New York City day 1...

Last weekend we went to New York City!! It was a spontaneous trip, we have discussed going to New York, but never seemed to have the right time to go, but Friday night we came home from the movies at 12:30 and looked up the weather for New York, the forecast had changed from thunderstorms all weekend to partly cloudy with much less rain, so at 1 am we decided to make plans to go on Saturday! We slept about four hours, hopped on the metro to catch a bus at 7:45 Saturday morning, spent 4 hours on the bus and arrived in New York at noon. It was so exciting and scary at the same time. To be dropped off at Penn station in the middle of a huge city you know nothing about. Strapped with a backpack of the bare necessities for an overnight trip and a couple of neceassary maps printed from google and we were off.

At first we were overwhelmed and I was a little scared, first things first we had to get our bearings of our location so that we could find our way back to our bus on Sunday night without getting lost. So we walked around the block once to figure out our directions. If worse comes to worse though we figure we can always just hop in a cab and say take me to Penn station, right?

So now we have some idea of general cardinal directions, we're off into the dizzying chaos of New York. Matt has visited New York, but I have not so it was a new experience for me. I have been to London and Paris, so I have been in a big city but that was with a guided tour. Walking in New York is actually much less scary than in London, in New York, pedestrians still seem to have the right away at least. I definitely did not feel that way in London.

I kept getting so distracted by all the architecture and buildings I recognized from movies or art, it felt good recognizing places. We started to gain confidence in that familiarity. The New Yorker, then the Empire State building and so on...


Lunch, New York Pizza, yummy!

Luckily we found our hotel soon after lunch and they let us check in early, so we didn't have to carry our backpack all afternoon. That was nice because we ended up doing a lot of walking, our goal was to find central park and everything in between, which we successfully conquered.

We went into NBC studios, didn't really do the tour, but in their store we found the best thing ever! I don't know if there are any Battlestar Gallactica fans out there, but I had to call Jess Barnes from the store to tell her about the cute baby onsie I found, "100% baby cylon"! Oh I loved and googled over it for a while, I resisted as I couldn't think of any BSG fans with babies and I wasn't close to having my own cylon baby... drats. But I will find that onsie again when the time is right! And we will have ourselves a most beloved cylon baby.

Rockefellar Plaza!

We trotted a few blocks over to Times Square and the Theatre district. We wanted to check out about tickets to a show. Friends at work told me about TKTS where you can get discounted tickets, however at 4pm the line stretches forever! We didn't end up going to a show, but with such short notice we weren't really expecting to. We needed to rest up for our next big day and really hadn't slept much the night before, so we moved on.

Here we found Central Park!! We breathed a sigh of relief as we walked into the park. After walking about 30 blocks of intense city it was very relaxing to find some green space and a more tranquil environment. It was still a very busy place but I was feeling very claustrophobic from the city streets. This is when I realized I could never live here and don't know that I could really take much more than a few days here! It is loud, busy, and dirty. The air feels suffocating and you feel grimy just from walking down the street. Thank goodness for central park, I don't know that anyone could live here without this haven. And boy is it well used!

I loved this stone staircase! (I love the man standing on it more though)

This was kind of fun, a group just brought out a bunch of hula hoops to share!

We tried, but I seem to remember it being a lot easier when I was a kid??

I was not any good. Matt wasn't any better.

It is fun to be in this great park and look over to see the city skyline right on the edge.

In this picture below the couple are doing some type of yoga or something. I just liked the picture and surroundings.

There seems to be street shows everywhere in New York along with street vendors. We saw a group just dancing in the street in central park, the exception was all the dancers were on roller skates. Here a couple guys were just amusing the crowd and probably trying to accept money for it. Down by the statue of liberty we saw some guys dressed in neon orange trying to wrangle a crowd, oh and the woman dressed up at the statue of liberty just standing on a pedestal??

This is overlooking one of the smaller ponds in Central Park, the park is just huge and we didn't even get through half of it!

This was on our way back through times square.


I liked this statue of a button and sewing needle, we were in the fashion district.

On our way back to the hotel we picked up some fabulous sandwiches and NY cheesecake for a picnic and some much needed rest after our 5 or 6 mile jaunt. We were a little cautious walking the streets at night so we just hung out at our hotel, there was a nice bar there, so we had a couple of drinks and enjoyed some R&R!

