Give me candy.

We all survived our first Halloween with me working. This was probably the hardest day for me so far because I've always gone to the girls' Halloween parties. But we are all alive. Nobody seems to scarred by my not being there. Amelia put on her costume by herself at school. Maddie had the neighbor do her eyeliner for her. Kolby picked them up and took them to Microsoft to trick or treat, and I beat them home with just enough time to heat up some beef stew to warm them up before they went out and demanded candy from strangers.

Halloween stuff...

Kolby and I always think we deserve Parent of the Year awards for actually getting around to carving pumpkins. Digging elbow deep in orange slime is not high on either of our lists of Favorite Ways to Have Fun, but the kids absolutely love it, and it's always fun to see what they envision come to life.

My family wanted to decorate for Halloween. I had to practice defensive decorating, as there was no place in my life for the skinned torso and bloody decapitated head they had in mind.

But I'm cheap. And I have a sister who likes brainstorming with me. And we have Pinterest in our lives now. So with a few cans of spray paint, a lot of old Christmas decorations, and several telephone and texting consultations, all is well.

Portland Getaway

My mom was in Portland a few weeks ago for a quilt convention, so the girls and I headed down to spend the weekend with her. We got a room in the hotel where she was staying so we could be close since we weren't sure how much time she'd be working and how much she'd be able to play.

It was such a fantastic weekend. It was gorgeous fall weather and we had a great time walking around downtown, taking the train around, swimming in the pool, and eating at our favorite restaurants. For some reason it felt like we were living there hanging out at our favorite places with my mom. We drove around our old neighbhorhood in North Portland. I have so many great memories of running those leaf covered streets in the fall, and walking them pushing the girls in the stroller with my mom when she would come to visit. I think we were all feeling very nostalgic, so we decided to head out to the pumpkin patch we visited when the kids were in preschool. Mom always came to visit in the fall, so she'd been out to Sauvie's Island with us.

One of my favorite photos of Amelia as a baby was taken at the pumpkin patch. I made Amelia pose in the pumpkins so I could get a comparison photo this time.

It does not seem that long ago that my kids were this size!

Spooky Sunday Morning

Our morning.

Winning popularity contests

This will absolutely put you at the top of the list for coolest person on Earth. At least if the person you are trying to impress is Madeline.

Maddie's all time favorite dinner is French Dip Sandwiches, which I find more than a little endearing since it's also one of my favorites. I've used this recipe for a while, and have found no need to modify it since it was pretty much perfection.

Until today.

What was the difference? Timing. I wake up at 5:15am for work. I start making my eggs and drinking my coffee around 6am. That is when I started my French Dips this morning. I omitted the pan-searing step and just dumped a thawed 3 lb. roast straight from the fridge into the crockpot, poured two packets of onion soup mix over the top, and added enough water to barely cover the roast and turned it onto the low setting. I came home from work 12 hours later to the most beautiful, delicious, fall-apart-at-the-touch-of-a-fork roast you've ever seen. With no work. I quickly threw some sliced cheese (I used Beecher's Flagship, but provolone is the usual) onto sourdough hoagie rolls, piled on the shredded beef, and broiled for seconds until the cheese was melted.

Now here's an important detail. Horseradish sauce. Don't leave me yet!!!! I thought I hated horseradish. It's served at Arby's, for crying out loud. But just give it a tiny taste with this sandwich as you dip it into the "au jus." (French for "juice"--the stuff left in the crockpot. So pretentious, I know. But supposedly those French guys gave us this amazing sammich, so their pretention can be overlooked.) The kids do not get the draw to the horsey sauce. But Kolby and I PILE on the horseradish sauce, and it is SOOOOOO GOOOOOD. Seriously. Just try it once. Trust me. (And if you live near a Safeway, you are in luck. Kolby and I could drink the "Beano" brand horesradish sauce they sell there. But don't be discouraged with other brands--just use it sparingly until you know how much of a kick it carries.)

So yeah. I'm the coolest person on earth tonight. And I will be for the rest of the weekend as we continue to eat the leftovers. Being a working mom isn't so bad.

And if your kids are more adventerous than mine, you might want to try this super easy variation. Instead of using onion soup mix, dump an ENTIRE bottle, juice and all, of pepperoncininis over the pot roast and cook on low for hours (6-12 hrs). Serve on a hoagie with the peppers piled on top of the beef and dip in the juice. With horseradish. :)

When Mom's Away...

There were plenty of days that Kolby got the girls off to school while I was in nursing school, but since that felt temporary, I think he was fine with them looking homeless as they walked out the door on those days. But now that I am working at a real job, and it feels somewhat permanent or long-term that he will be the parent getting them out the door to school, he's decided it's time to do their hair.

We had a brief tutorial the night before I started my new job. I showed him on my own hair how to part, and did not realize what a skill that actually is. I should have--the girls have yet to master that technique, or maybe they just don't care about it. But we worked on that skill for a bit, and then moved on to braiding.

The next morning on my break, I checked my phone and burst out laughing. I was treated to these photos on Facebook the first few mornings I went to work. I love that it's mostly my friends cheering him on in the comments.

Day One of Dad on Duty:

Day Two--Daughter #1

Day Two, Daughter #2

And just so you know, this is what he starts with. It is no easy task to whip this into shape:

But he has, and each day has gotten better.

