You Just Have to Laugh!

Oh my, this week has been nuts. Today, I think everything under the sun that could go wrong, did. But every time something happened...I just laughed. It was all silly stuff!

I had a meeting this morning scheduled from 8-9am with my clinical group so we could meet our instructor. We waited an entire hour before she showed up! It ended up being a "miscommunication" (aka our professor forgot to send out our meeting places...so no one knew where to go.)

I told you a few days ago that I'm doing student tutoring this semester. I had set up a meeting at 9 with a woman in the employee office to fill out my employment papers. I ran at 9 to her office to tell her my meeting was just starting and I'd be right back, to find that she wasn't there. When I returned after my clinical meeting she was still not there! Another nice lady in the office asked me what I needed and I told her the whole story and she said, "Oh, she's not here today!" What???! Luckily, she was able to help me :)

I went to run almost an hour after I had wanted to--it was already really hot and I only had to run 3 miles today, but they were the worst 3 miles ever! I was overheated, sweating profusely, and had the worst cramp the last half mile :) I'm sure I looked pretty funny running with my arm up in the air haha ;) I got to the end of my run and saw this sitting in my path:

(*I didn't take this picture...I didn't have a camera so I had to find one online...looks to be an eastern king snake...)

Holy cow! How nasty. He was just sunbathing on the pavement. It looked at me and then slithered in to the bushes. Remind me to never leave the trail...

Finally, I had a meeting at 4pm today with a previous nursing tutor and we went to get coffee. First, they forgot to fix my order, and then they tried to bring me 3 different drinks that were not what I ordered! At this point you just have to laugh, it was definitely a crazy day!

But one look at this angel face and everything turned out okay:) Tomorrow's Friday, what are your weekend plans?!

Wordless Wednesday

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My first day of school (come on, you always have to have a "first day" picture!) and 4 months until Christmas!!

(Let's be honest, my wordless wednesday posts are never wordless...it's not in my nature to be quiet ;) )

PS- I could NOT get the stupid plus and equal sign in the middle of the post. So it looks goofy, sorry!

What. A. Day.

It has been a full day, let me tell you! This morning, I got up and met V at 8am to run! She sent me a running schedule yesterday to follow and today I had to run 3 miles. I did okay, I definitely have to get in shape though, haha! :)

Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
1	Stretch & Strengthen	3 m run	2 m run or cross	3 m run + strength	Rest	30 min cross	4 m run
2	Stretch & Strengthen	3 m run	2 m run or cross	3 m run + strength	Rest	30 min cross	4 m run
3	Stretch & Strengthen	3.5 m run	2 m run or cross	3.5 m run + strength	Rest	40 min cross	5 m run
4	Stretch & Strengthen	3.5 m run	2 m run or cross	3.5 m run + strength	Rest	40 min cross	5 m run
5	Stretch & Strengthen	4 m run	2 m run or cross	4 m run + strength	Rest	40 min cross	6 m run
6	Stretch & Strengthen	4 m run	2 m run or cross	4 m run + strength	Rest or easy run	Rest	5-K Race
7	Stretch & Strengthen	4.5 m run	3 m run or cross	4.5 m run + strength	Rest	50 min cross	7 m run
8	Stretch & Strengthen	4.5 m run	3 m run or cross	4.5 m run + strength	Rest	50 min cross	8 m run
9	Stretch & Strengthen	5 m run	3 m run or cross	5 m run + strength	Rest or easy run	Rest	10-K Race
10	Stretch & Strengthen	5 m run	3 m run or cross	5 m run + strength	Rest	60 min cross	9 m run
11	Stretch & Strengthen	5 m run	3 m run or cross	5 m run + strength	Rest	60 min cross	10 m run
12	Stretch & Strengthen	4 m run	3 m run or cross	2 m run	Rest	Rest	Half Marathon

*Think I can do it?? I hope so! I'm ready to shed some pounds and tone up! :)

Then I headed up to school. Tomorrow is my actual first day of class (wish me luck!) but I'm doing something special this year! I was offered a position as a "student tutor" for the nursing students. It's a paid position and not only do I get to help my peers, I'll get to continuously review which will be extremely helpful come NCLEX time! We had a tutor luncheon today so I went for that. Since I was there, I decided to say hey to a couple of my professors--and let's be honest--see if I could find out my clinical schedule for the semester!! :) And I did! My clinicals this semester will be on Thursdays from 7a-1p. Such good news. Some people have schedules for Fridays from 2p-8p!! Can you imagine? I would never be able to go see David!

