Oh No[se] Jack.

So I was working today, enjoying my calm day in the ICU and a co-worker steps into my room and says, "Hey Becky, when you get a chance, call down to the ER. Katie just called up and said she wanted to talk to you." Unsure of why she would be needing to talk to me I say OK and finish up what I was doing in the room. I come out and sit down, do a little charting and then decide, well I guess I better call and see what Katie wanted. I call downstairs and Katie gets on the phone. "Hey Becky, I just wanted to let you know that....I'm treating your hubby down here. Jack's been brought into the ER via ambulance." UMMMMMM, OK! After finding out what was going on, possible nose fracture and some lacerations that will probably require stitches off I trot to go see for myself. YEP! It's broken alright. After getting to check out his CT scan and seeing that it's actually broken into about 5 pieces (eek) we'll be off to see the ENT on Monday to figure out what to do about getting it straightened. Broken nose #3...possible surgery #2. I think Jack's tired of being so accident prone! Yikes! He ended up with 8 stitches over his nose and toward his right eye (thankful he didn't injure the eye). Please be praying for healing for him and no infection! He's taking some antibiotics and is loading up on some pain medications. He'll be heading out of the country in 3 weeks and then he'll be in a friend's wedding in 4 weeks in Chicago so we're hoping to get any surgery out of the way before he heads to Budapest, Hungary!! And for your viewing pleasure ****somewhat graphic!****

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

---
A note from Jack:I was playing softball in the outfield and running back for what turned out to be a home-run, thinking I could catch it. I didn't notice this beforehand but the park didn't have a warning track (so I didn't know the fence was coming) and it was chain link, with the top pole lining up to head height, no pad either! It was like the perfect storm for me :-). I ran into the fence before I knew it was there, got some pretty good cuts on the nose along with a crooked, quite broken nose (see attached pics if you'd like, I look rough!) and 8 stitches. Doctor said the nose broke into 4-5 pieces, which I'm wondering if will make it easier to straighten! All in all, it just hurts but really seems all fixable given time. Plus I got told I look tough.

---
And on a side note...a BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Julie Galloway Lanford!!! Hope you had a fabulous day, sis-in-love!! :)

Earth Day and Easter (beware, picture post)

So this past week has been full and fun :) Last Friday was Earth Day and while we weren't out to celebrate it we did get to spend some fun, quality time with Jeremy and Kimi. They have officially accepted a position with Care Ministries and apartment ministry in Co. Springs, CO and will be moving in mid-July so we are taking the chance to spend as much time as we can with them before they move! Jeremy is a middle school history teacher and is taking his kids on a scavenger hunt at the Natural History of New Mexico Museum in the middle of May so Kimi, Jeremy, Jack and I headed to the museum last Friday to create the fun scavenger hunt. Upon arriving at the museum we found out it was closed due to Good Friday so we decided to meander around downtown Santa Fe for a little while and take in the sights. Jack had never walked around downtown before so it was fun to get to show him around a bit.

Kimi and I LOVE these teal doors. It's definitely one of my favorite colors and parts about Santa Fe :)

Chillin' in the upstairs outdoor bar...and on a ball....

He was juggling, too. Notice how everyone is interested in the dogs though.

just thought this was fun :)

Cathedral, can't remember the name of it. See it decorated for Christmas here.

Band shot :)

See, there really are flowers here in spring time!! :)

Cool wind thingies.

Loretto Chapel, one day we'll go inside it!

Love these people!!

We went shopping, and it was fun and colorful.

Will buy a basket one day...

Hopefully we can get a steal of a price like Kimi did!

Loving all the colors.

Treasures abound if you're willing to dig.

Thought that would be fun to have...bit out of the price range though.

Gotta love an R2D2 postal drop box :)

Just some coolness in Santa Fe.

After hanging out downtown for a while we headed back to the condo and had some yummy Salmon, Steak, Salad, and Corn on the Cob. We also had a rousing game of Sequence (which Kimi and I won over the boys 3 to 1 I believe) then tried our hand at Rummikub.

