Brilliant Ideas Pinned

So did I mention the kids are back in school?

Ideas

Source: thetidynest.com via Jami on Pinterest

I saw this idea on Pinterest recently, and decided this week as I was pulling out the various bags of frozen fruits to make smoothies that this idea is brilliant, especially on mornings when the girls needs to make their own breakfast.

Here's what I put in my freezer smoothie packs:

1 cup various fruits--mixed berries, mango, and 1/2 a ripe banana

small handful of spinach

3 cubes of greek strawberry yogurt frozen in ice cube trays

These packs took minutes to make. Now they are all looking cute in my freezer, ready to be dumped into the blender with some vanilla soy milk and blended for a quick breakfast or after school snack. I debated whether to make them big enough for two smoothies, or just one. Since the girls are on different schedules now, I opted for single packs this time around.

Utah or Bust: Blackham Style

Kolby's brother Clayton and his wife's family go to the Oakley Rodeo every year for the 4th of July. They had extra tickets this year, so we decided to join them. I went to rodeos all the time growing up, and wanted the girls to experience this for the first time.

They were a little concerned about the animals, and cheered for the bulls and broncos a little more than the cowboys, but we all had a great time.

Kolby's mom moved up to Farmington a little over a year ago and you can see the Lagoon ferris wheel from her back deck. So Lagoon is a must when we go to Utah now. The kids love all the roller coasters, and even agreed to take a break from the rides to check out the water park this time. Ana came with Aidan and baby Amare, and I had fun holding Amare while the kids played with Aidan. Although I did have to fight this one quite a bit for him.

On our way back from the cabin we stopped at Clay and Courtney's house for a barbeque. Pammy and Rex brought their big blow up water slide, and mayhem ensued.

And we snuck in a few family photos with us in our fanciest duds and a beautiful background.

All the Blackham cousins

Pammy and Rex
I did a little multi-tasking, snuggling Amare while I studied for the NCLEX.
And I love this picture of the Blackham Girls. Mia, Maddie, and Addie.

We had such a great time in Utah. Amare was born three weeks early, and was three weeks old when we arrived. I was so pleased to see that he was still just an itty bitty thing. Ana and Adrian stayed at Pammy's house when we were there, so we got in a lot of snuggle time with him. This is one of the hardest parts about living away--seeing how much the babies grow in between visits. Hopefully we'll get to Utah again soon before he gets too big!

Cast 2.0

We're so relieved! Amelia had her appointment at Seattle Children's yesterday, and when the doctor reviewed her xrays, he said everything looked good. The wrist fracture is near the growth plate but is a nice clean break and should heal very nicely without affecting growth of that bone. And the xray of the elbow looks good. They pulled her plaster splint off to get a good look at everything, and when they kept her wrist splinted she could move her elbow without pain. It is still really swollen and bruised, so she must have landed on it as well, but it's not broken. And the great thing about that? A smaller cast.
Getting that smaller cast did not feel good.
But it was worth it for an awesome small blue cast that does not require a sling. We go back next week for one more xray to make sure it's healing straight, and she'll get to pick another color of cast.

I caught her hanging from the monkey bars in our backyard last night.

"I'm her nurse."

Back in the day when I first started nursing school, I sort of thought I knew what kind of nursing I wanted to do (oncology), but I committed to keep an open mind and see where my experiences took me. The one thing I knew I didn't want to do was pediatric nursing. (Insert laugh track here.) See what happens when you think you know something?

A few months ago I went to a job fair (even though I was pretty certain nothing would come out of it) and I met the VP of a pediatric home health agency. Everything she said to me sounded great to me. I knew I didn't want to do home health, but I figured in this bad economy, it was a good back-up plan. I emailed her the next day and told her how much I enjoyed our conversation. And then after I graduated I emailed her again--once again as a back-up plan. A week later they had me in for an interview. And at the end of the interview they offered me a job.

I had two interviews that week. One was for my "dream job" with Seattle Children's on the floor where I had done my senior practicum. I really don't think I interviewed particularly well, but I also had the very distinct feeling from the first question they asked me that they were not in the least bit interested in me.

However, during my interview with the manager at New Care Concepts, I could not stop thinking about what a perfect fit this company was for me, and what a perfect fit I was for them. Everything we talked about--the type of nursing care they provide, the type of patients they have, their nurses, their vision, their corporate culture, etc. I was shocked to discover it felt like where the last four years had intended to lead me.

But still, when they offered me the job, I resisted. And in fact, I suppose I'm still a little resistant because new grads are supposed to do hospital nursing, med-surg to be exact. And I always thought I wanted to do hospital nursing. I do want to do hospital nursing. My instructor told me on my last day of clinical, "I pegged you as an ICU nurse the first quarter I had you, and my opinion hasn't changed." I really like the fast paced environment of a hospital floor.

But after my disappointing interview with Children's, and my fantastic interview with NCC, I thought long and hard about that commitment to be open-minded, and about the interesting directions life has taken me when I've let it. And most of all, I knew that I was really ready to work. I know a lot of new grads who haven't worked for over a year since graduating. And I had an offer for a job I knew I would love. So despite the direction I thought I was supposed to go, I accepted that this was where life was leading me for now. And now every night that I go to work, I am so tickled pink that I am there.

New Care is a company that provides intensive home health care for medically fragile kids. Most of their patients have nurses in the home for 16-24 hours a day. My kiddo is dependent on a ventilator for breathing, and tube feedings for nutrition, and a wheelchair for mobility, and she is nothing short of amazing. And every time I go to work, I can see what having a nurse in the home does to ease this family's burden. It almost allows them to ignore all the medical equipment, and just be a family.

