FREE FOOD (well...maybe)

if you live in NC, SC, GA, TN, or FL..... you better head on over to Harris Teeter this week!! Triple Coupons are in full effect. Last time I saved $80 off of my bill.

Happy Saving!!

prayer requests

My sister-in-law, who is 6 months pregnant with her second child, fell down the stairs today. The doctors say she is fine and so is the baby but they are still really scared. She is 40 years old. Their first child was born with Down's Syndrome on December 19th, 2007.

Please say a quick prayer that the rest of her pregnancy goes smoothly.

Walking in someone else's shoes

Unfortunately most towns have homeless people. Many of these homeless people are pretty "well known" around town.

Back where I grew up, we had a lady that everyone calls "Whoopie" because she looked like Whoopi Goldberg. She drove around town on a pink bike. Everyone has their own stories of "Whoopie", whose real name is really Esther Deever. The stories are all different but mainly say that she was born to a rich family, her parents died in a fire, and then her husband and child were also killed sometime later in life. She gave away all her money and lives on the streets now. She carries around a baby doll and has been seen in stores all over Winston-Salem buying baby food. They even created a facebook group for her here: "Who can prove the Winston-Salem bike lady is not a ghost?". There are currently 804 members of this group.

In Charlotte, or at least in our "university area", we have another person who is a well-known homeless man. He is a double amputee. He completely lost both of his legs in what people say was a gun fight (I am not sure if that is true or not). He often can by seen asking for money outside of Walmart to pay for food and sometimes a hotel room so he can wash up. I have also heard he sometimes lives at an assisted nursing home, which may be true since he has a catheter, and always looks clean and well-dressed. Someone has created a video of him on YouTube.



I also found out that Mr. Wideman (pictured above) was arrested on 12/4/2008 and served one day in jail for larceny.

It is interesting thinking about walking in someone else's shoes (or metaphorically speaking in Mr. Wideman's case). What happened to them to make them who they are (what are the real stories)? How did they become so strong to be able to survive with all that life has thrown at them? What do they think of their lives now?

Something to think about: What events in your life have changed you into the person you are today? What would you change if you could change anything?

MS Walk Update

My hubby and I have raised $1525.00 combined for the MS Walk. For some reason we created different sites instead of doing one together. He raised $1200 via his site and I have raised $325 on my site.

This means our team has raised a grand total of $5426.00 so far -- making us the top team for Charlotte, NC. We still 3 weeks until the walk. We are having a low-key party (aka: cookout) to raise funds next weekend. Everyone that comes will pay $20 at the door. We are providing all the drinks and food. We are expecting around 40 people to come which means hopefully another $800 will be raised. We are also having games (for a small price) and other such things to raise more money at the cookout. I will give you updates on that after next weekend!!

Do I live in a soap opera?

My day the other day started off as a regular day. I woke up at 530am, took a shower, got dressed, packed my lunch and was off to the hospital.

Upon arriving I found out we were a little bit overstaffed for CNAs so I was assigned as a sitter. Generally sitters are used for older patients who are confused or for people who have ended up in the hospital as a failed attempt of killing themselves. Turns out I was on a 12 hour shift for suicide watch. This means I would have to document the patients activities (sleeping/awake/calm/upset) every 15 minutes until my shift was over. You also have to stay at least an arm's length away from the patient at all times (including if they go to the bathroom or take a shower).

Anyway, before entering the room I was told a little bit about my patient. He had been incarcerated, was out of jail on bond and had recently done something that seemed like he was trying to kill himself and ended up in the hospital. I am leaving out a lot of details for obvious reasons. Well I spent the entire day with him documenting every 15 minutes what he was doing. I love to talk to new people so I learned his whole life story pretty much and he learned a little bit about me. He wouldn't be staying very long so I wished him well at the end of my shift and that was that.

Well, I was curious so when I got home so I looked him up on the internet to find out why he had been in jail. Turns out he was a SEX OFFENDER. Not only that, but he had only been released from jail for ONE day. Obviously got out of jail, tried to kill himself, and ended up in the hospital with me as his sitter. So turns out I am not bothered by needles, blood, any sort of bodily fluids... just don't make me sit with a SEX OFFENDER for 12 hours straight without telling me.

This also prompted me to look up our address to see how many sex offenders live around us. Turns out there are quite a few. If you live in NC, visit this website to see how many live around you: NC OFFENDER REGISTRY You may be surprised what you find.

