Newlyweds: The DeWitte's: April 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Spring Cleaning, 26th Birthday and Other Exciting Things!

Picture Update!

Last weekend I decided to do some Spring Cleaning of our closets. I sure had a mess! And a TON of laundry; I think I did at least six loads of laundry that day. (I HATE doing laundry!)

Ended up with three bags of clothes to take to Good Will. Gotta make room for new Spring clothes right? :)

Monday, April 11th was my 26th birthday!

Started the day with my sweet husband singing Happy Birthday to me before we even got out of bed. God has truly blessed me with such a wonderful man.

And then I got a call from my parents. And of course the call consisted of my dad playing the piano while they both sang Happy Birthday. My birthday's just wouldn't be the same without this exact scenario, every single year. No matter how old you are, you are never too old to be blessed by the sweet traditions of your family. I love them SO much!

The rest of the morning consisted of multiple texts from friends and family. And then even more Facebook wall posts wishing me a Happy Birthday! It is days like this that you realize how much you are loved and cared for.

If you are reading this and was one of the many that wished me a Happy Birthday, THANK YOU! Your kind words meant so much and made my day that much more meaningful.

I did have some school stuff to take care of during the day but my real birthday surprise came when Wes got off work.

Wes had told me that he was taking me out to dinner but would not tell me where. I was just told me to be ready by 6:30 because we had reservations at 7:00 and to dress really nice. Hmm...what does he have planned??

Wes gave me my gift in the car on the way to dinner.

Opening....

Pandora! A new charm for my bracelet! I got the bracelet over Christmas and have only had one charm so far. Good job honey!! Love it!

And the surprise dinner was...Mahogany Steakhouse! For those who have never heard of it, their food is AMAZING! Pretty expensive and most definitely only a once a year experience for us. Perfect for a birthday dinner!

A little glimpse at the menu...

Wes' expression after opening the menu nervously laughing and thinking in his head, "And why did I choose this place again?". Nah, not really. This was just how happy he was to be treating me to such a wonderful dinner.

And me smiling right back at him, :)

Couldn't have gone to a fancy place like this and not have taken a picture of our meal. It was SOO good! And nice to look at too!

After dinner we came home and Wes gave me his last gift. It was a homemade card, made so creatively by my wonderful husband! I was pretty impressed with the detail and the hidden meaning behind the front of the card. See if you can figure it out....

The front...That is little Lexi!

Inside...If you can read it, the very bottom says, "P.S. I bought you a storm door!" Now go back to the first picture. It's a storm door! Looking into the house at Lexi and a birthday banner. How creative is that??

The back..Wes now has his own card making company. Let us know if you are interested! :) haha

He didn't actually pick out the storm door yet. He decided he would leave that decision up to me. We have really been needing a storm door to the front of the house. So much more light would be able to come in if we had one. So hopefully we will go pick one out soon!

Overall, it was a great birthday! I realized how very, very blessed I am with such wonderful, loving people in my life. Birthdays are such a great opportunity to let that person know you care about them. And I most definitely felt that this 26th birthday.

We will be having a big birthday get together at the DeWitte's this Saturday. My parents will be coming up that day as well. I can't wait! Pictures will be taken, so look out for more soon!

The last exciting thing that has been going on is me making a decision that is long overdue....

Don't get too excited, no babies for us yet. haha

I have decided to start taking ballet classes again.

This has been something that has been stirring up in me for a few months now. Every time I would think about the love and passion I have for dance, I felt sad knowing I have such a God given talent and I am not using it. The joy that I got when I used to dance is indescribable. It allows me to escape reality and use my talent for the glory of God.

Ballet for me is hard work but effortless all at the same time. And I know that effortless feeling comes from God giving me the ability to succeed at something I was born to do.

I danced in Lawton for 15 years. When I was little, I was dancing sometimes four to five days a week. As I got older it was always twice a week. I haven't danced since graduating from high school. College was so busy and honestly there just weren't any good dance studios to go to in Stillwater.

So as much as dance is a huge part of who I am as a person, it has not been a part of my life for a long time.

