19 years in the making...

It may take awhile for this old woman to do things, but I did it! At 4pm today I became the very proud owner of an Associates of Science Degree in Nursing!!!!! I know one thing for sure and that's the fact that there is no way I could have done this without the help and support of my family. After I take my state boards in January, maybe we can get back to some sort of normal life around here!

Our eventful month and a half!

Life has been interesting for us to say the least. It all started off with Robert coming to us saying that he thinks he needs reading glasses because he's getting headaches when he tries to read. Sure enough, he does need glasses but not just for reading!

Then I get a phone call from the school nurse during class one Thursday. She think Robert has broken his finger. So we take a trip to Med One to see Dr. Jeff and sure enough, he has a splinter fracture on his left pinkie. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's pretty close to the growth plate and it's on his throwing hand. So he gets a splint and an appointment with Dr. Mitchell the following Monday. He doesn't have to wear the splint anymore but he does have to keep it buddy taped AND no baseball, football, soccer, or gym for 4 weeks! For him that was the end of the world. He still continues to go out to his ball games to be the bat boy. But you can tell he's just itching to get out on the field. He's tried a few times to throw the ball but he just doesn't have control without full movement of his pinkie.

Now for the fun stuff! Randy got the idea to turn our storage room into a game room for the boys. Bear in mind this was the room where the roof leaked all winter. So the carpet had to go. Randy has decided to try his hand at installing a laminate floor while he's on vacation. The flooring is the only part that the parental units will be picking out. Everything else is up to the boys. They have also been helping to get the room prepped. Last weekend they helped to pull out tack strips and staples before sanding the floor down and helped with painting the paneling. I'll get more pictures posted as we progress!

Opening Day

The opening ceremonies went fairly smoothly this year even though they were still putting up netting and backstops while pictures were being taken! Check out the Southside baseball site for a really cool aerial view of the field with most of the teams out there. The poor T-ball teams were getting their team pictures taken when they were trying to do this.

Robert's team played the opening game at 11am this year. We were all kind of worried because they really goofed off a lot during the practices over the past month. When they took the field on Saturday, it was like they had a completely different set of kids out there! They looked amazing! While they were doing warm ups, I got a chance to take a few pictures of Robert at first base. For the first time, I got to see how fluid his movements really were. It was absolutely amazing!

For the actual game, Robert's coach asked RJ to do the announcing for them. Needless to say, RJ was begging me to come up to the pressbox to do the books. While it's the best seat in the house, it was very difficult for me because you can't cheer from there! And I didn't get video of Robert playing. Which means I didn't get video of Robert's play of the game: an unassisted double play at first! He snagged the ball out of the air to get the batter out then ran over to tag first to get the runner out to end the inning! After tagging, he tossed the ball to the pitcher's mound and jogged to the dugout like it was no big deal. But you should have seen the grin on his face when he looked up at the pressbox!

At the end of the game, Robert was upset because he blew one play then struck out his next at bat. I took him over to the coach who keeps the team's game book to show him how many plays he had coming to first base. His outs at first base accounted for every single out in their innings except for 2. That percentage right there put him in the same league as many of the high school players out there now. That right there is amazing considering this was his first game starting at first base.

Even though they ended up lossing 6-7, those boys played an awesome game. They were the youngest average age team going against the oldest average age team. If that is any indication of how this season is going to be, then there is going to be a lot of hoarse parents out there!

Play Ball!

Honestly Robert thinks that should be the last words of the National Anthem! Yep, it's that time of year again. Robert is the only one playing this year. But RJ has stepped up to be an announcer for his games as well as help out the team mom when she needs him.

Robert's team is going to be interesting this year. We have one 12 year old, one 11 year old, four 10 year olds, and six 9 year olds. They looked pretty rough in their first practice game in March. But at last week's practice game they looked really tight! As first baseman, Robert is stepping up as the coach on field. He let's everyone know what the count is and when to move back or forward. He's also the one who starts up the "batter" chant. He's the loudest one out there, imagine that!

Opening day ceremonies is April 18th at 9am at Southside (Highland Park). Robert is really excited this year because Kokomo Glass (his team) drew to have the opening game of the season. So as soon as the ceremonies are over, he'll be heading out with his team to warm up.

Here's a listing of his games. All games will be played at Southside. Their colors are royal blue jerseys with yellow letters and gray pants. Their sock color alternates depending on whether they are home or away that day.

April 18 - 11:00
April 20 - 7:00
April 21 - 7:00
April 23 - 7:00
April 27 - 7:00
April 30 - 5:00
May 4 - 5:00
May 5 - 7:00
May 7 - 7:00
May 11 - 7:00 (this is also RJ's Spring Concert at 7pm at CMS so we'll be a split family that day)
May 13 - 5:00
May 18 - 5:00
May 21 - 7:00
May 27 - 7:00
May 28 - 5:00
June 1 - 5:00
June 2 - 5:00
June 4 - 7:00
June 9 - 7:00

Catch up

Well life has been interesting around here to say the least. But it has been a period of discoveries!

RJ has discovered that he was not meant to stand up on roller skates no matter how much Shandi tries to help him.

Robert has discovered that playing music isn't too bad (he has a bass guitar now).

Randy discovered that it does no good to lecture the boys about keeping their hands off the stuff at Guitar Center when they actually encourage people to play.