It cracks me up to see him looking at hair blogs now, checking out french braids and fish braids and saying that he needs a Topsy Tail hair tool for doing cool pony tails. Love that guy.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I am going to stop pretending like I'm actually going to get caught up on blogging about our summer, and I'm just going to get caught up on our October. What do you think about that?

So big changes around here. Right after I posted about my home health job, I got a couple of phone message about resumes I'd sent out earlier, both calls arriving when I was sleeping after a 12 hour night shift. One call was for an RN residency in a hospital--exactly what I was hoping for. The other was for a GI endoscopy clinic (a clinic that sends scopes "in both ends" to check out your guts--colonoscopies and upper endoscopies). I was very interested in the residency. Not so much in the GI clinic because it didn't sound interesting to me. I didn't plan to follow up on the GI position.

I mentioned both calls to my neighbor, who is a nurse, and she told me I should absolutely follow up on the GI call because as an endoscopy nurse I would be starting IVs (which nurses don't get a lot of experience with anymore because most places have IV teams), I'd be doing conscious sedation, in her opinion endoscopies are very interesting, and most important to me for maintaining some work-life balance--in a clinic setting you do not work nights, weekends, or holidays.

So I called back on both jobs on Monday morning. After the HR interview with the GI clinic, they asked me in for an in-person interview that day with the nurse manager. And then she asked me to come back the next day for a "working interview." I absolutely adored the nurse manager who interviewed me, and when I did my working interview (on the floor following a patient from admit thru the procedure, and then thru discharge) the RN I followed told me about how she had quit after her residency at the same hospital I had interviews set up for because she was "so stressed" from a high patient load and "had no life" because of the night shifts, and she said she had not regretted it one day because she is so happy here. And I could totally feel it--every nurse there seemed happy to be there. Most had been there at least 7 years, although there are two younger RNs who were hired in the last year.

A week later they offered me the job!!! Same base pay as the hospital, but no weekends!!! No nights!!! No holidays!!! Seriously, you have no idea the jail I was just released from. For the last two years, I was prepared to suck it up and miss Thanksgiving and Christmas day with my family and suffer through a year or two of night shifts because that's what new grad RNs have to do. But here I was offered early parole!

I started last week part-time while I finish up with my home health patient, and I. Am. So. Happy. It is interesting. The team is great. My manager is every bit as cool as she seemed in the interview. My preceptor for this month, who is teaching me to admit patients and start IVs, is ever patient and encouraging, and either as chill as can be, or an amazing poker player because she does not seem fazed in the least by my newbie mistakes.

It feels AMAZING to get up at 5:15 to go to work instead of being 10 hours into my 12 hour night shift at that hour. I have a life. I get weekends with my family. I'll be working 4 ten hour shifts a week, so I'll have a day mid-week to run carpool, volunteer in the school, get to the gym, and maybe, possibly, if I feel like it and they are disgusting enough, scrub the toilets. After my last shift with my home health patient tomorrow, hopefully I will be done with the night shifts forever because UGH. The night shift itself is not so bad--it's the drive home and then trying to sleep/eat/adjust the next day or two that is awful.

But it's not a perfect world. It is work. Today was kind of a crappy day--my IV starts did not go so well. I could blame it on the patients, but it was far more likely "user error." But my IVs went great yesterday. And nobody seemed concerned that I had a bad day with my IVs today. I mentioned it apologetically to my manager and she just shrugged and said, "Yeah, we all have days like that. Even after ten or fifteen years you'll have days like that."

So that's what is going on. I am now the queen of butt and fart jokes, so feel free to give me a call if you are running low.

Gabby Girl

Our sweet stinky dog had a stroke and died this morning. She got up with me this morning and laid by my feet while i drank my coffee. Then she went to the door to go potty and when she came back in a minute later she was dragging her hind quarters. I tried to get her up and she hobbled a bit, then dropped again. I ran and got Kolby and when we tried to get her to stand up she vomitted and just dropped her head. We kept trying to get her up--she didn't seem in pain--but she had no strength at all in her hind quarters and wasn't really responding to us much. Kolby scooped her up and we rushed her to the animal hospital, leaving the kids home. They hooked her up to an IV and oxygen and drew blood--she had no reflexes in her legs, no pupil reflexes, so they knew it was neurological. And then she had a seizure--which she'd had about 4 of with us this morning (two in the car) but we thought it was just panic. The whole time she was very responsive to Kolby and my voices and touch, she'd calm right down. They gave her some valium during the seizure and we stepped out--me to call the kids since we left them a mess, and Kolby for a little private sob, and a second later they came out to say that she had crashed and they were doing CPR. We went in a minute later and they were pulling the intubation tube and disconnecting the IV and she was gone.

I still can't believe it. I loved that little pain in the ass. I was so worried about her being home alone while I am at work all day because she cries when we leave.

Kolby went and got the kids while I stayed with Gabby. Then we all just cried and told stories about her and tried to wrap our brains around the fact that she's gone. It happened so quickly--she was just chasing the ball yesterday. Just following me around while i made coffee this morning. Our house feels so empty without her.

We are having her cremated and will take her ashes to Cannon Beach where we first fell in love with her eight years ago.