Jumping for Joy

All of my sisters and my Mom have nicely covered the wrap up of the Orlando trip, so I, being as lazy as I am, will not touch too much on the subject. The only other thing I want to say is that seeing things like Killer Whales doing pirouettes, talking to Disney princesses, watching the AWESOME Magic Kingdom parade and fireworks will turn you into a little kid. I know I looked like a fool jumping up and down, involuntarily yelling, "Oh my! Look at the colors!!!" and clapping my hands together, but it didn't matter. It was awesome and even as I am typing I am finding myself get choked up over how great it was.

After many headaches and confusion with the airports, I finally made it home. It was so weird to come back to Utah to a huge house and when I walked in the door, about 10 of my new friends greeted me. This was such an amazing feeling. And the rest of the week post Orlando was spent unpacking, painting, running to appointments, decorating and hanging out with friends. I will post a video later of my room because it's awesome, but I am too tired at the moment to do so.

School started this Monday and it was like a mini high school reunion. I found out my Community clinical assignment-HeadStart. It is a program that assists children ages 3-5 and their families get a head start in school (so pretty much like a preschool) for no cost. I am essentially going to be paired with a school nurse and check kids for hearing and visual disabilities, and probably giving flu shots and bandaging knees as well. YESSSSSS I am so down with this. On Monday, we will be touring other community health sites such as a Road Home, Christmas Box house (takes in foster children), Utah Food Bank, Homeless Shelter, etc. I am very interested in Community Health because I feel like you can reach out to more populations and practice preventative health instead of in the hospital where you are trying to play 'catch up' with diseases.

Today was spent at Primary Children's Medical Center. They started off their day quite nicely by having their nurse recruiters come in and give us presents and a present full of french toast, crispy bacon, juice, and other snacks. I had already fallen in love with the place walking through it because everything was so cute. All the walls are painted with "Under the Sea" decor or many zoo animals or Disney pictures. We toured my 'home unit' which will be Infant Medical/Surgical Unit. We walked by a couple of rooms with itty bitty babies and I felt myself doing a baby voicing and squealing, "OOOoOooo I just want to cuddle them, and rock them, and kiss them and love them!!! They can poop, pee, throw up on me all they want...it will be way cuter than a 60 year old man doing that to me!" And guess what...my instructors sit us down and tell us what we will be doing in the afternoons: Your main assignment is to cuddle the babies and just love them because that is truly the best medicine sometimes. Ummmmm....For SUREEEEE. I love my life.

Then later on in the day they gave us our semester schedule. (Well only half because the second half is dedicated to Maternity.) My special days where I won't be on my home unit will be spent in the OR, Diabetes Clinic, Same Day Surgery, and the NICU. It has always been said by past nursing students that third semester is the most work and the hardest, but I am exploding with anticipation for what I am jumping into. I have kind of shoved the idea of working in Peds and Labor & Delivery since starting nursing school because ICU/Emergency Nurses act like it's not as good. But after today, and I know it's early in the game, this is definitely looking like an area that would make me want to come into work. Who wouldn't want to come into work and try and help little babies keep their lives so they can grow big and strong one day?

So at this point in time, I would just like to take a moment to reflect on my happiness. I have been reflecting a lot on how happy I am over the last month and I am amazed that life is just getting better and better. But it's got to run out soon, right? Well, in case it does, let me gush about what I love. I love that I am living with 3 other girls that I love. I love that my best friend Jillian moved to Provo today and we will be hanging out tomorrow. I love that I am in Nursing school and get to play with babies for class. I love that I'm healthy, and even though I don't have the dream body that I would love to have because I will always be curvy, it is fully functioning and is letting me do more pushups than I have ever done in my life. I love that I just got to spent a summer at home and a week with my entire family. I love that not one thing is wrong in my life, and it almost scares me because I know how dark some times can be. But I'll roll with the punches and enjoy what life is handing to me now because I'm jumping for joy.