Back to the Real World....

I am back in VA...well at least for 3 more weeks until I head back home for Christmas!! YEAH!!
Even though I know I will be back in a few weeks it is always still so sad to leave and even more sad to know I am coming home to our lonely little house! But I had a wonderful time hanging out with the fam and enjoying Thanksgiving with them all. So tomorrow it is back to the real world of school and work. Although I am really looking forward to school this week, so that has helped me with coming back to VA :) This past week I was in the mother/baby unit and then starting tomorrow we will be in the Labor and Delivery unit for 3 days. I am sooo excited and pray we get to see a lotta little lives come into this crazy world!! Last week was so much fun too in seeing all the new proud parents and these precious little gifts of theirs!

Jason had a good Thanksgiving and was able to have a few of the Thanksgiving menu items. He had his regatta on Thursday afternoon. He said there were about 30 boats that entered the contest. He was the lucky one who got to paddle his boat in the actual regatta part. Although it teetered a bit and he fell out of the boat once, he ended up in 3rd place!! He said it was fun and was really surprised at the turn out. So hopefully he will be sending some pics soon that I can post.

We are down to the 6.5 week left mark - YEAH!! So I pray these next 3 weeks fly by and I know my time at home will and then once I return back to VA we should have only 2 weeks or so left! PRAISE GOD!!!

Well here are a few pics from mom and I decorating their house for Christmas....dad was behind the camera, so we will have to get him in the pics at Christmas!

I pray you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Thankfuls

So much to be Thankful for....

God - for all He has done for me and sent His son Jesus to die for my sins
Jason - for being the most awesome husband that he is and for him serving our country for our freedom and for the sacrifices he makes daily
Family - for being the models that they are for us
Friends - for their support and prayers during times such as we are going through now


I am thankful for the job the Lord blessed me with exactly one year ago, when I thought He was so not listening to my prayer for a job - He was faithful and taught me a lot in that waiting period and I am seeing His perfect plan unravel with this job he placed me in. I am thankful for the opportunity to go to nursing school and the wonderful success I have had thus far with this.

I could continue to go on and on, but these are just a few of the MANY thankfuls that I have.
I pray you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

Capping

Practical Nurse's Pledge

Before God and those assembled here, I solemnly pledge:

To adhere to the code of ethics of the nursing profession.

To cooperate loyally with the other members of the nursing team and to carry out faithfully and to the best of my ability the instructions of the physcian or the nurse who may be assigned to supervise my work.

I will not do anything evil or malicious and will not knowingly give any harmful drug or assist in malpractice.

I will not reveal any confidential information that may come to my knowledge in the course of my work.

And I pledge myself to do all in my power to raise the standards and the prestige of Practical Nursing.

May my life be devoted to service and to the high ideals of the nursing profession.

My Confession

So I must finally confess that I have a secret competition going on with the neighbor...well not so secret because my friends always are laughing at me about it. Well I am always competing every week with my neighbor (who does not even know he is in a competition with me) to see who can get their yard done first. I am not saying whose yard looks the best (because they got us beat by way far) but who can get theirs done first! Kinda funny because my friends are always teasing me because they always ask what I am doing for the weekend and it is always, do the yard, wash the cars, and study. And of course their reply is "oh yeah Michelle gotta beat that neighbor to their yard work."
He normally beats me but that is because he is retired and loves to do yard work (so I guess because he is always out there) and I am never home and yard work is not my favorite (although I do not mind mowing - I love to see the lines from where you mowed, kinda like the vacuum lines on the carpet, but do hate all these dang leaves I have to bag up every week.) So he did beat me this weekend but that is because it was raining all day yesterday and I was at church this morning. He started while I was at church, but that is ok, I just keep praying for them.
But I must say that J and I do have them beat on the cleanest car competition (in which he probably does not know he is involved in either!) LOL!!
Anyways...now that you all think I am totally weird - hopefully it will give you a good laugh!

