Employed x2

So I mentioned briefly in my last post that I got a second job...

I love it

for so many reasons...

To begin with, it puts me back into a hospital setting. I didn't realize how much I missed that until my first day. I love being able to focus on my 4-5 patients and really give them the best care I can (that's more difficult to do in the nursing home with 30+ residents). I love learning from all the other nurses on the floor. I feel like this job will stretch me and keep me from getting complacent about what I do know.

I get benefits. I've never had benefits before and let me tell you, they're a beautiful thing.

They also gave me a magical jug that gives me unlimited access to the soda fountain AND the world's most glorious pen (it has a squishy pad to grip with your work worn fingers and lights up blue when you click it on).

There are some downsides. Nurses are required to work every other weekend and some holidays at this facility...it makes sense, patients don't miraculously recover so they can spend Christmas with their families or rebound to lounge about on the weekend...it still stinks though.

I'm really lucky to have found something I love this much. I was lying on our couch after a long day at work with my head in Robb's lap, my feet sticking up in the air (nursing=lots of standing), and Robb patiently listening to details from my day. In the middle of explaining a procedure I glanced up and saw Robb looking at me with an expression that made my heart go all mushy. "This is the perfect job for you," he said. I agree.

Reader's Digest Version of August

Utah Valley Specialty Hospital made me an official job offer to work full time on their Med/Surg floor.

We traveled to Great Basin National Park which is located in the middle of Nevada. I personally have little love for the state (and if you had to drive through it every time you wanted to see your family, you wouldn't be that keen on it either :) ), but Great Basin apparently is their best kept secret.

According to the National Park website, Great Basin is the best place for star gazing in the continental US because it's so far away from everything. That night we got a breath taking view into the heavens. The sky was perfectly clear and hundreds of stars strung throughout the Milky Way were visible.

The next day we hiked. My favorite part were the Bristlecone pines (as an Oregonian, I have a thing for trees...google them sometime though, they are amazing).

We came back to civilization.

My faithful laptop of four years died.

We went to Washington and helped my parents move into their new house (P.S. the picture wasn't taken in front of their house, that's where my mom works :) ).

We traveled to Medford, Oregon, the land of my youth and probably one of my favorite places in the world and went RAFTING (I love rafting, I love rivers, I love attacking random boats with dipsticks, I love the thrill of making it through a difficult rapid, I love spending so much time with my family...it's amazing). Once again there were bears. I'm not sure why, but I decided a few years ago that being mauled to death by a bear was probably the worst way to die...and they've kind of freaked me out ever since. I guess my furry friends heard we are longer on good terms and now, out of spite, they are popping out all over the place. THREE bear sightings this trip, THREE!

And one of my mom's best friends got married around the same time so we got to attend the wedding. Congratulations, Brenda!

Back in Provo, Robb built me a computer (yes, he is that amazing) to replace the Mac and we prepared to start a new school year and a full time hospital job.

Life couldn't possibly better be :)

BEARS!!!

A few weeks ago, Lakin and I made the joyful treck back to Montana to visit my family. We had a chance to shoot some gophers at Brooke and Al's place while we were there. That's always fun. Mom and Dad also took us up to Glacier National Park for a few days. Lakin was terrified that we would be eaten by bears, but I guess my constant suggestion that this was very likely didn't help things.

Our first day in the park we were lucky enough to see a younger-looking black bear from the road. He was just traipsing through the rock-slide area by the roadside. We stopped and got a couple of pictures before the Rangers had us leave.

We spent three nights at the Many Glacier Hotel. I had been there before, but it was Lakin's first time. For anyone that hasn't been, you are missing out on one of America's most beautiful places.

Our second day in the park, we went on a red jammer bus tour. Red jammers are the old convertible busses from the 30's and 40's that the park put there to do tours with. The morning ride was hampered a little by rain, but on the way back over Going-to-the-Sun Road the sun was shining and we rolled the top down. It's definitely the best way to the see the park from the road.

