12-13-14

I feel like I need to blog today since it's 12-13-14 and it'd be fun for my children's children to see their great grandma was alive on such a cool date :) So, today I was supposed to work but I was able to get the day off and go watch my friend's kid's dance recital. I'd never seen a dance program before and I thought it was absolutely adorable! I hope I can get my 5 year old to dance and perform in front of people. They all did so well. 

I had to leave early because I was meeting my coworkers in Colton to deliver gifts to a kid from our unit. A couple of weeks ago my unit all gathered together and bought presents for an entire family that had been on our unit for a long time. Their little boy had brain cancer and we had all gotten pretty close to him and the family. The family was extremely poor and probably wouldnt have any money for presents. There must have been about 40 presents for the whole family along with cash donations and gift cards. I really wanted to go deliver gifts to them but ended up having to work that day. The little man passed away a couple of days later, so maybe it was for the best that I didn't go. I have to stop myself from getting attached to these kids. I have become such an overly emotional person since working with kids with cancer. I feel like my unit is a whole different world from the rest of the hospital. A lot of good things happen on our unit. Every one wants to donate to these kids because they're fighting the strongest battles. 

So, today I finally participated in the gift giving. To see the look on that little boy's face was absolutely priceless. He had no idea we were coming. We all just showed up with mountains of presents (literally didn't all fit in their small living room) wow what a treat it was that I'm a part of this unit surrounded by people that was so passionate about their job and these kids. 

Here we are walking up to the apartment with the first load of presents. It was such a great experience. Truly brought out the real meaning of Christmas. To be Christlike. To be charitable. 

Later on in the day I took care of Katie's kids since it was moving day for them. We waiting eagerly for Mike to get home from work and went to go see the Christmas lights in Yucaipa

The whole neighborhood gets together and puts Christmas lights up and they all zinc their lights to a radio station and all of their lights and the trees light up to the beat of whatever song is on the radio. What a cool neighborhood! 

We'll I'm off to bed. We can't wait to hear about some offers we have put on some houses. We're getting so anxious. It's starting to feel like we're never gonna get a house. Our fingers are crossed :) 

2 Down 1 to go

I can't believe I made it through these two semesters. I am so extremely nervous about my last semester in nursing school. These teachers show no mercy. But, do they really have to be so mean? I can't wait to be done with school. I've never known life as anything other than being a student and I'm definately ready for a change :D 

Nursing school has definately increased my faith. There is absolutely no way I would've gotten through these last two semesters without a lot of praying. I saw miracles happen every week. Even as little as my teacher ignoring me and not picking on me. Or passing a quiz, or passing my medications with the nice instructor rather than with the mean one. Lots and lots of prayers were said these past two semesters. There's no way I'm making it without Heavenly Father who is always watching over me. 

Here is my clinical group at the beginning of the semester....

...Here is my clinical group at the end of the semester. Notice the difference in size? It's almost as if the teachers find satisfaction I'm failing students :/ I am counting down my days till graduation. May 20th cannot be here soon enough! 

For Sale

We had been talking about this for a long time. Every time friends came over, we wished we had more room to entertain. Now that I think about it, I don't know why we want a bigger house. It's just the two of us. We have 4 rooms and only use 2 BUT when my family come over it is nice to have those extra rooms.

My sister in law had been talking about moving out of her house, and every time she went out to look at houses on Sundays after dinner, we'd tag along. Needless to say we finally got the courage to call our real estate agent and put our house up for sale. I was hoping that it would take a long time for someone to want to buy it. And it did. It took 3 weeks to get an offer, just in time for the semester to be over with, perfect timing! It didn't seem very real until this past week when we actually got the final date. Yikes! Is this really happening? I guess so since half of our stuff is in a storage unit. Since we put the house up for sale we have been slowly moving things out so we didn't have to do it all in one day. Man moving is a lot of work! Specially the cleaning part.

This move is going to be bitter sweet. This home was our first home together. A lot of good things happened here. This little home was so good to us. Even our neighbors were great, I'm going to miss them too. I'll miss living in a cul-de-sac too.

It'll be hard to part with our home and go live with my in laws for a while. I'm going to feel a little homeless and probably a lot home sick.

But, I'm excited for a new beginning, a new adventure. After all, home is wherever Mike is, right?

