Our First Anniversary!

This week Jack and I celebrated our 1yr anniversary (May 18). We celebrated on Monday night since our official anniversary was yesterday when I would be at the hospital all night doing clinicals.

It was such a wonderful day! Jack picked me up Monday in the antique convertible he and his grandad share and then he suprised me with a beautiful yellow calla lily plant (for my patio garden), an adorable stuffed puppy, and a beautiful card. Ranger, my sweet new Australian Shepherd puppy was my "big" anniversary gift, but Jack gave the sweet pup to me a little early since he was ready to come home the week of Easter. :)
After all of Jack's sweet suprises for me, he had one more in store! Even though I asked him where we were going about a half dozen times (can you blame me for trying haha??), he refused to tell me where he was driving me to! I knew it he had something special in mind though. He wound up driving me to my favorite Japanese resturant and we had a beautiful dinner together! It was soo special to sit across the table from the man I love and to know how much he loved me as well. God is good!


When we finished with dinner, Jack asked me if I thought icecream sounded good. (Yes!). We decided to make a fun night of it and to include some of my nieces/nephews. We picked them up from my sister's house and we all went out to Sheridan's for icecream. It was soo much fun! Everyone had a great time, and it was a wonderful way to celebrate such a nice day. I love that Jack not only thinks about sweet little ways to make me happy, he also includes my family and loved ones! Everyday I learn something new and amazing about him, and everyday I thank God for blessing me with such an amazing, God-fearing man. He treats me like a queen and always tells me how much he loves me. Jack always knows how to make me smile when I've had a tough day, he always knows how to make me laugh, and he is always there for me when I need him. I love that I am completly happy with him whether we're sitting on the couch watch our favorite tv shows, hanging out with our friends, or going to church with our families. I definitely cherish the gift of our relationship. Some of my friends/readers may know a little background on what I went through before I met Jack and why this 1yr milestone with this exceptional man is such a blessing to me. For those of you who do not know, I will elaborate more on my story of surviving domestic abuse another day. For now though, it's time to celebrate the wonderful relationship that God has been soo gracious to bless me with! :)

Here are a few pictures I took of the sweet yellow calla lily plant, card, and "puppy" from Jack. He is always soo thoughtful. :)

A Few pictures from our first year together! A few are out of order, but I was able to put general dates on most of them. It's been an amazing year! I'm truly blessed! :

Our first picture together: July 9, 2009. Jack took me flying for the first time. Best date EVER!

Jack came to dinner with me & my fellow RT students to celebrate us passing our term!

(First term celebration!)

(Second term celebration!)

Me & Jack last October

Halloween (when we changed out of our costumes). He thought it would be funny to scare me and shave his beard off...keep in mind I had never seen him without one before!

The two of us celebrating Jack's birthday

              

Me & Jack at my niece Taylor's 15th birthday party

Jack & I after the TSO concert (Dec 2009)

The two of us at Boscoe's

Germantown Christmas Parade 2009 (we got drenched, but it was soo fun!)

Christmas Cookie Bake 2009 with my family

Me & Jack celebrating my friend Jonathan's birthday with everyone (Fall 2009)

blurry Christmas pictures we took at his mom's house (2009)

Me & Jack (Feb. 2010)

The two of us at my nephew Isaac's 14th birthday party

The two of us trying to get a cute picture of us with Ranger...Ranger didn't want to take a picture haha

The two of us this past Sunday night- I love him! :)

Celebrating our first anniversary! (a day early)

Happy Birthday Kimmy!

"There's a special kind of freedom sisters enjoy. Freedom to share innermost thoughts, to ask a favor, to show their true feelings. The freedom to simply be themselves."

Today is a special day. It's my beautiful sister Kimmy's birthday! :) Since it's after 5am and I am apparently an insomniac at the moment, I thought I would post a few of my favorite pictures of Kimmy in honor of her birthday today! She is an amazing sister, a wonderful wife to her husband Jason, a momma to Taylor, Isaac, Cooper, Leedora, and Kianna, a best friend to me, the person I vent to and trust with all of my heart, and without a doubt- my rock! She has been with me through soo many ups and downs and I cherish my relationship with my sister soo much! Love ya sis!!

Kimmy and her fluffy "nephew" Ranger

                            A few pictures of  Kimmmy & Me

Me, Kimmy, Debbie, and our Mom

Me, Kimmy, and Debbie

Mom, Kimmy, and Nannie

Sisters!