COLORADO here we come!!

Just writing to let everyone know our exciting news... We just accepted our next contract in the Denver area. Yea, we are so happy and excited to go to Colorado. I am amazed at how quickly I was able to interview and get this assignment, it was a completely different experience than last time over christmas. The travel nursing industry is really slow still and I was not sure what we would find, if we would be able to find a good contract, but we have and here we go! We will go straight from here to there without any time off due to the hospitals need and orientation dates. So come April 20th we'll be coloradians for a while at leasts.



I will be sad to leave the position I am in now because I really like the group of people I am working with this time and am enjoying the aspects of opening a new unit and being able to take some ownership in the coordination of the unit. I work as one of the primary night charge nurses, which basically means I serve as the resource person on the unit for that shift and have a few more responsibilities. I am also serving as a preceptor, helping to build the full time staff that are coming in. So, it has been a great experience and my current manager is very sad to see me go. It always feels good to know you have done a good job and are appreciated. If I could take Inova hospital with me I think I would, it seems to be a great facility with a lot of opportunity. But it is time to move on and boy, Matt can't wait to move on! He feels much more couped up in this city than he did in Milwaukee and of course we both love the mountains, so this is a great move for both of us.



This new position will be challenging as I will be in the float pool and will work on many different units throughout the hospital. This facility has a very large Trauma program though, so that will be an area that I can develop in more.



So for all our friends and family in Colorado, we are coming soon and can't wait!!! For me, having visited Colorado at least yearly since I was about 11, it feels like my second home. It will be nice being in a familiar place again with friends and family close by.

A little of this and that...

Ooh I have been rather lazy in updating our blog, I guess with winter and all we just haven't gotten out as much to do noteworthy things. But here is what we have been up to...

We have mentioned before that we live right off great biking trails that take us downtown and all over northern VA, so a couple of weeks ago we rode down to Alexandria, it was a great ride and when we got there they were having a St. Patty's day celebration (about two weeks early??? weird) We were so confused at first, but once we figured things out we were glad we had unintentionally wore green!

Matt found the red bull car for refueling after our ride...

We also found the back to the future car on display, random... but fun

This cemetary had gravesites from the late 1700's! crazy, Alexandria is where our country was taking shape. George Washington's place of business was in Alexandrian and here is an old church with a graveyard in the middle of Old Towne.

(to all those history buffs out there, sorry I probably butcher trying to explain the history of the places we visit, I have never been that great at history)

After lunch and lazy strolling we decided to ride the metro home and took the easy way back! Although we were super glad to have our bikes along, because the metro was running super slow and on our way back there was going to be a 20 min delay...yikes! so we hopped off on our bikes and rode the rest of the way home. It was a fun day, no traffic or cars, but a great afternoon getaway.

We also visited the American History Museum recently, this is Abraham Lincolns' tophat... I thought that was cool to see.

Here I am being Oscar the Grouch!

Kermit!

Dumbo!

Our favorite part of the museum was the Star Spangled Banner exhibit, you can't take pictures in that exhibit, but they have the original flag that was raised during the war of 1812 that inspired the writing of our National Anthem.




We also visited some wineries with Scott and Cheryl a couple of weeks ago. Here we are at Potomac winery near Fredericksburg, VA. This was a beautiful facility with Italian architecture and design and great space for receptions and weddings. Also a great place to hang out and relax with a glass of wine!





Here we are waiting to sample our wines. This was the second winery we went to and Matt was feeling a bit light headed so he sat this one out (he has become such a lightweight!).

We didn't get the official tour because we arrived too late in the day but I snuck in some pictures of the oak barrels that make my favorite red wines and chardonnay taste so yummy.

Stainless steel barrels are important too, just so they don't feel left out...

At the end of the day we enjoyed some great wines and had a good time. The guys actually went to a men's bible study that evening and Cheryl and I took a nap! That wine went straight to my head too.