*This is my clinical group from Fall of last year! Still love these girls :)

Today also happens to be my mommy's birthday!

*My mom and my sweet cousin Amy!*

Happy birthday, mom! I love you and am so blessed to have you as my mom. My mom had a great family birthday! We had dinner at my grandparents house and had angel food cake with chocolate icing for desert! Now I can tell you what she got! She got a 42 in. flat screen LCD tv (from my grandparents) and a blu-ray player (from me and David!) She was so surprised! She thought she was getting a digital camera, but I think she's happy with what she got ;) I'll have pictures of the party once my grandma uploads them to her computer and e-mails them out.

Now, let me rant for a minute. Remember when I talked about my dress here? Well I got a package today from cache in the mail and was so excited! I opened the package and...there was a black pair of pants. Are you kidding me??!! This has been the most ridiculous ride trying to get this stinkin' dress! I mean how hard is it to get the order right?? I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do, but I guess I'll get my money back and start over. :(

Okay, done with that! I have class tomorrow at 1:30 so I think I'm going to go get things ready and head to bed! Natalie is my newest blog friend, she found me through miscellany monday and I can't wait to start getting to know her! Blonde at heart...aren't we all? :) Stop by and say hey to her! :)

Misc. Monday

I thought I'd join up with lowercase letters this week! Y'all know I'm all about the random posts so why not?! :)

1. I've decided to train for a half marathon in November. Crazy? I think so. Thanks to this girl:

(Can I just say that this is the cutest picture ever?? V, I didn't even know I had it on my computer!! I just love you guys:)!!)

Love. her. to. death. Hey running partner! ;)

2. Picking a cereal at the grocery store is hard for me. I literally will stand there for 10 minutes going back and forth. My brain wants one that's healthy...my body wants one that's, well...not so much. Know who wins??

Yep...that's a nice bowl of not so healthy goodness right there :)

3. I'm currently sitting here with a long sleeve t-shirt on and a Clemson blanket over my legs. I do realize it's 500 degrees outside. I'm just trying to hurry fall up a bit...I'm fairly positive the groundhog has been scorched to death by this summer.

4. Hello to my new blog friend, Caroline! She's a fellow nursing senior just like me!! Go check her out :)

5. I'm going to go be crafty now. Or take a nap.

Enjoy your Monday :)

Down in the Dumps

This has been an awesome weekend! But I'm a little sad and lonely tonight. Summer is over. I thoroughly enjoyed my internship and spending my summer with David. Now things are back to how they've been for over a year--both of us in different places! We've done it before and there's a light at the end of the tunnel now (graduation!) but it still makes me sad. And on top of him going home today--he took Jovie with him! He needs the company so I had no problem letting her live with him, but I sure do miss that sweet little girl! (I will see David next weekend--hopefully--but the transition from seeing him everyday to only on the weekends is still hard!)

So, to up my spirits a little, I'll take you back to my weekend!

I think I told you a few posts ago that I got a dress for David's cousin's wedding in October (if I didn't...well...now you know!) It is gorgeous and I am in. love. with. it. Unfortunately it has given me the run-around! The one I tried on in the store had a pick on the front of it, so the lady ordered me one! I got it in the mail earlier this week and it showed up with a stain on it! David came in Friday evening and went with me to exchange the dress. Because the mall I got the dress from only had one in my size, I took the dress to a different mall to see if their store had one. All I'm going to say is that I will never shop at that mall again because they were the rudest people. They literally told me they couldn't look up the dress for me. I was almost in tears! I went back to the first mall and told the woman working the whole story and she was amazing. She looked the dress up and found that 30 stores have my dress in my size and was going to call each of them personally, make them check the dress up and down for spots and hopefully find me one. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I should hear from her sometime Monday or Tuesday. I really really really love this dress and wouldn't go through such the effort if I didn't think it was worth it.

Don't you think it's so pretty?!

