A peek at our week

I'm on spring break right now, and feels awesome to be able to sleep in a little. Last week was my first week at the VA. I learned that they are one of the only employers in Omaha right now hiring new grads. However until they build a new facility in 5 years, I doubt that I would want to go work there. I'm always looking online at the job openings for nurses, and in this economy it's few and far between for new grads! I think I've decided to stay with my current employer for a few months after I'm done with school. That way, I can get my feet wet and get a little experience as an RN, so that I can get a job easier, since I will have had experience and won't be considered a "new grad" when I apply for jobs later. Next week, I will be registering for my final semester for my undergrad! I can't believe graduation is right around the corner. It has been a long road. I know I'm young and its not like graduating at 25 is a ridiculous thought, but it feels like it's taken forever to get here. I do have to keep giving myself credit and acknowledge the fact that I did get my associated degree in the expected 2 years and that it has only taken me another 3 years to get my bachelors degree. If I didn't keep reminding myself of this, I would be too hard on myself. No one knows how hard nursing school is- well, no one except other BSN students that is. I'm hoping graduate school (online) will be cake compared to this degree!

We had parent teacher conferences on Wednesday last week for Cecelia. As we expected, she is doing awesome. Her school only does report cards two times a year for kindergartners, once in the fall with parent teacher conferences and then again at the end of the year. So we didn't get an actual report card to go off of, her teacher has a list of goals that her students need to have mastered by the end of the year and Cecelia is meeting and exceeding all of the goals listed. The only objective that we need to work on more, is breaking the words up into syllables. So, we will be spending more time focusing on that. She is doing awesome in reading. Her teacher doesn't want me to push her to hard though because she said she is right where she needs to be and as long as we just keep practicing the way we are and not introducing too much too fast, like she sees many parents do, she will continue to master reading just fine. I understand that, and I do want reading to be an enjoyable experience and I don't want Cece to get frustrated with it. Cecelia has a few favorite websites that she just loves to get onto and play, like Sesame street, ABCya, PBSkids, and Starfall. She thinks the kindergarten level is too easy on the games, so she likes me to set it on the first grade level for her. She tried to do this really hard game the other day though. It was really a game for parents to set up for their kids. You are supposed to make a word find out of words that your child knows. She asked me for help and when I explained what the game was and that she should play another game, she insisted that she play this one and I told her that I couldn't help her right then. She didn't care and wanted to play it anyways. She got frustrated about 5 minutes later, and slammed down the mouse and broke it. I have never seen her get angry like that before. She got in BIG trouble for that incident. It's one thing to disobey, another to get upset about something silly, but to destroy our property (although not on purpose) is completely unacceptable behavior, and she needs to know that now. If she can destroy something, even on accident, at 5, can you imagine the damage she can do as a teenager if we didn't instill in her now that this behavior is completely unacceptable?

Cecelia started swimming lessons last week. I had to miss her first lesson though because I had to work! Aaron took her by himself. She said she enjoyed it. The lessons are only a 1/2 hour each week but the instructor to student ratio is 1:4, so I think she will get enough individualized attention to gain some skills out of the lessons.

It has been so dreary this last week here. It's like Seattle weather; overcast and wet. The sun is scheduled to come out tomorrow with some temperatures in the 60's. I can't wait. Kiley will be here the week after next for her spring break, we had originally thought that the girls' spring breaks fell one week apart, but since the Papillion-Lavista school district added a few days that they had originally scheduled off, they had to move the kid's spring break back a week. Thus, the girls will now be on their spring breaks at the same time. Aaron took the majority of the week off work. I however, still have school that week:(

We don't have too many big plans this week. I tried to keep it low key for my spring break. I am working a little, catching up on school work, spring cleaning and spending some time relaxing. This weekend will be swimming lessons on Saturday and church on Sunday.

My big helper

This is Cecelia helping with dishes. I never thought in a million years that my 5 year old would be willing and wanting to do dishes! She asked if she could do them I swear. I have no problem allowing her to help with whatever she wants to do around the house, just as long as we can accommodate her requests safely. Cooking is one of those things we have not allowed her to help with yet. Baking is definitely o.k. but she just isn't big enough to help cook very often. Although tonight I'm making Lasagna and I'm going to have her help me layer the noodles, meat, sauce and cottage cheese. Yummy!

Snuggle puppy

I told Aaron I was going to put this on my blog. I don't think he believed me. This is what Stanley does to us every night! As soon as we crawl into bed he pounces on us and expects us to give him a few minutes of loving and petting. After he has had enough he snuggles down either between Aaron and I or down by Aaron's feet. It is really sweet:)

I couldn't be happier:)

The pancake man was at Cecelia's school on Friday night. Since Aaron had to work, Sara went with Cecelia and I to eat breakfast for dinner. It was fun but the overall presentation wasn't anything to get too excited about. Cecelia did catch one of the pancakes that he threw at her...with the help of Aunt Sara of course:)

Here are a few pictures from Grandma Marilynn's 70th birthday a few weeks ago.

The grand kids led everyone in singing happy birthday. It was A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E!!!

Cecelia got an award for perfect attendance for the month of February. She really doesn't miss any school so I'm surprised that she hasn't gotten this before. Of course she missed in October when she had H1N1 and then in November she missed a day or two when we went out to see Kiley in Denver. Other than that I can't really remember her missing any days. Maybe she got there late (by like a minute or 2) a few times.