Time to get back to doing the one thing I love to do and that is to dance. I can't wait to start classes. I will be visiting a studio next week to watch a class and see what it is like. Hopefully it will be everything I want it to be and I can start taking classes soon.

And since it's been almost 7 years since I have taken a class, I don't have any leotards, no tights, no leg warmers...pretty much nothing. So I decided to go to a local dance supply store here in OKC and get what I need to get started.

I remember when I had about six pair of tights, at least 10 leotards, multiple warm up wear and ballet shoes to choose from. I realize now how much money my parents spent on me and this hobby. Crazy...I can never thank them enough! Here's my purchase from today.

Just being in a dance store and buying these items that were once so familiar to me growing up was so exciting. If I could have gone and found a place to take a class right then and there, I would have!

Needless to say, I am SO excited! This is something I have been wanting to get back into for a long time now.

It's crazy that even though Wes knows I grew up dancing and knows how much I enjoyed it, he doesn't really know me as a ballet dancer.

And he is just as excited and overjoyed as I am about me getting back into ballet. Words cannot express how much it means to have the love and support of a spouse.

Such a new and exciting new beginning for me. I can't wait to see how God will bless me through this experience.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Post Well Overdue!

Okay, this post is WELL overdue for sure! It's been what...almost a month since my last post? Geez...I will blame it on nursing school. But once school is over, I won't have that excuse. So I will use it now and just say to all my readers that I will try harder. :)

Maybe there just hasn't been anything really exciting going on, so I haven't felt that urge to blog. I say that now and watch this post end up being incredibly long just trying to get all of the past month's happenings in one post.

I will try to due a condensed update.

Nursing school has taken up quite a bit of my time lately. Due to having clinicals two days a week, class two days a week and then a test pretty much every Friday, doesn't leave a whole of time to even sleep at times. But we are getting SO close to being finished!

A respiratory educator at the hospital asked how long we have until we were done. After telling him we only have just a short three months, he gave the best response I've heard thus far to explain what we are all probably feeling right now.

He said, "So at this point you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you just aren't sure whether it's the light of being finished or a train coming at you full speed."

Exactly! I think we are all feeling that BOTH of those things could be happening at the same time. Yes we are finally able to see the end of school (finally!) but also feel like that end is just the beginning of the unknown, crazy world of nursing. And it's going to happen whether we want it to or not, full speed ahead. No turning back now!

Uh oh... Are we ready for this??

I don't think any nursing student is ever ready. But, we have been equipped with all the knowledge and tools we need to succeed. We just have to believe in ourselves enough to get started and take that first step.

In saying that...my first step is not anywhere near the ICU. I hope I don't ever have to set foot in the ICU ever again. That sounds pretty harsh doesn't it? Let me explain....

So far I have gotten to experience the NICU, Adult ICU, Children's ER, and PICU.

NICU is do-able. I really enjoyed the time I got to spend there. Even though these babies are so, so small, I wasn't scared by their size and felt extreme compassion to help them the best I could. These little babies did not ask to be in such situations of poor health and therefore they need us to survive. It is up to the doctors and nurses to nurture them and ensure their survival despite the challenges that might be stacked against them. Children's ER and PICU were just "okay". Nothing too exciting; don't think those areas are my calling.

However, Adult ICU was a completely different experience. An experience I don't ever plan on experiencing again. Definitely not for me. I really can't put into words why I feel so strongly about not enjoying the ICU but I just felt like I was way out of my element. I was uncomfortable the entire time. I wanted nothing to do with all the machines, pumps, IV lines, catheters, chest tubes, and overall such critical patients.

For those of you who are not in the medical field and will never set foot in an ICU, let me give you a visual, just a glimpse at what the nurses in the ICU deal with on a daily basis. I found this picture online and it is a pretty good depiction of what the ICU rooms and patients look like.

Umm..yeah...No thank you. I will leave this job to the nurses out there that thrive off of constant adrenaline. And I am so thankful that nurses all have their own desires in different areas of nursing. Thank goodness there are nurses out there who love the ICU and love their job in that setting. God bless them!!

Now even though going to the ICU was not a good experience for me, it did reinforce the area of nursing that I do want to go into. I told myself I was going to continue to keep an open mind about critical care before I got my sights set on a career in OB.

