LAST first day of school

Well ladies and gents, it actually happened. I have finally started my VERY LAST semester of nursing school EVER!!!!! <-- If you can't tell how I feel about it, take a look at all those exclamation points. I'm excited to say the least. 

As first days go, it was fine. Boring. Overwhelming. And almost a somber feeling. This is the last first day of school I will have until I get super crazy and go back for a masters degree. This is the last first day I will have with this amazing group of people I have been so privileged to embark on this journey with. But it was also a very happy feeling. We are nearly there. We did it. We survived MedSurg. And then we all survived ICU despite those awful quizzes. The homestretch is here...finally. 

I can honestly say though, I thoroughly enjoyed every last drop of summer. I did not do a single NCLEX prep question, or worry about any assignments. That was pure bliss. 

I will be doing my capstone rotation on the 6th floor at UVRMC. Night shift. It should be fun. I'm a little worried about staying awake at night, but I'm sure it will be fine. Just an adjustment. Dan is a little sad about having to sleep alone, but Ruby will totally snuggle up to him! He'll be just fine. 

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear." 

Capstone: prepare to be demolished. 

Xxo, me.

Why Sunday's are my favorite...and then some

(Preface...I wrote this ohhh 2 weeks-ish ago, and said nursing test that will be discussed later, well I have another one coming up. Oh the irony. This one I predict will go much better).

Not only do I get to spend the ENTIRE day with my wonderful wonderful husband, but it’s also the day that I get to be at Church, and feel the love of my Heavenly Father as I learn and grow more and more in the gospel. I know I can (and should) be doing this every day, but Sunday is just that day that’s set aside specifically for this one purpose. And that’s just one of the many reasons I love love Sundays.

But in order to understand this love a little bit better, we need to rewind to Saturday.

Saturday was the last day to take my nursing test. Yes I am a procrastinator. Always have been, and I’m pretty sure I always will, though I do have the resolve just about every week that I will do better (and for the most part this semester that’s worked out pretty well…except for this test). So I took Dan to work Saturday morning, and came home to study. I studied studied studied my little brain out, and I felt like I was doing okay. Then I realized that the study guide that had been handed out only had half the material on it. First “crap.”

I found the rest of the study guide online, downloaded it, and then proceeded to finish studying. I go to pick Dan up from work at 1 and had a little inkling to check the testing center line conditions (I had heard that on Thursday the lines were out the door and the wait was an hour to get in). Since the testing center closes at 4 on Saturdays, that means the last test is handed out at 3. So I wanted to be there around 2 just to be on the safe side. I checked the line conditions on my phone, and low and behold, it was packed! Second “crap.”

I panicked. Completely and utterly panicked. I hadn’t finished looking through all the material and hadn’t even really hit the important stuff. I rushed home with Dan in tow, burst through the front door, gathered up all the pages I’d been studying, printed off the study guide I’d been working on, and ran back out the door. I was in tears. It was a little ridiculous, but I honestly and truly felt like I was about to legitimately fail a test for the first time in my life. I had made a goal to get all A’s on my tests this semester, and so far I’d done just that: New Testament, Statistics, and this Nursing test was going to ruin it all. (This part was like the overwhelming “crap” going on in my head. Don’t judge, I have high standards for myself.)

We booked it to school, Dan dropped me off, and I was still in tears because I knew there was no way this one was happening. I didn’t deserve it on any account to do well on this test, and I sure as heck did not deserve to even ASK for the help I DEFINITELY DID NOT deserve. I get to the testing center, and just catch out of the corner of my eye a glimpse of the line: it was out the door. Third “crap.” (Though this one might have gone through my head more colorfully).

This time I kept the tears in, after all I didn’t want to fail a test and be completely embarrassed on campus all in the same day. A girl’s gotta keep a little dignity with her. So I’m standing in line, which surprisingly moved fairly quickly, and looking through all the powerpoint slides, frantically trying to remember all the things I’ve learned the last few weeks. I offered up a silent, pleading prayer, fully acknowledging that I had not prepared enough and that I knew I didn’t deserve any help on this one, but asking just the same. I had done all the reading (really, ALL the readings), all the homework, paid attention in class, and I just prayed that that would be enough, to just help me remember THAT stuff. I had another thought, to read my scriptures.

I came across this little gem: 2 Nephi 11:7

“For if there be no Christ, there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time.”

I’m a firm believer that He hears me, that He knows exactly who I am, and that He completely understands why I do the things I do. I’m also a firm believer that He knows exactly what I need to hear when I need to hear it. I’ve read this scripture before, and it hit me then much like it did on Saturday. Only this time, when I read that, it was almost like I felt Him tell me It’s okay, I can make up the difference, I know you’re not perfect, and you were never meant to be in this life. All I ask is that you try and consecrate your life to me. (In a lot more simpler feelings that words cannot quite express).