Saturday Jack and I hung out until I went in for a night shift I had picked up due to a co-worker with some family stuff going on that couldn't make it in to work. I got off around 8am on Sunday grabbed a quick shower and then it was off to Easter Sunday at church! We enjoyed a yummy continental breakfast in the lobby while chit-chatting with friends and then we headed into the service. The message was called: No Fear in Death. It was a good reminder that if we know Christ then that takes away our fear of death because we know where we are going for eternity. It gave a great reminder to have an eternal perspective, as those in Christ we do not experience death as judgment but as great gain. Death is not final but a prelude to resurrection and our eternal inheritance. What a great reminder and encouraging thing to stay our minds on. I was thankful to be alert and attentive through most of the service. Only once did my eyes close and my pen drifted upwards in my notes :). We ended up sitting in the very back of the church because there were so many people there so at times it was a bit distracting having so many people in front of us but we were thankful to be there. On the drive home I fell asleep without even realizing it and Jack woke me up in the garage. I went upstairs and crashed on the couch for four hours. I had asked Jack to only let me sleep 2 hours because I had to sleep Sunday night in order to work Monday morning but come to find out, he fell asleep, too! We woke up, roused our bodies with a good workout and then rested the rest of the evening.



Monday Jack and I both worked all day and then headed to small group. It was our night to share our testimony with the group. God was so gracious to give us the words to share with them, to give them a glimpse into what our last year has looked like and there were tears all around. But Jack and I were thankful to be able to get things out in the open and be real with the group. They were all thankful and encouraging to us and as Jack and I talked later, we both feel like we are no longer living under the big black shadow that hung over our marriage for so long. Restoration has come and is still coming and we are processing and moving forward in our lives. I'm so thankful for where the Lord has brought us, where he is leading us and from all he has brought us from! This time last year was probably part of the darkest times in my life and Jack's as well yet God, in his mercy, has given us new hope, new life and new love! Praise HIM!!

Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with me resting (life of a nurse I tell ya!) and running with friends, meeting up for accountability and discipleship and spending time reading. It's been good. Tonight we get to hang out with J&K again, and again on Friday (!!) and then Saturday we are going to watch the local high school put on the musical, Annie, because our friends' daughter is the lead, Annie! :) Very exciting. I can't wait to hear her sing, supposedly she's got a great voice! Will keep you posted about that.

Wee bit o' an update

Let's see...lately we've been enjoying beautiful weather here in NM. Highs in the 70s and lows in the ?? I don't remember, I'm not usually out in it. After our house guests left (it was so fun to have them!) Jack headed to work and I had a lazy day of cleaning up around the house. This past weekend I was in training to become PALS certified. PALS = Pediatric Advanced Life Support. This is required for my job working in the ICU because our ICU sees everything from 3 week old babies (yep, have had one of those) all the way up to the 90+ yo. I like it. It's a neat experience where I get to see a lot of things that I've never seen before or worked with before. HUGE learning experience for me. PALS went pretty well...it's a lot like ACLS (thankfully) which is Advanced Cardiac Life Support so I felt like already being certified in that helped out. The first day of the classes we went from station to station working out scenarios that might come into our hospital. I liked that part because I got to hear some crazy stories of actual patients that have come in and then got to talk/walk through what I would do in those situations. The second day (Sunday) we worked through more scenarios before we tested out. I was thankful it was a shorter day (finished my test first and got a 100, woohoo) so I jetted over to church and was able to sneak in right as the sermon started.

Our pastor was finishing up a series on generosity and giving. It was definitely a convicting series. Main point I remember and have taken away to let stew in my heart and brain from the whole series is: Does my standard of living dictate my giving or does my giving dictate my standard of living? God prospers us not to raise our standard of living but to raise our standard of giving. Fundamentally when we say we can't afford to give, it really shows our real view of God, our lack of faith and/or lack of trust. Pretty powerful stuff! Jack and I have definitely started to examine our finances, where we can get rid of lingering debt, and how we can start giving more. Yay! Looking forward to giving more. It always makes me so happy to get to give, not just tithe but over and above.

