Hey. I’m Brandi.

I am a 35 year old registered nurse. I currently work as a nurse case manager at a local hospital. My job consists of assisting patients to navigate the confusing health system and with discharge planning. I come from a family of nurses. My mother and two of my cousins are also nurses. I have my Master’s degree in Nursing Education. What I enjoy about nursing is getting to meet people from all walks of life and helping others.

Siblings

I have one sister, who is 3 years younger than me, and a step-brother who is six years younger than me. My sister works as a para teacher with the special needs class at an elementary school. She has one child, my nephew, who is 2 years old and he is a handful. He loves cars, playing on my mom’s piano, playing outside, and getting into things we tell him not to. If he plays outside, be ready to fight to get him back inside. My step-brother works at Hill Air Force Base. He also races dragsters along with my step-dad.

Hobbies

Like Tim, I have many hobbies and the list is always growing. My favorite hobby is baking. Some of my favorite childhood memories involve baking with my grandma and when I bake I feel like I am channeling her. I love baking breakfast foods, such as scones and cinnamon rolls. I like to imagine baking these for my future child. I also like challenging myself with difficult baked goods, like croissants and macarons, in case I get the opportunity to be on The Great British Bake Off.

I took a watercolor class in the Spring of 2021, mostly to get out of the house during covid, and I have been painting ever since. I love having a hobby that allows me to be creative. I am still a beginner, but I try to paint a couple times a week to help build my skills. My favorite things to paint are landscapes.

I love being out in nature. In Winter, I get outside by snowboarding and snowshoeing. I started skiing when I was a kid and when I was 12 I decided that it wasn’t cool enough so I took up snowboarding. Now skiing is cool again, but I have decided to just stick with snowboarding. Snowshoeing is something I enjoy doing with my family. My mom, sister, cousin, and I try to get together a couple times a month to go snowshoeing.

The rest of the year I enjoy the outdoors by running, biking, and hiking. Just like we do in the Winter, my mom, sister, cousin and I try to hike together a couple times a month. My nephew tags along with us on some the hikes. We usually do shorter hikes, around 3-5 miles. Tim and I also enjoying hiking and love doing long hikes while on vacations. I have run one marathon and countless half marathons. The running community has given us some of our closest friends.

When I am not running, I am going to yoga. Yoga is also a family hobby. My mom, sister and cousin also love going to yoga. In the summer, I love going to yoga in the park during the Ogden Farmer’s Market. My mom goes to hot yoga, but I prefer to stick with traditional non sweaty yoga.

Career

My first job was at Albertson’s as a bagger. When I turned 18 I was promoted to checker and then transitioned to work at the customer service counter. I worked at Albertson’s, which then changed over to Fresh Market, for around 8 or 9 years. I miss working with the A-team, the nickname my co-workers and I gave each other. I still see some of them at the Fresh Market by our house and I usually spend too much time at the store chatting and catching up with my old co-workers when I go for just a couple of things.

I left Fresh Market to do home care for people with disabilities. I helped my clients with activities such as grocery shopping, meal prep, and medication management. My sister also worked there at the same time.

After my 1st year of nursing school, I started working as Licensed Practical Nurse at skilled nursing facility. I worked there for a year and once I graduated and became a Registered Nurse, I started working at the hospital that I still work at.

Education

I graduated from Weber State University with my Associate’s degree in nursing in the Spring of 2012. My mother also graduated from Weber State with her Associate’s in nursing when I was I was kid and then graduated the same year as I graduated with her Bachelor in Nursing. In the fall, I started my Bachelor’s degree and graduated in the Spring of 2014

In 2017, I decided to go back to school to get my Master’s degree in Nursing Education. There were a lot tears and poor Tim would come home from work to a wife that was crying and he’d have to talk me out of quitting. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

Interests

As mentioned in Tim’s bio, we love road trips and especially road trips to National Parks. We also love camping. I have been camping pretty much my entire life. My grandparents had a picture of my as a toddler on my dad’s shoulders in Yellowstone hanging in their hallway. After my dad passed away, my mom, sister and I continued camp regularly. Now Tim and I enjoy camping together. We have camped in 8 degree weather, which I don’t recommend, and many rain storms. My favorite place to camp is among the red rocks in Southern Utah. I love the mountains, but my heart belongs in the desert.

I love reading. My obsession with books has taken over our living room. We have three bookcases and two them are full of my books. I have an eclectic taste in books. I love non-fiction, historical fiction, fiction, and nature books. I prefer real books to digital books, but I do listen to audio books. At any given time I have a book that I am listening to and another one that I am actually reading.

I don’t only listen to audio books. I love podcasts. My favorite podcast is Armchair Expert. I also enjoy a good true crime podcast, like most of America.

My mom, sister, and I enjoy seeing musicals together. Occasionally, I drag Tim to a musical. I was a choir kid in high school, so naturally I love musical theater. My favorite musicals are Wicked, Hamilton, and Book of Mormon. A few years ago I convinced my mom and sister to go see Wicked in San Francisco when we couldn’t get tickets to the show in Salt Lake.

Harry Potter

Since Tim included a special section devoted to Star Trek and Star Wars, I am including a special section for Harry Potter. I have read and listened to the each book countless times. I relate not only to Harry losing a parent at a young age, but to how the characters use relationships to help fight against evil.  In case you were wondering I am a Gryffindor.

Gryffindors Represent!

Childhood

My father passed away in a motor vehicle accident when I was four and my sister was one. My mom had suddenly become a single parent. She had a lot of support from my grandparents. My dad’s parents would help care for my sister and me while my mom went to nursing school. Even though it was just the three of us, my mom worked really hard to give us as normal of a childhood as possible.

When I was in the fifth grade, we moved in with my step-dad and step-brother and a year later they officially joined our family. Our blended family had some tension in the beginning but now are tight knit family. I think of my step-dad as my dad. He helps out with our cars and any other way he can.