amber & josh: January 2013

Preceptorship

For my last semester of nursing school, we do what is called a Preceptorship (or a capstone). I have to do 135 hours of clinical work with the same nurse on the same floor of a hospital. Our instructor picks these for us, and we really don't have any say. These are different from my clinicals I have been doing the last 3 semesters because with those, we did one a week throughout the 14 week semester, and every time we went, we were with a different nurse and went to a different floor (ICU, ER, labor and delivery, post-partum, OR) every time. This will give me a lot of great experience because I will get to do 3 twelve hour shifts a week, like I am working full time, so I will get to know and care for the patients that are ill instead of coming back once a week to a different floor and having it be different patients everytime. I will be going to the huge IMC facility in Murray Utah. This is a giant hospital and has many floors. I get to be on the Shock Trauma/Respiratory ICU unit and am SO EXCITED! This is where people will come from the ER and will be on mechanical ventilation (where the machine breathes for you) and people will have chest tubes and need a lot of nursing care. There are a lot of different traumas that are seen on this unit and I am going to get so much experience.

Not too much longer to go... I graduate in April with my Associate of Science in Nursing with my Registered Nursing license!! I plan to complete my Bachelor's Degree in Nursing, which is only another two semesters.

Roxy update

Roxy is getting so big! So big that at her annual vet check-up, the vet said she was overweight and needed to lose 4 pounds! She is 13.8 pounds and supposedly she is supposed to be 10 or even under. This is crazy! She is already so tiny! But we sure love our little fluffy. She is so spoiled and she knows it. She is always making us laugh and always gives us love and snuggles. Her favorite things right now are her toys.... she has a million. I always clean them up and throw them in a corner in the living room and two seconds later she drags them all out and scatters them all over the house. She has a zoo of stuffed animals she likes to pile up and then chew her bones on. She has a lion, bear, elephant, and a badger. She also likes to sit them up all next to each other. In November we finally taught her how to roll! So what she knows so far is: sit, stay, shake, lay, roll over, and whenever we say 'treat' she runs over to the treat drawer and sits patiently. She also LOVES tuna fish. Whenever she hears the can opener, she freaks out and starts growling and barking at me. This is frustrating because 90% of the time it isn't tuna, I am just opening stuff for dinner and she gets so mad at me. She also loves the snow. We hate when it snows because when we take her outside to go potty in fresh snow, she has to run through the whole yard and smash her face in all of the new snow... so it takes about 30 minutes each time to go potty.

Roxy loves her bear... and sleeping in dad's pants

She carries her bear around everywhere

She always sleeps in the most uncomfortable looking places

She is so cute!!

"Snow" boots

This is what we have to deal with when it snows...

Like father like daughter

Studying with dad

Mr Bear again

Snuggling with mom

TUNA

She likes to be tucked in to bed

Her best friend Maggie on Halloween

She loves her dad...

and her mom!

Josh's 23 Birthday!

Josh's birthday was on a Saturday this year... yay!! It was two days before school started, so we took advantage of the last weekend off. We slept in till about 1230 and then I made him a big plate of bacon and one eyes for his birthday breakfast. I hadn't planned anything but dinner, since we weren't doing presents or anything big for our birthdays, but he said he just wanted to relax and enjoy the day. I asked him if he had ever gotten a pedicure and he said no. We jumped in the car and I took him to go get his first pedicure! It was so relaxing to soak our feet and sit in the massage chairs. The warm water felt so good because it was freezing outside. When we got home, we took a nap and watched some TV shows. For dinner, I took him to Tucano's, which is where we have gone for the past 3 years for his birthday because it is meat heaven for him and he doesn't get very much meat at home. So this is his yearly splurge where we just sit for a few hours and he has at every type of meat imaginable. They even had salmon, which is his favorite! Happy Birthday honey!

Christmas

Since I worked on Thanksgiving Day this year, I was lucky enough to get Christmas Day off. I had to work on Christmas Eve, but I get off work at 6pm anyway so that wasn't a big deal. On Christmas Day, Josh and I enjoyed sleeping in until about 10am and then we opened presents. We went an visited our families and then had prime rib dinner at my Mom's house.

Temple Lights

Christmas Morning (no these are not all for us... about 3/4 of this presents are for the 15 people in our family!)

Finally a tall mirror! We have the matching dresser in our bedroom.

Jazz tix!

My new sweat suit... I look like a boy

My baby Roxy and I

Roxy and Maggie.. how cute!

Baby B and I... I love her!!!

My pups!

School Break!

Finally a break!! Josh and I had 3 weeks off of school for winter break and it was AMAZING! It is so nice to only have to work full time and not have to worry about coming home at 7pm exhausted and having to go straight to doing homework until midnight. I only work 3 times a week, since I work 12 hour shifts and get my full time hours in those 3 days, so having 4 full days off a week to relax and not worry about anything was so great. I still feel like I was extremely busy though for some reason.

Over the break we had a lot of fun. My mom and KC took Josh and I to the Christmas Carol play that was going on at the Draper Historic Theater. My dad and Sharon took the whole family downtown to Olive Garden one night and then we went and saw the lights at temple square. We went to a few Christmas parties. We had fondue at my dad's for Christmas Eve and Prime Rib dinner at my Mom's on Christmas Day. My mom took me to see Les Mis and Josh went to The Hobbit with a buddy from work. I took Josh to the Jazz vs LA Clippers game after Christmas. We went to Idaho for New Years. Brad and Susie took us out to dinner for our birthdays. That about sums up what we did over the break....Whewwwww!

Amber's 22 Birthday

For my our birthday's this year, Josh and I got new phones. We got white Samsung Galaxy S III's. Kinda boring... but in September I dropped my phone face down on tile and it shattered the LED screen so it wouldn't even turn on. Luckily, we had an upgrade on November 1st. So we decided that since it was going to cost each of us $200 to get a new phone, it would be our early birthday presents this year.

My actual birthday was on a Wednesday this year and I had clinical for school :( So I was up at 4 am and had to drive out to Tooele hospital and be there until 6 pm. However, Josh wouldn't let me have the bad day that I was expecting to have, and woke up with me at 4 am and cooked me an amazing breakfast and made me some hot chocolate for the drive and started my car! When I got home that night, he made homemade chicken alfredo. It was the most delicious dinner ever! He got a special recipe from the internet and he cooked for over an hour. Hand breaded chicken that was nice and crispy and homemade alfredo sauce (the yummy fattening kind with half and half!... mmmmmm.

I really didn't get much of a break the whole week of my birthday. I had work Sunday, school Monday and Tuesday, clinical Wednesday (my birthday), work Thursday, and a Pharmacology exam on Friday. Finally on Saturday I got to sleep in and have the day all to myself!!! After my exam on Friday night, my Dad and Sharon took us to Twilight and out to dinner.

On Saturday, my Mom and KC took us out to Olive Garden for lunch! Yummy! That night, Josh and I went to City Creek for the first time and did a little bit of shopping and then he took me to The Melting Pot for my birthday dinner. This place is so dang good! I had heard of it before, but we had never been. We got the 3 course meal. So we had a cheese fondue that we dipped bread, fruit, and veggies in. Second, we had the main broth fondue that we dipped meat into including chicken, beef, pork, steak, and shrimp. Lastly, we had a chocolate marshmallow (smores) fondue that we dipped cheesecake and all sorts of fruit into.