After church on Sunday, Jack headed down to Santa Fe to meet up with our friend J for some accountability and to work through a book J, J, K and I are doing called A Call To Spiritual Reformation, by D.A. Carson (awesome book, highly recommend it). I met up with K and we did a workout together (which killed both of us) and then I headed home. Sunday evening was a nice relaxing time with Jack where we enjoyed our back patio furniture and our new sunbrella! It was awesome (except for the time that it almost blew over on me and as I leaped out of my chair to catch it my Bible went spilling to the ground, oops!).

Monday Jack headed off to work while I relaxed at home (man, the schedule of a nurse sure is nice!) then made a cake and some salad to take to dinner with J&K up in LA. We enjoyed some yummy chicken alfredo, salad (topped with pomegranate seeds which were SO enjoyable), garlic toast, and Chilean white wine, mmm! After dinner the four of us discussed what we've been learning from A Call To Spiritual Reformation, challenged each other to do practical things to jump start our prayer lives and set up accountability with that. SUCH an encouraging and challenging time together. We spent some time in prayer and then Jack and I headed home. What a great start to the week. 

----
So what are you learning from the Word lately? From your church? Have you struggled in your prayer life? If so, what are practical things you've tried that have worked to help keep you on track in praying regularly?

House Guests

So we had another round of house guests with us last night. Jessica and Kyle B. drove all the way from Atlanta just to stay with us for one night! Isn't that great? Hehe. Ok, so maybe they were on their way to California and we were a nice pit stop along the way. It was fun to have a taste of home here with us. We consider them family but really if we put it all together there's no relation, just my sister-in-law's husband's sister and her husband. Did you follow that? :) They arrived around 9 and we took them up the back hill behind the condo to see the lights of Santa Fe then we stayed up for a few hours chit chatting and catching up. They even came bearing gifts!! Jess is cutely pregnant and looks great, baby's due in August. They left earlier this morning after more chit chatting and some breakfast but it was so nice to have house guests from back east. Like I've said before, we love to have people come visit, even if it is just to pass through so pack your bags and head west young man (or woman) and come give us a visit...free place, free food, who can pass that up?! :)

Lily and Aslan came back home to us. Thanks J&K! :)

Do they know me or what?! This was a thank you gift for letting us stay, AWESOME!

In other news, this past weekend I enjoyed a phenomenal woman's conference at my church led by Priscilla Shirer. It was on the book of Jonah and it rocked my socks (yes I did just use that cheesy phrase). The study was called "Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted." Some points of highlight:
1. The interrupted life is the privileged life.
2. The interrupted life is the significant life.
3. The interrupted life is the cure for the search for significance.
4. The interrupted life is the challenging life.
5. The interrupted life not only looks different it also looks more difficult.
6. The interrupted life is the accountable life.
7. The Holy Spirit's job is to sanctify us.
8. Forgiveness of past sins qualifies us for present service.
9. You get a second chance.
10. You get the presence of God.
11. You get an exceedingly great opportunity.
12. God can redeem the parts of your life you thought were wasted.
13. You get divine anointing.
14. You get supernatural results.
15. Sometimes your greatest message is the mess in your life.

The conference was convicting, challenging, and helped me work through a lot of stuff I've been dealing with due to past sins. I'm very thankful I went and was able to connect with other women from my church. When I got home from the conference on Saturday Jack had surprised me with some beautiful flowers he had bought for me. It was such a nice treat!

They were so pretty :)

I really liked all the colors and how they complimented

Smile Jack :)

And just for laughs, this was Jack's snack that night. Yummy :)

New Recipes from my "personal RD"

So I have a fantastic family. Part of that fantastic family is my fantastic sister-in-law. Julie is a Registered Dietitian who writes a nutrition blog that I highly recommend you check out. You can see it on my sidebar to the left over there <--- listed as Cancer Dietitian. Her most recent post has a number of simple and quick recipes that sound delicious! I'm looking forward to trying some of them out soon. I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Julie and her blog. Feel free to browse it for very helpful, insightful and educated posts about nutrition, cancer fighting healthy eating habits and much more!