Saturday, David and I went shopping for my mom's birthday gift! I can't say yet what it is because she reads my blog (hi mom!) but her birthday is Tuesday so look for it then! She's really going to love her gifts this year ;) We also went to Petsmart because it was "adoption" day. I would adopt every animal there if I could. The puppies were so sweet with their puppy breath and the kitties were pretty cute too. (Not as cute as my little rescue, though!) And did you know you could adopt birds??! I sure didn't... something to think about though, haha! (David said I couldn't have a bird...)

Saturday night, David's sister Susan and her boyfriend Chase came into town for this guy's concert:

Yep, Zac Brown! And it was such a great concert! It was very bluegrassy (pretty sure I just made that a word.) and unique. Quite the experience! Thursday was Chase's birthday and Susan surprised him with the tickets! We think he was excited :)

Susan and the birthday boy! Can you see his excitement?? ;)

Of course we had to get a picture of the girls!! :)

Me and my boy:)

Today was mostly a lazy day for us. David watched some tv and I finished reading "Jane Eyre" --which is a great book! I absolutely loved it! He packed up and left around 4:30pm with my Jovie. I hate goodbyes! I cried and miss them terribly now. To lift my spirits, I did what everyone does when they get upset--I got everything ready for school to start on Wednesday!! (No? Everyone doesn't get excited about getting ready for school? Hmm..) Here is my before picture of my work area:

And here is the after!

It's so much more clean and my books are all lined up! I'm ready to get started with this year. It's going to go by so fast, but I'm ready for it!

I hope everyone has a great Monday tomorrow!

Technical Difficulties...

I'm having some technical difficulties with my new blog design here. If you can read this, would you please leave me a comment saying so? Thanks!

Have a great Friday! :)

Just a Mix

Hmm...I feel like my blog posts really have no main purpose. Each time I post, it includes a multitude of different things! And that's just how today's post will be. Not much has been going on the last few days. I go back to school next Wednesday so I'm taking my last few days of freedom very easily :)

Last week, I got an e-mail from my school saying that my professors had recommended me for a nursing tutoring position at the Center for Academic Success at our school. I decided I would do it because it will look good on my resume...and it's a paid position so I'll be getting some pocket change which will be great gas money. Tomorrow is my "interview" and I'm not too nervous about it, but if you happen to think about me tomorrow, my interview is at 10am ;)

How cute is this picture??!

Think he doesn't get enough attention? Ha!

Nothing much more to report. David is coming in tomorrow for the ZBB concert on Saturday!! Here's a little video of Jovie to end the night:)

Wordless Wednesday

I'm ready for some Tiger football! :)

I Cooked It Too Long..

Hi friends!

Well, I'm back home and I was so happy to see these babies!

(I think they were happy to see me as well!) Since I've been gone, Jovie has learned what the word "cookies" mean and boy is it too funny!

When I bring Marley in from outside, he always gets a "cookie" (a doggy treat!). My mom watched Marley and Jovie for me while I was gone this weekend and apparently, grandma's got the goods ;) She bought Jovie some kitty treats and gives them to her on top of her play house so that the other dogs can't eat them first.

Now, whenever Marley comes in from outside, he runs to the pantry door (where his treats are kept) and Jovie runs to the top of her playhouse!! It is too darn cute for words :)

I got home around 11:30 this morning and started my workout routine again. I'm really just trying to "tone up" a bit (a lot...) so I'll be running different increments each day (or trying to ha!) and starting up P90X again. Today's work out completely rocked my nervous system to the core! I felt so shaky after I got done, but it felt so good to get a good work out in for a change!

Tonight, mom and I went to eat with one of her teacher friends from school. We had Lorenzo's pizza and it was delicious! I came home and wanted to warm up half of a chocolate chocolate chip muffin for dessert. Not thinking...I put the HALF of a muffin in the microwave for one. whole. minute. Stupid? I think so. I tried to eat it after it cooled off, but it was chewy and the chocolate chips were all kinds of nasty! Haha, so no dessert for me tonight! (Which is a good thing since I'm trying to slim down!! Ha!)

I'm off to play with my children tonight :) OH, ps! The sewing machine is back! So more crafts will be showing up soon!

