Blogging Loser

Lately, I have been a blogging loser! I have alot to catch the world up on. First, my birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I would like to thank everyone for all of the birthday well wishes. JR threw me a suprise party, and sorry to my friends who were not invited. MANY of my friends were not invited, he went thru my phone in the middle of the night and could not figure out who was who because of my cripted naming of people in the address book. Not to mention he was not as I-phone savy then as he is now. I was very suprised and had a very good time at the party in my honor.
Another great thing has been that my parents have been here a lot lately due to my father getting a job. He has been "non-office" working for the last couple of years. It is so funny to see him in a coat and tie again. I have really enjoyed having them here, even if they are in Bethesda and not staying with me or near me.
I have been back at work full time after my 23 day vacation. Vacation or staycation as I called it was really great. I got to spend time with my family, have my birthday and very special go "behind the scenes" at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum with my Aunt Frances. That was very cool and if you are ever in town, you must go on one of her tours, she has really thrown herself into volunteering at the SNHM, and has really learned a lot over the past couple of years there.
That is the update...I will post pictures as soon as I down load them into my computer.

JR's Birthday

Sorry, still no pictures. I am pretty lazy about taking pictures and then downloading them. Last week was JR's birthday and we had a great time. I made dinner for his entire family including his great grandmother. We had fillet, crab cakes, fresh green beans, and squash casserole, and crescent rolls. It was sooooo great. JR got an I-phone 3G from me and a Wii with Mario Cart driving game from my parents. That is the main reason that I have not blogged in a while, I have been spending all of my free time playing Mario Cart on the Wii. So we have been also eating birthday cake for the last week also, and I need to stop doing that because by the time we finish this cake there will be another cake for my birthday.

ATO

How many times does your work call you and say, there are too many people today, go ahead and get back to bed? Well, my work did just that today. While I was in the shower at 5 am to get ready for work, the charge nurse called and said that if I felt like going back to bed, I could.
Call it a case of too many nurses and not enough babies, but my unit is "OVERSTAFFED" each shift we are using about 16 nurses and each shift is scheduled with about 20-25 nurses. What do they do with other/extra nurses at Children's? Why, they recycle them to other units, or throw them out completely and let them stay home. Children's is a very "GREEN" hospital.
Anyway, ATO stands for authorized time off, or something like that and when there is too many nurses and not enough babies some nurses are lucky to get thrown out of the mix and ATO, stay home in bed, go shopping, eat out, finish house work and chores. It is a lucky surprise, and getting back into bed feels so much better, when just moments before you thought that you were going to be driving that hour commute to work.
I just feel a little bad for JR, because he was the one who go the call at 5 am, while I was in the shower, so he was awoken from his precious slumber, and could not fall back asleep. He is not lucky enough to ever be ATO'd. Since, he is the only employee, they are never overstaffed. Poor, JR.
Thanks to the ATO day, I am able to update my blog, and get some well needed rest after last week.

Florida

This past week I was in Florida with my parents and grandmother. I had a great time moving my parents into their new house (note the sarcasm). JR and I packed up all of their stuff left here in Maryland into a 24 foot moving van last Wednesday and set out on Thursday morning at 4 am. We arrived in Palm city at 11 pm that night. That's right JR and me in a bumpy, uncomfortable moving truck for 19, count them, 19 hours. I was going to drive, and it ended up that my feet would not touch the pedals in the truck, so poor JR drove the whole way, all 19 hours.
Once we were there it was not all fun and games, we had to unload the van, well actually JR and my dad did, and then unpack boxes. Every time we move you would think that it would get easier, but no. It still stinks. The best part was that we moved my parents pool table which weights about 2 tons or something like that. As I left yesterday, the garage was only filled with about 25 more boxes or so. I hope that my mom and grandmother can get them unpacked as my dad left today for a meeting in Washington and will be gone for two days.
I know you all are thinking, what did we do with Casey and Shelby? Don't worry, Aunt Kaley, Aunt Thaila and Uncle Dan were here to entertain those girls. Kaley is a very good friend and her parents Thaila (my former piano teacher) and Dan came up from Atlanta to spend the 4th with her and our house was the perfect place to stay, all the similarities of home including a cat and a dog.
Although, I was sad to leave, I was happy to get home. I am not much for living out of a suitcase and this was more of a working vacation.

