Blessings

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are so blessed. WE got to go to Brian's Uncle Jim and Aunt Darla's and do Thanksgiving John family style. I was great with that- we just had to bring the games, coldstone premade pie, and veggies and dip. I was sad that my mother in law, Kathy, was too sick to come. Got to play catch phrase with Brian's Grandpa and be taken down in Dutch Blitz by my brother in law Jason. Got to briefly hold my Niece Hannah. I say briefly because her darling 5.5 month self was the hit of the party. We were trying to coach her to crawl but she may have a little while before that takes place. I will post the family photo once someone emails it to me.

Tomorrow we are going to get up at 5 AM and go shopping but honestly Brian and I are so blessed and spoiled we really don't need anything and I haven't gotten my Christmas gift list figured out. Then I plan to be back in McMinnville early enough to start work at 8. Yes... I do get to work the day after thanksgiving and Even Saturday clinic this weekend but I figure it's a fine trade off to have 5 days in a row off at Christmas. Christmas we get to make the trek to visit my side of the family!

So blessings:
1. A wonderful husband.
2. Two excellent jobs.
3. A roof over our heads.
4. Christmas lights!
5. A toshiba laptop to blog from.
6. Talking with both my mom and my dad today.
7. Bilateral 20/15 vision thanks to the greatness of LASIK surgery.
8. New makeup from MAC- courtesy of my random shopping spree last week.
9. A great church and an awesome God led church planting team.
10.A Master's degree
11.This time last year I was in Ecuador celebrating Thanksgiving with Ecuadorians and Australians.
12. I have all my front teeth!
13. I had my wisdom teeth removed for free back in the day- since I worked for the surgeon.
14. Got to read the 2nd book in the Twilight series last night... Amazing!
15. My house is clean.
16. My rock band drum set.
17. We got to go to a Blazer's game already this season.
18. I know what an Omental infarction is and I got to diagnose it last week.
19. I barely cook but for some reason there is plenty of food in my house.
20. Our friends Matt and Judy
21. Women's Bible Study
22. My husband likes to shop. In a manly way.
23. The game Dutch Blitz
24. My mom and my sister who are teaching me the value of clipping coupons.
25. I have a secret Katy Perry addiction and have concert tickets to see her in January.
26. Our treadmill that we don't use enough
27. The new siding on our house that my dad and I put on.
28. Union Block Vanilla Spiced Chai
29. Hawaii vacations.
30. Orange is my favorite color.
31. My fantasy football team.
32. Putting puzzles together
33. My daily sudoku calender
34. Facebook- it's kind of an addiction.
35. Walking with Jesus daily.
36. Salvation.
37. 37. 37. 37.

Just another musing Monday

It's almost Thanksgiving! Just have to work a few more days.

Yesterday Brian and I put up Christmas lights! So beautiful! WE are going for something not quite as over the top as the pic on the left. Still have some more work to do.

Today I tried really hard to diagnose someone with appendicitis. I knew something was up when they didn't have a fever or an elevated white count. Alas, they had what the radiologist referred to as an omental infarction. Which I couldn't even find on up-to-date. So now working them up for why they would have an omental infarction. EKG, holter monitor and the like. Fun fun.

Oh we got to do lots of fun things this weekend but I did stretch myself and taught youth sabbath school. I hadn't been to youth in over a year and then got asked to teach. The lesson was on Nehemiah and how he was the King's cupbearer. Nehemiah performed his duty faithfully and one day he wasn't quite up to par and the king noticed and asked why he was so sad. And then Nehemiah shared the burden of his heart. He wanted to rebuild the city of Judah and the temple. Nehemiah goes on to be a strong leader and mobilizes other Israelities to accomplish that goal.
So do the task you find yourself in faithfully. God can do great things.

Thanksgiving is almost here!

Yesterday was my wonderful day off.
I bought a binder and some baseball card holders to design an awesome coupon holder.
Then I went to brunch with Brian at the Crescent cafe- waffles in the middle of the day.
Then Kathy and I went shopping! IKEA. I got some cute curtains and a duvet cover. All for under 50 dollars.
Then I went to MAC and I got my makeup done. Here is the result.
Pretty fun...


Then we went to the Blazers vs. Bulls game. Whoo hoo. Oden, Rudy, and Batum looked awesome! And we won by 42 points. A total blow-out but a fun blowout because they were dunking like crazy. We were going for a 50 point lead. Free Chalupas. yippee!

Anyways. Got to go to lunch with Kylie and Hannah today. And I only saw 5 patients. Developed an Asthma protocol for the department... I feel like I'm back in school. I keep telling myself the patients will come.

