Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Just to add more pictures

I have not yet put up any pictures of my braces and I had these on my phone so what the heck, here you go. I feel like I am 14 when I look in the mirror. I kick myself for not just sucking it up and getting braces when I actually WAS 14! Oh well they won't be on too terribly long

I also have a ton of pictures from the Bahamas on my phone that I didn't post on FB.

Loved this resort!



And "Our Beach"

This is the video I took right after Chris asked me to marry him :) I was still in shock

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Time for news.

It is about time that I got back to the blog and updated. As everyone already knows from Facebook and talking to me, I am ENGAGED! I am going to marry the most incredible man that I have ever met. He balances me, supports me, laughs with me. I can't wait to spend my life with him and to love him throughout every moment. I have to share this song because it completely shows the way that I feel right now and whenever I am with him. It is from the Sound of Music :)

Here is the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVy8_pTUgwE&feature=relatedI must have done Something Good

Maria:Perhaps I had a wicked childhoodPerhaps I had a miserable youthBut somwhere in my wicked, miserable pastThere must have been a moment of truth
For here you are, standing there, loving meWhether or not you shouldSo somewhere in my youth or childhoodI must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothingNothing ever couldSo somewhere in my youth or childhoodI must have done something good
Captain:For here you are, standing there, loving meWhether or not you should
Maria:So somewhere in my youth or childhoodI must have done something good
Maria and the Captain:Nothing comes from nothingNothing ever could
Maria:So somewhere in my youthCaptain:Or childhoodMaria:I must have done something . . .I must have done something good.

That being said <3 All is in motion to begin our lives together and we just signed the papers for our first home!! We have been looking for a while now but we just haven't found what we wanted. Some homes needed so much work and others were too overwhelming. Nothing quite fit. Until we found this....


The front of our house!


The Kitchen, where I shall be cooking as often as possible! I love to cook
This the entry way, the formal dining room, the living room, and then a cute little room that will be made into the library.

The back yard. I love it! It has citrus trees, grass, plants and a pool.
The POOL! aww love it.

So this is our HOME! I hope to have lots of get-togethers and dinner parties. We chose a house that we can grow into and raise our children in, until then please come and stay with us!! Just show up and we will have a room ready and waiting for you. It was love at first sight for both Chris and I, and I can't believe that I will become a wife and then a mother in this home :)



Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Not much time

I don't have much time but I wanted to post something after that last sad blog. I only have three weeks left of actual school and then I will be starting my preceptorship at St. Josephs hospital in the L&D. I am very excited! I was able to talk to Elle my Preceptor and I found out that she has an accent. That's fun, and I am really looking forward to meeting and working with her. I am going to work as hard as I possibly can at this preceptorship and hopefully that will showcase me in a way that will help me find a job. I would absolutely LOVE to work at St. Joes and I like everything that they stand for. As an aspiring Midwife and current Doula, I am a little leery of they way hospitals view and treat pregnant women. Thankfully St. Joes is very supportive of Midwifery and the have quite a few CNM's on staff (Certified Nurse Midwife). I was able to talk to the new graduate adviser and she informed me of the programs that I could enter in to become a CNM through their hospital. Honesty, from my first impression I could see myself working there for a very long time.
School is going great! Neurology is freaking AWESOME! There is so much to learn and I think it is really fascinating. I take my last regular exam next Tuesday and I can't believe it! After that I only have my Final and my Exit HESSI exam :) I have loved Nursing school. It has been unbelievably hard and challenging but it has been so rewarding. As I always do, I will relate it to birth. Nursing school has been like a woman going through labor, working though all the many contractions and then when it is over she has a beautiful baby to show for it! I have worked so hard but I will be a Nurse after all of this is over. I know that I still have a tremendous about to learn but I am ready and willing to do it.
I love people. I love being able to help someone feel better. I will do everything that I can to get a job so that I can finally make a living doing what I love. I AM SO BROKE lol! The cost of becoming a Nurse is freaking ridiculous! I have encountered so many little costs here and there during the final stretch and they are adding up really fast. Well I guess some of them are not so little, like my NCLEX Nursing exam to become licensed in AZ...500$ an NCLEX review class 450$. Ouch! Welp I have never wanted to put things on my credit card but now seems like an adequate time.
Chris and I are still doing great. He works so hard and I am incredibly proud of him. His office is up for "Office of the Month" again and his company is definitely noticing how much he has to do with that. He was going to open his own dental office but now it looks like he will be able to buy into the office he is currently working at! This is really great news because the other Dr. he works with is wonderful and they make an awesome team. The whole office makes a great team! I love the people he works with and I know they make his life at work SO much easier. Also some other big news, Chris is the #6 Dentist in Arizona!! His company works with numbers and then they rank the Dr's on overall performance and productivity. Basically he is rocking it! He doesn't talk about it but I have to because I am just so proud of him :) Way to go Baby!!!
Spring break was nice and relaxing! I got to spend time with my family and that was wonderful. I didn't feel like I had enough time with the kidos though :( I didn't even get to see my baby niece Lily *sniff sniff*. The weather was phenomenal and my sissy and I took Tyson and Makeely to the pool but I had just done my hair and so I was lame and didn't get in and really play with them, major bummer. Keely is such a good swimmer! She is fearless and just jumps right in. Tyson as always is a fishy and he gets faster all the time. That boy is athletic in every way! Both of the kids are getting so big, and I still hold strong that Ty will out grow me by his 14th birthday. I went to a volleyball activity with my sister and that was a blast. I got to spend quality time with Nana and I know I will cherish that time.
Anyway, it's about that time to get back to my studies!
Loves