Julie, her hubby Jon and baby KyLee at Christmas last year.

East Coast Visit

Well March [April] Madness if officially over, congratulations to the Huskies on their NCAA tourny win. Did you hear about the Oregon School Librarian who was the only one out of 3,000,000 on Yahoo to correctly guess the final 4 teams in the tournament AND she ended up picking Butler vs UConn in the final game AND she picked The Huskies to dominate the Bulldogs! Read her story here. Fun stuff. We enjoyed watching the game with new friends (our neighbors who we finally met, yay!), old friends (Kimi and Jeremy made the frequent trip down to hang out and watch some games with us) and an even older friend! Our good friend Dr. M. Francis graced us with his presence last night for the final game. It's fun having him here in town (on business from ORNL to LANL) and it's nice to hear news from friends back in Knoxville. Looking forward to taking him to Bobcat Bite tomorrow night as well. So we all hung out last night watching bball and munching on some Upper Crust Pizza! It was fun and nice to have friends around. Very thankful!

Look who popped by! So hard to tear these guys away from the computer :)

Old friend meets new friends! L-R: Kimi, Jeremy, Matthew, Jack

New friends whom we dearly love! :)

this makes me :)

Thanks to my dear friend, Alinna, I've been using these for my desktop background since December. So fun, so pretty, so exactly what I enjoy looking at every time I'm on my computer :) Thanks, Alinna!

The Busy Life

Life's been...busy. I finally switched over to working day shift (yay) and that's been going really well. There's just something funky about working nights. Your body just feels off. While being a nurse on night shift was often times much "easier" because there weren't as many people around writing orders or taking the patient away for some sort of test or coming in doing PT and whatnot, it was often times hard because it was just you and your other nurse(s) there "fending for yourselves." We didn't have techs around to help move patients or answer a call light, there weren't usually docs around to answer questions or change an order. We often fixed our own problems without having to call anyone for help. However, now that I'm on day shift and the pace is way faster and things happen all around you, often without your knowledge, I'm enjoying it a lot more. One of the things I am enjoying the most about working in a smaller hospital (this is the smallest I've ever been in) is that 1)a lot of the docs and nurses are on a first name basis (yay for not "groveling" at someone's feet and feeling like they are unapproachable) 2)the docs at this hospital are the nicest ones I have ever worked with. They are SO open to teaching, answering questions, collaborating with the nurse in order to give the BEST care they can for their patient. It is such a different work environment than any I have ever been in before and I am very thankful for it. Still working on getting the hang of working in the ICU, getting to see a TON of new stuff that I've never worked with before, learning a lot and enjoying my preceptor. I'm thankful she's easy going, open to questions and a good teacher. I was able to go to a lecture/in-service today on ventilators and I feel like I've learned a lot about them. Still need more practice working hands on with them since I've only worked with a handful in my entire career but I'm glad I went and the MD teaching the class was very good at explaining all the different things that went along with it. I guess it was a good thing that he was a respiratory therapist before he went to med school!

Other than work things have been going well here in NM. Jack is still enjoying his work and is doing really well with it. He's gearing up for a trip to Hungary in about a month (hoping this trip goes better than his Switzerland trip). We're bummed my work schedule couldn't afford for me to go with him on this trip like we had originally planned but I just got my passport renewed and we're looking forward to planning a trip to Argentina!! Either later this year or next year sometime, but it's on the books and in our minds and we are pumped. We are still loving our church and small group and are thankful for the friends we are making through that. It's neat how being around people from the church feels like "home" and we are thankful for that.

Tomorrow we are headed to southern NM to visit the Trinity Site which is only open to public tours twice a year! I'm excited to go, but I'm sure Jack (and the other nukeys that will be with us) will understand things much better than me and hopefully they can dumb it down for me! While down there we may stop by for a brief visit to White Sands, NM which would be fun.

Otherwise...life's been life. Not much else is going on with us. But life is good and we are enjoying the warmer temperatures (we daily have our back doors open so we can hear the fountain and wind chimes on our back patio) and looking forward to some good hiking/camping come later spring and into summer!