The third day we were going to go hiking, but decided to head on up to Waterton Lakes in Canada due to the stormy weather. We took a nice little boat ride across Wateron Lake and ate at a local weiner shop. Later that day we did a little hike to Red Rocks Lake not far from our hotel. We saw a bear along the trail and there were numerous other sitings from others on the trail of a mother with 3 cubs. When we stumbled upon that bear, Lakin started walking straight back to the hotel. It was pretty hilarious. Luckily, Dad and I had our trusty bear-spray on the ready and we didn't meet any problems.

On the way out of the park the next day we saw a bear cub on the road. We got a nice picture of it grazing on the roadside grass (from our car, of course). We knew mama must be near, so we got out of there quickly once we had our pictures.

It was a great trip all around and we'll have to go back some day. The hilarious thing is that I've never seen so many bears in Glacier before, but now that Lakin was with us (who is an admitted melissaphobe) we saw 3 in one trip!

Quail-hawk, the official Hays family vacation mascot

We edited the name of the creek

Little bear cub on the side of the road

Mirad A Vuestros Pequenitos

June 9^th, 2007

Before the old girls left we had a banquet/slideshow in their honor. It’s a tradition here…in seven weeks I will be the one saying goodbye. It struck me as I watched all our kids’ faces flashing momentarily on the screen how much has changed. OSSO uses the slideshow to give the new girls an idea about what they’ll be doing here and I can remember a time when those faces meant relatively little to me…now they mean more to me than I could have ever imagined. I know their personalities and what their smiles mean. I’ve put up with their tantrums and been the recipient of their besitios and sticky hugs—in short, I am their mother. They are in my prayers at night and in my thoughts during the day and I am dreading the 27^th of July when I have to leave them.

The summer after my freshman year of college I decided, on the recommendation of a friend, to venture out into the great wide world and volunteer for a program called OSSO (Orphanage Support Services Organization).

It was one of the best decisions of my life.

With fifteen other girls (boys are allowed to volunteer too, my group just happened to full of females), I spent three months working in an orphanage in Quito, Ecuador with children under the age of two and with older children with mental and physical disabilities. I learned how to securely tie cloth diapers, successfully feed wiggly toddlers, and how to cuddle five babies at once. But most importantly I learned the meaning of unconditional love from the children who had nothing.

OSSO needs new volunteers for this upcoming year. If you have ANY interest whatsoever, please let me know (I can wax eloquent on this subject :)) or check out their website for more information.

“Behold your little ones…”

R.N.

The Exam

I got to the test fifty minutes early (I almost missed my LPN exam the year before because I couldn't find the building and I didn't really want to deal with the adrenaline rush this time). People slowly trickled into the building (there were four other BYU nursing students) and at 7:30 they opened the testing center. They called me up to be scanned and fingerprinted and after six failed attempts my palm vein scan went through...but it didn't match up with the scan from my LPN scan (although I doubt my veins did any serious moving in only eight months :) ).

One hour after everyone else started, I was allowed to begin (they had to do some weird back-up procedure). I was expecting lots of 'select all that apply' questions, but I'd say they only made up about 1/6th of my test. I did get massive amounts of priority questions (you know, if patient A is in dire condition, patient B is seeing lights at the end of the tunnel, and patient c is trying to jump out of the window, who will you see first?) and a good deal of medication
questions. The test questions really weren't that bad (as in I recognized the material, but I was still pretty iffy on the right answer). I had one math question and none of the audio or diagram type questions. I answered 75 before getting kicked out.

The Wait

I left feeling pretty good about life because a) we were told that BYU students never get kicked out at 75 questions and fail and b) our instructor was pretty sure that all BYU nursing students who pass the LPN exam also pass the RN exam. The next day Calvin, a student from my testing group, posted on facebook that he passed. I rushed to the dopl website, but my name wasn't there.

I looked up the other four BYU nursing students. They were all listed there, but not me. At that point I started to panic. In the next two hours I went through 4 of the 5 stages of grieving and then went to bed planning to spend the next day eating lots of tator-tots (they're my comfort food) and mapping out a rigorous study schedule.

