Growing Up

So I was at my clinical (basically an unpaid internship) seeing patients and doing my thing. I saw a woman whose blood pressure was through the roof and I realized that I could do anything I wanted to do with her. I could send her away, I could admit her to the hospital, I could prescribe pills. It was up to me.
I have known for a long time that I would be a nurse practitioner but it really hit me that it is getting very close. In a very short four months I will graduate. If all goes well I will have passed my licensing exam by the end of the summer and will be working with my own patients by then. That means that I will be able to treat my own patients, write my own prescriptions, and have my own practice very very soon.
Wow, that sounds so grown up!!!

Our new pets

Greg has wanted a big fish tank for a while. Well, we got one. It is huge; as long as a couch! Setting it up took a little longer than we thought. It turns out that Greg's idea of getting river rocks from a river here in the city doesn't work so well in the winter time. My idea of buying gravel from Home Depot also wasn't so hot, apparently not a lot of people need gravel this time of year. We did eventually find some gravel that Greg deemed worthy of his tank and then added the rocks that he has been collecting and saving for years. We got some fish yesterday, they are tiny little things. They will grow to be big though so we didn't want to over populate the tank, but right now it looks a little funny with just seven tiny fish in that huge tank.
It is fun to watch them though and see how they interact, I also enjoy the sound, it is soothing.

Greg's new toy

So Greg got a new toy. It went a long way to make his nose feel better. He got a new 52 inch Samsung LCD TV. He did a lot of research into what he wanted and now there is a very large television set in my house. The delivery guys even brought it upstairs for us, all we had to do was take it our of the box which was not so bad because it was surprisingly light. I would have taken a picture of our TV except that I am not thrilled with the cleanliness of the room.

Greg got a nose job!

So Greg has had a crooked nose all of his life and he decided to get it fixed; he thought that it would be cool to breath easily out of his nose for the first time in his life. So on Thursday we went to the hospital to have it done. Everything went pretty well until Greg realized that he couldn't feel his right arm. It was completely numb, apparently he was laying on it funny and compressed a nerve. The doctor didn't seem very concerned, he said that the feeling would come back within a couple of weeks. Greg did not think that sounded ok at all. A couple of weeks without being able to feel his right arm!!! Greg thought that that was an awfully long time to not be able to play his guitar. Fortunately it only took until Saturday for the feeling to come back.
From my perspective I thought that all went very well, Greg only has three stitches in a small triangle on the underside of his nose, all the other stitches are inside and hidden. The stitches are also so small that they are hard to see, if they weren't blue they might be invisible.
Now he is just working on healing. He still hurts quite a bit and is feeling a little sick to his stomach but otherwise much better. His nose is still swollen so he can't breath out of it too well but our hopes are high that soon he will have a new straight and functioning nose. :)

I am addicted

So I must confess, I have an addiction. I am addicted to HGTV. I love it! I started watching it because I was looking for something clean to watch (that is the great thing about HGTV and the Food Network). Anyway I have come to realize that they have all sorts of great ideas. I particularly enjoy the show Design on a Dime. That is the perfect price tag for me.
That is not the end of my addictions, as I become more interested in decorating I also have become a KSL.com geek. I would highly recommend it to anyone needing almost anything. It is fabulous!
So my addictions got me started thinking about my living room, which really needs a makeover, and I decided to do something about it. I was so excited about the makeover I couldn't sleep. I thought of many different scenerios and various possibilities. Some of the ideas were a little wacky, some were too pricey, a few were good.
So I have started redoing my living room. I have come a long way, I sanded and stained a table that I had, got a cover for my loveseat, bought a great bench and some rugs (from KSL), made a cushion for the bench and some pillows for the loveseat and bench (that was really my mom), painted a wall and the mantel (with help from my sweetheart), stripped sanded and stained the bench that I bought, and then hung some decorations (luckily I had some help from my sister for that)
Though I am not done I do love sitting in my new room and just looking. This morning Greg and I were sitting just looking at the wall we had painted. After a few minutes he thought we needed to get out more, I thought we were admiring a hard days work.

School

So School is back on. This is my last semester. I can't even tell you how happy I am about that, I have now been doing this college thing for a total of 7 1/2 years. Wow, that is much longer than I had originally planned. This semester I get to write a ridiculously long paper; tons of research into a topic as yet to be determined. I also am doing my residency (essentially an internship, paying the university for the privilege of working) and taking what I hope will be a very easy online cultural competency course. Though it is a lot to do I am pretty happy about it. I can't wait to be done (I am not sure what I will do when I can come home and not have any homework) and move on to the next phase of my professional life. Becoming a nurse practitioner. YEAH!!!!
As for Greg this is his first semester returning to the world of students. Getting in the grove had not been as bad as he would have thought, though he was a bit shocked to see the cost of tuition. One of his favorite things is that his class begins at 5:45 and parking is free after 6:00. Boys find such funny things to be happy about.

2009

Well New Years for us was probably not what it was to most of you. I worked that night so Greg and I bid farewell to 2008 over the phone. I did my best to have some time at midnight so that I could spend some long distance time with my sweetheart. Though it was not ideal it was much better than nothing.
On New Years Day Greg picked me up and we headed to Bear Lake to join my family and some friends at my parent's cabin. We played games and went snowmobiling (not me, I don't like the cold). It was nice and relaxing. It was also good to spend time with people we care about. Not to mention it was beautiful.