Every year, our town hosts a Festival of Lights parade and carnival. This year, it was supposed to be on Saturday, but due to crazy horrible weather, everything was moved to Sunday. Due to a previous engagement, I was unable to ride on the float on Sunday, and I was really bummed about it.
But I was able to help work on it a bit the week before. It was really, really cute. I know these student nurses worked so hard on it, and from the photos...it looked like it was worth it.
Here are a few of the photos of the float "in the process".
It's an alligator, since our school mascot is a gator.
And here are some pictures of the finished product in action!
Christmas is just around the corner and it is Jansen's last year of elementary school. Each year, we put together some little treat for the kids in his class.
This year, we decided against the traditional "sweets" gifts and instead chose to do glow bracelets.
There are 17 kids in his class and Walmart had these packs of glow bracelets for 97 cents. I bought them out!
Then I went to this PAGE and downloaded her cute little printable.
Punch a hole, sign the name, string some ribbon, and these little gifts are finished.
YAY!
Now that I am on break from nursing school I can catch up on blogging. Oh, our lives have been so busy. I am about to blow up this blog with activities. Brace yourselves!
So the first thing I will blog about is 4th grade elections. Jansen has decided that he wants to run for CHICKEN club President.
It makes me so proud that he is confident enough to try this. I could never just run for a school office. I am way too insecure for that.
He picked out stickers, poster board, and letters and got to work.
He's a cutie if I do say so myself. Even if he doesn't win, this is a fantastic learning experience for him.
Jansen for Prez! "Because Prez is cooler than President!"
It's here, it's here, it's here!!!
Oh thank you!!!!
The time has come for a quick break. Nursing school is over for a whole week. Can I get an AMEN!?
Thursday was our last day of class for a week and it couldn't have come soon enough. We came together as a group to have a Thanksgiving meal just for the nursing group and teachers. It was fun to just take some time to relax, eat, and enjoy each other's company.
Thursday evening was also my first "clinical" experience in working a local clinic. After class, myself and a classmate went to work for 4 hours at the Live Oak Clinic here in town and it was a fantastic experience.
I worked with the "triage" nurse to take vitals, blood glucose, and A1C's on the patients we saw before they were sent to see the doctors. I was also able to watch the nurse educator teach some patients how to give themselves insulin as they would be receiving it for the very first time.
It wasn't really surprising to see that almost every patient we saw either had diabetes or COPD. It was a really great experience and was a low key way to get my feet wet directly with patients.
Our professors are also going to be hosting a Christmas party for the nursing students and their families after Thanksgiving. They challenged us to decorate our classroom. Um, challenge accepted. They told us they are expecting big things and that we have our work cut out for us. Well.....let's do this.
So I am currently working on a few things and several of us are meeting at the school on Monday (our day off) to start decorating. It should be really cute :)
On a not-so-happy front, my husband's grandmother is currently on hospice. While we are completely saddened by this, I am so glad that I am in nursing school so that I can be of some help to her and my family during this time. We were there tonight, and I will be going back tomorrow morning to help her with some of her personal care. It's made me a little bit mellow the last few days. Having seen several of my family members on hospice, I know what to expect. This is definitely an area of medicine that I want to pursue eventually once I graduate and get my license.
So that is my family in a nutshell over the last few weeks. A break for me, a break for my kids, family sadness, and the holidays are almost upon us. :) Hope you all have a blessed weekend!
Halloween for us was a bit different this year. We tried to go with some of our friends to a local church's festival. It was nice...but it seemed like it was catering more to the little children as opposed to kids my boys' age.
The boys quickly said, "I'm ready to go. Can we just go trick or treat?"
So we drove back home, even though it was already dark, and got about 45 minutes worth of trick or treating in. They don't need buckets full of candy.
Then our friends came back over to our house with their kids and we all enjoyed some 50 cent corn dogs from Sonic. It's a tradition.
