Landes was accepted to NYU!!

Landes was accepted to transfer to the Law School at New York University.

School Webpage

Lately, I have been spending a lot of my work time trying to advertise the new TDAP requirement.  A few months ago, I set up a School Nurse Page at my school and helped the other nurses set up sites at their schools.  About a month, I was disappointed that the district had not yet placed a TDAP banner on their homepage.  I emailed one of the assistant superintendents about this and she said to build a site about TDAP at my school and she would link it to a TDAP banner on the district site.  Here is the TDAP site.

Children are funny

As a school nurse, I get to spend plenty of time with children and they are hilarious much of the time.

A few days ago, I wore scrubs to work.  As a passed the kindergarten table, one of them said: You're dressed like a doctor.  I replied that I was the school nurse and that nurses often wore scrubs.  She replied that her mom was also a nurse and that she dressed like a doctor.

Today, a 7th grade girl came in with stomach pain.  I asked if it felt like cramps and she said yes, so i got her a hot pack.  Since there was a 7th grade boy in the health office, I asked her whether it was the right time of the month for cramps.  She replied that she wasn't sure, but was too lazy to check.  Since the bathroom was 3 feet away, I told her to go check.  She came out saying that yes, it was in fact that time.  I gave her a few pads to hold her through the day.  The boy then proceeded to tell me that he knew exactly what we were talking about and had already had "the talk" twice with his parents.

There is a first grade boy who always calls me Mrs. Nurse.  It is pretty adorable.  He is mildly autistic and comes to the office quite often.  Last week, he came to the health office to use the bathroom.  I was busy doing some paperwork and thought nothing of it.  15 minutes later, I heard knocking from the inside of the bathroom.  He said, "Help me Mrs. Nurse, I can't get my pants on."  Hoping for the best, I opened the door to find his still-buttoned pants around his thighs.  I unbuttoned them for him and left while he proceeded to dress.  Afterward I walked him to class to make sure he actually got there.

I am having lots of fun just seeing children.  I am not as busy as I would like to be, but it is a wonderful job.  This week, I set up a Tdap plan for the district so we can be in compliance with the new law.  Also, I am apparently good at web design because after seeing my school nurse site at BWI, my boss asked if I could help set up the Special Education website for the district.

 

Since I have no recent pictures of us, this is the banner I added to the school website, taken from the California Department of Public Health.  

Picture Catchup

My Brother, Matthew, turned 18 in September and this is the cake Christine and I made for his party.

We had an awesome smoothie party with my family for my birthday

Landes and I at the Halloween 2010 Trunk or Treat

Our awesome pumpkins - Halloween 2010

The baby dress I made for a friend's bridal shower.  I am trying to develop a talent for sewing.

Bryce and Miriam gave us an awesome pizza stone for Christmas.  I finally found a pizza dough recipe I love and we have pizza once per week.  This is a chicken, corn, and onion pizza with sweet chili sauce as the base and a stuffed crust.

Landes is a genius!

As stated above, I married an incredible smart man.  Not only did Landes get a 4.0 his first semester of law school, he also had the highest grade in the class for both criminal law and legal research and writing.  Since he is ranked at the top of his class, he will apply as a transfer student to a few of the top-ranked schools including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.  We will see how that goes.

I am still enjoying my work as a school nurse.  The hours are incredible.  I am often home by 3:30 in the afternoon which gives me plenty of time to play.  The kids are still adorable and yesterday one walked over and gave me a hug while I was walking across campus.

My sister-in-law, Essi, taught me how to crochet a few weeks ago and I have really been enjoying it in my free time.  This is the purse I made recently:

Marie is a School Nurse

I have been working as a school nurse for almost 2 months now and am quite comfortable with the role and with the paycheck.  I still get confused and overwhelmed occasionally, but I think i am doing a better good job.  My main job is to provide care for 6 diabetic children who all attend one Elementary School.  I am also the nurse for one of the preschools.  I spend my day checking each child's blood sugar levels 2-3 times and administering insulin, either through a pump or a syringe.  The children are adorable and really fun to work with.  I have been enjoying them greatly thus far, but it stresses me immensely when the kids have either high bg or low bg and it won't normalize.  Working in the nurses office has been pretty enjoyable for me.  I deal with a lot of bloody noses, scrapes and scratches.  Kids come in all the time with sore throats and stomach aches, most of whom I have seen several times.  There have been many bumps on the head and even a broken arm.  I checked a kindergarten class for lice this week and sent out letters warning of fifth's disease.  I have done several assessments for IEPs.  I am taking an audiometry course so I will be qualified for hearing screenings.  My main project this week was Immunization Reports.  Since I only cover one school, my boss decided that I should do all of the Immunization  Reports for the 8 elementary schools and 8 preschools in the district.  The reports were originally due today, but the deadline has been extended until next Wednesday.  WooHoo!!!  I did complete 14 of the 16 this week and only have 2 more to go.

I really enjoy cooking and gardening lately.  Four of us girls in Relief Society share a garden in the on campus housing.  At the beginning of the summer, we planted over 20 tomato plants and they are currently coming out my ears.  I dehydrated over 15 pounds of tomatoes in the last couple weeks (into some awesome sun dried tomatoes) and there are still plenty left.  Kathy also canned a bunch and split the bounty with us.  We'll see what happens to the rest.  We plan to turn it into a winter garden in the very near future.  I made pizzas a couple times this month...once with some awesome pesto sauce I whipped up.  I also made burritos, lemon pepper chicken, apple stuffed pork chops, mini apple pies, rosemary/sun dried tomato bread and a couple kinds of cookies.  I love good food: )

We love being in California!!!  The weather has been amazing.  We enjoy cruising around town on our bicycles and walking to the farmer's market.  I have been on the job hunt for over a month now.  Not many people are interested in hiring new grads sadly enough.  Things are looking up however.  I had a pretty good interview at a care center today and will have an interview for a school nurse position on Thursday.  I am so glad I worked at Mesa Vista because it gives me an edge over other new graduates.  We have enjoyed spending lots of time with the Martineaus and enjoying many delicious meals.  This week, my mom and I received a box of free bell peppers, so we made lots of pepper jelly.  It was really fun and half the jars actually set up.  I will try to remake the others when it is not so hot outside...perhaps tonight.  Life is great.  We enjoyed a trip to Tillamook the last week of June.  We stayed in a converted church for a week with Landes' family.

Here I am with Faith and Tasi

 The adorable nieces and nephews I have obtained through Landes.

Landes with his siblings and Father