But the decision has been made, I want to pursue a career in the OB field of nursing.

Look at this picture and tell me that this would not be the most wonderful job to get to experience this every single day.

Ahh...so much more comforting and peaceful when I look at this. I know there will be challenging situations that can happen in OB but it is still such a happy place with nurses working who absolutely LOVE their job.

I can't wait! The plan right now is that I will be doing my Leadership this summer at the Integris in Yukon on the OB floor. The good news....we have been told that the OB supervisor not only wants to have Leadership students this summer, but she has plans to hire them after. YES!!!

Wes and I still plan to move to Yukon in a year or two so this would be perfect! God is so good! It is so obvious that He is continuing to work in our lives in mighty, mighty ways.

My mom was here this past weekend. We ran around getting everything needed to finish up the flowerbed. So after new stone edging, four bags of soil, five bags of mulch and fifteen Gerber daisy plants, it's finally done!!

Next item on the list of improvements to the outside of the house is a new driveway which is much overdue. The driveway was in bad shape when I moved into the house and it has only continued to get worse. So finally having a nice, smooth driveway will be great!

We are going all out too. Decided to make the driveway wide enough to fit two cars and extend the concrete all the way to the back of the house to give us a small patio area in the back. We are also going to have a walkway up the house and redo the patio surface. All of these changes are going to make such a huge difference in the way the front of the house looks from the street. I know we will have no trouble selling with all the improvements we are making and it is only adding to the value of the house too.

We hope the driveway will get done next week. We went through quite a few estimates before deciding on who was going to do it. You know you are a true adult when you get excited about house improvements like a new driveway. HaHa

But we are excited! It's going to look great!

And of course the last update is Lexi. She is doing really good. Even more of a brat than my last post. :)

My mom and I went into a so-called pet "boutique" in a mall we have in OKC. They carry a lot of little dog stuff so I knew I had to check it out. It would have been so easy to spend a lot of money in there but I stopped myself and just bought her two shirts and a bow.

And here is the crazy, funny thing we discovered about Lexi and wearing shirts. First of all, she doesn't mind them at all. The bow is a different story but I think she is getting used to it.

As soon as my mom and I got home, we put the shirt on Lexi. Normally she is running around like crazy, jumping, biting at our feet and just out of control. The minute we put the shirt on her, she was calm. I mean just sat down and looked at us. Whoah! I have a magic shirt!! It calms dogs down!!

My mom and I couldn't believe it. It was a very pleasant evening having her so calm. I thought it might just be a short lived thing, but we have continued to put the shirt on her and when it's on...she's pretty calm. So weird...I think I might be visiting that pet store frequently. :)

She's grown so much again! She is already 3 lbs and only 3 months old. Let's just say, she doesn't skip a meal. HaHa She's a little pig when it comes to food. But I guess that is a good thing. Better that than not eating at all.

Now if we can only get her to stop biting so much. Ugh...We are hoping that she will start to grow out of the biting phase, soon!!

She is really smart though. She already knows how to sit for a treat and is fetching her toys when we play with her. She does know what "No!" means but I think most of the time she knows and just doesn't want to listen. Imagine that.

We thought it was funny when she couldn't get out of the bucket. She looks defeated in this picture.

This picture was only taken about a week ago. Her ears aren't standing up all the way and they are now. Crazy how fast they grow!

This bow didn't stay in for long. We got these at PetsMart. They don't stay in as well as the one I got from the little pet boutique.

Both ears are up!! When I took her to the vet this last time, they took some of the hair off her ears to help them to stand up. And it worked, so cute!

This is the sweet face I get to look at every day.

I guess that's it for this update.

Hopefully I will have a good post to come since my birthday is this coming Monday, April 11th. I don't know what we have planned but it being on a Monday, I don't know how much time we will have to do something.

My parents are coming into town Saturday, April 16th. We are going to have a big family get together for my birthday out at the DeWitte's. It should be fun, I'm looking forward to it!

All I've asked for my birthday is a cookie cake. :) I don't know why I want one so bad but it sounds so much better than the usual birthday cake. No one else agrees so maybe I will end up getting the entire cookie cake to myself!

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week and weekend!