Well first of all Merry Belated Christmas to you all! I don't know about you but it was a wonderful Christmas and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing and being with family and friends. I hope you all felt the spirit of Christmas in your own homes and hearts. Well, today I want to blog about teddy bears. It just so happens that 4 years ago Andy got me a little nurse teddy bear from Build-A-Bear that I accidentally lost. He always accuses me of purposefully losing it which I emphatically deny! That being said, for Christmas this year he decided to relive the dream and get me a nurse teddy bear from Build-A-Bear. Now call me heartless but I really wasn't all that sad when the first one went missing and I really have no use for one now. Andy and I having been married for 5.5 years now and neither of us flinched or whined when I asked for the receipt. So I'm at the Build-A-Bear place and there are little girls all over the shop and they have a station for naming your bear along with a woman working at the stuffing machine in her cute littple apron talking to the kids about how their teddy bears will be with them always and there are signs everywhere for the "Teddy Bear Promise" which is they will always love you and look after you. So I'm standing in line feeling a little out-of-place and like a heel for returning mine when the woman in front of me with teddy bear outfits and teddy bears literally bursting from her arms turns to talk to me and asks me about my bear. When I tell her I am returning mine she looks shocked and a bit affronted and asks me why. I tell her I'm a little old for teddy bears to which she replies with slight indignation, "No one is too old for teddy bears!" I give a half-hearted chuckle and hope the line moves faster. Well, finally its my turn and they let me return my bear and I am $30 dollars richer and have no regrets!

We had an Ugly Christmas Sweater party at Tammy's house and Ty and Andy were the top rated for their ugly christmas sweaters! In the end we had a cat-walk to break the tie and Ty won as he had the better runway walk (and I think the better sweater as well!) I will let you be the judge.

Diary of a Wimpy Nurse

So we had the missionaries over for dinner and it was a rainy day so I figured I would make some nice warm beef stew in the crockpot. So I'm chopping carrots, celery potatoes and beef to throw in the pot and while chopping the onions I ended up dicing the tip of my thumb as well. My thumb starts to bleed profusely so I quickly run my thumb under some cold running water and grab a hand towel to try and stop the bleeding. Now, I am a nurse and in my career as a nurse I have seen some pretty nasty things. For example: in Ecuador an arm nearly coming off on a man who was robbed with a machete, a back wound with the spinal cord nearly exposed from the guy's neck to his butt, pressure ulcers that tunnel and go down to the bone, etc, etc. So I can hold my own when it comes to blood but apparently not my own. Thus after dicing my thumb I start to get a little woozy. Then it quickly progresses from being woozy to nauseas and I know I am going into shock. So what do I do? I call my mommy. After calling her I sit on a chair with my head between my knees. I soon realize that it's not working and that I am seconds away from passing out so I lie down on the floor. My whole body goes cold and that queezy feeling in my stomach won't go away and the world starts to go white. So with what little strength I have left in my legs I pull a chair over and lie on the floor with my legs above my head on the chair and wait for my mother. When she knocks I feebly call out for her to use her keys because I can't stand up. She does and opens up the door and finds me with a bloody dish towel and me lying on the floor with my feet on the chair still in my pajamas and robe. My mother is as calm as can be and when I tell her about my going into shock she just says, "yeah, your father does that too!" So we bandage my wound and all I can think is that I am such a wimpy nurse!