Out of the office

hasta la vista! I'm off to Costa Rica in the morning, so excited, and exhausted right now. I just checked into my flight, and they upgraded me to First Class! This is going to be great. If I can I'll post updates, If not, I'll be back ina week!

update

So we had our Road Show this weekend. Chuck, Leland and I were all in it. I was very nervous but it was fun. I'm not as much of a performer as my husband, but I'm glad we did it. I'll see if I can find someone with pictures to send you guys.

By the way--I LOVE the picture of Scott in the tub!! The funniest part is the cat looking in. :-)

We are going on another "free" vacation this week to Atlantic City. Chuck is very excited about not going to work for 3 days. He's had a pretty stressful few weeks and has had to work a lot. We still have no "Yes's" to any law school, so that's making me nervous. We have 2 No's, 1 maybe on the wait list, and 1 wait list (9 no response yet). The wait list schools say they will send another notice in May with the final decision.

My mom came into town this weekend to see the kids and the Roadshow. Leland is sick so she's not her cute playful self with her cousins.

I'm excited about our Birthday weekend. I can't believe my daughter is going to be 1 year old soon. Crazy!!!

more pictures

Leland and Ahley, looking pretty as ever

Leland really should be a lot more scared here

my favorite, Scotty after tooo much beer

Since you both did.....

I guess I needed to put some pictures on since you both did. The first picture is when Chuck put snow on Leland's "plate" to see if she would eat it. She just stared at it. The other is my crabby little girl.

I've been staying busy with work stuff and being Mrs. Domestic Goddess. Chuck and I have been doing Weight Watchers which has been great. (I've lost 8lbs and Chuck 12 in 5 weeks) I checked out some Cooking Light cookbooks and have been making some yummy stuff. I also have taken up sewing. I made a cute church bag for all of Leland's stuff, a cute blanket for Mitzi (Chuck's sister), and a baby blanket for my sister, Suzanne (who is pregnant!! Yeah!!) Now I am working on one of those shopping cart cover things. It has turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. I don't have a sewing machine yet, I am working on getting one. I borrow a friends or my sisters so I can wait to save up for a really nice one.

Leland is getting bigger and more mobile. She amazes me everyday on something new. After almost a year I think I'm finally enjoying being a stay-at-home mom and I'm not bored anymore.

pictures!

Well, here's two at least, isn't Scotty suprisingly cute? and aren't the kittens getting big?

B-day weekend

I have an idea for our weekend, it's not very glamerous or sophisticated, but it's something I've been wanting to do since I leared about it three years ago. The Kenetic Sculpture Race! http://www.avam.org/kinetic/index.html (Don't worry, I don't want to participate, just spectate) It happens to be on May 6th, Liz your boys would love this, it's totally silly and goofy. Also, the idea of doing Let's Dish is still out there http://www.letsdish.com/. Can't wait to see you guys! ( all together)

Halloween!

Frankenstien and the Bride of Franky for Halloween. Park was spiderman, Lauren was a pumkin one day and a puppy the other.

miss independence!

this i the last time i tried to do pics of lauren.-she was not interested. She hauled off w/ the chair-figured if there was no chair there would be not pics. she took a nap and we tried again. she is my little angel!

Rumor Control

Wednesday: 10am - Shift Coordinator Allison (coordinates admissons and transfers, float pool and travler staffing etc for all the oncology units) rushes on to our unit and informs Charge Nurse Ellen "We've got two criticals coming to you. They just intubated a guy on A, and D has a floater, they're pretty sure he's going to go." Mass painc on B ensues; we have3 critical care nurses, each with 2-3 patients and an orientee or LPN. So myself and Alicia, both 6 moths off orientation prep to take on 2 more patients and an orientee. Our unit is the middle of a complete "bed swap" with brand-new state of the art beds, all of our empty, clean rooms are now emptier and dirty. Housekeeping steps it up to hurricane mode and prep the rooms. Now there are no pumps! Criticals usually need at least 3 pumps, we have 0. Two days ago Clinical Enginereeing took 3 pumps for service, promising a 24 hour return time, they have not returned and clinical engineering states they have no record of taking them (a case of pump robbery from another unit perhaps?) Charge has compleatly lost it, and is running arround the unit like the Tazmanian Devil, stopping to ask me "What supplies do we need in a critical room?" It's 11am, so June and I decide if this all does happen, we're not going to see the seat of a chair unitl 8pm that evening, so we take our lunch break.

1pm - Charge visits the other units, no one was intubated on A and the floater on D has a intra-staff critical care nurse, who can just come wiht her to our unit if/when she crashes. Panic dies down somewhat, but everyone is on edge.

2pm - Data coordinator calls the floor looking for Mrs. M's nurse, June looks at the schedule (yesterday's) and calls Sunu to phone, "It's about Mrs.M"
Guy, eating his lunch, "she's in IPOP (our intensive outpatient clinc) today"
June "M is getting readmitted, we jsut discharged her yesterday!"
Chrage (taking phone from Sunu) "We don't have a nurse or bed for her, C has the IPOP bed, make them take her. I don't care that she's a BMT-er" hangs up to take another call.
Guy - picks up phone and calls IPOP "Is M getting admitted? No, I didn't think so." To us "You guys are wacko today"

5pm - no criticals came over, all has remained calm. Charge comes to me. "Right now our numbers look really good for tomorrow, you're at the top of the Pick list, do you want off?" Of course I do!

Thursday
5am - No call from work, no big surprise, I've been at the top of the pick list for a month now, and have been offered off at least 4 times, it nevers happens. So I drag my butt into work, only to find that I've been pulled to D! Oh this is cruel!

8am - Getting myself acquainted with the am routines of D, not a bad place, (except they are notorius for having the worst MD team) D Charge comes up to me, "I'm so sorry you had to come over here, thanks so much for doing it. Are you here for an 8?" "Oh a 12, well, I'll see if I can't send you home, or at least back to B for the last 4 hours, I know we gave you one discharge." Sweet! I really wanted the afternoon off.

11:30 - D nurse goes home sick, I pick up another patient, no chance of an 8 hour day now.

Never beleive anything unitl it happens.

The Best of...

Weekend highlights:

• Ashley's face when she saw her "surprise" Friday morning. Watching Scotty play with Leland, at the resturant, in the car, while ashley, dev and I did some candle shopping. She just laughed and "talked" to him the whole time.
• Taking Scotty on the train and subway for the first time. "How do you walk on these things? I'm not even drunk!"
• Touring DC, "Gosh, that's pretty big isn't it?" Freezing cold winds kept us inside the museums (Native American & American History) most of the time. I love going to the DC museums about someone's passion with that person
• Hanging out with Sara, I'm so happy when friends of mine meet and instantly like each other as much as I like each of them. Scott - "Sara's one of those people who just makes you feel good." Sara - "I love this guy, I want to know your life story, I find this fascinating."
• Watching Scott and Chad, the bartender bond over way too much tequilla and beer, finding scott curled up int he bathtub, peacefully snoring away at 5:30 am. Pictures to follow.
• Having an excuse to eat/shop at all my favorite places; The Daily Grind, Blue Moon, P.A.D., Dudley & Max, Nacho Mama's, Maggie Moo's etc.

It was a great weekend, lots of walking, I'll post pictures soon.