8 things

I was tagged by Lindsay from Another Day in Paradise and by Jeanette from Cooler Ranch or Nacho Cheese to do this so I guess I better do it now :)

Here's how 8 THINGS works:

- Mention the person that tagged you.
- Complete the lists of 8's.
- Tag 8 of your wonderful bloggy friends.
- Go tell them you tagged them!

8 THINGS I LOOK FORWARD TO:

-Starting nursing school
-My birthday in two weeks (May 6th)
-Hanging out at the lake all summer
-Getting a tan
-Traveling
-Wake Football season
-Spending time with friends and family

8 THINGS I DID YESTERDAY:

-woke up at 5am to get ready for work
-arrived EXACTLY on time to work (we get penalized for being even one minute late)
-worked 12+ hours
-found out a good friend that moved away is in town so headed uptown to have dinner/drinks with her
-had a horrible dinner at a new place called NIX
-came home to find a mean letter from our homeowners association telling us we have too many weeds in our yard (even though we have a sign up that we just hired landscapers... seriously people give us a freaking break!?!)
-watched a little bit of TV
-finally went to bed around midnight

8 THINGS I WISH I COULD DO:

-Travel to more places
-buy a new car
-spend more time with friends and family
-Clean my house without having to actually CLEAN my house (I stole this from Lindsay)
-get another fur baby
-go on a super huge shopping spree
-learn how to quilt
-eat all the oreo cookies I wanted without feeling guilty

8 SHOWS I WATCH:

-Grey's Anatomy
-Private Practice
-Gossip Girl
-American Idol
-90210
-The Real Housewives
-Desperate Housewives
-24

8 BLOGGERS TAGGED:(okay so I just did 4 but hey, it's halfway right??)
The Company She Keeps
The Duncan Dialogues
Confessions of a Weirdo
Kicking Brain Cancers Butt

Thank you, Thank you

My blog won an award courtesy of The Duncan Dialogues! Woop woop!

The rules are that I am now supposed to list 10 UN-cute things about me. Well, here goes nothing...

1. I love trashy TV (aka all those dumb shows on MTV, VH1, etc)

2. I hate to clean and/or do laundry

3. I HATE talking on the phone and am horrible about calling people back... so much that people don't really call me anymore.... they call my husband in order to get in touch with me

4. I am geographically challenged. I may have been somewhere 10 million times but can never remember how to get there... luckily the hubby bought me a GPS for christmas last year

5. I love to sing in the car REALLY loud and often have people staring at me while they drive by because I am so into the music

6. I am what my husband calls a "pull and throw" kind of girl when I am looking for something and often am amazed when I come home to see how much of a mess I made in the morning while getting ready

7. I often leave the house without ANY makeup on

8. I am weird about organizing my clothes.. everything is arranged in the closet by color and style (long sleeved/short sleeved/no sleeves/dresses/skirts/shorts/pants/capris). I also have certain spots for college t-shirts vs regular t-shirts with prints vs. plain regular t-shirts (which are also arranged by color). I still have a hard time finding anything to wear

9. I love chapstick but can never hold onto it for more than a week before I lose it and have to buy another one

10. I often buy things I don't need now but may need one day. Example: a few years ago I saw an outfit that was so cute and had a great sale on it... but it was maternity... clearly I was not pregnant... but decided that one day I WOULD be pregnant and couldn't resist buying it. I must have inherited this from my mom who has already bought boxes of clothes for our children "one day".

Ok, now to tag a few more cute bloggers!!!
1. Another Day in Paradise
2. This, That & My Blog
3. OhAmanda
4. Legally Blonde Ambition
5. Quotes from the Queen

I heart faces self portrait contest

Check out my entry and then visit I heart faces to view the other entries!



What a great contest. Anyone who knows me, knows I love the art of the self portrait. Of course, I am not usually taking a picture of just myself.... but after searching through, I found this:


This is obviously a picture of me taking a self portrait while trying on wedding dresses... I look pretty happy :) you can even see me taking my own self portrait in the mirror to the right... too funny!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!

big announcement........ are you ready?!?


drum roll please....................................................................




I GOT INTO NURSING SCHOOL!!!


So you remember after the first denial, I was trying to remain calm. You can read about that here. Well somewhere along the way that all flew out the window. I started having a pity party for myself on Friday because I was supposed to hear from the 2nd school by the 15th. Well when I called the school on friday (the 17th) they said I would have to wait until I received my letter... they couldn't discuss anything over the phone?! Well to me that sounded like I was going to get a big fat reject letter (again) so I decided to throw a pity party for myself for the rest of the day. Poor hubby came home to find me in tears and proceeded to take me out for Japanese because he knew that comfort food was the only way to go.