And I discovered that I am WAY too old to function on 3 hours of sleep!

RJ officially has a girlfriend now. Randy thinks she must be pretty cool since she was named after a KISS song. It doesn't matter that it was a really bad song... just that she was named after it. He's also found out that as long as he keeps turning in his homework, he gets to go out and do fun things. Imagine that!

Robert's baseball practices have gotten into full swing now. He ended his first practice by catching the baseball with his nose. The coaches were impressed that he knew right away how to take care of it and went to do it without a tear. They started working on Robert's pitching last week. The first one was really wild. But the coach showed him the motions and the next ones were really good. Only one pitch was straight up the middle. The rest were still within the strike zone, which is really good for a 10 year old with no experience. This week they start with 1 day in the batting cage and the next day in the gym. Hopefully Robert will be feeling better. He's currently lying in bed (voluntarily) with a fever, sore throat, and stuffy nose.

Randy woke up Friday morning with a rash on his chest. He swore up and down that it was the poison sumac rash he gets when he goes outside to pull weeds. Since he hadn't been doing that, I told him he was wrong and took at closer look at it. I told him it was shingles and he needed to go to the doctor. Well he ignored me and went into work anyway. Saturday he gets up looking like he hadn't slept any. He admitted that it felt like someone was stabbing him with sewing needles from his chest around to his back. I kicked him out to the doc... and guess what? He had to call and admit that I was right! After the nurse and I quizzed him some more, we found out that he'd had a spot on his back that had hurt for about 3 weeks. And the rash lead right to that spot! I guess I am learning something in school!

As for me, I'm still plugging along with work and school. My lecture is really becoming a struggle. We currently have 80% of our 66 students failing (below a 75%) the med/surg 2 lecture. Personally I only have an 80% which is a C. That is really going to kill my 3.95 GPA. And I am studying my butt off! Hopefully I can pull it up 2% over the next 3 tests so I can at least get a B out of the class.

The boys' latest saga

Last week was dental week for the boys. On Monday, RJ had his orthodontist appointment. He got the heavier weight upper arches, "chains" put on both uppers and lowers, and super heavy rubberbands on both sides. The chains are something I had never seen before. Instead of tightening up the wires to pull the teeth together, they put these things that look like rubberbands twisted around his brackets. The object is for them to close up the spaces in between his front teeth. And then the other rubberbands finish pulling his bottom jaw forward to close up his overbite. He gets to take off the rubberbands everytime he eats or brushes his teeth and then has to put them back on.

He was pretty sore for the first week of having all this done but he's been faithful about wearing his rubberbands. The theory is that if he wears them like he's supposed to, he'll be done with braces completely by the first part of October. Oh and he got a variety of colors (his fav is green and orange). He went through and picked out all the pink ones. I wouldn't let him throw them away though. I told him he gets grounded for doing something stupid, he has to wear the pink ones to school. Needless to say, we haven't had to enforce it... yet!

Tuesday was the regular dental check ups. RJ came out with a clean bill of health on his (which he was grateful for!). Robert didn't have any cavities. However, they noticed how his permanent teeth were really starting to turn sideways. So they did a panoramic xray. There they found that his permanent canines had completely missed the roots of the baby teeth and were pushing into the permanent ones! This means they are going to pull at least 2 baby teeth (tomorrow) and hope that gives the canines some room to redirect themselves. If they don't start coming down on their own, he will have to have them surgically brought down and bracketed in place. We are hoping that they move on their own!

On a side note, they did discover something else weird about Robert (imagine that!). He only has 3 wisdom teeth! When I mentioned that his uncle was missing a canine, they started counting teeth on his xray. He may be missing another permanent tooth as well but they won't be able to tell until they get his canines out of the way.

My crazy Tuesday

Tuesdays are usually my days to work 11am-7pm. This Tuesday they had 4 secretaries scheduled instead of the usual 3. I assumed it was a mistake and were going to end up sending someone home. Instead they sent me down to CVICU (a 2 bed ICU with a 1:1 nurse/patient ratio where they get all the thoracic surgery patients). The first thought going through my mind was "oh great, of all the days for me NOT to bring my bookbag!" When I get down there, Paula (the manager of CVICU/ICU and my former boss on TMS) asked what my grades were for my first semester of clinicals. After I told her, she said "Fantastic! You get to help the nurses out and get some hands on experience down here as well as do the secretary stuff." FINALLY I get some patient care time!

Everything went smoothly until around 1:30ish when the thoracic surgeon calls up and states that we have to move one of the patients up to CCPU and get the room STAT cleaned for another patient. We pulled off a miracle turnaround of 15 minutes on making that happen. And then the entire department (keep in mind this unit is the old ER and the patient rooms are the old trauma rooms) was taken over by equipment and staff from OR/Cath lab. To make a long story short, I got to observe putting a patient on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) and floating a temporary pacemaker. It was such a rush! The doctors and nurses did a fantastic job of teaching once the patient was stabilized. Even during the procedures, they would explain what they were doing and why they were doing it. They even set up monitors at the nurses station so we could have a good view of what was going on.

Needless to say my 8 hour shift turned into a 13 hour shift with lunch/supper on the run. But it was well worth it! And I must have done something right because they asked me to come back to CVICU Friday morning for at least 7am - 11am to assist with the beginnings of a post-op open heart! I am hoping that they are light enough on TMS on Friday that I can stay down there :)