I Love Haircut Days!!

Today I got a very very very long overdue haircut. Thank God! I had definitely been feeling downright unsightly this past week, I suppose the lovely cold sore that exploded on my lip didn't help either. But, that's healing up and I LOVE my new hair - things are looking up!
The hubby likes the new do too, he tells me "it makes you look older". Believe it or not that's a complement, he means I don't look the usual 12 years younger than I actually am. Gavin said to me "Mommy, I like your new hair", I think it's pretty impressive that a three year old boy would even take the time to notice it! Mikayla says "How long will your new hair last?", "Why?" I ask, "Because I want you to have it for the field trip on Friday." Ha Ha Ha. She has her first school field trip coming up and can think of nothing else, I'm going along as a parent volunteer, should be interesting.
It almost feels like a waste to be sitting here in front of my computer doing taxes for the hubby's business and blogging, instead of showing off my gorgeous locks to the world. Well world, here are those locks. Sorry there's no "before" picture, just imagine it all pulled back in a ponytail, because that's all I was doing with it day-in and day-out.

Mother's Day

What a great day. I was given what almost every mother dreams of having, a sleep-in, yep my hubby managed to keep the kids at bay until 9:00. They woke me with presents and cards and lots of love. It's amazing how all it takes to make this mama happy is a little extra sleep and a few kisses.

We had beautiful weather today, so after church and lunch with MY mama, we spent the majority of the day outside. Playing in the backyard (for the kids), cleaning up the backyard (for mom and dad), and a little campfire with roasted hot dogs and marshmallows!!

It's these three little joys that have made me a mom, and I am so grateful for them. How did I end up with the three most perfect children in the whole world?

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there. I hope you were spoiled!

Happy Nurses Week

I'm feeling very lucky this week to have an amazing out-of-the-house job, in addition to my mommy-ing job. This week I've felt extra appreciated at work, mostly in the form of edible gifts (pizza, coffee, cake, muffins, etc.), because it's nurses week!!! The doctors, management, PTs, OTs, patients and their families have all been super kind to us this week. It's really nice to feel recognized for doing what can sometimes be a very challenging job. It's a job that I love because it makes me think. It's not a job you can do on auto-pilot, it is so much more than just following orders blindly. I really do learn something new everyday. For me the real challenge comes in the emotional toll it can take. We as nurses are welcomed into the most vulneralble moments in a patient's life. From learning about terminal diagnoses, to witnessing the very first or very last breaths our patients take. We often see something in a patient that causes us to become attached, I'm sure we've all shed a tear over patients and their families who've touched us some how. We do things for our patients that most people would never want someone else to have to do for them. We are most often thanked for our work, but ask any nurse and she/he will be able to tell you stories of those patients who do not appreciate what we do for them. We get hit at, spit at, called every name in the book, we get peed on, puked on, and yell at. But we come back day after day to do this job that gives immense satisfaction in the knowledge that what we do is important. We save lives. We care. We are nurses.

Super-photographer in the making: Part 2

Well, that lived up to all my expectations, and then some!! On Sunday I got to go to the highly-anticipated photography class I wrote about last week. I'm pretty sure I was grinning ear-to-ear the whole day. It was fabulous in a few ways: first and foremost I learnt lots, and it gave me an appetite to keep learning more, and secondly the added bonus of spending kid-free time with a friend.

The course was VERY beginner, it went through the basics of the buttons on the camera, changing different settings on the camera, and just barely grazing the tip of the iceberg on the rest of photography. But you've gotta start somewhere, and this course will be a great foundation for many more to come.

Of course while you're learning about photography you've got to take some pictures, I mostly took pictures of the back of people's heads, or the ceiling, or the whiteboard and our instructor writing on it (almost all of which I promptly deleted). I definitely took numerous photos of my coffee cups, other people's drinking vessels, my note pad, and of course of my partner in crime, Moj. We also had a short field-trip outside just before lunch to take some "scenery" shots, thank goodness for a sunny day. But like I said, I deleted most of the photos. There was lots of playing with settings and trying out new things which of course leads to, ummm "interesting" photography.

Here's a little glimpse inside my photography course...