The week in review

I started class again last week. After nearly 6 weeks off, 4 full days of school last week felt pretty brutal. We have another full week of class this week, with our clinical rotation starting next week. I start with 2 weeks in community health (school nursing and home visits), then mental health, critical care, and telemetry. 

We had orientation for mental health last week. I'm starting to see that mental health nursing is going to be a horse of a different color. Instead of our nursing uniforms, we are supposed to wear business casual. The terminology and nursing responsibilities are completely different too.

I was pretty wiped out by the time Friday afternoon rolled around and wanted nothing more than to order in.   Unfortunately for me, we have decided to nearly cut restaurants from our budget until I'm out of school. We ended up having eggs and pancakes for dinner. The kids loved it and Ry cooked, so it worked out well for me.

Our weekend morning look a lot like this:

Gummy Bear has mad dance skills.

I had a ukulele lesson, where my instructor taught me to read tab. I am making a serious effort to play the uke for at least 30 minutes every day. If I don't, I feel like we're wasting money on the lessons. I have made some good progress in the last month ... so that's cool.

Ry and I went out last night to celebrate our 8th anniversary, which actually occurs tomorrow. We went to see The Artist. It was wonderful. We also rented Crazy. Stupid. Love. It was amazing. I have to say that Steve Carrel is beginning to grow on me. Happy Anniversary to us tomorrow!

Tomorrow back to the grind. This morning, however, I'm enjoying some snuggle time on the couch with my two favorite boys. *snuggle*

Mark your calendars

Because I'll be a graduate nurse on May 23.

We had a session today about graduation requirements and licensing/testing/fees that made this whole "I'm going to be a nurse" thing very real. For whatever absurd reason, I'm much prouder of this associate's degree than either my bachelor's or master's. Maybe it's because I'm so much more excited about the resulting career. Maybe it's because I've given up so much time and energy to this one. Maybe it's because I never thought I had science brain and this is some small validation of my ability to understand things that are hard.

Hurrah! Four short months.

Excited. Terrified. Excited

My final semester of (this) nursing program is upon me. I woke up this morning pretty excited to get it done. And then I went to class this morning and saw the clinical rotations and clinical expectations for the semester  and freaked out a little.  We have rotations in Community Health Nursing, Mental Health Nursing, Advanced Telemetry Nursing and Critical Care Nursing this semester. Plus we have our transition, which is a 60-hour shadow of a nurse in an area we'd like to be a part of. And oh, by the way, the nursing managers are watching you, so be good so you might be offered a job this summer.

Yeah.

Totally no pressure though.

And then I took a deep breath and realized that this is what I've been working towards for nearly 4 years now. I am so excited to be a nurse. I am so terrified to be a nurse, because then, I'll be the nurse. But I'm excited.







And terrified.

A day with the Monkey

Today, my mom had Gummy Bear most of the day, so I got to hang with the Monkey. We had a fun day. The way he talks right now is super cute. He over-enunciates everything. So, for example, in the picture below, he would say "Eat. Gogurt."

Eat. Gogurt.

I'm. Swimming.

It's. Pun!

He was also pretending to be a dinosaur and wreck the road below. Unfortunately, every time I tried to get it on video he stopped saying "I'm. Dinotaur," and just roared and said "Inna geetcha!" (I'm going to get you). Still, he's pretty cute these days and I'm glad I got a Monkey day.

Snowy snow day

And now I return to what I know you're all here for: cute pictures of my kids. Last night into this morning we got about 5 inches of snow that turned into 3 after an hour of rain. Ry is out of town, of course, so it fell to me to decide how much snow removal I really wanted to do. Our township has a rule that sidewalks have to be cleared within 24 hours of snow, so I thought I would at least get that done. As it turns out, I also got the walk cleared and the truck dug out.

Gummy Bear was actually a big help. He cleared all the windows on the truck. Then I literally had to make him go play in the snow.

They had fun playing on the frozen, very slippery  play equipment.

It wasn't the 20 inches of snow we're used to the last few winters, but it was enough for the boys to get out and play in. Cheeky Monkey mostly ate it. They both had fun though, and they came in rosy-cheeked and starving.

Uke uke uke

Because I'm a total slacker and still haven't taken more pictures of my darling children, here is a video of me playing ukulele. I recently had a fire lit under my ukulele-playing bum because a longtime friend asked me to play and sing in his wedding. No pressure. I started taking lessons last Saturday and had a bit of a breakthrough this week with strumming and playing at the same time.




In other news, my adorable children are still adorable. We met up with a friend at a mall with a play area today. It was nice. The kids were really good. They were rewarded at the end of the day with a carousel ride. Gummy Bear named his horse "Seven Silver" and Cheeky Monkey's "Black Tail." You guess why. Then we came home, where they mercifully took a nap, got up and then tormented each other while I made dinner. Good times. Tomorrow we're off to a friend's birthday party if we don't get crazy lots of snow. And Sunday, Ry comes home! Hurrah! Because being a single parent kind of sucks. And I miss him.

