Great Holiday

Well it's been a while since my last post. I had my MRI done on Wednesday and I should find out the results this Wednesday 12/3. So I will let you know what we find out.

Eric and I had a great Thanksgiving. My brother stayed with us Wednesday and Thursday night. We went to Eric's parents house on Thursday and took my brother with us. Our parents unfortunately had to work Thanksgiving so he spent it with us and Eric's side of the family. We had a great time. We had a huge meal and then spent the afternoon baking. My brother even participated in the baking extravaganza! We made turtles, buckeyes, mexican wedding cakes, fudge, mini pecan pies, cinnamon rolls, carmel rolls and cookies! It was a lot of fun learning to make new things ( I am not much of a cook, let alone a baker!) So his family and my brother enjoyed teaching me to make things. The buckeyes were an experience, I am pretty sure I had quite a bit of powdered sugar on my clothes and on the counter ( I wonder how much actually ended up in the buckeyes?!) Oh well it was fun to say the least!

We then spent Friday and Saturday with my parents, my brother and my nephew. Friday we went to Pizza Hut for dinner and then Dad took Eric, my brother and me bowling! I haven't bowled in a while and I beat my brother both games, which never happens, so that was a lot of fun (although I am not so sure how happy he was to get beat by his little sister not once but twice!) Then Saturday my mom made Thanksgiving dinner. We then took my nephew who is 2 to see Madagascar 2. It was fun to watch him, he had never been to the movies before! He did really well though and seemed to enjoy it!

We had a lot of fun but I am thankful that the holiday is over for now! It is always nice to have a break from school, unfortunately that break was so busy I need a break to recover from my break! But studying awaits me for my test tomorrow! The end is near, just a few more weeks until the semester is over.

I went back on my lifestyle change full force today. I have really been struggling with this for a while now. I have been helping Mindy get started on her new lifestyle change this week, however feeling guilty because I hadn't been doing it myself! So thanks to Mindy, I am back on board! I need to do this for me, but I also need to do this so that I can continue to help others and glorify God. I will continue to update on the progress! I am hoping to start exercising today as well! I will let you know how that goes!

I hope everyone had a great holiday! Talk to you all soon!

Please Pray!

I went to the doctor today for my ankles. I had the ligaments in both of my ankles reconstructed 2 years ago along with having a scope done on my right ankle. I have been doing fairly well until the last couple of months. I have been having a lot of pain. So I called my orthopedic foot doctor and made an appointment. Thinking it was probably just arthritis, because I am at a high risk for it!

So I go in for my appointment today and leave having had x-rays taken and being scheduled for an MRI. I go back in a week and a half to go over the results of the MRI and make some decisions. But at this point it looks like we are leaning towards having to have another scope done or a more invasive procedure that involves removing cartilage from my knee or hip and placing it in my ankle. So we shall see what happens. I will keep you updated.

I don't know how much more bad news I can take medically! I mean, I am already dealing with my eye problems and facing a possible surgery with my eyes next spring. And now this! All this in the midst of nursing school. I would really appreciate your prayers during this tough time.

Prayer and God is the only thing that will pull me through this.

Quick Update

Ok so all of my mandatory tests are done for the semester! I passed 2 and I had to remediate on my pharmacology one! It was ridiculous! There were several cancer drugs and other drugs that I had never heard of on there. Even our professor was shocked when we told her what was on there! But I remediated and I am done with those for this semester! I can't wait till next semester to take more!

I have my last health history due tomorrow and clinicals end on Wednesday! So the little bit of down time through the end of the semester will be welcomed!

I am excited that I am getting a treadmill from my dad this week! So hopefully I can start working out. My energy has been really low lately. I assume from all of the stress, the not so good eating habits and lack of good sleep I have been getting. So hopefully having a treadmill will help me to get moving and lose more weight. I have been at a standstill for a while now! But that is my own fault. I got my infection, school got stressful and the good eating habits went out the window. I am hoping to start them back up soon!

I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving break. I am ready for a break from school and some time with my family!

I will post more later in the week! But that's all for now!

Being faithful pays off!

Ok so I am sure that we are not the only ones who have ever struggled with faith! It seems like forever ago, but it's only been about a year and a half ago since Eric and I started tithing. Before we started tithing, there were always excuses. We didn't know how we could afford it, we were selfish and wanted the money for us, etc. We talked with PK about it and he said that if after 3 months God had not been faithful and we weren't seeing results, the church would give us our money back. We thought well that's a crazy idea but ok PK we trust you, (still not trusting God at that point) we are in. So Eric and I began tithing. Well long story short, we never asked PK for our money back,funny thing, and God was faithful. After we started tithing Eric got a 2 dollar an hour raise at work. That was more than 10% of his current pay! So that money that we didn't know where it would come from....well there it was plus some. God is good.

So a couple of weeks ago we had our building to bless campaign 1 year anniversary at church. Eric and I had not participated in the campaign for the first year for the same excuses that we used when we were not tithing. So when the pledge cards came out this time I told Eric that I felt like we should contribute. Again, he was really on the fence not knowing where the extra money would come from since I am not working and our income is limited. We continued to talk about it and I said, but we couldn't we just do a certain amount of money? Again he was still hesitant but we finally agreed on an amount still not knowing where that money would come from, but knowing it would come from somewhere.

