crunch time

happy birthday to me!! well, as of yesterday, anyway! :) Yesterday I was initiated into the age category of "early 30s" No longer at the milestone of just 30, I'm now 31. I'm surprised at how this suddenly feels so much older than I thought it would be. Good thing I have a best friend who is 32 and a husband who is 28. One reminds me that being older is not so bad and the other keeps me young. ;)

It was a good day all around--I felt I made some good accomplishments at work, then dinner with my family, then a nice walk with husband & puppy in the warming spring air. It was a nice day!

Now, today, crunch time begins. I have a nasty paper due in my nursing theory *gag* course tomorrow. This will make for an interesting day. Luckily, the weather will keep me from being too cranky as it is sunny and suppose to warm up to 50 degrees today! yeah for SPRING!! :)

cracking hearts

I love this picture. About five years ago, two of my friends were pregnant at the same time. Alessa came first, on March 17, and William was two months later, on May 24. Through the years, lives get busy, people move--but we have all tried to stay in touch and revel in the joy of watching these precious children grow. Alessa & William were the first "neice" and "nephew" of my heart. It has been an honor to be dubbed "auntie" by them and their siblings--most likely because of the knowledge it will be a loooong time before it happens for real through my brother. :)

These two don't get to see eachother very often--but when they do, they seem to click and have great fun playing together. According to William's mom, earlier that day she had told him he would see Alessa that night. From that moment on, he carried around his digital alarm clock, hoping the numbers would soon show 5-3-0 (the appointed time). At one point, he couldn't stand the wait anymore--and began crying to his mom: "I can't wait anymore! My heart is cracking!!"


Ah, from the mouths of babes. :) His cracked heart healed, 5-3-0 eventually came, and a good time was had by all.

leap day!

Happy leap day to everyone! At work today we talked about how this should actually be a recognized world-wide holiday as a vacation day. Since we are getting "caught up" with our trip around the sun, we should also get "caught up" on things that may be lacking in our lives--namely, rest!

Here in Michigan it's just one more day to add to our record breaking month of no sun and lots of snow...I'm ready for March!

oh, and happy birthday to my brother, who is in Korea and as of right now is already in March--celebrating his birthday I hope! :)

funny story

No, I did not write this letter, but I did have to chuckle out loud! :) --rjv

Dear Tech support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry application which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.9, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate

DEAR DESPERATE
First keep in mind Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If the application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck
Tech Support

concept analysis of my life

Can one person do too much? I'm testing this theory...I may have to even do a concept analysis on it (an inside joke with myself...). Right now in my life I have the following to keep me out of trouble: work as a school nurse, plan an annual conference for Michigan Association of School Nurses for both this year and 2009, two graduate level nursing courses, sing in church choir and be in easter musical, and be a loving, encouraging, and supportive wife to my wonderful husband.

The highlights: being a wife is definitely right up there! But my work as a school nurse and all that that encompasses (MASN) is really exciting. I love being a part of something so big--not only touching the lives of my students and families, but also working within the state-wide organization of MASN as it works to improve the standards of school nursing practice.

The lowlights: one of my grad classes is really getting to me. Nursing Theory is such an incredible stretch for my "live by the rules" personality; words like "phenomenon" and "empirical referent" and "concept analysis" are all completely abstract to me. I've never been good at arguing--much less arguing for concepts I barely understand! My only light in this tunnel is the topic of my research paper; I chose to investigate Reactive Attachment Disorder. Many of you may not know what this is--but if you really want to know, just shoot me an e-mail and I can have you proof read my paper once it's written. ;)

So, there you have it, Rachel's life in a nutshell right now. All I can say is, God must have big plans for me, cause I'm feeling very stretched!

ho-hum

I do believe the winter "blahs" have set in...officially. We are on our way to record-breaking amounts of snow this winter. Great! if you love snow, but not so great if you love the sun. I'm thinking warm sunny thoughts of summertime--vacations, sleeping bear dunes, camping--it tends to warm me up inside. :)

We celebrated our first Valentine's day as a married couple with little fanfare. Neither of us wanted to join in the mass of crowds, so we ordered to go (one of our favorite things to do lately), and cozied up on the couch to watch DVD episodes of Seinfeld (another one of our favorite things to to do). He gave me a CD I had been wanting (has anyone heard Mandisa?! she's awesome!) and I gave him a Life Is Good t-shirt. It was a good evening.

Grad classes are keeping me very busy and slightly overwhelmed, but so far I'm managing. Jason is keeping busy, but managing quite well so far, his three courses. Overall, life is chugging right along without a whole lot of fanfare or excitement right now and that's okay by me!

seriously?!

I couldn't believe it, Jason woke me up this morning to inform me I had snow day! I couldn't believe it--I had to check the listings myself. WOW! okay, so normally, when one complains, they still don't always get their own way...but my last posting complained of snow, sun, & sick. While we still have the snow (which I previously mentioned I don't mind too much), today we have SUN! and I get a break from all the sickees!! My goodness. :)

It is very cold today, but the sun is out for now, and it's beautiful. Harley and I are enjoying the coziness of home, while I'm just purely thankful!

Harley loves watching for squirrels from the warm house... :)

by the way--this is the ONLY piece of furniture Harley is allowed on... ;)