The test went great, in fact better than I could have hoped. I knew everything on the test except maybe 5 questions, and of those 5 I still felt moderately comfortable with the information. I turned it in, called Dan, and then decided to check my score. I was secretly in my heart of hearts hoping for an A (even if it was a 90, it’s still an A), all the while knowing that if I had gotten a B I would have been overjoyed! It loaded, and I almost broke down in tears right there. I had only missed 3 questions, and gotten a 93.6%.

You know those moments when you don’t even know where to begin to express how grateful you are for all the blessings in your life (especially the ones you see immediately) and “thank you” just never seems adequate, but it’s the only thing you can say?

This was one of those.

I jumped (practically) into Dan’s arms when I saw him, and I think he was honestly more excited than I was about this. Before I walked in to take the test, he had text me this: I CAN DO THIS! I AM SMART! I HAVE FAITH! I AM HAPPY! (these were each repeated 3x). I breathed a sigh of relief and it was all I could do to keep from crying (it was an emotional day) and smiling and laughing all at the same time. And then I told Dan crap! Now this means I have to keep the A’s on tests up! Haha go figure I was looking to let myself out of that goal!

Then Sunday came, remember it’s my favorite day of the week, and Dan was teaching Sunday School and had us look up this scripture: 3 Nephi 1:12-14

“And it came to pass that he cried mightily unto the Lord all that day; and behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him saying:

Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfill all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets.

Behold I come unto my own, to fulfill all things which I have made known unto the children of me from the foundation of the world, and to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh. And behold, the time is at hand, and this night shall the sign be given.”

So it’s talking about the sign of Christ’s birth that would be seen in the America’s, but the bolded part was really the message he was looking to grasp from this. I think the background information is important though. Anyway, it was just another one of those that I felt was directed to me personally (though I’m sure many people felt that way too).

Dan had these words written on the chalkboard: OPPOSITIONàPOSITIONàPOSITIVE

It looked something like this after he was done explaining everything:

OPPOSITIONàPOSITIONàPOSITIVE

The underlying message was that we should be positive when we face our trials and to never back down.

Take home message: be positive through your opposition. You don't have to like it, but be happy through it. If there's anything I have learned throughout my life (geez it sounds like I've lived forever) it's that my Heavenly Father knows me. He loves me. He is aware of me. Time and time again I'm reminded of that, and it always makes me cry...but a happy cry. A grateful cry. It's a goal of mine to personally try to be happy. All the time. Even if I have to fake it for a bit till I really believe it.

Anddd...since this was originally written 2 weeks ago...test update: I have gotten A's on all my tests, except 1 (and that one was a B)! (I have a theory on that...more to come later.)

Baseball caps and t-shirts

I've been meaning to blog for quite some time now. There's all kinds of things to blog about here in Denver, but let's just chalk it all up to the fact that I work too much...especially right now.

Denver has been great so far, but definitely not what we had expected out of the summer. I guess you win some and you lose some. Honestly it's just a little frustrating when you plan things and then it just doesn't work out that way. It's okay, don't get me wrong, we're happy, but it's just a little frustrating. The frustration comes to a culminating point every so often and I just break down. Two nights ago this happened. I just couldn't take it anymore...I'm working on a coping mechanism, but haven't quite managed to find one that works for me.

Basically it just came down to the fact that I miss Dan. We've been so go go go ever since we got married. We left for Texas, I left for school, Dan was working 3 jobs (I still can't believe he did that!), and then I got into the nursing program, Dan left on recruiting trips to Idaho frequently, and then we came to Denver. I started working...50+ hrs a week. It's just been so so busy and honestly I feel like we lost each other a little bit. We're happy, don't get me wrong, but I just miss being friends and having time to just hang out with each other.

As much as it sucks, I think this has been good for us though to really decide what we want to do. We made some life directional decisions and have a rough outline of what we're doing after this summer.

Dan got accepted to UVU! So he's going back to school in the fall...maybe. He hasn't quite decided because originally he was going to have to take placement tests and stuff by the 15 of June to be accepted, and obviously that one wasn't going to happen. At that point, we had pretty much decided he'd take a class or two just to get back into the groove of school, work some and then start during the winter semester. So being accepted was definitely a blessing, but now it's the toss up...what do we do? Dan wants to get a full time job, take a class or two and get us settled back into a home that we'll be in for the next year or two. Let's face it, I'll be doing clinicals, and I pretty much will not have a life so any settling in will not get done by me.

Life has been good to us though. We just celebrated our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!! (well...it was almost a month ago) I'm still not sure how I feel about that though. It went way too fast. Lucky for me I have forever with that man and I'm so so excited for all of it. We're happy, we're healthy, and I really don't have too much to complain about. I wish I blogged more, but I'm working on it. We've had some seriously funny things happen to us lately but for the life of me I can't remember a single one of them. So as they come to my head I'll jot them on this post. It's my catch all right now, so if you read all the way through...props my friend, props.

