Farewell to our Honda Civic

Great Dane + 2 Door Civic = Backache = Need bigger car

We wore out our car thoroughly inside and out. This is the car Jaime bought when he was 21. Then first date. Marriage. Honeymoon. College. Two major moves. (sigh) It's been very good to us.

Once our cute little puppy became an extra-large dog, he was too big to ride comfortably in it any more. Now he has to stick his head out through the moonroof to fit.

A few other things broke down too (like the windows, so we have to open the door every time we try to drive through McDonald's or something).

When loading and unloading Huck, we have to flip the front seat forward and then scoot the base forward even more to give him room to get through the door. That got sort of tiresome, so a priority requirement is the new vehicle must have FOUR doors or a hatch thing in the back! As much as we love the sentimental value of the Honda, we are ready to "grow into" another vehicle.Time to go car shopping! Any tips?

Soccer Life Continues Despite Rain

 We watched our friend, Tyler Mould, play soccer tonight at a game. He's quite nimble! Some scouts were sitting next to us, watching. Good job, Tyler! His brother, Roxxie, also plays soccer.
 

By the way, they had a dramatic win. Good job again!

In Washington, if every school waited for a dry day to play soccer, it would take 8 years to complete one season, so these guys all get accustomed to playing with wet shoes and hair plastered to their heads. That is the norm around here.

They Got Him

Remember all those Evergreen trees that got toilet papered? Well, they finally figured out it was Jaime and came to arrest him. So he had to ride in this Highway Patrol car this morning.

Just kidding. (Kidding about the arrest part.) But Jaime did indeed go to work in this car. What an unexpected morning! We changed the oil in the car last night. All was well. Then this morning at about 5:00 AM, he was going to work when a rod shot out from the engine, creating havoc and a marvelous plume of smoke. The car was dead just like that, despite our preventative measures to keep it maintained. Luckily, the Highway Patrol sent someone to investigate our car on the freeway. The officer was nice enough to drop Jaime off at work. He pulled up to his office parking lot and his co-workers got a surprise when they saw him step out of the car! :)

Hey, I was using that!

 I got this butter-soft body pillow for my birthday. Two days later, Huck decided he wanted to use it. He dragged it out of the bedroom into the living room and plopped right down on it!
 
Since it was brand new and I wasn't about to convert it into a doggy bed quite yet, I immediately took it away from him. He looks so pitiful, huh?

Just like Tacos de Beisbol!

This place is a local favorite and we ate there for a lunch date one time, then a couple more after that. The menu items here mimic very closely the ones we ate from Tacos de Beisbol in Isla Mujeres last Christmas vacation. That's a sign that this is authentic!

A Real Nurse?

Many of you are dying to know what's going on with my job. Here's the update:

I talked to the nurse recruiter at Ft. Lewis just yesterday morning. She said that the human resources office should be making me an offer in about two weeks (finally!). If I like the offer, I could be working in the step-down ICU about three weeks from today. I'm both excited about it and dreading it.

It's been fun playing at home with Huck--no wories and no bosses over me. In the meantime, Major Rolph gave me a thick packet of things I need to remember by the time I come to work; all the most frequent issues and medications they deal with in that unit. So in other words, I've got homework! Can you believe that!?

107th Army Nurse Corps Anniversary Celebration

Prayer of An Army Nurse

Hear my prayer in silence before Thee as I

ask for courage each day.

Grant that I may be worthy of the sacred pledge of my profession

And the lives of those entrusted to my care.

Help me to offer hope and cheer in the hearts of men and my country,

For their faith inspires me to give the world

and nursing my best.

Instill in me the understanding and compassion of those who led the way,

For I am thankful to You for giving me this

life to live.

Jaime and I went to this event to run a 5K race for fun. Turns out it was an excellent idea because I became acquainted with two nurses at Madigan Army Medical Center, both who put in a good word for me. One was being deployed just as I was getting on board. The other one was trying to help me get a leg up in this process by giving me ACLS (advanced cardiac life support) brochures in advance so I could be studying those and make up somewhat for my lack of hearing directions. How nice of both of them to do that!