Updates for February

Hey all!! It's been a while, but things are going good here in Virginia. We went to Virginia Beach the week before Valentine's day for a whale watching trip. The humpback whales migrate through that area in the winter. We stayed on the beach and walked in the sand barefoot, it was nice. Our boat trip was cancelled though due to the high winds, which was a huge bummer. Then our computer crashed and we lost all our pictures that were on our computer!! I was a little devastated, but glad I had downloaded a lot of pics onto facebook, so bye bye all our pictures from the beach. That's okay the trip was a little disappointing and hopefully we'll go back to the beach another time when it's warm enough to swim. We also lost pictures from hiking with our friends Scott and Cheryl. But at least our computer is working now that we have wiped it and reinstalled everything. grrr. Posting a blog isn't nearly as much fun without pictures, unless you are smart and witty like Jess Barnes... drat someday you can write my biography filled with dragons and fantastical creatures.



Other than that I've been working and I am enjoying the new unit I am on. I work with a lot of travel nurses, which is crazy at times, but very fun. We work together well and since it is all so new, and many people don't know the hospital and the unit is so small we have to rely on each other to get things done. Matt is doing a wonderful job taking care of things around the house, cooking and baking and learning all sorts of things. Last week he made his mom's mostaccoli's and it was fantastic! We had people over to share in the yummy goodness. The only problem was that we do not have much pot or pan space and thank goodness Autumn left us a crock pot in December, because we would not have been able to fit it all in and have a pot available to cook the noodles. Her recipe makes a lot, it filled our crock pot up to the top edge! Matt spends a lot of time online reading up on the news and researching politics, economy, stock market stuffs, and of course playing some games.



Well I hope everyone is doing well. We don't really know where we are going next, the market for travel nurses is still slow and very competitive, so we'll see in the next month or so what happens. We may stay here for another three months if we need to, to ride things out. Love you and take care!

A Funny Story

So this is a funny story I thought I would share. This is our condo building... inside all the hallways look the same on each floor... the other day Matt and I were bringing in groceries from the car, just talking about our each others day and such and when we opened the door to our condo, I was really confused. The door opened to someone elses condo? and there was a young woman sitting across the room quite shocked that some random couple with loads of groceries just opened her door! I quickly apologized, feeling like I had just walked in on someone in the bathroom, didn't make eye contact and closed the door. We got out in the hallway thinking what in the heck happened here... Well, our parking spot is on the 6th level of the parking garage, we live on the 3rd floor of the building. In the midst of our conversation we accidentally got off at the 4th floor and had no idea we were on the wrong floor until we walked in on the woman who lives above us! We now double check everytime we get off the elevator or stairwells. Ooops. Sorry to the nice lady who lives above us, we really aren't scary people.

Snowy Days...

Another wet day!! Time to do some museums! We headed back to the Natural History Museum, but first stopped at the House where Lincoln Died, rather uneventful, but this is the room he died in, across from Ford's theatre. I wonder what this house was before he died here?

This building above is the FBI building, the big buildings always impress me over and over. I really like the architecture.

The National Mall in wintertime, by the end of our stay here we should have pictures from every season in Washington D.C. The mall is in desparate need of repair, they say it is from the inauguration, but it was pretty bad before that too. I like how you can only see half of the Washington Monument in this picture below.

The entrance at the Natural History Museum. This is a great museum overall, a lot of fun. We just skipped over the evolution parts. They are hard core darwinists of course and show our oldest relative as some small rodent that was supposedly the oldest animal or something, I really didn't pay that much attention!!

Ooo, the orchids were beautiful though. We learned how orchids differentiate and grow into many different kinds of species for survival. They adapt to best get themselves noticed by the bees for reproduction. They are the most varied flower ever, some of them don't even look like orchids.

Then some of them are so aromatic I had to go back for third and fourth sniffs!

This guy was funny looking, those ears crack me up! I wanted to measure myself next to the leg of a Giraffe.

This is how Giraffes drink, I thought it was funny looking and awkward. Too bad they aren't graceful creatures!

This picture was taken on our way to F.D.R. island. I needed to get out for a walk and we hadn't been on the island yet. I think the castle on the left is part of Georgetown, could be the college, not sure. Then you can also see the National Cathedral on the right hand side of the picture.

Sunset from our parking garage at our condo. The end of a good day!