Hope y'all had a great day!

Blonde Ambition

I changed my blog. I changed the way it looks. I changed its set-up. I even changed the name of it. I needed the change. (This coming from the girl who cannot deal with change without shedding tears. I'm fine once the change happens and I've had time to adjust...but change is just so hard!) But I needed this one. And I love it!

David and I (well, mostly David!) worked on getting my blog just the way I wanted it this weekend! He's amazing on computer programs and he photoshopped this baby up for me! :) I told him he should go in to blog designing ;)

Obviously, you can see from my pictures that I have blonde hair. Now I've added "ambitious" into the mix ;) Well, I think it's always been there, I'm just embracing it. I have a lot of things I want to do and accomplish in my life and I'm bringing you along with me for the ride!

One thing that might have you confused is my title--what exactly does "hair twirler" mean?? Those of you who know me in person know exactly what this means :) Since before I had hair (I was 2 before I actually had hair...) I would fall asleep twirling my finger on the top of my head. I don't know why, I guess it helped me get to sleep better? But as my hair started growing, it started twirling around my finger and through my whole 23 years of life, I have had this terrible hair twirling habit. I've tried many times to stop twirling my hair and my mom has made fun of me for it before (although, now I think she's resolved to the fact that I will be a hair twirler until the day I die! Ha!) I don't mind the hair twirling and I do it all. the. time. I didn't think it was a problem until I was preparing for a big interview my senior year of high school and my teacher called me out in class for it! She said I better put my hair up for the interview haha! But I had no idea I was twirling my hair until she mentioned it. It's sad, I know ha! Anyway, some may consider it a bad habit (I don't!) but it's not going anywhere, so now I've incorporated it into my blog:)

I hope you all will stick with me on my new ambitious journeys and maybe we'll pick up some new followers along the way! What do you think of my new look??

Quick Update!

So! Obviously the lake didn't happen this weekend! :) We woke up this morning and it was pouring down rain! We decided to stay home and I am so, so glad. I think I needed this weekend to just be me and David.

Anyway, this is just a quick update. I know my blog looks kind of messy right now, but David and I are working on making my blog more fun! We worked for like four hours on my header Friday night and we were going to work on it today, but decided to go shopping instead! (Which was awesome because I got some great stuff I'll show you later!!)

I hope you guys are having a great weekend and I'll update again soon :)

All Grown Up!

Today has been a busy day! I haven't slept in much this week due to doctors appointments and helping my mom set up her classroom for the upcoming year, so today I did sleep in! Until about 10:30! I got up and showered and headed out for a Starbucks date with this man:

My granddaddy and I have a long standing Starbucks date tradition and today was the day for that:) We get to catch up on life and talk, just us two, I love it!

When I was 11 years old, the sweetest little girl came in to my life--and 11 months later so did her sister:) I call them my "babies" and I babysat for them until they were too old to be sat for anymore! Anna is the older of the two and will be going in to middle school this year! And Faith is the younger and will be going in to 5th grade. How did they get so old??! They were the cutest little angels and still are! (Faith is on the left, Anna is on the right!)

And here they are now... (Faith is on the left, Anna is on the right!)

....such big girls! But I still call them my babies:) Anna is the same age I was when she was born! I haven't seen them all summer so today I took them to see the movie Ramona and Beezus. It was such a cute movie and I enjoyed getting to spend time with them!

And just for inquiring minds--my latest sewing project was a pair of pajama pants! And the good news is that they stayed together last night when I wore them! :) :) No sewing projects for a while because it's in the shop getting worked on--it's a 23 year old machine so I'm sure a "tune-up" was needed.

I'm so excited because tomorrow David gets back from Mexico! I'm picking him up from the airport and we are heading to the lake for the weekend. So no weekend updates, but I'll try to take some pictures so I'll have something to write about when I return:) I hope you guys have a great weekend!

Summer's End

Friday was my last day of work at the hospital. I made dirt cake as a "thank you" to everyone for being so welcoming. It was a big hit! I was so surprised though that my nurse, Heather, brought chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream icing on top! AND a big 'ole bag of pretzel m&m's! I don't know if you've tried these yet, but the first time I tried them I thought they were so dry! But I had a whole bag so I ate them anyway and now I love them!

