Nurse of the Year

This past Friday, Anthony, my parents, his parents, and I attended his awards ceremony for getting nurse of the year at Shands for his unit. It was really nice! They had chello players playing classical music in the background, the Vice-President of nursing conducted the ceremony, the Chief Nursing Officer for Shands gave a rah-rah nurses speach,and the the CEO of Shands was there too. It is really impressive when a company goes out of their way to support and reward their employees' efforts. It makes you want to work that much harder knowing that you are appreciated. Anthony got a gold nursing pin that he put on his badge and a gift certificate for the mall that he is trading with me for more money in his aquarium budget :)

As coincidence would have it, the awards ceremony is in the same building at UF where I have all of my classes. The building has three different colleges: the college of nursing, the college of pharmacy, and the college of public health and health professions (my college). Anthony's parents wanted to see where I had classes, so I showed them around a little bit. Here is me posing in the first floor of the building. Move over Vanna White!

Narnia

Today I finished reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, the entire 7 books in the collection. They were amazing!! I read them in chronological order, from the first book that describes the creation of Narnia to the last book that describes the end of Narnia. My favorite thing by far about the books was the symbolism to the gospel and Christ found everywhere! For example, The first book talks about a boy searching for a fruit that makes you immortal and Aslan (the Christ figure of the book) creates Narnia by "breathing life" into animals and plants and trees. The second book, (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe which is an awesome movie by the way) has Aslan sacrificing himself to the White Witch for the sins of a boy, and then coming back to life. The last book describes the characters as coming to Aslan's country and eating of a fruit that "if you had once eaten that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like medicine after it. But I can't describe it. You can't find out what it is like unless you can get to that country and taste it for yourself".

I really love reading books that help me understand the gospel more. Even if they are not written by LDS authors (although I am sure many of us want to claim C.S. Lewis as one of our own) they help add more to my understanding and make me think about gospel principles more often then I normally would throughout the day. This is, I think, my absolute favorite passage from the last book (The Last Battle) referring to death:

"And as he spoke [Aslan], He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of a real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

You can't resist the cuteness

A friend from work showed me this website that has literally thousands of cute animal pictures. If you are a cat person the website is:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
If you are a dog person the website is: http://ihasahotdog.com
Of course, I had to look at the dachshund pictures and these are a few of my favorites. I have to admit, I have wasted many an hour going through the pages on these websites. They are just so cute!

It's a big one!

Anthony came home from fishing today victorious! He caught this black drum out at Cedar Key. It was 36 inches long and he said that it weighed at least 30 pounds (it was too heavy for his scale). His fishing partner estimated that it weighed more than his son who is 37 pounds! The point is it was a BIG fish! It is a good thing he took these pictures (with our new "boat" digital camera bought off ebay for $15) so we could see the majesty of it :)

Dogwood Park

Last week, Anthony and I took Brownie and Bitsy to check out a local dogpark. We've been putting it off for awhile since I had heard that their monthly rates were pretty expensive. It turned out to be such a blast!!! The park has around 15 acres of land with two different ponds and multiple segregated areas (small dog/dry, small dog/wet, etc...) so if you don't feel like dealing with a muddy wet dog that day, you just go to a different area in the park. Here is a picture of our favorite pond there:


The dogs loved it so much that we decided to join. We even got a discounted rate for just going on weekdays (I always have to work on the weekends). We've gone several times since and it has really improved the dogs' behavior because they are so tired out afterwards, that they don't have the energy to get on my nerves! Anthony went fishing today, so I loaded them in the car and took them myself. It was so nice to sit in the shade, read a book, and just let them explore. Here are some pictures from today:



This is a basset hound called Bonita that LOVES Brownie and was trying to play with her for at least 30 minutes

Bitsy is still terrified of the water, but Brownie loves it! She won't fetch to save her life on the grass but she will fetch pine cones and sticks from the pond for hours on end.

The grades are in!

Final grades were posted today and I got straight A's this semester!!!! Yea!!!!

Milestone

So the semester is finally and truly over! Anthony got A's in all of his classes and has officially graduated from UCF with his Bachelor's in nursing. We are all so proud of him!!! Sometimes it is difficult for me to sit back and realize what an accomplishment it is, since I am always thinking about the next step (graduate school) but this degree is definitely something to celebrate. Of course it means a significant raise at the hospital (10 cents) and I have to remind myself to spend the extra money coming in wisely ;)

Almost done!