Doggie Halitosis? Gone!

Huckleberry went to the vet today to get his teeth cleaned. Needless to say, the house was empty all day without him being home with me.

This afternoon when I brought him home, he was still groggy from the drugs and was "lost" even in the living room. I had to show him where his water pail was and show him where to lie down. He tried to take a nap, but seemed to not remember how. (He was lying all crooked, trying to close his eyes, but wasn't comfortable. All he could do was grumble and look at me for help.) I had to actually take his head in my hands and put it down on the bedding. I moved his legs out from under him to make him more comfortable. He let out a sigh and promptly went to sleep.

Huck finally reached a weight of 150.1 pounds! (Almost four years old, it's about time he reached his target weight!) He's always been on the thin side, being active.

Chehalis River Flood

(Photos by Paul Henderson)

Thurston and Lewis Counties surrounding us were buried under water and muck on the afternoon of December 4th. (We live in Thurston County, so that says how lucky we are that our little piece wasn't drowning, but still, it made us somber to see our neighbors' properties get washed away.) A huge rainstorm just overwhelmed the Chehalis River.

Jaime and I drove just a few minutes south of us on parts of I-5 that were still running and this is what we saw.

Families lost EVERYTHING because the water was contaminated with sewage, so anything that couldn't be sterilized had to be thrown away, even if it was normally waterproof. The Chehalis fire station was the gathering place where volunteers picked up rubber gloves to wear under leather ones for added protection. The red cross even had a table for tetanus shots to anyone who needed them. The flood-waters filled the homes 9 feet up the wall! That means even pictures above our heads on the walls were ruined and what was left behind was about 4 feet of slimy muck that had to be shoveled out. (Personally, I would have just set fire to the building and walked away, to start completely over. But as the victims would have it, they wanted to salvage as much as possible...a very hard position to be in for them.)
We drove past a few areas where there were cows standing in what used to be a fenced-in pasture. Only now there were no fences--luckily the cows didn't know about the fences yet and were still standing there. There were chunks of road with the painted yellow dashed lines still visible floating around the cows' feet.

Millions of dollars of damage in less than an hour...(groan)

Link Click here for more images of flood.

Arrival to Renton

Jaime and I knew Anna from BYU. She interpreted for several of our classes. She and her husband live in Washington, so we sent them an email telling them we were coming from Miami. They were very welcoming and helped make our transition much smoother. Anna contacted her parents-in-law and asked them if we and Huckleberry could stay with them. (It was perfect. A house with a big fenced in backyard and friendly hosts who were more than willing to help with whatever we needed.) We appreciate you guys! Rob took us for a bike ride to show us the trails and to begin to introduce us to Washington environment!
Anna and Andy's kids, Noah and Lovis. They are adorable and entertaining every time they came over to the house! Noah LOVES his grandma's train set that she has.
Andy and we are just chatting after dinner one evening. Andy is telling us about medical school and how they structure their classes. (No, he's not trying to be a bore, we asked him about it. :) )
Some things never change...Huck sitting on Wendy's lap. They were a good sport about it all. The moving company gave us trouble and we ended up staying with the Tegeders for two weeks. We didn't mind calling it a home, too.

Interaction

Huck staring intently, trying to send a telepathic message to Dad.
Dad: "What do you need?"

Sunday Flood

Miami had torrential rain Saturday. On Sunday, it was still raining and we literally watched the streets fill up with water. Being in the city, there was no room for all the runoff, so it came into the lobby of our building.

Luis Valerino, our neighbor, said the kayakers couldn't resist and they hauled out their kayaks and paddled down the ramp and out the garage and down the street!

Jaime's Predoctoral Intern Classmates

University of Miami School of Medicine at Jackson Memorial Hospital
Back row left to right: Anne Wysoglad, Raul de Villegas-Decker, Jaime, Ben Johnson-Markve, and Connie Kekwaletswe
Front row left to right: Melisa Oliva, Jennifer Schmidt, Yari Colon, Katrina Belen, Mirta Alvarez-Rice, Jessica Garcia, Linnette Castillo, and Andrea Auxier

ICU Classmates

Critical Care Nursing Clinical Group. (Everyone in the class is divided into groups of 8 to go to various hospitals.) We were assigned to the VA Hospital near the University of Utah.