Monday, February 28, 2011

Disappointment

This is not a happy post.
I am SO disappointed and discouraged. I have been looking for a few weeks for job opportunities and I have nothing. Right now Arizona is saturated with Nurses and hospitals are not hiring new graduates. Awesome... I have a degree that I have worked my butt off to attain and now I can't use it. I have worked so hard and now I don't have anywhere that will hire me. If I could score an interview I KNOW I could get a job. They would see my personality and how willing I am to adapt to their training and become a perfect employee.
I try to contact Human resources I get the lovely recordings that say only apply online. Once I get to the website all I get is online job searches to tell me "Not available for new grads....Not hiring New grads....Must have two years experience...." NOWHERE IS HIRING NEW GRADUATES!
My brain is full up of wonderful knowledge and IT'S COMPLETELY WORTHLESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Therefore I feel worthless.
I have been shaped into an expensive tool and no one is buying me.
So what now? What do I do? I need money, I want to help people, All I really want from life is to Help people! I would work for less money and harder hours! I am willing to bend over backwards and a freaking online application won't let me show that.
I want to work,
I need to work,
I am skilled and educated.
All for what????
To be a server? Hey at least if someone chokes on their steak I can come to the rescue. Or if I am the first person on the scene of an accident I will know how to help save their life.
And that pregnant mother who just happens to go into labor in the street, I'll be able to jump in and say "I'm a Nurse! Let me help you"
Yes, I will be able to say those words "I am a Nurse"
Yet, Am I working? Nope because no one will hire me, But Hey I'm still a Nurse!
How can I, A Nurse, Be worthless?
....It's kind of a sad day

Monday, February 7, 2011

Did I mention....


That I love this man?
I love you Baby, I miss you.
See you soon

Last semester!

