Happy Friday!

What a fantastic day this Friday was. Nothing special happened… it was just a relaxing day off from work. Chad and I have traveled every weekend for a while so it was the first weekend home in several weeks where we were not committed to traveling some place. I had a quick 2 hour meeting this morning at work with our Unit Based Leadership Council. Those are always fun times as we’re hashing out ideas to make our Labor and Delivery and Antepartum units a better place to work. Our hospital is in the process of achieving Magnet status. You might ask what this particular title means to be attached to a hospital. It means we are staff driven and we are excellent nurses. This process can take an extremely long time. It’s a long and tedious road as we figure out how to work better as a staff and prove to the Magnet committee that we are qualified to possess this privilege. There are 5,764 hospitals in the United States. Guess how many are Magnet hospitals? Only a mere 350. It’s a small number in comparison to the number of hospitals in the United States and I’m very proud to be working at a hospital that is working toward this goal. And I love being a part of a committee on our Labor and Delivery unit that is working to make things better, not only for our patients but for our unit staff as well. Morale is such an important part of being part of a staff. If we are all united and supportive of each other, we only make our care better for our patients. So anyway… that was the gist of my quick meeting. But other than being at work for 2 hours this morning,

Chad went to Borders books to study while I attended my meeting and picked me up a copy of the latest People magazine because….. my best friend and her husband are in it! It’s the county music edition and David and Catherine Nail are on page 18 with their wedding being featured. I was her matron of honor for their wedding on June 6th and was so glad it was featured. It was a classic country wedding and Cat did all the planning. It was intimate and gorgeous and I’m so honored that I was chosen to stand beside her as her matron of honor. She is like my sister and I am so thankful God gifted me with a best friend like her. There is never a dull moment when we’re around each other, hence my road trip to spend all weekend with her 2 weeks ago. So sweet. I’m so excited for them. Here’s a little snapshot of the article. Last week David’s song “Red Light” hit #13 on the country music charts. It just keeps climbing so that’s great!!!

Chad and I ran some errands and ended up back at home around 11:30 am. I climbed into bed to catch up on my much overloaded Tivo shows and found myself waking up at 4 pm. I had fallen asleep! I must have needed a nap due to not having taken a nap in months. It was quite refreshing but at the same time I tried to fight the guilt I had for letting myself sleep. I know there are things I could’ve gotten accomplished around the house but Chad quickly reminded me that I NEVER have time to myself to even have the luxury of taking a nap anymore so I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. If I fell asleep, my body must have needed it. So I quickly brushed away the guilty voice in my head and hopped up to run to Sam’s Club to get some grocery shopping done. I’m proud to say that Chad and I are being very self-conscious with what we are purchasing. We are determined to eat more healthy foods, and quit the junk foods. I do have to admit we picked up a gallon of Blue Bell Cookies ‘n Cream ice cream but seriously, we can’t deprive ourselves of everything. That will just lead us to binge more. I don’t think a little one scoop of ice cream in a ramekin will really hurt anything. A whole bowl every night, on the other hand, definitely would hurt but that’s not our case. So we’re doing the best we can with just getting started on eating better to go along with our P90X workout.

Here’s our shopping cart full of our goodies.

Upon our arrival home, we unpacked our groceries and sat down to snuggle up on the couch in this cool weather. I love when it gets cooler outside. It means all sorts of things. It mean our kitties snuggle up to us in bed, Chad and I snuggle closer to keep ourselves warmer, I get to break out the heavier comforters and blankets, the UGG boots make their debut for the season, the North Face jacket comes out, I get to break out the gloves, pashmina scarfs and toboggans, the crisp breeze makes me feel like I’m in New York City walking down the sidewalk to the nearest subway entrance, and it means we eat more comfort food like soups and roast. I. Love. It! I’ll leave you with a few pictures… some are random and some aren’t. So enjoy!

Me sporting my pink UGG boots for the first time this season! YES!!!

My Nattie boy cuddling on my pink breast cancer blanket that my dad made me last year for Christmas. He loves snuggling on this blanket. It’s so soft and fluffy.

My Ollie boy chilling out on his back half-way in and half-way out under our living room glass table. Such a ham.

~ by Lauren Watson on October 16, 2009.