In Atlanta

I made it to Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon and came right over to Jenni and Jon's to meet Tilden. I must say, I'm in love... how could you not be? So as of late, this is how I have been spending my time:

Giving Tilden his first bath

Reading while Tilden sleeps on me - my all time favorite

There's plenty more that we have done - gone on errands, taken Tilden for his first portrait, among other things. If you'd like to see what else we have been doing while I have been here, check out Jenni's blog. It has been a great trip and I'm sure that I will have a hard time leaving, but I'm not going to think about that since it's still 10 days away.

On the home front, I talked to Mike and he is working on getting everything finished at the house - seriously! The bathroom is 100% done (which I think I have mentioned before) but I learned today that the kitchen is 100% complete, as well. That leaves painting trim in our bedroom, installing and finishing trim in the living room, and finishing the closet in the front bedroom. Mike says that it will all be done when I get home so we'll see.

Time to get back to watching Tilden do whatever it is he is doing. It's a rough life here in Atlanta!

Traveling

It's been a couple of weeks but that is mainly because Mike and I have been traveling over the past two weeks. Last week we went on one of our "mini-honeymoons" since we didn't take a real honeymoon after the wedding. We went to Steamboat Springs and stayed at the Strawberry Park Hot Springs. The first night we stayed in the caboose and the next night we stayed in one of the cabins. The hot springs were fabulous and very relaxing. And because we were staying on site, we were able to go before they springs opened in the morning and after they closed at night to soak. We only did it once but it was so cool to be the only ones down there. We also went cross country skiing at Steamboat Lake and overall relaxed and did nothing at all. Here are a few pictures...

Mike hanging off the caboose, our lodging for the first night



Cross country skiing


Down at the hot springs on our way back to Denver

As we got back in to town on Friday I got a message that Jenni was in labor!! I was excited, to say the least, and kept being antsy that I was missing a call or something about the baby. I was on the phone multiple times that night and the next morning with family to find out any news but Tilden didn't make his arrival until 12:42 EST the following day. He sure is cute though! I was glad to be able to see pictures of him that very night! I can't imagine what it would be like to have to wait days for a picture to come in the mail - thank goodness for technology! I'm very excited to be going to see them in just over a week - I hear he likes to be held a lot so it's my duty as an aunt to keep him happy by holding him.

So I worked some more over the past week (there are finally kids on the unit who are sick) and then on Saturday we loaded up the truck with 4 people and a dog to go up to Estes Park and stay in a cabin for a couple days. We stayed at a county park, Hermit Park, which used to be owned by Hewlitt-Packard and was some place that Mike had come to visit with his family 20 years ago or so when both his parents worked for HP. We actually stayed in the same cabin that they stayed in and Mike says that the curtians are the same as they were then.

This winter has been very warm in Colorado so there wasn't enough snow to go snowshoeing, but we did hike on Sunday which was nice. It tired out the dogs so both Trucker and Jager (Sonya's dog) were sleeping very well last night. There were a total of 10 of us the first night and 7 of us the second night staying up there. We had a lot of fun - campfires, good food, games, and again, doing nothing at all. It was a great group of people, some of whom we don't get to hang out with all that often, so that was nice, too.

The next few days will be pretty crazy in getting ready for the trip to Atlanta. But I hear that when I get home from Atlanta the house will be almost complete so that's exciting... we'll see how that actually goes.

Now you know when I'm working!

I don't know if I'll keep this forever, but for now, you can see my work schedule on the blog. I played around to try to find the best setup and I think this is it - it's an agenda view so that if you scroll through and don't see a date listed - there is nothing scheduled that day (i.e. I'm not working that day). Hopefully this will be helpful, but I'm thinking that if this gets to be bigger, I may take this off since not everyone in the world needs to know exactly when I'm working. Let me know what you think about it though!

Still learning

OK, so one week = one post, right? Well, I'm getting there - and soon I'll be better about posting more. For now, I'm enjoying reading my sister's blog about getting ready for Baby Ellis. I'm actually going to visit for 2 weeks after the baby is born and I cannot wait! I hope that I'll be able to help out and give Jenni and Jon some time to relax but at the same time not be too overwhelming for them. The nice thing about Atlanta is that if they are having too many people or the new family just wants some time to themselves, there are about 100 other places I could go stay. The whole trip is about seeing them, helping out, and helping with the transition of life with a new baby. I'm so excited to be able to take part in that!

On a less exciting note, we have been incredibly slow at work since Christmas. The unit actually closed December 23rd because we had no patients at all. The slow spell is also very unusual because in winter (i.e. starting in January through March/April - depending on the year), pediatric units across the country are bombarded with respiratory season. You see a lot of kids end up in the hospital with flu or RSV. The odd thing with this year is up to today we have had 2 cases of RSV and one case of flu - that is unheard of! So I was taken off all clinical shifts this week to do project work so that I would not be cost-contained (when there are too many nurses scheduled and not enough patients so you have to stay home - you don't get paid unless you use your vacation time). I got a call tonight, however, saying that we now have at least 3 patients with breathing tubes and one or two more coming in as I type. It's not that nurses want people to be sick, but as a rule, it's helpful to have patients so you can work. And in my line of work, patients just happen to be kiddos who are very sick. So with any luck, the dry spell of patients will be over and I'll be back to normal work weeks... and I'll still have this project to work on when the unit slows down again in the spring.

Getting started with blogging...

Well here goes - my sister has convinced me to blog so I'm going to give it a try. I know it's been useful for keeping up with what she's doing, but really Mike and I don't have that exciting of a life right now - no pregnancy, no kids, just house stuff.

Right now we are working on trim all around the house. As I'm typing, Mike is in the bathroom installing trim. And we put up all our window treatments this week, too! And I keep saying that we don't have much left but seriously, if the trim gets all done, we really won't have anything on the inside left to do! I'm very excited though, because it makes such a difference. And then it's back to things I can help with - like painting and staining and the likes. Mike's parents are coming out some time in the spring or summer to help with the last few big things and we'll do landscaping and paint the outside of the house this spring, too, but other than that, we'll have to find more things to keep us busy. Go to picasaweb.google.com/kenorris and look for the albums titled "Before Renovations" and "During and After Renovations" to see where we have come from. And now that we have more things to show off, I'll post more pictures soon.