Our Life in DFW is moving!

We've started a new chapter in our lives... both of the kids are in school and I'm going to nursing school... so we're starting a new blog!
Join our family over at http://ththeschoolyears.blogspot.com/ to keep up with our latest adventure :)

Little Miss and Little Man

I've been thinking for a while now that I need to change my kids "screen names". Little Miss has blossomed into a beautiful young girl and Little Man is my handsome "strong boy". Trying to come up with names that encompass their personalities is a challenge.

Little Miss is growing like a weed (or a bean plant :)) and Little Man is obsessed with all things dirty and crawly so...

I think I've settled on "Bean" for Little Miss and "Bug" for Little Man. It's short, sweet, and to the point! So from here on out that's what I'll be calling them :)

Little Man is playing soccer!!

Little Man's first soccer practice was tonight and he did great!! He's a natural :)

Last Day with Shelley and Sophie

Shelley and I met back in the Fall of 2006 when our girls started their first year of preschool together. The girls were 2 and became fast friends. While in preschool our 2 year old class, 3 year old class, and 4 year old class pretty much stayed the same and we had playdates once or twice a month. Not your regular playdates - super fun, field trip worthy playdates. Preschool was a BLAST for the kids and the moms!
Little Miss and Sophie have played together for years and Shelley and I have been best friends for all of those years too!
Shelley's husband got a promotion and now they are moving to West Virginia and we are very sad!!!
Today we got the girls (and ourselves) together for one last afternoon before they head out. While we're sad they are leaving - we're excited that we now have a place to crash should we ever head out to West Virginia :)

Sea World 2011

Fabulous trip to San Antonio this weekend to visit my high school besties and take the kids to Sea World.

Day #1 - We decided that it was Water park day today. The kids had never been down a water slide and it took some convincing but once they tried it they loved it! We also spent a lot of time in the wave pool. For lunch we took in the show at the cafeteria and then dried off for some animal fun. We took in the beluga whale show, the Shamu One Ocean show, the Codfish Cafe show and then hit up the roller coaster and merry go round before calling it a night.





Day #2 - Sea World Day - Lots of fun at Sea World today but our favourite activity by far was feeding the dolphins!




High School Best Friends reunite - Amy, Becky, and I were best friends in high school (Go Dragons!) We got together and chatted about high school and various other random things until around 2am. We are in frequent contact but it's great that we are close enough to be able to actually see each other frequently!








Now these pictures are hilarious! Amy found an old picture of when we were dating our husbands :) The picture on the left is from 1998 or 1999 and we took the picture on the right this past weekend - July 2011. LOVE IT!!

Little Man and his first pair of glasses

I scheduled the kids for eye check ups this morning before we all get back into school. Little Miss and I checked out pretty good (although apparently glasses are in our future). When Little Man had his exam they told me that he's nearsighted and astigmatic and definitely needs glasses. Yikes! I was definitely not ready for that. They fitted him for frames (he picked out these blue frames and loves them) and made the lenses in house. We picked them up this afternoon.

Here he is in his new fabulous blue glasses - he looks so handsome and I'm so proud of him for wearing them all day today :)

Oleo Ranch 2011 - Day 4

Happy Birthday America!

What a great day :) Kids played (loudly) this morning while Ryan and I slept in. We went to the La Garita for pancakes with the family and then it was time for showers for all and curlers for my hair! Then I went to Ronnie and Barbara's cabin to do some online quizzes for my computer class while Ryan and the kids fished the ponds.
Little Miss caught a fish all by herself and Little Man caught a couple with dad's help and they skipped rocks and saw a red-tailed hawk and a golden eagle which they said was really cool!
Then we all went back to our cabin and took a good long nap.
We all left for the Lake City Fourth of July Celebration around 4:30pm. We stopped and watched a moose and her baby for a bit on the way. Once we got to town we did a bit of shopping and then found ourselves a nice place on the grass in the town square.
It was (as always) a great small town America 4th of July celebration - street band, street dancing, lawn chairs in the town square, kids playing at the park, glow sticks, blankets on the ground, and a fantastic fireworks display that boomed super loudly in the valley and lit up the surrounding mountainside. I LOVE coming here for the 4th!
Fireworks started around 9:15pm and ended around an hour later - best fireworks in Lake City yet! There was a LONG stream of cars and trucks leaving town to go back to their various mountain cabins.
What a great evening!