I got up yesterday with the intention of arriving early to sign Cecelia up for swimming. I am so glad I did! According to the flyer, sign ups were supposed to begin at 9:00 A.M. at the main entrance of PLHS. So, since I am typically one to be on time if not early, I arrived at 8:30 to find a desent sized line had already formed! You have to admit that getting 8 weeks of swimming lessons from the Red Cross for only $35 is an awesome deal. Apparently every parent in Papillion feels the same way I do. We ended up getting Cecelia into one of the limited sized classes, however we didn't get our first choice time slot that we wanted, but I'm sure there were alot of parents who weren't as lucky as us. So I'm just really grateful we got in at all. There must have been at least another 100 parents in line behind me that didn't get they're kids in at all.

The weekend before last when we were in South Dakota, Sara, Cecelia and I went to church with Aaron's Aunt and grandparents. Cecelia loved it and was so well behaved. She asked me if we could start going to church because she really wanted to learn about Jesus. I feel really bad because I haven't made church a priority. This is partly because I have to work every other weekend so even if we had been going it would only have been every other weekend. Plus, on my weekends off we are usually pretty busy. That really is no excuse though and I should have been teaching Cecelia the importance of church all along. So after giving it some thought, talking with friends and family, and looking at a couple of churches on line, I chose to take Cecelia to Southridge church today to try it out. I LOVED it. This will be our new church from now on. First of all its a new church and it meets at Twin Creek movie theater which is literally 2 minutes from our house. Gotta love the theater seating and cup holders too:) They serve delicious blends of scooters coffee and otis spunkmeyer cookies before service. The whole atmosphere is relaxed, fun and contemporary. The band has a contemporary rock sound. The most important part to me though is that I wasn't bored at all during the service. The topics of discussion were completely relatable. The pastor is probably in is thirties and is really inspirational. I don't think church should be boring at all. I wouldn't want to go somewhere that I was bored at. Cecelia really enjoyed the childrens ministry too. Apparently one of her classmates from school also goes to this church too. I think that really helped her feel comfortable. I'm disappointed that I won't be able to go next week since I have to work but I won't have to work every other weekend after I'm done with school so that's something to look forward too. Thank you Sara for referring me to Southridge!

We are all getting excited for Kiley to come to Omaha for spring break. Cecelia has so many plans for the family while she is home. We want to go see Alice in Wonderland, go to the zoo (weather permitting), go to the Pizza Machine, maybe go roller skating and cosmic bowling too. I'm sure we will be doing at least one activity a day while she is here. Sounds like it will be an expensive week though.

The snow in our front yard has completely melted! The back yard is getting there. It makes for muddy paws and we have to remind Stanley to stay off the furniture for a little while after he comes inside from being out but we will take it. I'm so happy spring is here:)

Keeping busy

My computer had a virus up until Sunday night, so that is why I haven't posted anything in a while. All is well now, thanks to one of Aaron's dad's friends. He worked on it for free too! I had to save anything from the computer that I didn't want erased though and I filled up my whole entire flash drive with pictures. My next task will be to organize them and upload them to shutter fly...which I should been doing all along!

Where to begin? Last weekend was Aaron's grandmas 70th birthday. She lives in Yankton, South Dakota (Aaron is from South Dakota and a ton of his family still lives there). Cecelia, Sara and I headed up on Saturday afternoon and stayed with Aaron's aunt Rhonda. Aaron came up that Sunday just for the birthday party. I absolutely love all of Aaron's family. They are some of the funniest people I've ever met, in addition to being the nicest people ever. I laughed harder than I have in a while. Cecelia and her cousins got to go swimming in the hotel pool that some of the family stayed at. They loved it!

My car got fixed last week too. I assumed the shop would wash and wax the outside of my car obviously, but when I picked it up I saw that they had detailed the inside as well. It was a very nice surprise! The rental car that I was given was a brand new Toyota Yaris. Dinky little car but fun to drive. Since it was new, it still had the new car leather smell...gotta love that! Plus, its a hybrid and so it got great gas mileage. My next car will definitely be a hybrid, but it has to be an SUV. I felt really unsafe driving the Yaris which is so little!

Next week will be the official half-way point in the semester. It went by really fast. I loved community health and doing home visits. Now I will be in my mental health rotation at the VA. I'm really excited for this semester to be over though. Just a few months and I will be done with school. YAY! I can't wait.

Karissa, Summer and I bought our plane tickets to Florida last week too. They were only $114 each. We leave 2 days after the end of my semester! I can't wait. I need to get shopping for summer clothes though:) This will be my last big trip with my friends for a while I'm sure. The next year of our life will be pretty busy. Me finishing up school and starting a new job as an RN, we want to buy our first house next May, and we want to get pregnant this fall. With all those added responsibilities, I'm sure vacations with friends will be put on the back burner for a while.

Cecelia is doing awesome since we implemented the chore chart. When we first started I had her actually check off her chores on the chart, now she knows what her responsibilities are and I vary rarely have to remind her of them. So we still have the chart hanging on the fridge but I haven't continued to have her actually check off the tasks when they are accomplished. Now we just talk about them at the end of the night and discuss that they are all done before we hand her her allowance. She originally wanted to buy a new DS game with some of her allowance but has now decided to save for something bigger. Although she isn't sure what yet.

Cecelia had seen an info commercial for pillow pets while she was watching Bindi the jungle girl on the discovery channel a few weeks ago. She really wanted one. So I used it as an incentive to jump start the chore program. After 1 week of perfect behavior I ordered her one. She had a hard time deciding which one she wanted...there was probably 30 to choose from off the website. She finally decided on a black cat. It came in the mail over the weekend and she can't get enough of it. She thinks its the coolest thing ever!

The weather is finally showing some imporvement here. We have had such a crappy winter. Its warming up and the snow is beginning to melt. I'm so happy that I actually have a use for my sunglasses lately! Stanley and Cecelia will be very happy to start going on walks and to the park again too!