Easter

I remember as a child spending Easter in various places including our Grandparents house when they lived in Matthews, NC. We would wake up at a crazy hour (which was really only like midnight or even earlier) a few days before and drive through the night. My parents were smart in doing this because that meant that their 4 children (this was before the time of Megan) were sleeping the whole way down. We would arrive sometime the next morning/ afternoon and I remember the smell of spring, the south has a distinct smell that I love. On Easter Sunday we would wake up and hunt for our Easter baskets...get all dressed up in frilly dresses with white tappy shoes and Easter hats, take pictures in the front garden and head off to their church for an Easter breakfast. Then after church we would go back to my Grandmas and die Easter eggs, my Aunt Beth always coordinated that, go on an Easter egg hunt, and then have a big family Easter dinner. It was glorious!

Sometimes I wish I hadn't grown up, that I could still just be told what to do and not have to miss out on things like this. The past 3 years I have been in school for Easter. My freshman year I went to church at Thomas Road and then had chinese for lunch while I studied Anatomy. Last year I was able to go to a friend's family in NC for Easter Sunday which was great, but I missed out on Easter dinner on a count of needing to head back to school. This year my family stopped by on their way to the beach and we went to Thomas Road together and then shared a nice turkey sandwhich meal with a delicious hashbrown casserol (a tradition for my family) in my dining/ living room. Easter just doesn't have the same feel without a big dinner and family gathering.

But that's not what Easter is all about. It is intended for us to come together as a family, but to celebrate that Christ is risen again! Have you ever noticed that Easter falls right at the beginning of spring? When everything is begining to bloom and rise out of the ground. Maybe I'm stretching it here, but there is just something about Spring when everything is new and fresh that helps remind me that because of Christ we are new and fresh too! It may not be the ideal way to celebrate it, and it's probably going to be the same for the next couple of years...but no matter what way you eat dinner or where you are, Easter is not about the food or the easter baskets, or dieing the eggs. It has a deeper meaning, like most other holidays that we celebrate that we can't over look or let it become over shadowed by the worldly traditions...

Thanks for keeping your promise Jesus!

Why I love SPRING!

So I can't help but post one more post tonight just because when the weather is warm so much stuff happens!!! First of all, it is an indication of Spring and with Spring comes flowers and garage sales! Yesterday morning after a late night clinical on Friday and before a late night clinical on Saturday (for me at least), my roommates and I woke up early Saturday morning and went garage saleing! It was beautiful...here's my first buy of the season...

It actually rocks too..it's so awesome and the best part is it was only $5!!! I'll probably end up changing the cushions by buying some seat cushions for cheap at Walmart and sowing them together, but it's pretty comfortable for now! This will most likely be put in the sun room at the lake house! I'm so excited!!! That's all I got during the first garage sale outing, but my roommates made out pretty good..one actually got a microwave and toaster oven for 15 dollars total, and they are really nice too! Love it!!!

Another thing that I love about spring is flowers! Here are some that we have in our house...

I'm not sure what these are called, but they are my roommate's, she has a lot of different ones, but this is the only one that bloomed so far this year!

We also have Lilacs and not pictured we have sunflowers and Lillies in vases too! It's wonderful...trust me!

Recently my mom and littlest sister got into painting pottery, my sister made me a pot which I love just for the heck of it...so I was looking and debating as to whether I should put flowers in it or some sort of plant like basil or something. Well I went to Target and in their dollar section they had these little starter kits so I bought two.

The one in the yellow in the "green house" are sunflowers and the other one has Zinnia's in them... They were only a dollar so I wasn't sure if they were going to work, but as you can see they did and their sprouts came up earlier than expected! They gave me so many seeds I had extra so I put Zinnia's in the pot my sister gave me and I have more Zinnia seeds and Sunflower seeds I am going to plant outside at the Lake house

Look at all those...they are just growing like crazy, I didn't expect so many to come up so I might have to terminate some...this is going to be hard, how do you choose which one stays and which one goes????

Down by the James

So it's been pretty cruddy here weather wise the past week, raining constantly....but it's been looking up..this weekend it was in the 70's!!! Beautiful! Unfortunatly yesterday I didn't get to enjoy it because I was in Labor and Delivery clinical for 8 hours...was that ever interesting...still not sure if I want to have children, but that's another story...this story is about my 2 roomates and mine little hike by the James River in Downtown Lynchburg. Last Tuesday it was a beautiful day! and since we don't have classes we decided to go for a little hike!

Lynchburg is similar to Binghamton in the way that it's small, old, and was built around factories. It differs from Binghamton in the way it looks in my opinion, Lynchburg's looks reminds me more of downtown Owego! With all of it's old brick buildings built right along the river...

The main factory that founded Lynchburg was the Craddock Terry...this didn't really occur to me until recently. Downtown has the BEAUTIFUL hotel called the Craddock Terry Hotel. I always thought that was just a cool name for the hotel, but then as we drove around and noticed all the old signs on the empty warhouses that said Craddock Terry we realized that it was orginially a big shoe factory. Here is a picture of the back of the hotel...we didn't realize it was a shoe factory until a couple days later and this picture made sense then...

Notice the Red Stiletto....

On the river, there is this big fountain...I don't know what it's for, but it's pretty cool and it shoots up really high...

Here is some pictures of our walk...

