursday telling me that we were going to Hawaii in a week and a half. She left the coming Tuesday and I left on Saturday. I love her spontaneousness. Lesley set up all the flights and accommodations. We stayed a majority of the trip at her old roommate Michelle’s house in Laie, about 5 minutes from the Temple and PCC. I got to fly out to Hawaii first class!

Here are some of the things we did:
Surfing at Waikiki, Castles, and Turtle Bay (where I caught the biggest wave of my life to date)
Ate at local places like Hukilau Café, Surfing Tacos, Rainbow drive in, Ted’s Bakery, Haleiwa Eats
Attended the Laie 3rd ward and the newly renovated Laie Temple.
Snorkeled Wimea
Hiked S@cred Falls which is against the law due to all the rock slides that killed lots of people.
Hiked Diamond Head
Punchbowl Cemetery
Pali Highway
Did lots of homework ☹
Went swimming in a shark cage
Watched big wave surfers at Pipeline

Overall, it was an awesome trip. We hope to return soon!
















Also, while there, my mom called with the bad news of Tammy Ballard’s passing. Tammy was like a second mom to me growing up. Her and her family were very close family friends ever since before I was born. She was always fun to be around. I blame her for my love for Coke. She would let me take sips from her mug before I could even walk. She told people like it was and didn’t hold back, which always made me laugh. She has a wonderful husband and kids who are the most sincere and serving people you will ever meet. She will be greatly missed.

General Conference was amazing! I loved the messages from our Prophet and Apostles. I am energized by their messages!

Parker

To see more pics, click here!

Christmas in Utah 2010

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Hello family and friends. Life is good in the Sadler world. We had a lot happen in the last few months. The holidays went well. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Thanksgiving was an adventure for us. A couple days before the holiday we got a really bad storm, according to Washingtonians. It snowed a few inches and completely shut down everything. I was commuting by bus and ferry then. It took me 6 hours to get home. Me and a couple co-workers waited for a bus for 2 hours and realized it wasn’t coming. So we walked a couple miles in the snow to the airport and caught the light rail to Seattle. While on light rail, the interstate was a frozen parking lot. There was an inch or two of ice on the roads and it was fun to watch all the near miss accidents. Luckily I was able to catch the ferry and was picked up by my father-in-law who has a 4-wheel drive Tahoe. We got home and the power was out. It was out for about 24 hours. On Thanksgiving day, the water pump to the city lost power. We spent another 24 hours without water. We chipped holes in my in-laws pond and bucketed water to the house to flush the toilets. The day after Thanksgiving warmed up a little and the pond started thawing. Lola, our intelligent and fearless dog, decided to walk on the frozen pond. The next thing I hear is Lesley screaming that Lola had fallen in. What a horrible sight to see Lola trying to pull herself out of the frozen pond. I ran out the door and grabbed the canoe sitting on the bank of the pond. I dragged it around the pond and jumped in. I started paddling over with my hands and within a few seconds she had pulled herself out. We gave her a warm bath and she’s fine. During this whole fiasco, Ollie had got scared and ran off. We figured he ran down the driveway and would be back as had happened a couple days earlier. Nope. I was wrong. A day went by, then two. No Ollie. We put delivered “Lost” signs to the nearby neighbors. Luckily they called us every day with Ollie sightings. He was too scared to come up to people. So he just wandered in the woods for many days. We put food out for him every day at the neighbor’s house because we couldn’t lure him back across the street to our house. Finally we built a ghetto trap and baited it with steaks and tuna. We would sit a ways off in the bushes and pull a rope when he entered the trap. Finally after 10 days of him running off, Lesley caught him. He was very skinny. He has since fattened up to normal and is now not let out in the yard without a leash.

We were able to spend Christmas in Utah with my family. We road tripped it with Lesley’s parents and our doggies. It was so nice to be home for the holidays. It was great seeing all my grandparents and my new nephew. Between Christmas and New Years, Lesley and I went snowboarding at Brighton for 3 days. The knee-deep powder on the second day was amazing. New Years was fun even though I fell asleep at 10 o’clock. Lesley woke me up for the ball drop. We had to leave on New Years because the weather wasn’t supposed to be good and didn’t want to travel on bad roads. We made it home just fine and didn’t have to stop overnight and wait out any storms.

Since being home, I was able to transfer my job to the Tacoma campus and I no longer have a ridiculous commute every day. I can now sleep in till 6am and it only takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get to work. It has cleared up so much time that I can now be home with the family every night and have really good workouts with my new weight set.

Other than that, Lesley is doing great. She is getting stir crazy being home so much. Her work is really slow and she really only works on Fridays unless they call her in during the week. She would like to work more but their patient count isn’t high enough that they need her every day. She works per-diem as a radiation therapist (treating cancer patients with radiation). She is hoping to pick up more work at her current clinic or another hospital in the area.

Speaking of Lesley, I better go hang out with her because she has been sick with flu-like symptoms today.

Here’s a link to more of our Christmas pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=597343&id=720885537&l=b8eb420e04

Parker