Saturday I opened the mailbox and saw "the letter". Well, it looked as small as the last one did (the reject letter) so I just assumed it was another denial. BUT, I was wrong!! They accepted me!!!! I am hoping to get a kick start on things this summer if possible to get the ball rolling!! I am so excited right now I can hardly contain myself. I will be sure to remind myself of this post once I am a year into nursing school and crying about all the studying.... but for now, I can't wait to start!

Cute

Top Ten Tuesday

Read my Top Ten list and then head to OhAmanda to view some more.

So here in no particular order are:

Top Ten Vacations I have taken

1. Venice, Italy

2. Paris, France

3. Las Vegas, Nevada

4. Jamaica
(Justin took me here to propose to me -- well not in the palm trees, but in Jamaica)

5. Cozumel, Mexico

6. New York City, New York

8. Nice, France

9. Avignon, France

10. Boston, MA

I have been to some other places I wanted to put on here but didn't have the pictures scanned... so these were the ones I could pick from...I love traveling and hope to do a lot more of it in the future.

I heart faces

I found out about this through Another Day in Paradise. It looks like a lot of fun...



Visit the above link for lots of other cute Easter/Spring pictures

My niece, Elizabeth, at Easter

Happy Belated Easter

I have been a blog slacker because:
Wednesday, April 8th: Work 12+ hours, come home and pass out

Thursday, April 9th: wake up at 5am, find out I was called out of work because we were overstaffed... get a call at 7am saying I may be needed....get a call at 9am saying I am needed for a couple of hours... since it takes me almost a hour to get there, I say no and spend the day running errands instead

Good Friday, April 10th: Work 12+ hours, come home and pass out

Saturday, April 11th: Work 12+ hours, come home and pass out

Easter Sunday, April 12th: Work 12+ hours including 3 hours where I was the ONLY CNA on the whole unit of 3o patients.... come home and PASS OUT.

Now I have a couple of days off so I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK :)

and with that, I want to let you know of an awesome giveaway by Sweet Tea Diaries

click the picture for the link and enter to win... you definitely will WANT this giveaway!!!

Whatever you are, be a good one

The above is a quote from Abraham Lincoln. Also a theme in a book I am reading called "American Wife". This book is "loosely" based off of the life of Laura Bush.

I love to read so I recently joined the online book club below. This is also how I heard about American Wife. I am glad I found the link, because I am loving the book.

Click above to join in the discussion.

The schedule will be

Part 1 - April 9

Part 2 - April 22

Part 3 - May 4

Part 4 - May 15

Since today is obviously discussion of part one you may be a little behind. However, this is a great read (so far) so you should be able to catch up pretty quickly. Plus part 1 is less than 100 pages.

I think the quote "Whatever you are, be a good one" is a great quote. Of course everyone makes mistakes in their lives, but if everyone tried to be the best they could be, the world really would be a better place to live. Lord knows I have had many road blocks and wrong turns in my life, but I am still trying to become a better person. I know I have a long way to go but I think I am making good progress :)

What does this quote mean to you??

MS Walk Update

Our team has currently raised $3335.00!! This (so far) makes our team the TOP TEAM for donations. I am amazed. We are blessed. Our current team goal to $5000. I know we can make it. Please consider donating, even $5 can make a difference!

Click on the button below to find out why I am walking:

Publish Post

I have personally raised $300 so far which is more than I ever expected to be able to raise (especially since our orignial team goal was $1000). I am so thankful for everyone who has donated!! Thank you!!

Happy Campers

We decided to go camping this past weekend. We are not really campers. We didn't have any of the necessary supplies and had to go out and buy a tent, sleeping bags, and air mattress. Yes, an air mattress... did I mention we are not really campers?!

Well after buying all of that stuff, we made it to the campsite Friday afternoon only to realize the campsite was pretty much completely empty. We went to check-in place and we learned that there was a HIGH wind advisory for the night. What is that you ask? Apparently 50+ mph gusts of winds that would be blowing all night. Did I mention that we also forgot to look up the weather for the weekend. It was currently 40 degrees!!

Well we decided NOT to camp. We instead rented one of these for the night:

Appropriately named the "Cozy Cabin". Yes, it is as small as it looks.

The next day we went hiking at Linville Falls and Grandfather Mountain

We did not "camp" a second night in the cozy cabin... we instead stayed at the Hampton Inn our second night.

Sunday we met up with some other friends and went on a Zipline.

so much fun!!

We are going to try a "real" camping trip again sometime later in the summer when there are NOT 50+mph wind gusts and when it is NOT 30 something degrees outside.