First Easter in Texas

I spent our first Easter Sunday here in Texas at work. Of course you guessed this, seeing as I have worked every major holiday since we moved. I was actually a little upset and depressed about it. Easter is a time of celebrating Christ's sacrifice on the Cross and spending time with family, and Erik had to go to church by himself. For the past 3 or so years I have spent Easter at Erik's grandmother's house with his family. This year we both missed everyone so much! It doesn't help that I also worked Good Friday, and Erik was off from school. It's ironic that I work at a Catholic hospital, and yet I don't get paid holiday pay for Easter Sunday. Hmpf.

Thank you to Erik's parents for thinking of us and sending us this sweet (literally) basket of cookies! They were so yummy!

A Must Read

Last week I read this book and literally could not put it down. Stephenie Meyer's (the author of the Twilight series, for the 2 of you who haven't read it yet) brother runs her website and recommended this book to her readers. I put it off for a while, as I had started the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series, so one day I finally requested it from the library and decided to try it out. Man, I wish it had a sequel that I could read right now. The book is listed under Teen Fiction, I think, but if you like Twilight you'll like this. The Hunger Games is about a girl in futuristic post-war American who participates in the Hunger Games put on every year by the Capitol. Basically 12 boys and 12 girls ( one from each district) battle it out in an arena as a way for the government to remind the people that rebellion will not be tolerated. I don't want to give too much away and there is so much more to the book than that. This book was so interesting I stayed up past eleven on nights when I had to work the next day! Read this book, and if you do leave a comment in this post.

Too funny

see more dog and puppy pictures

Spring Cleaning

Personally, I hate cleaning. I love the sense of peace and calm that a clean house gives me, but I don't like the effort put into it. Nevertheless I'm going to be using time on my days off to clear out some of the clutter that is in my house and do some of the deep cleaning that only gets done every so often. One of the ways I'm clearing out clutter is using an online service called PaperBackSwap.com. It's a free service where you list books by their ISBN numbers, then when someone wants your book you pay the postage and mail it to them. Also, when you want a book you just request it, and they send it to you. Erik and I have a lot of books lying around that we either don't plan on reading or have read and don't want to read again.

I have about 2 or 3 old cell phones lying around, and there are two services that I found online, Flipswap.com and Cellforcash.com where you mail them in your cell phone and they pay you. I got almost $18 for my old Motorola SLVR (which by the way was a piece of crap).

Woman's Day magazine is mailed to me free and I also get Southern Living. I have several old issues lying around, so I'm going to take those to work and put them in our nursery. When there's a baby in the nursery the poor nurse rarely gets to come out, so a little reading material is appreciated.

I if think of other useful spring cleaning tips I'll post them here. Happy Cleaning! (yeah right)

I'm Still Here.. and then some

Erik and I are still alive down here in sunny Waco. The past 2 weeks have been a blur. We came back from Hot Springs while Erik was on Spring Break and then I had a crazy work schedule. This is what I worked. We came back on a Tuesday, and then I worked Thursday-Friday-Saturday, had Sunday off, went to ACLS class Monday and Tuesday, worked on the floor Wednesday, volunteered to work an extra day Thursday, then worked on the floor Friday. Friday was pretty horrible, because I had a patient who came in to deliver her 22 week baby. Babies at that gestation don't live outside the uterus. Needless to say it was a tearful, solemn day.

Currently Erik is battling sinus issues and I haven't talked to any of my family or friends in over a week! However, I think we've decompressed some this weekend and next week will be better. At least I hope so!

An Amendment

Just in case any of my two readers out there think I was boasting in my last post, let me enlighten you. Tonight I heated up some garlic bread to go with our spaghetti pie. After cutting the bread I placed it in the oven. Easy, right? Upon taking the bread out of the oven I realized the knife I cut it with was in there too. So I've ruined one of my good Wolfgang Puck knives. I guess that's the price you pay for "having it all together!"

Can I get an Amen! for productivity?

Every now and then I get an itching to be domestic and productive. Today was one of those days. Let me list what I've accomplished today:

1. Got up at 8:30 to walk and exercise Roxy for 30 minutes around the neighborhood.
2. Went to HEB for groceries, dropped off items at Goodwill, went to the bank.
3. Cleaned our guest bathroom including toilet and tub.
4. Did one load of laundry.
5. Put together ingredients for chili in the crockpot so I can turn it on when I leave for work tomorrow morning. I think my chili recipe is on this blog. If not, look up Jaime's Chili under Paula Deen recipes at Foodnetwork.com
6. Made Mongolian Beef Stirfry for my lunches for the next two days. See picture in below post.
7. Made a two layer vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. See post below.

All I have left to do is heat up last night's Spaghetti Pie and enjoy the evening with Erik. Trust me, it's not that often that I get this much done in one day. Especially on my first day off after working 3-12 hour shifts, I usually don't get up til 9:30 and then do practically nothing all day.

P.S. I wanted a cheap centerpiece for our table now that spring is in the air, so I bought some limes (5/$1), put them in a bowl, added some leaves from my Peace Lily, and an unused candle from this past fall. Not Martha Stewart caliber, but I'm working on a budget!