Dave Matthews Band

On Friday I won Dave Matthews Band tickets at work for the Saturday concert at Nissan Pavillion. JR and I decided to go, even though we only were familiar with a few of their songs. We had great seats and arrived just in time for the concert. The music was great and I danced the whole time. BUT, during the middle of the concert these 18 year old girls decided to come and steal one of our seats so then I could't sit down. I was so mad...but, at Dave Matthews you are not allowed to be mad, and every one must "chill" So I just let JR sit down in my seat and I continued to dance for the rest of the concert.
While we were walking to our seats, I noticed that almost all of the fans were wearing JCrew clothes, and I commented to JR that this might be a JCrew convention, sarcasitcally. One guy who was walking near us had over heard my comment and said in all seriousness, "my shorts are from JCrew." Thus proving my point.
I will never go to another concert at Nissan again though because it took us over an hour to leave the parking lot, so even though we left the concert at 10:30 we did not get home until 2 am. So today I slept all day and JR went to play golf. Poor Casey had to hand out with me in bed all day. All in all, the concert was great, and I need to download some more Dave Matthews music so I know the words like all of the other fans.

Slip-n-slide

At our party my sister-in-law, Tracy, brought a slip-n-slide. Although, the kids did not really play with it, Casey loved it.

Crab Feast

JR and Jen, eating crabs..

This past weekend we had a crab feast at our house. Many of our family and friends gathered at our home in Grasonville and ate crabs, steamed shrimp, and corn on the cob. We had a blast with our nephews here and also many of JR's cousins' children.
We set up a blow up pool in the back yard and the kids and many parents had a great time, especially during the Broomfield v. Walters water fight. This is a picture of JR's nephew, Matt, and Jason's daughter Kaley. They were pelting each other with water for about an hour, and then JR's brother-in-law, Bob, ended up in the pool himself. That 20$ pool gave us thousands of dollars worth of fun!Casey also had a lot of fun at the party. Of course she thought that all of the guests were came to our house just to visit her, especially the children. She loves children, but probably a little too much. They are just her height and she tends to jump up to eye level and just about petrify them. My friend Shannon, from work, also made the long trek from Arlington, and brought her dog Henry, who although is 10 months old, was the exact same size as Casey. They played and ran around our yard for about 8 hours.

Casey also like to hang out under the tables that we set up for eating crabs. She drank every spilled beer and ate everything that fell under the table, needless to say, there was very little clean up in the backyard.

Casey was so worn out after the party... I took this picture after she had put herself to bed and she did not even wake up after the flash went off. She was so sore the next day that when JR went to pick her up she whimpered. Thanks, Henry, for wearing this little one out completely.

Casey

Casey is the newest edition to our family. She is a pure bread "golden" lab. She has been so much fun and here are some pictures of her. These pictures are of her on her first night here. She was only 7 weeks old. JR picked her out from a litter of yellow labs because she had the same color hair that he has. The first few nights were very rough, because we were crate training her, but now she sleeps all night. She is quite a bundle of energy, requiring at least one hour walks daily, which is also good for me. More on later posts with more pics of her as she grows...

Beach

Recently, I have been feeling the need to go to the beach. I have been twice in the last week and am going this weekend also. This is a picture of my friend, Kaley, and I on one of my trips to the beach last week. We had so much fun just people watching. Also, last week I went to the beach with two of my cousin's Sarah and Kathleen. I am just so blessed to have such great cousins. All of them have really been there for me in the last two months, and I know that at times like these I need close family and friends more than anything. For some reason the ocean air and the sand at my feet really calms me, and I love spending time with my good friends and family.

New Blogger

After spending some time recently with my cousins (missing Katharine) and talking a lot about Katharine's blog, we decided to all become bloggers. Well, at least I decided to become a blogger. Hopefully, this will force them to do it too. I love to look at the pictures of Addy and Luke and watch Addy's videos. So I know I don't have two cutie strawberry children, which is the main attraction of Katharine's blog, but I will try to make my life somewhat interesting for you all to read.