There are my roommates...Mary is kneeling and Leigh is in the green...

Don't worry this was not from us...

The Lake House

Here is the house! It looks kinda small, but it is very deceiving...

This is the front of the house

Here is our fenced in back yard...and the LAKE!

Entering the house...it's much bigger than it looks, this is only half

Part of the sun room with a view of the lake

Part of our deck where we are going to have a BBQ's!!!

Part of my bedroom...I can't wait to decorate it!

My bathroom...you can tell it's an older house by the matching color of everything! I'm gunna have to add different color than blue!

This was used as an office, but we are making it into a bedroom....notice fireplace number 2

Here is part of the downstairs, it's carpeted and has heat..there is a bedroom and bathroom on the other side, 3 storage rooms that go off of it, 1 has the washer and dry, 1 is just a storage room, and the other was used as a work shop...This place is seriously huge!

The other side from the picture above..notice fireplace number 3! This is not the other bedroom just a continuation.

There is still the kitchen, and 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms that I don't have pictured here, but you get the jist of it. I wish the pictures did the size justice but they really don't. I'm so excited that it is spread out a big house because that will make living with 5 other girls easier! I can't wait to decorate it and make it look nicer! I also can't wait to wake up to the sun shining on the lake! Y'all will have to come visit!

New home

Well it's official...or will be Monday, but I have a new home! I'm really excited about this...number one because it's on a LAKE! That's right for one full year I will be living in a house that is on a lake! It is so cool. The house looks small from the outside, but it is huge on the inside! There will be 6 of us girls living there! It's so weird how God works. The one girl, who currently lives in the basement of the house I'm in now, I met freshman year, just briefly through a mutual friend. And now 4 years later we are living together! How crazy is that. Another one of my roommates is a quadmate of mine for freshman year who left Liberty for a year and a half and is now back and we are going to be living together! It's so crazy how God brought all these girls into my life. Looking back I know it's all through Him. And this housing situation was all Him as well. We found out about the house and in less than 4 days got a call from the Landlord saying it was ours! I'll put pictures up on a later date, but I'm just so excited for my new home!!!

I'm Probably going to die...

As this is true, hopefully it won't be any time in the near future.

As you have probably caught on by now I'm hoping to have the opportuinity to go to Afica this summer for a missions trip. Well in order to go you need certain vaccines such as Yellow Fever. I got this vaccine 1 week ago to the date. I experienced no problems until last night when I noticed it was feeling a little tender, when I looked at it this is what I discovered:

A red, raised, warm, tender area. Now as nursing majors we become hypocondriacs! and I was flipping out.."I probably have yellow fever, but I don't have any systemic reactions" "Why did it react a week late!" and all this stuff. I've never had a reaction to a shot before. So my roommate said that we should trace it and see if it grows...the first dark circle is the trace from 9pm the night before. When I woke up it was just a little bit past the line, but I decided that was enough to go to the Dr.s. First I went to my nursing instructors because they know all! (literally) and no one was around! go figure. So then I just gave in and went to the Dr.s. Turns out its probably an infection/ reaction. Which I thought briefly before the thought of yellow fever popped in my head. So she put me on an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory so hopefully it will go away. The second line is from my friend about 20 hours after the first line. As nurses we are told to initial and date everything...so she did. Hopefully it won't grow any bigger and will just shrink. The Dr. measure it as 4 inches by 2 inches! ahh and its on the back of my arm. It's so annoying.

Anyway I'm still alive and need to get back to studying! Just be aware if you ever get the Yellow Fever shot!!!

Quick, Random, Catchup

Well I'm on the downward slope...I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...or so I'm told. I think I migh be blind because I am not seeing any light except the light coming from my alarm clock at 6:00 am.

We only have 7 weeks left plus a few days of finals...that's awesome, except for the fact that I just got off spring break and I didn't get any rest and I'm just as worn out now as when I left Lynchburg 1 week ago. Owell that's life I suppose. But the numbers keep getting smaller, 7 weeks left, 6 clinicals, 4 profiles and I think 4 is the smallest number...but hey I'll take it! The only problem is, the numbers may be getting smaller, but the work isn't. I finished my Philosophy class (thank God) and I passed with a good grade too!!! (thank God again!!) Now I'm starting up Humanities...this should be interesting. We still haven't finished round 2 of tests yet and after that we still have round 3, ATI testing, and finals. So in this short amount of time, I have a lot of work to do!

Plus on top of that I'm still working on going on a Missions trip. The one that I wanted to go on is all full, however, I'm still going to fill out the application and get on the waiting list and hope...Then there are a couple trips with Pioneers which look cool. I had originally disregarded this trip because they conflicted with an event this summer, but that event go moved so it's a possibility. So I'm in the process of filling out a bunch of applications! If not I found out that there are 2 different missionaries who will be in my home town that my church supports that both have medical degrees that they use in missions..how cool so even if a trip doesn't work out, I would be sad but it's all in God's plan.

So I guess that's my life in a nut shell. It's not too exciting and it's very very very busy. But I have a good education and I'm healthy and on my trip back down to Liberty today I saw Daffodils! I always love seeing those flowers because I know spring is actually coming! So I'm not complaining!


P.S. Please pray for my roommate, she's going through a really rough time health wise right now plus shes doing everything I'm doing school wise as well! She needs it