The time has come, I am in my last semester of nursing school. I wish I could say it has flown by but in all reality it feels like the exact amount of time it was...two years! The most interesting thing is that the days have always been longer than the weeks. Do you know what I mean? It's like everyday drags on forever and there is always SO much to do. I think to myself on a daily basis wow it's only noon and I feel wiped out. With every day feeling like an eternity all of a sudden I turn around and it's Friday. It is the strangest feeling. Last semester I was so wonderfully distracted by new Love that I came surprisingly close to not having my "mid-term break down". Yes I have had at least one...alright more like four total breakdowns in each semester of Nursing school. By the way I do not discount the coincidence of my menstrual cycle with these break downs. Because of my wonderful Christopher, I suffered only two breakdowns during third semester :) One was in result of losing 9 pages of a research paper. I felt absolutely justified in balling for a few hours over that one. The computer program froze and lost 9 flippin pages of my paper! Computers should not do that anymore, I mean with all the technology you would think it would never happen. Well it was a flash back into 1999 and my computer couldn't handle the simple job of running a word program. Therefore breakdown No 1 ensued. The second break down was worthy of sedatives lol. Picture this....Me balled up, face down in the corner of the bathroom crying hysterically into a towel, yes a full sized towel. Tissue paper was in no way capable of containing this mess. What brought me to this point? None other than my Hyperactive, type A, Perfectionist, anal, IwillNeverGiveYouPositiveFeedbackNoMatterHowGoodYouDo- Clinical instructor. This woman was intense to say the VERY least. She is a career ICU Nurse who is also one of the clinical instructors at my school. If any of you know an ICU Nurse I need not say more, you understand how they can be. For some reason either perceived or actual this woman had it out for me. She was watching and critiquing my every move. On more than several occasions I would walk out of a patients room and she would be standing at the door having listen to every word I said to my patient. Raising an eyebrow and writing in her book she would then proceed to interrogate me on everything having to do with my patient. Did I know the lab values, did I know Meds, Special needs, how many other patients I was taking that day, their meds, their lab values, On and on and on! And this would be at 7 o clock in the morning! I had barley met my patients let alone studied the multiple meds/drug interaction/needs/assessments. At first I used this in a positive way, I thought it is only going to make me a better nurse. I need to be pushed. In a weird overattentive way she is trying to help. In the long run yes, she has made me a better nurse and as much as it pains me....I thank her. BUT it would have kept myself and all the other student in my clinical group from tears had she just balanced her criticisms with positive feed back. I made it a point to excel at everything she got on me about. By the end of that clinical experience I was a dang good student nurse and I knew it! Did she ever ONCE comment on how good I was doing? Or how much I had improved? Nope. She just had something else that needed to be improved upon. I understand that I am a student and I still have SO much to learn, but the truth is I am learning! Yes I need to know what I need to improve upon but give me a little credit! I have gone from not knowing if I should scratch my watch or wind my butt, to being a knowledgeable hard working student nurse. Anyway, one day after clinical I let her get to me. I had worked on my paper work for 6 hours the day before, making sure that it was perfect so that she wouldn't have any room to criticize. Turns out that I had one mistake in it, not kidding ONE little mistake in ten pages of paper work. I had reported that the patients capillary refill was ">" 3 seconds instead of "<" 3 seconds. Greater than 3 seconds is an abnormal finding vs less than being a normal finding. Side note* The rest of my paper work that clearly stated (without the use of > or <) that his capillary refill was within normal range. She proceeds to lecture me for 10 minutes on this mistake. Seems like a small ordeal, yet in this case it was the straw that broke the camels back. I almost didn't make it out the door before the tears came flooding in. I had worked so hard and I still wasn't good enough. This in combination with Aunt flow, and lack of sleep, and stress from school sent me right over the edge.
So in making a short story long, those were the only two breakdowns of 3rd semester :)
This last and final semester has been a blast so far! It is all of the meat of nursing and for the first time all the material is making sense haha. It starts to piece together in 3rd but in 4th it really starts to click. I am seeing what should be done in order to treat patients, I am understanding the disease processes so that I can know what my next move should be, I am absorbing medication information at an incredible rate......AHHHHH it feels SO good! This has been the most fun I have had all throughout Nursing school. I am in love and I have the unconditional support of my gorgeous man, and I am becoming a REAL Nurse! I only have 7 more weeks of class and then I am done. I will then have my preceptorship (it's like a teachers Student teaching) at St. Josephs hospital in Labor and delivery. When I am done there I will be Graduating. May 14th is when I am graduating and I would love for everyone who can to come. It's going to be so emotional and wonderful.
Alright now I better get back to studying for my test tomorrow:)
Loves
Julie Ann

Monday, October 25, 2010

Jerome and then *Date night at the Asylum*


Chris and I went to Jerome and while exploring he locked me in this.

He let me out and then we Enjoyed the rest of Beautiful Jerome.

Ok, There is a restaurant inside the old grand hotel and it is quite possible my FAVORITE restaurant! So when Chris came up I made plans for us to have a romantic date here.

This is where we sat, but this was taken during the day. We came back that night and ate our Amazing dinner overlooking the whole valley.

On our way to Dinner, Chris pulled over and got me out of the car so that we could take pictures with the sunset. It was stunning.


Chris Bought me the Jewelry I am wearing earlier that day.

It was a magical night.
I've decided that love is not just about the hugs and kisses, the 'I love you's' or the 'I miss you's', but about the chills that hit every part of your spine when you think about him.