I didn't think that it would ever happen, but the semester is finally coming to an end. Anthony is almost done, he just has one paper and a test left. I have one more class to go to tomorrow, a final, and a paper. Yeah!!!!!! I made it through my first semester of graduate school! It definitely was a lot more stressful than anything I have done before, but I feel like I learned a lot. Almost everything I learned was practical and will be obviously useful in the future. For example, our lecture today went through how to develop a treatment plan and even how to word certain phrases so that they can be reimbursed by insurance companies. Talk about real life education! Of course, I don't get much of a break because the summer semester starts May 12, but I am enjoying things being at a slower pace until then. Anthony and I might even take a little vacation.

As a side note, Anthony got voted the Nurse of the Year again this year! I am just so proud of him. He really works hard at doing the best for his patients and making his work environment better.

We have now moved into the 21st century!

So I finally broke down and bought a laptop for a few reasons:
1) I was starting to feel like a red-headed step child in my group project sessions, taking notes on scrap pieces of paper and never being able to work on my actual assignment with everyone else
2) In my head I have convinced myself that I would have so much more motivation to do school work if I didn't have to do it sitting at a computer desk. Now I can do it lying down in bed. Wooohoooo!!!!!
3) Now it will be easier to do schoolwork at work, I can just bring my laptop and work on any assignment without having to email it to myself ahead of time. (For those of you who don't know I work nights, with a LOT of free time ususally)
4) I get a new toy!!! And lets be perfectly honest, Anthony gets a new toy. He's already spent more time on it that I have.

Disappointment!

So we FINALLY heard from University of South Florida today and they said that they deferred Anthony's application for the Summer semester. So basically they didn't even really look at it, they aren't even accepting applicants for the summer. They said that Anthony can just tell them and they can push his application to the fall semester starting in August. I guess that is not too much of a disappointment since it is only a difference of three months, but now I will definitely graduate before Anthony and before we were planning on finishing at the same time. Oh well. Anthony is acutally a little bit relieved because now he has the entire summer free for fishing! What a boy!

So now starts the waiting game to see if he got in for August. I hate waiting!!!!!

Poor Bitsy!!

My poor dog Bitsy got into something she was allergic to at my parents' house yesterday. At first I wasn't too worried because even though her face was swollen up like a ballon, she was breathing fine and still running around chasing the other dogs. However, my mom the ever vigilant puppy-grandmother got on the phone with an on-call vet in their area who then told me to give her some benadryl. Soon after that her swelling went back down, but my brother snapped this picture before it did. Have you ever seen a funnier looking face?

Things to be Grateful For

I've had a somewhat aggravating day today. First: traffic. Doesn't it kill you when you are stuck in HORRENDOUS traffic for no good reason? I always think to myself,"okay, there must be an accident or something" but then when you finally make it through there is nothing going on. It's like someone sat there and decided to make my day miserable. To make things even worse, my car overheats when I idle in traffic too long, so I have to put the heater on full blast so that my car doesn't break down. In April. In Florida. With the sun shining on my face.

When I finally made it home, soaked through with sweat I walked into my house and could smell instantly that one of the dogs (guess which one) used the bathroom in their kennel. Don't ask me how, but it was everywhere!!! Even on the top of the kennel. HOW is that even possible?? So, I pulled her out and brought her straight upstairs into the bathtub. (And believe me I bleached that tub to no end afterwards) I couldn't even clean her kennel with paper towels, I had to take it outside and powerwash it with the hose. I really think that these dogs are helping me build my patience for kids (or making me second guess how soon I want kids:)

So in spite of everything I was thinking about all of the things I am grateful for. I have been really worried about school this past month, but lately I have felt so much better about things. There are three weeks left in the semester and I have almost all of my projects done and I am not even worried about my research proposal that I have to present (in public!). Normally, I would be hyperventilating at the thought of getting up in front of people.
I have great friends and an amazing family that always support me and are willing to listen to me complain. Anthony and I both have jobs and are still able to go to school and we don't have to struggle. I have a wonderful husband that supports me in everything. Seriously. If I told him that I wanted to quit school and become an ice cream truck driver he would say, "Okay honey. Do whatever makes you happy." I really am blessed.