I'm a Real Nurse!!!!

What a glorious week this was!! With the Lord by my side, I took my state boards on the 20th. On Monday, I found out that I am OFFICIALLY a REGISTERED NURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I passed my state boards!!! WHOOHOOOO!! The dream has finally become a reality! On Wednesday, my license was posted on the Board of Nursing website :) I am so excited!!!!!!! I can't even describe how excited I am!

This week I worked my three 12 hour shifts and then went to a Neonatal Resuscitation class. I feel so much better now about working in the nursery. It was a great class :) Next week I am working and attending a Fetal Heart Monitor class. My boss has also decided that I am going to be the "meditech ambassasor" at our hospital. You are wondering what the heck is that! Well it is a computer system that allows each department to communicate with other departments via the computer. Our little rural hospital is all paper charting and telephones so this is going to be a drastic change for us. I will be attending training the following week and then in May, when meditech goes live, I will be training everyone on how to use it! I think the plan is to hold classes in a computer room and I will teach the class. Fantastic lol. RN for a day and look at that huge responsibility bestowed on me. I am excited though :) So work is going great! I have to say I absolutely love my job!

Cory is making some great progress in his studies and projects. I am excited for him to finish school this year and be Dr. Farley :) It will be great! I also must say that this weekend will be my first full weekend where I don't have any homework or studying to do (YAY!) and I am looking forward to a weekend with my wonderful husband where school is not looming over me!

Well it has been a month since I posted pictures, whoops! So here are a few albums for you to check out :)

Florence, Part 1

Florence, Part 2

Venice!

That's all of Italy. The next set of pics will be from Germany :) Have a great one yall!

The beginnings of our European Vacation

We are back! Our trip to Europe was AMAZING. Words can't even describe how amazing it was! Over the next few weeks (cuz thats how long it will probably take me) I will be posting pictures of our trip in small chunks. Beware, you might experience picture overload cuz we took ALOT of pictures ;)

Before I post the pictures though, let me fill you in on what we have been doing since we got back. Cory started school back up and is planning to graduate this year with his PhD, hopefully in August. He is in 3 classes, but 2 of them are research credit hours so he only has one class with actual homework, that way he can focus on his dissertation. I started working at the Plainview Hospital in Women's services. Currently, I am training in Nursery (WHICH I LOVE!). I am the nurse that takes the baby right after birth, recovers it and stablizes it. I also educate the new mothers on how to care for thier new infant. It is soooo fun :) I will be training there for 3 months and then I will crosstrain in post-partum and labor & delivery as well. It feels good to be making some money! I take boards February 20th so I am still studying away. I just want to get it over with and have that license! I am nervous as all get out! But God will provide :)

So back to Europe. We flew into Rome and spent a few days there. Click on the links to see pics of our adventures.

The First night in Rome

Ancient Rome

Roma- Day 3

The Vatican

That is an overwhelming amount of pictures so I will post Florence in a few days :) Have a great weekend everyone!

Going Abroad!!!

The past three months have been so busy that I have neglected to blog!!! Well BIG NEWS!

I GRADUATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so excited! I am currently a GN (Graduate Nurse) and will start working in January. I plan to take my Boards at the end of January or beginning of February. I was offered a job where I did my internship and will be starting my career in Labor and delivery/postpartum/nursery :) I am so very excited!!

Right now, Cory and I are sitting in the Orlando Florida airport waiting for our plane to...IRELAND! We are traveling Europe for the next three weeks! Happy graduation to us! This is a post-graduation gift to me and an early graduation gift to Cory as he will graduate in August 2010. We are sooooo excited! We will be visiting Italy, Austria, Germany, Ireland, France and England and who knows where else ;) We are traveling with a bit of a spontaneous flair and figuring it out as we go. One of the weeks we are there we will be at the Edelweiss Resort in the Alps with Cliff and Jennifer Jackson for New Years. HOW FUN!!! It is going to be a blast! If I can get wi-fi as we go, I will try to post on here as we travel to keep everyone up dated.

Have a very Merry Christmas! Love to all!

Another weekend gone...

Another weekend gone, another busy week ahead of us. This weekend Cory attended the choir retreat all day Saturday. I went to Lubbock with some Mary Kay girls to a Robert Jones makeup artist workshop. I learned so much! It will be extremely beneficial to my business and to my own makeup application! It was alot of fun :) This week, I will be in the ICU for clinicals, which I am looking forward to. I also have a project due at the end of the week, 2 Mary Kay parties, several meetings for school and 2 papers to get to work on! PLUS my exit exam is in about 2 weeks so I am frantically trying to study and do practice questions. We have to pass this exam to graduate and we get 3 chances. I am very nervous. So I am trying to squeeze in as much study time for this as possible. Cory's week has hopefully settled down some. He has a ton of homework and is continuing to work hard on his research. I am so proud of him :)

I am going to leave you with some pics of our Dove hunting adventure. Have a great week everyone!

Cowboy Days/Hale on Wheels

Howdy :)

This last week I missed a few days of school for a severe sinus infection, bleh it was yuck. Im recovering but still have some congestion issues. Cory was busy at school this week preparing for his conference he will be speaking at on Wednesday, not to mention the insane amount of homework he has plus an exam that same day.