One that I do remember though is on Wednesday there was a killer storm moving in through Denver and according to the weather lady all it was supposed to be was 50 mph winds from about 5-9 pm. No big deal. Well high speed winds is a HUGE deal apparently when it's combined with rain and hail! Luckily at work it just rained so I didn't have to worry about the hail aspect when driving home, but the boys had basketball that night. It was sprinkling when I got home around 10 and Dan and I left for the Church at 1015 at the latest and it was pouring already! After 3 games (they only go to 9 pts) I was ready for bed (it's 11 mind you and 730 just always seems to creep up on me earlier than the day before). Being the good husband that he is, Dan said okay and we left, only this time the rain was coming down in buckets. There are no words to describe the amount of rain that was falling from the sky. We made it home just fine, after all a little rain never killed anyone. After about 10 minutes of being home, believe it or not the rain came down even harder and was much much louder. I went outside on our balcony to check it out and then noticed it actually look like it was hailing. Sure enough dime size hail was cascading down the roof of the apts and it actually looked like snow on the ground. Quite a bit made it onto our porch. I was honestly shocked and worried about our car (there's no covered parking anywhere in the complex unless you have a garage). It was super crazy and cool at the same time. Luckily it stopped hailing after 20 or so minutes and went back to rain, but it was nuts!

I've been pretty lucky that I haven't seen too much wildlife activity in my apt, and by wildlife I mean spiders. Well I was thinking to myself it's been so great and wonderful that I've really only seen one cricket (which seriously scared me to death--pathetic). I picked up Dan's lunch box and set in on the counter and a huge wolf spider crawled up the side! I dropped it and just screamed! It scared the poop outta me! Dan killed it of course and that was the end of it. Later that day I was washing the sheets and we had a little spider crawling in our bed!! I flipped...again...and killed it by myself but at that point I was like this is not okay! Not okay! I texted Jed (the branch manager in Denver) and told him I NEEDED my apt sprayed asap because spiders are not okay, at all! Especially not in my bed!

It's been a pretty busy summer so far. I can't believe it's already June! I just want things to slow down a little bit, but at the same time I want to get back into school. It's a little pathetic but I kind of miss studying a ton for tests because I just love learning about the body. It's probably a good thing I chose nursing to go into.

As for the rest of the summer, I've decided I'm going to be Happy. I know that seems like a silly thing to decide but I've just been miserable lately. Dan and I both have. I try to stay positive but I'm just miserable and frustrated with life in general. We were watching a clip on youtube about a guy who has no arms and no legs. I don't remember his last name, but his first name is Nick, and he's from Australia. He has the best attitude and watching that video just helped me to realize happiness is a state of mind and a choice. It's choosing to be happy when everything around you tells you otherwise. It choosing to be happy amidst the struggles, and choosing to be happy when at the end of the day you'd rather cry than smile. It's okay to get down, but don't get stuck in a rut. Just be happy. This life is the greatest blessing and I for one want to be happy and enjoy it.

It's a baseball cap and t shirt kind of day and I'm happy about that. :]

Positive thinking

Dan showed me this video the other night and it's definitely a must watch. Honestly, it's life changing. I've been thinking about it for a couple of days now and I've just been wanting to blog about it.

One of the things that really stuck out to me was that you should look at obligations as opportunities. Lately this one has stuck with me. I got pretty sick Sunday night and I've been literally out of commission for the last 2 days. Flu. Sucks. Brief overview of how this week has gone.

Sunday night start coughing, not too bad though.

Monday still coughing but definitely manageable; got to work, coughing continues, body aches start; went home from work early

Tuesday STILL coughing, pretty intense body aches, fever, mild but enough to make you sweat; did not go to work

Wednesday AWFUL!!! absolutely freaking awful. Fever, sweating, coughing, aching; definitely did not go to work; went to the doctor. They couldn't decide if it was viral or bacterial. Dan left for Idaho. My momma and family left for Arizona. I got a prescription for a Z pack (in case it's bacterial) and heavy duty cough syrup with codeine (in case it's viral). I stayed in bed all day and watched movies. Oh and I didn't even go to school.

Thursday so much better!! I went to work, slight slight coughing. Still taking my cough syrup drugness. And I went to work. I sound like a man, but I can actually talk and not hack up a lung or feel achy and sickly. 

Anyway, the point in going over all this was that I also had to take a nursing test this week. Tuesday specifically was the last day. Sucked. But then Dan reminded me about that video and how I need to look at it as an opportunity to take the test. That it's an opportunity to learn and grow. I really liked that and the whole idea of taking a positive spin on life. 

It has a couple of other things that are included in the video and as soon as I find it on youtube I'll post it.

I haven't blogged in forever, but life is so busy right now, I probably won't blog till we've moved to Denver.