Love my goofy sister- we both got our noses pierced together!

She's got a bit of a coffee addiction, but we still love her!

Sisters! Me, Monica, and Kimmy at Christmas

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIMMY!

Life Lately

I didn't do a lot of posting in the past week because I've been a little under the weather. I wound up having a 'lovely' sinus infection that led to laryngitis, a double ear infection, a shot in my hip, and a very intrusive (but thankfully negative) strep test at the doctors office). Since I didn't feel like leaving my bed much last week, let alone blogging, I thought I would update my followers a little today on what's been going on.

Last week was my "vacation" from school. It was my break for a few days between RT 201 and RT 301. I DEFINITELY needed a break after that hussy of a horrid teacher I had for my 201 class! You better believe that I wrote one hell of a review about her too! (I looked foward to writing that review the entire semester I had to suffer through her class!) Unfortunately though, I spent my entire vacation sick, so that doesn't really count as a break in my book! As of tonight though, I am finally feeling a little bit better. I am also getting my voice back as well and coughing much less so that's also a great thing! (For a few days there I ranged from having no voice, to sounding like an 80yr old man)

Last Friday I finally was able to go in to the cardiologist for my Coronary CTA test for my heart. The whole thing was a royal nightmare because my heartrate would NOT cooperate whatsoever. What should have been a 30 minute test took over 4 hours! The nurse stuck me 4 times in an attempt to land an IV stick (my veins roll). I am still bruised all over my arms and look like an IV drug user at the moment.;) In addition to the heart medicine I normally take, they also gave me 2 really strong pills to lower my heartrate.What can I say, heart is stubborn and wouldn't budge! They wound up giving me a total of  9 IV/med flushes (yes, 9) in an attempt to get it to slow down that way. (The maximum dose the average person gets via IV for that is 3 IV flushes...my heart is anything but normal apparently- 9IV flushes later it STILL wouldn't slow down enough!) For reference, I have some pretty significant heart issues, which is why the test was soo important in determining if they need to do surgery soon or if it can wait. My heart rate needed to be 62 beats per minute or lower for an accurate test so that the pictures would show any kind of blood clot/etc in my heart. If your heartrate is faster than that, the machine can miss some problems. To make a long story short, after 4 hours - I knew my sweet nurse's entire life story (she monitored me the entire time), and they still were unable to get my heartrate below the 80's range (after TONS of meds) so they get my doctors approval and went ahead with the test anways. I am still waiting for the results. Hopefully I will know soon if I need surgery or not, and hopefully they were still able to get what they needed out of that test. Please pray for good news! I definitely do NOT want to deal with an open heart surgery right now (that's a possibility). Anways, enough of the rough stuff,...onto the good news:

This week I started my RT301 program on Monday. The teacher for this course is awesome so far thankfully! I'm thinking it will be a much better semester than the last one was! On Tuesday (yesterday) I started my first ICU clinical rotation (I did my floor rotation at the hospital during RT 201). I love the ICU so far! It's an entierly different atmosphere and you get to see and learn soo many new things! I love working with the patients and trying to help them. I got to extubate my first patient, learn more about the ventilators, do closed suctioning & treatments, and help with the art. lines, etc all on my first day in the ICU. We definitely stay busy down there! It was soo much fun, and it was great because I was already familiar with the hopsital and a lot of the staff. I definitely love it there and can not wait to graduate and get lisenced soon!

            Here are a few amusing pictures from the past week:

                     Me & Kojak! He's the coolest little guy ever!

I spent all day Friday hooked up to this monitor. My uncooperative heartrate never would drop below the 80's for that test! Ugg! Not only am I stubborn, so is my heart apparently...

I love my sweet boyfriend. :) Jack and I tried to get a cute picture of us with Ranger last night...our attempts were fuitle seeing that Ranger is now a crazy 14 week old Aussie puppy haha!

I can't believe he's already 14 weeks old!

Well, at least we attempted to get a good "family picture" haha...Ranger looks like he's howling and I look like I'm choking the poor thing...

Jack and Ranger (Kojak and Velvet were watching in the background)

Wordless Wednesday

(Poor pathetic Ranger got neutered on Monday. He's not too thrilled about wearing his lampshade of an e-collar!)