Oui, il y a plus

I know you're like, "what? So your room is clean?" Or, "wow, that is a really ugly room." But for me, this is a huge accomplishment. Our poor room is the neglected room in the house. We're never really in it awake and no one ever sees it, so it becomes the dumping ground for randomonia. Because I'm doing so freaking much laundry every week, it rarely gets put away. Instead, I grow laundry mountains in the basement. While I've gotten better about getting the boys' put away at least weekly, Ry and I tend to use the basement as our closet.

Right now, all my laundry is put away. In drawers and closets.

 That shut.

 I dusted ya'll.

And this is my entire collection of shoes. This is it. And from now on, I have a one-in, one-out policy on all items of clothing and shoes. Now the shoes have to be cuter and more comfortable than a pair I already own, or they don't come home with me.

I feel good. The only untouched room in the house is our office, which is mostly boxes and Christmas crap that never got put away (and now, 4 giant contractor bags of stuff to donate). Well, and the basement. I'm not sure that's a project I can face on my own though.

I'm sure I'll get back to my regularly scheduled pictures of cute children, but this is what's occupying my life right now. My house is starting to feel a bit less claustrophobic.  Ahhhh.

It Continues

Wait. What? There is no open space allowed in my cabinets.

Charmed by the Doctor and Mr. Holmes

I'm not usually a book reviewer. However, I'm about a third of the way through the collection of Sherlock Holmes books and short stories and have been so utterly charmed by them that I wanted to share. Certainly, they aren't politically correct, but hey, they were written 125 years ago. What they are quick, clever and quirky. Protagonist with autism, manic-depression and a side of cocaine addiction? Yes please. I'm a little irked at myself for having never picked them up before. If you don't want to be irked, go, now, and get some light, tasty book popcorn.

The complete collection was only $3 on Nook.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

So I just took an unplanned 4 week break from the blog. There was no specific reason aside from not really feeling like blogging. Lately every post feels like more of the same. Here's an overview of the past 4 weeks. Hopefully getting caught up will make me feel more like blogging, because hey, there won't be so much to catch up on.

1. Christmas was super fun. As is my family tradition, on Christmas Eve we went over to my Mom's house. We opened presents, ate food, and hung out. It was wonderful fun and made me grateful again that they are here.

2. Christmas morning we opened our stockings from Santa, ate, and played with toys. This car track from one of Ry's aunts was hands-down the Christmas favorite.

3. The day after Christmas, we loaded up the truck and made for Oz. Along the way, we spent the most miserable night hotel night EVAR when our hotel didn't have a crib. "No problem," we thought. "We'll just each sleep with a kid." While the boys slept pretty well, Ry and I got a combined 3 hours since we had an elbow, head, foot, or knee in our faces or sides approximately every 5 minutes. Then, Cheeky Monkey decided he was up for the day at 5 am. Hotel room fail.

The upside is that we got on the road really early and made it to Oz by 2 pm. We stopped on our way into town to visit a longtime friend and then went to my Dad's.

Where Lala used the Monkey to mop the floor.

 We did Christmas x2. This one contained far fewer toys. The boys handled it (mostly) with grace.

We had a great time visiting with both Dads, grandparents and friends. Our drive home was uneventful and a strategic call ahead yielded a hotel stay that was much less suck.

4. We got home, caught our breath, and cleaned out the boys' closets. They are almost the size where I can take clothes directly from Gummy Bear's closet and put it Monkey's.  Almost. Then,  Ry had to go back to work.

School doesn't start again for me for two more weeks. I have 6 days of boys-in-daycare between now and then. And so this week, I did this:

And this:

The curtains were $9, ya'll!

Poor Monkey had lived for 2 years in a nursery decorated for his brother. The pictures on the wall were of Gummy Bear. There was even a lovely piece of tatting on the wall with his name on it. I updated his room on the cheap. I found the curtains at Ross for $9, and put some scrapbooking paper in the picture frames. It's subtle, but for the first two nights when I put Cheeky Monkey to bed, he would point at something new and say "I like it!" and "It's fun!"


Also, this:

And this:

I couldn't very well leave Bear's room untouched, could I?

5. This weekend we've had some quality time with friends we haven't seen since before the holidays. Tomorrow Ry has the day off (woot!) and he leaves Wednesday for a whirlwind trip to Portugal. I'm hoping to tackle the rest of the house this week. Unfortunately, there is no amount of organizing that will make our master bedroom anything but ugly.  Still, I can hope to get everything put away and piles made for "donate", "trash" and "give away." We already have two giant contractor bags full from wardrobe and toy purges this week. Since our house isn't getting any bigger, we need to have less stuff.

And there you have it. Four weeks in one post.

Sorry

I've been feeling exceptionally un-inspired to blog lately. I'll probably get back to it sometime.

I also just learned I've hit my photo upload limit. This means I need to figure out how to increase my storage space. This is something I don't have the brain power for.