We did a little bit of upgrading to get it ready to sell. It was mostly in the living room area, here are some before and afters.

Top pictures are of the same angle, one with the old door and one with the new. It took me a while to get used to all that light. Every time I would walk by I would think someone left the door open. I'll miss our beautiful door that I worked many extra shifts for.  

Recently we retiled the entry way and finally got rid of that horrible orange tile.

We also repainted all of the rooms and put in new base boards. Oh what a little paint can do. When we moved in I didn't know that when you painted you had to wait a couple of days for the true colors to set in. I made this mistake painting the rooms but was too lazy to ever change it. They looks so much better now.

My cute little helpers

 

Before with the horrible paint job and old base boards...

After

  

 

 

 

In the living room my sister in law, Emily,  gave us that fan for our wedding present. We loved it! We also re did the floors and baseboards. We were supposed to re do the ceilings and put crown molding in but we never got around to it. Oh well, maybe in our next home. 

 

 

We're sure going to miss this little home of ours!

Griffith Observatory

Our favorites came to town. We absolutely love these three and are more than delighted when they stop by. I was planning on going to visit them for the weekend but we heard news that we were to move out of our house by the end of the week so I had to cancel, which I was super bummed about. On Friday morning, Marsix called and said they had decided to go to a wedding in San Diego and asked if they could spend the night at our house, um..ofcourse! They spent the day in San Diego at a wedding in a yacht (fun) and I was at work all day. The next day though we decided to go to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Last time they were here, Alex wanted to take us but it got to late and we didn't get to go. It was my first time going too.

 

There were some great views from up top (of mostly smog, hehe) I bet it must be a gorgeous view when the sun is going down.

 

 

Vanellope is such a cutie! She has been professionally trained to smile in pictures

Love my handsome man, muah!

 Inside the observatory. The entire time I was in there, I was thinking about the temple and how immense the universe must be compared to what we know. Worlds without number. One day I'll comprehend it.

 Whatcha' looking at Einstein? We think he had a splinter on his finger, whatever it was I'm sure it was brilliant ;)

 This guy is just too good to me. Man, how'd I get so lucky?

My supermodel. I told him to pose in front of the Hollywood sign. This what he gave me. I'll take it.

 Vanellope saying hi to her fans. She seriously got so many people stopping to talk to her. So popular!

Hanging out with these guys is always such a blast. No matter where we go there always seems to be delicious food and a lot of laughter involved. 

Like I said, there's always food involved. Michael found this hole in the wall place from "Man vs. Food" and we decided to try it out. Man it did not disappoint. We all agreed that it was absolutely delicious. We shared this 5lb Carne Asada Burrito "Miguel's special" that we saw in the show. This burrito was the smaller one, we could've gotten an even bigger one!

Yum!

Mount Roubidoux

 For Veteran's day Mike and I went to Riverside to go hike in the famous Mount Roubidoux. I remember my friends talking about going to hike up here, but I didn't knew it was this pretty! It probably took us almost 2 hours to walk the entire thing. Mostly cause we did some stops and took the long way down. I loved it!

  

 And ofcourse I had to take pictures with my pups

 These two are such little buddies, too cute!

After our hike we discovered that there was a dog park at the entrance. We thought our dogs would be tired but just to make sure they would sleep the rest of the day we let them run around. They had a section fenced off with a bunch of obstacle courses, it was pretty awesome. I couldn't really get the dogs to do the tricks, they were too distracted from being in a new place with new smells 

Veteran's day picture 

After burning all of those calories, we ate them back up at a Mexican Food place. Mike and I have been trying to visit new food places every time we eat out. This one was o.k.
I loved having Mike home an extra day of the week because of the Holiday, love this husband of mine

Dinner and a show

 For Mike's birthday, Jill gave him a gift card to the movies. We had been wanting to go for a while but since my face has been buried in the books all semester we hadn't had a chance to.

Finally the day came when I had a night off and we decided to go see Guardians of the Galaxy. It didn't look like something I would like but it was Mike's choosing. I'm so glad we saw that one, it was SO funny!

Afterwards we walked down Victoria Garden's Mall to eat at California Pizza Kitchen 

 I sure love pizza. And I sure love my man.