So, here's my question: How does one cover more than six months of changes in one blog entry?

You just do it! 

As bedtime fast approaches for me, I'm finishing up my evening with some banana bread, Netflix, and a blog update for everyone who's hung with me for the past few months. Life has, indeed, changed over the months... A lot has happened since I last checked in with my darling readers! 

So, I think I last left you right here:

Valentines Day, 2013.

Well, between then and now, I've finished one semester at USC and started another. It's been challenging to keep up with the curriculum now that I have an internship, too. Oh, did I tell you about that? No, I didn't. Oops. I work at an acute psychiatric and chemical dependency hospital called Riverside Center for Behavioral Medicine. It's amazing and I'm in love with every aspect of clinical work. I never get tired of the patients, the pace, or the staff, and every day I come home exhausted from all the running around I've done during the day... I don't even mind the fact that I usually don't even eat lunch until almost 3pm. I was made for social work, definitely. 

And here's another thing that's happened! 

We got a puppy! 

The day we brought him home from the pound!

His name is Buster, he's pretty awesome (even though he chews absolutely everything in sight), and he's going to be a big boy when he gets older. He's a Boxer mix that we adopted from the pound on April 1st. He was our little April Fool's baby, and we couldn't be happier. He's been such a wonderful addition to our little family. Currently, he's about eight months old, weighs about 50 pounds, loves to eat carrots, and enjoys the doggie park. I think I can speak for Derek and myself when I say that we definitely took for granted all the times our parents picked up the dog poop growing up, because now the responsibility falls on one of us (and I think we all know who that is). Needless to say, despite the challenges of having a puppy, it's really wonderful having a little bundle of love to greet you at the door at the end of a long day at work. Because I love our dog so much, I'm probably going to post much more about him than I need to, but I feel like you all need to love him by default now, right? 

I mean, really, how can you not love that little face of his?

The view from our room's balcony.
It was such a soothing way to wake up in the mornings.

 We also took a trip (read as: our long-overdue-much-needed-honeymoon) to St. Maarten, a tropical paradise located just southeast of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Truly, it was a paradise. Derek and I were both sad to leave the island - we snorkeled, ate, sunbathed, ate, walked around, and ate. Did you get an idea of what we mostly did? The food isn't anything to shout about, but we also didn't venture too far away from our resort which was on the Dutch side, while all the good food was on the French side (a mistake we realized until after we came home). Alas, we've simply decided that a return visit is necessary since we basically missed out on half the island, and therefore half the fun. We really enjoyed our time in St. Maarten - it was a nice getaway for the both of us, which helped ease our stress levels for the coming months. Spending time together as a couple, simply being able to relish our time together was so special to me... We hadn't really been able to do that since before Derek deployed to Afghanistan (you know, with the move and school and everything), so it was nice to be able to enjoy each other's company without the worry of an imminent departure or another hectic schedule. I think we need to make it a priority to take a trip together once a year so that we can devote one, uninterrupted week, alone in a secluded place - then we can make more memories together doing things we love doing, rather than things we dread doing! Anyways, St. Maarten was amazing, incredible, awesome, and so much fun.

It was such a great trip!

Enjoying the sunshine along the St. Maarten promenade!

Derek and I at Maho Beach on one of the last days of our trip!

Maho Bay is famous for it's insanely low-flying airplanes, flying sand, warm water, great snorkeling, and exciting plane experiences. The island's airport is on the beach which makes it extremely difficult to land a jet on the runway... So right as a jet was flying over, I snapped this picture of Derek right before it flew over our heads. The sound was immense and the sand hurt when it was kicked up from the jet force, but the experience was once-in-a-lifetime!

So, between Derek's recruiting job and my insane school schedule, the dog, and life in general, things have been crazy busy. Life has been an adventure for the last few months so we're loving every minute of it, learning more and more about each other along the way. I've begun a new workout routine, incorporated healthy eating into my meal planning, and am working on staying true to a tighter budget. Derek, meanwhile, has been preparing for the promotion boards, working on keeping his "video game time" down, and helping a lot around the house with Buster and the dishes (which makes this grad student VERY happy, indeed). We're very much an old, married couple, fighting over who's got to do laundry this week, laughing over funny commercials on TV, cooking together in the kitchen, listening to the other rant about work. We love taking Buster to the park and we spend our Saturday afternoons washing the cars together, dancing and singing to our favorite songs on the radio. We're weird but we love to love each other, which is pretty darn great. And thus, life moves forward, and so do we.

Things are good, folks. 

Things are so, very, very good.