Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Adios, Carle!

September 4, 2012

My days as a nurse at Patient Advisory are over. Wish I could say I was upset, but I'm not. I just got a new job at Kirby Medical Center in Monticello. No more traveling 40 minutes to work. I am in town, 5 minutes from home. I am working the night shift 1900-0700 in the Emergency Room and on the Med/Surg floor occassionally. The hospital reminds me a lot of Mount Ogden Surgical Center. It's a smaller facility, there are only 200 employees, eight ER rooms and 16 Med/Surg inpatient rooms. The closeness of the staff reminds me a lot of Mount Ogden Surgical Center too. I'm looking forward to brushing up on my skills and becoming a real nurse again, and so far I love it.

Pork & Apple Festival

September 29, 2012

Clinton, IL has an awesome Pork & Apple Festival. If you like pork and apples this is your place to spend a Saturday afternoon.

First Day of School

September 2012 I've got both of the kids in preschool at Kairos this year. Charlee goes Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Van goes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This picture was taken on Van's first day of school and I wanted a picture of him by the sign. I was planning on taking Charlee's picture the following day on her first day of school day. Well............



Someone was upset that it wasn't HER school day.

Grandma Sandy here to play!

September 11-25, 2012

Grandma Sandy is here to play. She was a HUGE help to me with decorating the house. There is no way I could have done it without her. I have a hard time with decision making. I suppose I can partly blame that on my Dad. He can spend all day, driving from store to store to compare prices and products and leave for home completely empty handed. This would drive my mom absolutely crazy. More times than not I am the same way when it comes to shopping. It was great to have Sandy here to help me get down to business, make decisions and get it done!

The kids, Grandma and I drove to Chicago to meet up with Aunt Jill. She happened to be in Chicago for business and had nothing scheduled for her last day here. We were able to go on an Architectural boat tour of Michigan Avenue that took us out to Lake Michigan to see the skyline. It was actually very interesting and informative.

We MOVED... AGAIN!

Ok, so I am late writing about our most recent move that occurred almost six months ago now. Why have I put off writing about it? Maybe because moving sucks, and I figured if I had to write about it I'd be re-living it. That might be it. We have moved four times in seven years. That's a lot of moving. This most recent move was a short distance from our rental home in Monticello to another in home in Monticello that we decided to purchase. It was a big step up for us. We had been living in 1100 square feet. Our small garage was not actually being used as a garage. It was packed with boxes, drums, bikes and at one point a piano... don't ask. We were pretty much on top of each other. So, needless to say I think Joel and I were excited to move. To be honest I don't know how we stayed in the rental for as long as we did. We were there for an entire year!! Anyway, this new home is pretty nice. For the first time ever we have a garage that is being used for a garage. We can park both cars there, and as a bonus it is attached to the house. We also have more than one bathroom... our bathrooms have drawers and closet space. We have an unfinished basement and a large backyard for the kids to play in. I feel incredibly spoiled and very fortunate at this point in our lives. We have great neighbors that haven't completely shunned us because we are Mormon... (I find absolutely no relation among the fact that we are Mormons and the fact that our backyard neighbors put up trees along the property line, our other neighbors putting their house up for sale and our other neighbors calling us, "the black people of the neighborhood", and others asking Joel, "Do you have more than one wife?" All within 3 months of us moving in). But seriously, we really do have great neighbors, it's a great neighborhood for kids and I think it's a good move for us... for now.