Saturday, David and I just hung out. I decided I wanted to teach myself how to knit (it's going okay, by the way! I have everything down except for the purl stitch and for some reason every time I do it, it looks just like the knit stitch so I'm obviously doing something wrong...any tips?!) so David took me to Hobby Lobby and I bought the supplies. Saturday night we went to Nami and oh my gosh that place never disappoints me! It was just as good as it's always been!! I definitely ate my weight in sushi though...I need to start running again! :)

The majority of Sunday was spent packing all of my stuff and getting it to fit in the car where I could still see :) It was really bittersweet. I think I cried the good part of the last half of the day and I know I cried a lot that night! (What can I say? I'm emotional!) I had so much fun this summer and I'm really going to miss seeing David every day. I really got used to it and spending time with him! I'm looking forward to school starting though and hanging out with some of my girlfriends:)

Now I'm waiting on my momma to get home from working on her classroom so we can run some errands and go pick up some more fabric! I think my next project (until I can figure out that stinkin purl stitch!) is going to be sewing a pair of pajama pants...hopefully they'll turn out as well as my pillow--which is holding up well!

I hope ya'll have a great Tuesday:)

Big Kitty.

Tuesday and Wednesday were my days off this week. I'm back to work today and tomorrow. (Yep, I'm blogging at 5:45 in the am...this is what you get when I work 12 hour days!!)

I've said before that my best friend Jess's mom is a vet and has been giving Jovie all of her shots, dewormers, etc. and yesterday was Jovie's last set of shots! She was not a happy camper and I have all the scratch marks to prove it:) (That's the other thing I'm excited about! She's old enough to be declawed and spayed!! Yay!!)

She sat on my shoulder and hissed and growled at everything that moved. It was pretty hilarious but I did feel bad she was so upset.

You all know that I found Jovie on the side of the road and kept that sweet angel so she could have a good life. Well it looks like Jovie has a little (big) surprise of her own. Apparently....Jovie has some maine coon in her. Never heard of it? Well, let's have a look....

And then there's this....

Are you kidding me??!!

I can definitely see the resemblance between these cats and Jovie, especially the first one. She's got the same markings on her face and she's also got the tipped ears! I think the only thing going for us at this point is her fur is NOT fluffy at all--she's definitely a short-haired cat.

(This kitty is not Jovie...see the furry hair??)

(This kitty IS Jovie...see the tipped ear and markings?? Oh my lord...)

*But don't the kittens look just alike??

But can you imagine??

I guess time will only tell if this sweet angel grows up to be a lion....

Happy Thursday y'all!! :)

Last Week

Today started my last week of my nursing internship this summer. Where on earth did the last 12 weeks go?? I can't believe I have 2 days left of work. I have gotten to participate in some amazing learning experiences and feel like I have grown a lot as a future nurse.

I worked in areas of the hospital I never even thought I would enjoy and found that I really could work in those areas and probably will in order to further my career as a nurse-- CRNA anyone??!

I met some great girls who are going to make fabulous nurses one day. We should all feel lucky we will have people like them taking care of us one day!!

I feel much more comfortable with very sick patients. I know I can handle anything--including post-mortem care. It will happen to most nurses at some point in their career and it is a very honorable job to do for your patient.

I've seen gunshot wounds, chainsaw wounds, intubations, extubations, chest tube insertions and exertions, and abscesses caused by staph infections. I've seen patients posturing, brain death, and miraculous recoveries.

I've given shots, primed tubing, extubated patients, put in multiple male and female catheters, taken blood from good and bad veins, post-mortem care, dressed wounds, and dressed art lines. I've even done sternal rub on a patient who was bradying down (very low heart rate) with a low blood pressure and got him to come back!

Like I said, I've experienced a lot and feel so blessed to have had this experience. And I can't wait to celebrate with all the externs on Friday night! Happy Monday everyone:)

Have You Heard?

...this song? It's called "Yahweh" by Tal and Acacia. I first heard it a few weeks ago on the radio and now every time I get in the car I hope to hear it. The lyrics and the voices are just beautiful and really pull you in to worship. It's just simple and beautiful. So I thought I'd share with you all:) I hope you like it as much as I do!