Instructor: Ron Ulberg
Classmates: Tiffany Childs, Ann Wilson, Camber Cooper, Tara Routsong, Angelina Barlow, Janet Lundberg, Abby Lamb, Valerie Cavanaugh

IV Practice

This was during the end part of my clinical rotation. I was still looking for ways to improve my skills. My brother, Adam, has good veins so I begged him to come by the hospital during a slow time so I can practice intravenous insertions. He said, "No way!" but was sweet enough to round up the whole rest of the family and drag them here. I got to poke a couple pair of arms that night! Nice! That shows love! The girl sitting on the right is Autumn. She and I knew each other in high school and we were shocked when several years later, we were paired up; this time she was a certified interpreter and I was now a sign language user. Back in high school, neither one of us knew ASL. What a big surprise!

Methadone Overdose Protocol Display

This was my LAST project for my entire college career! I spent two days at Mom and Dad's house putting this together. I did the paperwork while Mom and Dad helped me by making the backboard stand. I wished Jaime could be a part of this, but he was in Miami while I was in Utah. I emailed my work to Jaime and he proofread it for me and then emailed it back. Nice to have some electronic speed there! We were tired and frazzled and relieved to get this all done.

The NEVER AGAIN Semester

August-December 2006:

Fall Semester 2006 is an experience we never want to do again. Jaime and I had to each complete our education in different places. Jaime's pre-doctoral internship landed us in Miami and I had planned on finishing up in Provo and being available to trail along. Due to some unexpected twists along the way, I ended up going back to Provo to wrap up everything in addition to doing a clinical rotation at the American Fork ICU. Needless to say, it was one of the hardest things to do, culminating our student careers apart. At a time of increased intensity, the last thing we needed was to be solitary. It's like finishing a marathon and looking up and no one is there. We were lucky, though, to have so many people who watched out for us when we couldn't do much to watch out for each other. We give our heartfelt thanks to you! We could not have done this cursed semester without all that help.

I graduated, but am not interested in celebrating just yet. After taking the NCLEX exam and (hopefully) passing it, I will feel like I got what I set out to do. Just one more step. Besides, I'm not hanging around Provo when I could be running off to Jaime!

Hahn came to visit, as did Jaime's dad, Mary, and her dog Star.
Some of the things Jaime did during his play time:
The Valerino Family next door got this new puppy. She's only a fraction of Huckleberry's weight, but still came over to play once in a while to make the apartment not seem so empty.
Guess where these guys are?Yep! With the alligators. Boys will be boys!
A lake where Florideans experience cable-towed water-skiing around its perimeter. No, it's not Lake Powell, yet it's still entertaining and you sleep really good that night!
Who's playing?

The Three Martians Have Landed

After an enormous task of loading up all of our stuff from the house, we had the equally enormous task of whittling down our belongings to fit into a Miami apartment. Downsizing is never easy.

Because of schooling, I was in Hawaii doing a clinical rotation while several friends and Jaime did the hardest part of finishing off home "A" and establishing home "B" 2,600 miles apart from each other. Jaime and Huckleberry flew to Miami while David and Chrystee made the long haul across the country. Jaime had already been there a month before I finally caught up to him to see our house for the first time.

We were actually living in a temporary place until we found an apartment we could enjoy for a year. Then we moved again (home "C"), this time only a few miles apart, which was a little easier, but it didn't remove the chore of lifting everything all over again.

What was funny is someone tried to sell us a contract that said, "One bedroom, one bathroom." We asked for a video and we counted extra doorknobs. The tenant then confessed that the other room belonged to his roommate. "Don't worry, he's never there anyway." Oh. Well, I sort of don't want to feel obliged to feed him if we're cooking and eating something in front of him. That would just make me feel bad. We were glad we didn't sign anything until after we got there and could sniff out the apartments ourselves.

The apartment we did end up with was FABULOUS! Small, but leisurely nonetheless.