Well fast forward to today. I got home from clinicals and checked the mail as usual. The first thing I opened was from Ivy Tech. I was dreading that it was a bill or something not good (although I had no reason to think either of those things!) Oh the life of a worrier! Anyways, so I open the piece of mail expecting the worst only to find out that I received a nursing scholarship that will cover my tuition for this semester and next!! I was so excited and overwhelmed by God's greatness! I called Eric to share the news.

Then while talking to Eric I continued to open up the rest of the mail to find out that Eric had received a check from his uncle for helping him with computer problems. Again, nothing we were expecting but something we greatly appreciated. We were just overwhelmed with joy about the unexpected funds we received today!

I post this to share you with you that are God is awesome! We have struggled at times with being faithful but God always affirms our faithful decisions! Isn't that awesome? It makes me wonder why it is so hard to be 100% faithful and just let God be in control?!

Great Weekend!

Eric and I had a wonderful weekend away! We spent some much needed time together and did some fun things while we were gone. We headed to Indy Friday night after Eric got off of work and we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We had never eaten there before. The food was good but the cheesecake was fabulous! We split a piece of cheesecake that had reeses cups, butterfinger, peanut butter and chocolate swirled throughout it! It was amazing!! If you have never been to Cheesecake Factory I would recommend going just for the experience of the cheesecake! We then did a little bit of shopping, well looking, at the fashion mall. It is to pricey for our tight budget :) We then turned into the hotel for the night and watched a movie and relaxed!

We woke up Saturday morning and headed downtown. We had breakfast at Cinnabon, yummy! We then headed over to the Bodies exhibit! This exhibit was so neat! If you are into learning about the body and things of that nature I would highly recommend you check it out! I wasn't sure if Eric would enjoy it, being that he is not really into that stuff, but he said that he learned a lot and thought it was pretty cool! A very interesting fact that we learned while we were there: You lose 3 hours and 45 minutes of your life for EVERY pack of cigarettes that you smoke! Can you believe that? That's incredibly scary! So if you know someone who smokes share that fun fact with them! Wow! After the bodes exhibit we headed over to Circle Centre to do some shopping! Again, a bust! We didn't but a single thing but jewelry cleaner. We then headed over to Clay Terrace Mall in Carmel. While we were at Clay Terrace we had some Red Robin for lunch! That was a first for us, we figured PK liked it so we would give it a shot! It was very good I must say, we will go back! We then did some shopping! Eric got some new tennis shoes and a toboggan. I got a new Vera Bradley item! Yay! We then left Clay Terrace and headed back to the hotel. I took a nap and Eric and watched TV and played on the internet. Then that evening we headed out to Crackers comedy club for the 8 pm non smoking show, with all of the old people :) This too was a first for us. We had never been to a comedy club, but we had a blast! I haven't laughed so much in a long time! It was a great time! The headliner was Chris Porter, he was a runner up on Last Comic Standing. He was very good and hilarious! We had appetizers at the show(that was dinner) we then headed back to the hotel for the night.

We slept in this morning and packed up and left the hotel around 10:30. We headed to Perkins for breakfast. We then stopped in at Castleton Mall for some shopping. We bought Eric a shirt and then headed home around 1:30!

It was a great weekend. We enjoyed our time with each other and getting to have a break from school. I only wish we could do it more often. But unfortunately we are back home and already back to working on school work :( Here is to a good week and good rest of the semester!! God Bless!!

Did anyone else do anything fun this weekend? If so tell me about it I would love to know what you did this weekend!

Looking forward to the weekend!

It's been a while since I have blogged. School has been school as usual! Busy with tests and lots of studying. I have had a few fun and interesting experiences the past week though! I got to start an IV on my friend Vanessa in class last week! I got it in on the first try and I didn't hurt her or bruise her :) Mission accomplished!! I also got to give flu shots last week(mission accomplished), I got to insert a catheter today (mission not so accomplished), I got to do glucometers (mission accomplished) and next week I get to pass meds and do insulin coverage! I am enjoying getting to experience all of this stuff. But no one can prepare you for how different things are from when you learn and practice things in lab to when you actually do them on a real person! It is so nerve racking!! I hope that as time goes on things become easier and not so nerve racking!

I have had a slight break in studying this week and let me tell you that has been nice and a blessing. I spent 3 hours deep cleaning my house last night, it really needed it! It felt so good to be able to put some time into something other than school!

Eric and I are looking forward to the weekend. We have reserved a hotel in Indianapolis for the entire weekend! We made an agreement that we would not be doing any homework or studying while we are gone. We really need this weekend to spend some quality time with each other. We are looking forward to hanging out and doing some Christmas shopping. We are also planning on attending the Bodies exhibit while we are there! I am really excited about that, it looks so interesting! I hope that we will really get to spend some much needed time together and come back refreshed and ready to push through the end of the semester.

I can't wait until Friday. I have a check off on IV's and central line dressing change tomorrow morning. A Pharmacology test tomorrow afternoon. And then Friday at 5:30 we are out for the weekend and I can't wait! God Bless!!