Reaching Florida

This week I was able to go to Florida to celebrate my Birthday with nurse RaDonna  and my big sister and brother in law.  I try to go see them twice a year... life is good.

I reach for some of this every time I am at my sister’s house

(want the best bbq recipe around?  Buy a ticket to Florida.  Call your sister and beg for chicken.  Show up and find your brother in law  grilling chicken that has been marinating for hours.  Eat.  Eat some more.  For good measure go back a couple of hours later for another piece.  or two.  then, as an added bonus freeze the leftovers and put them in your suitcase to take home… on the plane.)

His tongue is reaching for a taste, but it shall be denied.  That chicken is mine.  All mine.

Mini golf is my favorite thing to do in Florida.  Nathan usually ends up reaching for my ball when I whack it into the water… Hit it HARD is my motto.  

Me and my big sister.  We like being grown up friends.  I find it very unfair that she tans and has non frizzy hair.

And then I got to reach out for a huge with my bestest friend NurseRaDonna!!! And of course that requires reaching out to take a self-taken portrait!  (or 2. or 3. or an uncountable number…)

All decked out for my birthday!!!

(is there any better day than St. Patrick’s day to have a birthday?)

(Corrie, RaDonna, and Randi) 

I leave you with a picture taken by the very talented Randi Jean (RaDonna’s sister… and the photographer behind the new blog header)

This picture might look like I am reaching out to her.

But no.

I am pushing her.

I am that kind of friend.

The end.

(written at 7am sitting in the Memphis airport.  Being in the Memphis airport at 7am means I got on a plane at the Jacksonville airport at 6am. Oh… and I go to work in approx. 10 hours and work the next 4 nights.  Woe is me.)

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Part of You Capture!

Us

Nurse Corrie
PLUS
Nurse RaDonna



EQUALS:

Us getting into some totally random situations we are not sure how to get out of.

The end.

Colorado: 3 days of awesomeness. plus two days in the car.

We had grand plans to post while in Colorado. However, we were too busy having fun, or recovering from having fun, to do so.

It was fun. We had no schedule, no set plans, no place we had to be at any certain time. It was my mom, dad, cousin Jessy, RaDonna and myself, and we just relaxed. And did more exercise than either of us do in a month.



We walked around town with the craft fair. I got sunburned all over my shoulders and back. It hurt the rest of the week. We went to a great mexican restaurant. We walked around Echo Lake,



and up Treasure Falls.


For the record, mountain runoff waterfalls are cold. As in my toes froze in less than 2 seconds and it hurt like mad cold. BRRRR.

We talked. We hung out. We enjoyed life. We saw beautiful views that girls from Kansas and Florida don't often see.

I don't have to go back for 8 days.

She is on a plane flying to me as we speak. Or type.

Life is good.

The beginnings

She lives in Florida, went to DSC, works in an ER. I live in Kansas, went to MNU, work on a PCU. How exactly did we become the kind of friends we are? Well... that is a story...

Back in seventh grade we all lived in a smallish kansas town. We were both homeschooled all the way through, and it was time for our town's homeschool graduation. We were the official escorts for the 8th graders graduating. I was there with my best friend at the time, Liz, and then RaDonna was the third escort. It was the first time we had met. She refused to talk to us. We tried talking to her, she didn't really respond, and Liz and I gave up and did what best friends do, ignored everyone else. A couple of months later her and her sisters started a play, Anne of Green Gables. My group of friends were all in it, so I joined as well. That began the friendship of RaDonna, her sisters and myself. Over the next couple of years my family started attending their church, we started doing more and more together, and at some point she became the person in the world who got me. By the time I headed off to college a couple of hours away she became the friend I missed the most. When she moved to Florida with her family partway through freshman year of college, I cried. When I about lost my mind that spring, playing backgammon with her on IM was the main thing that pulled me through. We have talked each other through years of school, clinicals, the highs and lows that only someone who has experienced nursing school can understand. Last year I graduated, and she flew in for a grand total of 36 hours to watch my pinning ceremony, before she went to texas to say goodbye to her dad who was leaving for Iraq. This week I flew in for her pinning ceremony, and I just about burst out crying through the whole thing.

We made it, RaDonna. We are finally done.

Being a new nurse is terrifying. I know this, she is going to figure it out soon. The constant fear that you will screw up because honestly, I don't know near enough to do this job, can be cripling if you think about it. This blog is so we can share our thoughts, fears, experiences. So on the exciting days when something went right I can write about it and she can celebrate with me. On the days when everything went wrong, she can write about it and I can comiserate.

This is us, figuring it out.