The one sure way to know if you failed or passed the exam is to wait for the results to come through the mail or to shell out $7.95 two days after the exam and find out early. I needed closure, so I paid the money and found out I passed. Dopl now has my name up (I'm still not sure why it took them so long to post my results) and you can see it here :)

Lakin Hays, R.N.

Now What?

I'm still working at my nursing home, but now as a registered nurse (woot for a $2 pay raise) and I'm applying for a second job at my capstone facility. The position is night shift on the medical/surgical floor. I'm not thrilled about the prospect of messing with my eight-hour, 9-5 sleeping schedule, but it will be wonderful to be working in a hospital again. Now I just have to find a hobby to fill up all of my spare time :)

Fireworks

First dates are typically awkward. There are so many unknown variables: sense of humor, interests, background, values, friends, goals, etc. you have to sort through to find if this relationship might have the beginnings of amazingness or crickets.

We had fireworks (of the literal and figurative variety) on our first date.

I waited for three solid weeks for Robb to ask me out. We walked together to choir practice several weeks in a row, we talked every time we met in the fishbowl, and there was even flirting (at least on my part)... which probably didn't come across as flirting, but I tried anyway.

He finally got around to calling me up and we made a date for the 4th of July. It was perfect. To begin with, he smelled really good. It was like having my own mobile and manly scented air freshener. We went to Red Robin (home of the most amazing hamburgers my taste buds have ever come in contact with), sat down, and started talking. Our poor waitress came by three times to get an order, but we were so wrapped up in conversation we hadn't had time to glance at the menu.

We left the heavenly hamburger joint, walked through the Freedom Festival, and joined a group of friends to watch the Stadium of Fire from the MTC playing field. They were playing card games, but we decided to sit a little ways off and continue talking. It was the easiest thing to be with him. And the fireworks were pretty amazing too :)

Traffic going home was terrible. We loaded up in his car and waited a good half hour just to leave the parking lot, before deciding to the ditch the car and walk home.

And from that point on I was smitten with Robb Hays.

Every year we celebrate the anniversary of the world's most amazing first date by reenacting that day.

2008

2009

2010

Thanks, Robb, for the three most amazing 4th of Julys of my life.

MOAB!!!

(Click to enlarge...the more times you click, the bigger it gets.)

If you couldn't tell by the title, Lakin and I went to Moab over Memorial Day weekend, and it was awesome. We hit pretty much all of the arches on the first day including a sunset stroll to Delicate Arch (which should be renamed to either Arch-which-was-once-thought-delicate-but-which-has-now-proven-more-permanent or Arch-where-everyone-and-their-dog-goes). We just missed the sunset when we got there, but the clouds were just beginning to light up orange and pink, so it was still a good picture.

The first arch we went to was Tower Arch, which is off on a washboardy old sideroad, but definitely worth the drive because there are a lot less people there. We also visited Broken Arch and Sandune Arch.

On Sunday we went to church in Moab, and met one of the senior couples from Jordan's mission that had just returned home. Apparently, they served in Jordan's first area and knew him very well. When we told them who we were they immediately got this frown on their face that said something like, "We really have nothing good to say about Jordan." Just kidding! Actually, they got way excited and started going on and on about how great of a missionary he is.

After church we went on a drive around Canyonlands National Park. It's basically a miniature, less spectacular version of the Grand Canyon, at least the part we went to. After about 2 hours we got to the point of saying, "Wow, more pretty red canyons." The best part was the sunset, but other than that there's definitely not enough to consume a whole day. We only saw the Island in the Sky district, but there's also a Needles district and a Maze district. There are apparently more things to do in those parts, so we'll have to see that when we go back some time.

On Monday, we got permits to go into the Fiery Furnace in Arches. It's basically this small area of the park where there are no established trails, and they just let you wander around in and amongst the big sandstone fins and boulders. We had a lot of fun climbing all over the place, and the best part is that there are hardly any people. Definitely worth the $4 for the permit.

That about sums up our trip to Moab.