Finals are almost here again...

Last paper of the term finished and submitted ...yeah!!! 

... I have been slacking and not blogging for a such long time.  School has been busy.  Really really busy.  I love being in nursing school!  It is intellectually challenging and stretches my learning wonderfully in so many directions.  But the biggest challenge of all is being gone so much from home.  I miss the kids tremendously and cannot wait for Spring break to roll around.  The toll of being gone so much over the last 10 months is compiling and every Sunday night when I have to leave yet again to go back to Portland my heart aches.

But here we are with the last week of term three upon me and I can look forward to almost two weeks of spring break.  It is gonna be great!  I can also look back over an intense 10 weeks of acute care experiences.  I had 5 weeks on the labor/delivery, mother/baby, and NICU units and 5 weeks on the adult cardiac unit.  It has been intense and I have loved every minute of being in clinical.  I am just so happy that I made the choice to pursue nursing.

Last week also brought my first ATI testing which is preparation for the NCLEX or the national nursing licensure testing that I will need to complete once I finish school.  It went fairly well .. we did not have to study in advance for this test so that it can provide me with a good baseline measure of what I currently know and where I should focus my efforts as I continue my studies.  It was a long test though - 150 questions ... still it is another step in the direction of becoming a nurse.

In addition to school, I sometimes feel that our life is constantly in flux and that I am caught in a game of wack-a-mole!  I will not blog much about it other than to say that we have had some very difficult times on the personal front and it has been emotionally tiring, difficult and unsettling.  It lead to a new move for our family and in January we relocated down to Eugene, Oregon for a new job for my husband.  We have rented a house there and hope to settle in and make this our home for the forseeable future.  Alas things seems to be settling down now for which I am immensely thankful...