Monday Moments (Random Musings)

Today was quite lovely outside! The sun was shining most of the day and I thought it was teriffic that there were no blaring tornado sirens this afternoon like I had become accustom to hearing over the weekend! It was quite nice outside! :)

This morning was my very last day of RT 201. I am SOOO thankful that I never have to deal with that hussy of a horrid teacher ever again! Praise the Lord!! The highlight of my morning was filling out the the teacher review for this semester.l got to anonymously let them know exactly what I thought about her teaching (or lack there of- she failed about half of our class!) I am very thankful that my teacher for next session is sweet and very approachable! I am off for the rest of this week on "vacation." I start class back again next Monday, and then I start my second clinical rotation on Tuesday. I am quite pleased about that as well- I got everything that I requested! (Same hopsital- I LOVE it there!, Same shift (evenings), and I'll be with my two favorite classmates again- Kendra & Kendall!) I am soo excited! The only difference is that now I will be working in the Intensive Care Unit on the venitlator patients/etc instead of doing as much on the floor. It will be challenging, but fun! Hopefully I will be able to help a lot of people.

In other news, little Ranger got neutered today. He did very well with his surgery and is resting on his doggy bed with his favorite stuffed animal at the moment.. He also looks quite goofy with the huge e-collar around his little fluffy head ! Poor pathetic puppy! 

Tonight Jack is taking me out to dinner (not sure where yet, he wouldn't tell me haha!) It's the 1 yr anniversary of our first day, so that is exciting! :) We went to Abuelo's on our first date and I remember thinking how cute he was the entire time we had our meal! It's been such a blessed year with him! I'm definitely looking forward to our official 1 year anniverary on May 18th (when he asked me out and we made it official that we were dating.) He's been such a blessing in my life and I'm definitely soo greatful for him!

Rainy Day Musings

It has been raining non-stop here since last night. Oh the joys of stormy, muddy, nasty weather! I have to say, there's nothing quite like waking up to the lovely serenade of a tornado siren! My morning started off to me waking up to a huge crash of thunder/lightning and then hearing a tornado siren. Not plesant when you're not quite awake yet! ;) I attempted to take the puppy for a walk after I woke up, but I thought the poor thing was going to float away since there was water backed up all the way to the entrance of my apartment door!(That made things interesting!)Thankfully the weather has died down a little now and the tornado warning is gone for the time being. I'm hoping it stays that way!

Pictures from today's rainy weather! (I wish I had thought to take pictures before the water started to subside, but I forgot. Water was flooded everywhere this morning! Thankfully, these pictures are for a little while ago after most of the water started to drain down.)



 The view from my patio after the "flood waters" finally decided to drain down!
                                        
                             Right after it stopped raining
                                          

The "river" outside of my apartment complex this afternoon. (I wish I had pictures of it from this morning- EVERYTHING was coverd in water! Now it's draining down thankfully)

                                           

                                             
The walkway to my apartment after the water FINALLY drained down a good bit. This morning there was standing water up to my calves!

Hello Muddy Weather!

Another view of the "river"

I appologize to my faitfhful readers for being lax in posting this week. Things have been busy around here! After an insane week filled with non-stop studying, I passed my RT 201 final this week and finished up my last night of my first clinical rotation on the floor yesterday! Monday I go to class to sign for my grades and get the order for my next clinical rotation site  (I'll be in the ICU!) I'm excited!! After that on Monday, I'm supposed to be going out that night to celebrate with Jack (It's the 1yr anniversary of our first date :))  I have a few days off of class after Monday, and then start RT301 on the 10th and my next clinical rotation in the ICU on the 11th. Exciting!!! :)


In other news, the sweet new puppy, Ranger, is growing like a weed! He's 12 weeks old now and is most definitely going to be a big dog when he's full grown! He is soo sweet! He was supposed to have his puppy class today, but we opted not to go  since the parking lot at my apartment complex is currently flooded ;).  I also discovered today that my one of my fancy goldfish laid eggs in their tank today. I had to scoop out the Amazon Sword plant they decided to lay them on and put it in a tank by itself so that they wouldn't get eaten. I'm hoping the eggs hatch eventually- I'd love some cute new little goldfish babies! I have no clue what they will look like if they do hatch as I have more one type of goldfish hybrids! (I have 5 - 2 ryukin, 1 oranda, 1 red telescope, 1 fancy).