Update on Jason

He has moved to the day shift, so we will most likely only get to talk via phone on the weekends now due to our crazy schedules and the time difference of 8 hours (they did not "fall" back an hour!) So that is a bit hard, but thank goodness for computers.
He is doing good though...it is a bit warmer being on the day shift (it has dropped to the 90's now and around 60's at night), but he is keeping really busy! They only had one day to switch from nights to days, so it was a rough start for him on Wednesday but I think he was so tired by evening, that he was able to get on track fairly quickly. But it is definitely quite exciting to know we are definitely on the downside of this deployment!!! The ending can not come quick enough!
Also, in other news...we thought there would be a chance for us to go back to Florida, but the military decided to nix that. Jason has been doing some calling along with his wonderful command that he works for now (kinda sad you have to deploy in order to find good supervisors!) in hopes of having something for him for when he returns. He kinda does not have a job when he returns, so he was "looking" for a job and there were some in Florida (sorry -trying to put it in laymen's terms.) After his commander made a few phone calls they were told we have to be on station 2 years before leaving. Which kinda does not make much since...but we do like it here but Jason was trying to take advantage of having an opportunity to actually pick your next assignment. So it looks like we will be in VA for a little bit longer...for how long, we do not know?? But if you think about it, please do say a prayer that all goes smoothly with a job for him when he does return.

God is in Control

Now that the election is behind us and forward we must go and remember that God is in control!!!....here are a few thoughts from another blog of a friend of a friend "Whether you personally like it or not, Barack Obama is our president now. As such, he deserves the prayer, support and respect due to someone in that office. Paul commands us to honor and serve our rulers as the ministers of God (so far, of course, as conscience allows) Speaking disrespectfully of them is an offense against God and a bad testimony to the name of Christ. (1 Peter 2; Romans 13). He is our president and he has my prayer and respectful support." May we all have this thought process as we continue to pray for our country and the new leaders coming into office!

It has been a bit of a tough, yet enlightening week for me. A friend of mine reminded me at our bible study Wednesday night that it is just funny how God's timing works and of course works perfectly. With J's deployment, it is hard to not have him here yet I think about the timing of this deployment and praise God for it. School has literally consumed me and all of my time and with J being deployed during my busiest months of school is a relief to know God is in control of it all. I have said this many many times, that I wondered if I was in His will in going to nursing school. Yes, I have wanted this for many years, but when the time came I had to wonder if this was really what I was to be doing. And as each day comes and goes I am quickly reminded that I am in His will in doing this whole nursing thing and I love it more and more each day....although I wish J was here to celebrate it all with me, but he will be home soon and my schedule should be way calmer when he gets home!! So Praise God for His timing and for His calling on our lives uring this season as a military family and a nursing student!!

As in thinking about God's timing it is really awesome to sit back and ponder on the timing and the people He surrounds me with during each season of my life. We are doing a study called a Walk Across the Room (I highly recommend this study if you are in a life group!!) But the Lord has been speaking to me a lot about this lately. And to keep this secretly without telling this person's personal business too much. I just ask that you pray for this friend of mine. I do not know for sure, but I believe they are thinking of getting an abortion very soon. I do not quite understand this, but just pray that I have the words and actions to speak to her through God's love. It is crazy this all came up this week, because we started our OB rotation and watched a video called "The Miracle of Life!" I will not go into more detail but just ask for prayer for her as well as myself. Also prayer for me as I obey God and walk across the room to this person as well as a few others on my prayer list.

Half-Way There!!

We have finally reached the half-way point of J's deployment!! YEAH! It has gone fast yet it has gone slow. These last 2 months will hopefully fly by with all the busyness I will have with school...I did not think they could make us more busier than we already have been.
J is doing great and is keeping busy too and says the time is going by fairly quickly. I spoke to him last night and they are making plans for their "regatta" they are having right before Thanksgiving. They have to have a team of, I believe he said 4, and they have to build a boat out of cardboard and see who can get across the pool the fastest or just get across period. He is trying to get the exact specs/rules to see what can and can not be used for their raft. So he seemed pretty excited for this. Over the past several weeks they have been building things...the latest being a bookcase, then a backboard for the dartboard I sent (some people are having a bit of a hard time hitting the dartboard itself LOL!) and they have built a card table. So hopefully he will be able to send some pics from the regatta that will be taking place on 22 November.
Please continue to keep him in your prayers as well as our country and the other troops deployed!