This weekend was fun. Plainview had its 11th year of Cowboy Days this weekend. It kicked off with a chuckwagon breakfast, then a bike ride, followed by a parade/cattle drive down Downtown Plainview, and then a days worth of cowboy activities. It was a ton of fun. Cory and I did the 21 mile bike ride in hopes that we would be done early enough to see the cattle drive, but we missed it :( We finished our 21 miles in about 2 hours. We got to the parade 15 minutes late and missed the horses/cattle! BUMMER! Click here for some picks of Cowboy Days/Hale on Wheels.

BIG NEWS! Cory and I will be going on a Europe tour in December and visit our friends, the Jacksons in Germany:) CANT WAIT! We are still in the planning process but it is gonna be amazing!

This week is gonna be busy. Got another round of clinicals and our final presentation for our Capstone project. See yall at the end of the week maybe :) Have a good week!

Preparing for another busy week.

This past week was busy as usual. Tomarrow I will be attending a Diabetic Education class as a part of my clinical requirement. We have to follow an alternative nursing role and I am following a nurse educator. Tuesday, I have practice for Capstone. Capstone is the final project of nursing school. Our project is to make a presentation on our given topic, which mine is Nasogastric tubes, and make a powerpoint presentation. Then on the 22nd, all the junior and senior 1 nursing students will come in for a skills day and we will be teaching them how to insert an NG tube and nursing management. An NG tube is a tube that is inserted through the nose and goes down thru the esophagus into the stomach. It is used to decompress the stomach, and delivery of nutrition and medication. Fun huh? ;) We will set up a "booth" where we will present to them then they will do a return demonstration to us, proving they are competent of performing the procedure. Of course, we will be using mannequins but it is still nerve racking for them! I have been there many a times in my nursing school career! It is fun to be the one on the teaching end :) Other group topics include wound care, foleys, iv's etc. I think it will be a fun day. This week its just practice but the following week is the real thing. Im looking forward to it ! On Wednesday, I will be doing a 12 hour in Same Day Surgery. I hear I will be starting iv's all day, whoo hoo! ;)

Cory is working a million hours of homework and he is also preparing for a NATAS (North American Thermal Association Society) - or something like that. He will be giving a lecture at this conference on "The Use of Differential Scanning Calorimetry and Thermogravimetric Analysis for Development of Reaction Kinetics for Aluminum-Iodine Pentoxide Reactions" And because I have no idea how to explain what any of that means, we will leave it at that!

I have some pictures for you, of course. I would like to introduce you to Jack, Cali's brother, her littermate.

Jack is my brother Jimmy's new dog. Its awesome cuz the siblings (my brother and I) have sibling dogs (hes got the brother and I got the sister!) Its fun :) Jack is in love with his new dad and is turning out to be a really good dog! We all adore him and hes such a little lover.

Here are some pictures of the weekend our nephew stayed with us before we took him to his new dad. Click on his name here --> JACK

I also have a pretty decent sized album of pictures from our trip to St. Louis this August. It was so much fun and great to be with family. Click here --> August STL

Better hop it to the homework. Hope everyone is having a great weekend :) Talk soon!

Summer fun and some catching up!

Long time no blog!

I hope we find everyone doing well. I have sort of neglected the blog for the past month. We spent a few weeks in STL in August and it was alot of fun! We were busy with garage sales, visiting family and I worked some Mary Kay :) It was really great getting to spend time with the family. I miss them so much!

We have been back for a few weeks and back into the swing of school. Cory is working hard on getting his papers completed and he is always researching, researching, researching. I am doing my clinicals at Covenant Plainvew Hospital right here in Plainview and its AWESOME. I am loving it. Small rural hospitals are a great place to work! I have already been offered a job at this hospital which is exciting! Clinicals are for 12-13 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday although I do some extra hours here and there throughout the month. I have to get 228 hours completed for my internship which means I will be done by the beginning of November! I also have class Thursday mornings and I am on the Nursing Pinning ceremony committe which also meets Thursdays. Busy busy! Tuesdays look like 12 hour clinical then Mary Kay meeting, Wednesdays- 12 hour clinical then choir practice, Thursday- class, Pinning meeting. But after the middle of the week is over, its smooth sailing. Cory and I joined our church choir and we are very excited about it :) Today was our first Sunday to sing with the choir and it was a BLAST. We have rehearsals every Wednesday night. We are also preparing for a Christmas special that will be happening December 12/13. The songs are AMAZING! In November, we are making Christmas cds to sell to raise money for a mission trip and will be performing these songs at the Christmas special! Its gonna be amazing. I missed choir so much and it is great to once again be a part of it :) Cory has also decided to join "are you smarter than a 2nd grader?" which is a tutoring group through our church that tutors elementary school students and he will be doing that on Monday nights. We are really happy to be getting more involved in our church and community!

Of course I have some pics to share with yall. :) They have been piling up!

Here are summer pics - backyard fun!

Cory just finished his Fantasy Football draft so we are off to play some racquetball at the Y! Peace!