Oleo Ranch 2011 - Day 3

Fun and Relaxing Day

* Breakfast at the La Garita with the family
* Fun colouring sets from Meme for the kids
* Kids fished at the ponds with Ryan while I read my book back at the cabin - They caught a total of 7 rainbow trout - Little Miss caught 4 & Little Man caught 3.
* Naptime for all
* Little Man fished the streams with Ryan and caught 2 brown trout for the fish fry - Little Man was so excited to catch some fish for the fish fry and to gut his fish for the first time!
* Lara and Ryan came in today - Lara in her car and Ryan riding in on his Harley
* Lara and I cooked dinner - chicken, potatoes au gratin, broccoli and cherry cheesecake for dessert

Oleo Ranch 2011 - Day 2

Kids were up at 6:30am bouncing on the beds and chatting with each other. After a couple of attempts to get them to go back to sleep, Ryan and I decided that we'd have to get up. We got ready, had breakfast at the hotel and then went down to the City Market for our groceries.
After filling our cart with the necessities along with a couple of wind catchers, we ate lunch and headed up the mountain.
This year we decided that our family is just too big now to share one room in the big cabin so Ryan, the kids, and I stayed in the Alabama. We loaded all of our stuff into the cabin and then mom and dad and Bill and Rita showed up an hour later so we headed next door to the La Garita to help them unload.
The kids had fun using their binoculars and playing Old Maid and dressing the paper doll horses that Little Miss brought. Dinner was yummy flank steak and potatoes. After dinner we headed back to the Alabama for some much needed sleep.

Oleo Ranch 2011 - Day 1

Day 1 - Driving to Colorado

We left DFW around 10 am with the car topper (with the broken string) loaded and the obligatory family photo snapped by a neighbor. If we don't have it - we don't need it - although we did forget our Scrabble and Quiddler games at home!
My friend, Nicole, called me about 5 hours into the trip and told me that the Nursing School exam results were posted - lowest score accepted was a 74 - so with an 87 - I am officially accepted to nursing school (Nicole is in too!)!
The hills going over Raton pass were scorched from the recent wildfires and the sunset outside of Trinidad was beautiful - there were numerous mammatus clouds (my favourite kind) hanging around from the recent thunderstorms and the light through the clouds and around the mountains was spectacular this year.
We stayed the night in Alamosa (got in around 11:30pm). Both kids were asleep when we got there but Little Man woke up when we took him out of the car and was so excited to be there that it took a little while to get him back to sleep :)

Kaplan Nursing School Entrance Exam

Yikes! It's been on my mind for the last month and the day has finally come and gone - the day that I took the Kaplan Nursing School Entrance Exam (when you put it in all caps like that it makes it look very official and very scary :) ).

This is the picture I call: The door to my future. Here is where I sat as I waited for the door to open to I could go in and take the test.

Back story: I've been thinking about going to nursing school for a while now. I thought about it the first time I was in college and then again after I became a stay at home mom and it really came to the forefront when my brother in law decided to take his pre-reqs and go to nursing school. So a year ago I started taking a couple of pre-reqs that I would need in order to be able to apply for nursing school. I took A&P I last fall, A&P II and Developmental Psychology this past spring, Speech over the Maymester, and am currently finishing up my last pre-req, computers. I applied for nursing school last month and received a letter stating that I had made the first cut and was invited to take the nursing school entrance exam.

My test day: Wednesday, June 29th at 1 p.m. in Room 518.

I started studying for the test last week using a Kaplan study guide (which ended up being useless), the Little, Brown Book to study for grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, and all of my Anatomy and Physiology notes from the last two semesters.

The test consisted of 91 questions divided into four sections: Reading Comprehension, Math, Writing/Grammar, and Science. It was an online test (I hate online tests!) and each section was timed.

I showed up around 12:30pm as prepared as possible and I was so nervous.

I'm pretty good at taking tests though so I knew that once I got into it that my nerves would calm down a bit :) I got logged in and started the reading comprehension part of the test and 2 hours later emerged with an overall test score of 87% and a critical thinking score of 88%. My individual scores were Reading 95, Math 89, Writing 86, and Science 75. From what I hear from others about this test those are really good scores. The nursing school will post score cut offs for final admission on Friday afternoon so I'm hoping for the best!


Kaplan Test Info:

Reading Comprehension: Kaplan study guide was good practice for this. There were long passages to read with 3-5 questions per passage.

Math: SUPER easy. All fractions (add, subtract, multiply, divide), percentage conversions, percentage calculations, and a couple of nursing dosage calculations (given this much medicine at this rate of flow, how many minutes should you give this medicine if patient needs to receive this amount)

Writing/Grammar: Long passages to read just like the reading comprehension. It asked questions like: look at sentences 4, 7, 9, 13 - which one has a subject/verb that do not agree or which of the following sentences has the comma in the wrong place. There were also a couple that said where should the following sentence be added in the passage to clarify information.

Science: This was the hardest one for me because there were only 20 questions but 5-6 systems that were covered so there really wasn't a good way to study. I read through my A&P notes 2 times and really made sure to pay attention to the major points in each and that's all I did. Some of the questions that I can remember (these aren't exact but the main ideas):
* What are the three compartments in the body where water is held?
* Which of the following statements is the primary function of the circulatory system?
* Which body system is the main system used for the homeostasis of pH?
* Where does oxygen exchange take place?
* If a person has chronic hypertension, which of the following illustrates problems in their vascular system?

I did find that doing the quizzes at http://www.learningnurse.com/content/view/25/39/ was a helpful study tool and illustrated the types of questions that might be asked on the exam.