I'm offiically a Senior!!

Well I can say exam week is officially over and my worries for this last semester are over. I left my last final on Friday a bit aggravated at myself for a dumb "mistake" I thought I had made which would leave me with a B instead of an A for the class. So I have yet again worried and stewed over my dumb mistake all weekend...only to find out that I Aced the class and did not make the dumb mistake that I thought I had made. Yet again, God pulled me through these exams and all of my tests thus far. I truly was a B-C student throughout high school and into college, but the Lord has totally proven me to be an A student through nursing school thus far. Praise to God for helping me through this school. I have had straight A's up until this semester in which I had one B, but not to use it as an excuse those test were worded weirdly, not to mention Hard. So now, onward to the next semester.
Our evening rotation at the hospital tonight, was our first day being seniors!! YEAH!! In a couple of weeks we will have our capping ceremony where we receive our nurses caps and are officially marking our senior status. I can not believe how fast the school has gone by thus far and can not believe we have a little less than 5 months left.
My prayer is just that I sense the Lord's direction in where I should be going with my career as a nurse. At the end of this month and beginning of next month I will be in the mother/baby unit as well as labor and delivery. I say this is what i want to do as a nurse, but I have never worked nor been in these 2 fields for any reason. So we shall see. By the end of January we have to make a decision of where we want to do our preceptorship in March at. We get 3 choices and I pray I make the right decision for this because you generally want to choose where you think you might want to work and in making that decision you kinda want to choose where they may be hiring in that they hire you right on after your preceptorship. Kinda confusing and hard to explain, but please if you think about it, say a prayer for me in making the right decisions and that I can continue making straight A's.

How Great is Our God!!

Our church has finally found a home to call ours..well at least until God leads us elsewhere. There is a place here in town called the Mosaic and they have 4 other churches that use this facility. Our church service will be held on Saturday nights now instead of Sundays. Please see our church's website here and listen to our pastors sermons from the past few months as he speaks about this issue of Sunday only services. We have only been in this church for 1 year and the church was started almost 3 years ago and have always met in a movie theater...so this is definitely exciting times. We love our church and are so excited to see where God is to take us next. We have both grown so much in the Lord this past year and in being part of this church. But we are so excited to see what God has in store next for the church as well as for Jason and I.
In other news, we were totally blessed with a HUGE blessing this week. To try to keep the story short, I was officially separated from Civil Service at the end of July in which I was to get my leave that I had left paid out to me. So after a few months of waiting and a lot of patience in trying to find out what happened to the money (it was kinda lost for a few months!) we received the check and the Lord totally provided us with way more than what we were expecting to get from it. God sure does have a sense of humor and I have totally been laughing all week with Him. I have been asking myself for the past several weeks if I am or have been effective for His kingdom in all that I do and say and act! (My schoolmates and coworkers have been a true test for me!) And just this week with this huge blessing from Him and then showing me several things through people I have been praying for...I felt He was saying yet again...See Michelle - just trust ME!! (Hopefully that makes some sense - I was trying to not go into great detail to keep this "short!") But to sum it our God is soooo Good and always shows up when you least expect it.
As you can see by the pic....I got a bit bored this weekend and got a new doo. Exams were finally over and I have NO homework this weekend and with J gone, it got a bit boring here!! LOL!
I talked to J for a few minutes on Friday and he is doing great, yet totally exhausted. I know he is ready to come home and really excited that it will be striper season here...so his brother Brad will be flying out after J gets home so they can get their fishing on, not to mention to brother/buddy time in!! So I know he is excited to have all that to look forward to when he gets home!!