One thing that really surprised me in nursing school was how holistic nursing is. I didn't realize that nurses don't really focus on the medical diagnosis, they focus on the issues that stem from the patient's medical condition--how that condition effects this person's ability to function normally in his/her life, how to get them abck to functioning normally or how to help them establish a new normal. That's what home health is--finding and dealing with the new normal. The great thing about caring for this one patient in her home, is that I get to think about all aspects of her care every time I'm with her. How is her medical condition effecting her ability to develop like a normal 5 year old? What do we need to think about socially (she has playdates and sleepovers!)? What about academically? What choices can I let her make to feel more in control? What can I help her do for herself, because that's what 5 year olds are all about, right? And I'm doing all this while I'm monitoring her respiratory status and keeping her airway clear and giving her meds and all the other fun things I learned in school.

Anyway, I love it. I love my job. I love being a nurse. I probably won't be doing this particular job forever--I'm sure I will have 10 different careers as a nurse over the years. But for now, I am learning so much and I am so grateful that I have a job I love straight out of school.

And there's no Looney Tunes scrubs required.

I'm so excited to see where all of this leads me...

Jumping right in

So ready or not, school began.

Madeline has been so excited for middle school--only a few butterflies, almost all excitement. Despite the fact that most of her friends had their moms drive them to school the first day, Madeline wanted to ride the bus. She didn't mind if I walked to the bus stop with her, gave her a kiss, and took 42 photos of her getting on the bus. However, she did not know that I drove by the school a couple times during the day, in hopes that I might see her through the windows. No, actually I didn't. Or maybe I did.

Amelia was almost as thrilled to have the elementary school all to herself, with no big sister to boss her around and bring home the school notes.

But I had a very melancholy day at home missing my girls. I've decided it's the lakes and neighborhood pool that make me resist summer's end so much. I remember looking forward to school starting when we lived in Portland. But it is just so decadent to spend an afternoon hanging out beside the lake.

And so on the second day of school, I decided we should go to the lake when the kids got home from school since it was 80 degrees outside. The girls changed into their swimsuits, threw on their flip-flops, grabbed a beach towel and we headed to Idylwood Park for a little while.


Lifeguards are only on duty until Labor Day, and for some reason Amelia felt much more free jumping off the dock without the lifeguards watching. (I was watching very closely!)

Madeline did what she usually does--tries to catch minnows, follows the ducks, and recruits kids to build sand castles with her.

When I gave the girls the 15 minute warning, they decided to play on the playground. As soon as I set my purse and the beach towels down on the park bench, I heard Amelia cry out. She ran up to me and said, "Mom I fell off the zipline and broke my arm! We have to go!" (And then there were a few tears. Or a lot of tears. We can't remember now.)

I inspected it quickly (and so calmly! No hand flapping or crying or anything. You'd think I was a nurse or something), and it did not look good (elbow looked funky). Mia is not known to have a high pain tolerance, but her reaction to this was very clear: "My arm is broken. It hurts worse than anything has ever hurt. And it does not work." I handed my phone to Maddie and told her to call Kolby to find out where the nearest ER was. He was in a meeting, and we scared him pretty bad with 3 or 4 phone calls in a row followed by an urgent text, so he snuck out of his meeting to answer and helped us find the nearest ER. (Evergreen ER in Redmond is fantastic, ya'll!)

At first after the xrays they said her wrist had a simple break in both bones, but the xrays on the now swollen elbow were unclear so they sent them to an orthopedist to look at. Then they came back in and said the elbow was still unclear, but the orthopedist was concerned because the fracture in the wrist went into the growth plate. So we're heading to the ortho clinic at Children's tomorrow to get it checked out. They casted her up, gave us some Tylenol with codeine, and sent us home for the night.

In the meantime, Mia's home with me! No school for two days until Children's clears her to return to school. Too bad we can't go play at the lake.

(I fell asleep three times in the writing of this post.)

Clinging

School starts tomorrow.

I know I should be thrilled, and the part of my brain that craves organization is ready for the girls to be back in school. I look around my house and see messes and clutter and projects that need to be done, and as I make lists I'm happy that life will settle back into a schedule so I can do it all.

But the rest of my brain? Totally mourning the end of summer.

I love the lazy mornings with my girls. I love the summer activities. I love days when the toughest decision we have to make is whether to go to the pool or the lake. I like eating dinner on the deck and sleeping with the windows open. I adore evenings with no homework. I like not having to think about making lunch until it's actually lunch time. I like the constant stream of suntanned kids through my house requesting popsicles and snacks. I love having friends up from Portland and going back to Utah and Oregon for vacations. I love the pool and the parks and the lakes and the sunshine and the smell of sunscreen. And I really like having the girls home.

I am not ready for school to start.

(But my house is.)

Today the plan is to squeeze as much fun as we can from the last day. Possibly some golf. And definitely the pool. And probably some kayaking as well. Did I mention I'm having a hard time letting go of summer?

While waiting for the paint to dry...

I have a lot more summer blogging to get caught up on (including part 2 of the Utah trip), but I'm knee deep in house projects right now. Here's a sneak peek:

We've also been trying to squeeze in every last bit of fun we can from this incredibly short and stingy summer.
And I started my new job this week, training during the day. My night shifts begin tonight. So I will be back with finished house projects, summer activities, and details on the new job. But I have a feeling sleep deprivation will be in charge for the next week or two...