celebrating father's day

as mentioned previously, my father was out of town for father's day this year...livin' it up on sunny lake eufaula. so we celebrated father's day with the family on the following sunday (june 28) and enjoyed our traditional father's day feast: home-made chicken fried steak with all the fixin's. it was *very* tasty as always and everyone had a great time. happy father's day again, dad!

father's day 2009

happy father's day!

unfortunately, my father is out of town today...he's with most of the rest of my family enjoying a week at the lake, drinking beer, watching sunsets, water skiing, grilling and tooling around the lake in his boat....without me! because of this, we will be celebrating father's day next week with my whole family, but i still wanted to take this opportunity to say:
happy father's day!
to all the dads out there, hope your day is wonderful and you enjoy all the blessings being a father has to offer!

sunday funday

jared shows off his skills


mom & matt

dare i say it? i actually took *another* day and devoted it to all fun! madness, i know! if you're thinking you might not know me anymore, don't fret, some of the "old" jes is still here. the day was only possible because i didn't sleep....at all.
i worked my usual saturday night shift and fell into the usual sunday morning routine: leave work, drive home, change clothes, wake up matt, head to church...etc. however, when we left church we had to stop at target and costco to get some desperately needed items (i.e. burt's beeswax lipgloss and redbulls). matt and i ended up goofing off in target for almost an hour, despite our "quick trip" promise to each other. we had so much fun that we decided to get some starbucks (a treat!) at the shop located in target and vow to stay up the rest of the day until we had to meet my parents that evening. we headed to costco and continued the fun shopping trip, people watching and making fun of various items for sale. on our way home, we decided in order to stay up we should watch some movies. blockbuster was an obvious choice at this point. we rented three movies, all of which i would recommend: seven pounds; he's just not that into you; and fired up. all were good for different reasons, of course. we ended up watching the two comedies that afternoon (we saved the less-funny movie for monday morning) before we met up with mom & dad for a trip to the lake.
after the second movie was over we rushed to put on our swimsuits and meet mom & dad & jared at their house to load up the boat and head to lake lavon where we enjoyed cruising on the lake, watching jared wakeboard (and eat it!) and drinking some cold beer while watching the sunset.
needless to say, it was an awesome day that ended in a very tired jessica being barely able to keep her eyes open long enough to shower off all the sunscreen! when i finally made it to bed, i slept so deeply, i didn't even remember going to bed!
yay for sunday fundays! oh, and thanks to all of you who encouraged me to *not* work extra on sunday....it was worth it :)
i only have pics of the trip to the lake...sorry! enjoy :)

dad, the captain, & mom, first mate


me & matt...i apologize for the swimsuit pic!


two of my favorite guys :)

fun-filled fridays

driving the boat


mom driving, and our instructor adam

on friday the 12th, i should have probably stayed home and slept to recover from work. i had worked monday-thursday and was in the ER again on saturday as the charge nurse. however, i did not use this one day for sleep recovery, but fun recovery! i came home from work friday morning and slept for a quick 2 hours before being picked up by my mom for a drive to lewisville and a trip to the lake for a boating class. since my dad & mom got their new boat, dad wants us to be able to drive, park, dock, and tie-up the boat. some of this i was familiar with, other parts...not so much. mom wasn't familiar with it either, so we attended a free class called "women on the water" where we got to drive around in a brand new boat (it only had 5 hours on it) and practice driving, parking, pulling the boat onto the trailer, tying off, anchoring, etc. it might not sound like much fun, but it was a blast! there were only 3 students: myself, mom & another woman who was originally from germany. even though it was about 95degrees out and sunny, it was windy and felt great to be on the lake! afterwards mom and i stopped for some tcby frozen treats...yum! oh, and i forgot to mention we had subway on the way to the class...double yum! thanks for the great time, mom!

tcby strawberry frozen yogurt!

when i got home in the afternoon i was exhausted but we had made plans to go out with our friends crystal and rich. this was important for three reasons: 1) it was crystal's 24 birthday! 2) they are moving to DC in about 2 weeks and 3) i hadn't come close to filling the fun-quota for the day. so i took another nap while they figured out dinner plans. we ultimately decided to go to zenna a thai/japanese restaurant so crystal could get sushi (a fav of hers). the food was great and i also highly recommend the beer tower and white wine! it was loads of fun and great conversation. after the meal, crystal and i headed to kroger for some birthday desserts and we met the boys back at crystal and rich's place -- which was half packed-up :/ the only downer for the whole evening, though i'm very excited for crystal (she's going to georgetown for a CRNA program!).
happy birthday, crystal!

me with the birthday girl

the zeigen bock beer tower


the birthday girl with her sushi

CPEN celebration

a pic with my certificate

my supervisors and educator at work decided to honor my recent certification with a cake at work the other night. it was a very nice cake (from sam's ...yum!) and could not have been presented on a better night. i was in the middle of working all that overtime and we were supremely short-staffed on this particular evening. everyone was in kindof a "funk" and the department morale was sinking. that is...until you bring cake! and not just any cake, read the message closely and let me know what you think :) it gave us all a laugh at work...

a pic with the cake


"Congratulations Jessica, RV, CEN,
CPEN - CPEN picture"
uhm...i think they meant RN, and they wrote out that
they needed to include the picture...oops! :D

the best husband

just a post to make everyone out there jealous....
the last few weeks i've been working a lot of extra because matt has been teaching an evening summer class. by a lot of extra, i mean five 12-hour shifts/week...this is why most of you probably think i've fallen off the planet. sorry! i haven't even really seen my husband, but he has made extra effort to make sure that i keep my sanity during this time period. not only has he made increased efforts to help around the house, but he has been making me breakfast when i get home from work! this is a big deal because my husband doesn't really cook, and he doesn't wake up early. the days he greets me in the morning are those in which he has also been up all night working: grading papers, writing lectures, making power points or tests, etc. it's a big deal for him to stay up a few extra hours and cook for me! those of you who work with me also know that he always packs my lunch for me...a huge (and tasty!) time-saver!
life isn't always easy, but it's certainly better with an awesome husband! thanks for being wonderful, honey!



better than ihop? ;)

sarah's baby shower

my sister's wonderful work friends hosted a joint baby shower on may 31 for sarah and another work friend of hers, jen, who are both going to be new mommies this summer. unfortunately (or, rather, fortunately?) jen was unable to make the shower because she delivered 2 days before the shower! this probably doesn't seem odd to anyone, but each of sarah's 3 baby showers hosted by her work friends has been arranged to be a joint shower with another girl from work...and every time the other person hasn't been at the shower because they had their baby early (but not too early)! sarah likes to joke now that if you are needing to go into labor you just need to schedule a baby shower with her ;)
the shower was at the cheesecake factory in allen (a short drive for me, yay!) and was lots of fun with yummy food, cake and lots of laughs. liv even got to join us this time. sarah told me liv was a little confused when sarah first started telling her about the shower, insisiting that she & sarah bring washcloths and that the boys needed to come, too, because they would miss sarah & liv so much. awww...such a sweet girl! you'll notice in the pics that there are a few girl outfits, but sarah and ray don't know the sex of the baby. the clothes were bought by ray's mom because she was "tired of buying gender neutral!" sarah and ray have yet to find out the sex of their baby before the day of arrival.
we can't wait to meet you, baby proctor!

sarah's baby shower