Oh and Bible study was awesome on Tuesday: The question was- What do you LOVE about Jesus?

Planting in the middle of winter

Church planting! Didn't I tell you that God was doing awesome things? We just went to the church board meeting and they approved our church plant application. So now its needs to go through two committees at the conference level and then get approved in church business meeting and we have all the backing of the home church. Lots of hoops but so worth jumping through.

There was some discussion but mainly about technicalities. The church board was resoundingly supportive of a plant church. If things go smoothly we should be starting our first service February or so. It just feels good to be approved of.

A call went out to church members asking for more core group members. Currently there are 6 of us and we are looking for a few more to take part in these planning stages. So keep praying!

It's holiday season!

We love the holidays. We've been playing Christmas carols since before Halloween. Today I'm going to get all our Christmas decor out and just start looking at it. I wanted to start hanging Christmas lights but since my back hasn't been doing well Brian doesn't want me to get up on the roof so must wait until the men can do it after Thanksgiving or so.

Work has been trying. I love seeing patients but have had some challenging cases. I just wish I had all the answers and had so much more experience than I do. I'm always running to my office and looking things up or running to ask one of the great docs in my practice. I know this is normal and this is where I am at in learning. However, by the end of the day I just sit at my desk with my charts and think... ahh... am I going to get better at this or will it always be this way? Luckily my coworkers are quite supportive and although I have a fear that one might might say in frustration "Sunshine, you should know this already, quit asking me this stuff!" no one has said anything of the sort. They have been very encouraging and keep reminding me that I need to ask these questions and can't rely on myself. So humbling.

We had lunch with some friends from Southern Adventist University in Tennessee yesterday. We saw them at church a few weeks ago and said hey... we knew you in Tennessee and now you are at our home church in Oregon! Such a fun Adventist world. We had fun playing guitar and reminiscing about friends we had at Southern. Brian and I met at Southern and have so many great memories from there.

Our friends Gabe and Maria

Then we went to the new James Bond movie. It was action packed. I definitely recommend it if you are male. Us girls enjoyed it okay but it was definitely geared towards the male sex.
Next we went home and watched Alvin and the Chipmunks. It was actually kind of cute and I got all those chipmunk songs stuck in my head.
Now going to start putting up those Christmas decorations!!!

Musings in the middle of the week

I've become a tad bored. I'm learning lots at work and gathering up my patient base. It's only my 2nd week so I don't have that many patients to see. So I've decided to take guitar lessons.

I got a number for a guitar teacher but if anyone has good recommendations for someone close to McMinnville I need a good teacher. And now that I am finally out of school I have time to take lessons.

I was a little down when I got off work today so Brian decided to take me out for dinner. We went to Golden Valley Brewery. Yummy.

And today a friend loaned me the first book in the Twilight series. I've decided to join the craze.

Lately I've been trying to use coupons. I've never been good at clipping coupons and my sister is trying to teach me. So I've got 100s of coupons now and I've separated them into about 4 envelopes. So whenever I got to the store I'm like now where is that coupon??? So I've been searching on the internet for a coupon holder. I've realized you can make a binder and put baseball card sheets in it. Keep all the coupons in the baseball card sheets so you can see them easily. The other option is to get a check file and sort each coupon by category. I like the idea of seeing all the coupons with the baseball card sheets but it seems a little bulky. And I like the idea of the check file because I could potentially keep it in my purse but it's a little harder to sort through when you need something.
I'm proud to say that I've saved at least 20 dollars so far. I have a coupon for practically everything!

Musings before I lay me down to sleep

So Chelsea pointed out that I was a little critical of myself last blog. That is true... But I actually kind of think it's cute of me to do everything half way. Most things I come back and finish promptly and even the crazy long term projects are what they are... I've been cross stitching these four fruit patterns for a couple years and making a collage for my dining room wall in my mind for at least a year. But I like that about myself... what is the point of finishing the project right away? Then I would just have to go find a new project to occupy my time. And the cool thing about me is that I usually finish the projects in my mind eventually. Like next spring I will finish planting grass seed.

Today I raked up all the leaves that had fallen in our backyard. I've decided I really like raking leaves. It's just such a big mess that looks better then cleaned up. But I flared up my sciatic nerve while doing it. The past few months I've known that I was aggravating it and that I needed to rest and let it calm down. Well I thought things had calmed down but it was pretty mad at me for raking leaves.

Later on today we went into Portland to meet my mom for lunch and I was limping around the mall... uggh!! I hate pain... it makes me cranky. Luckily I went to my Physician Assistant a month or so ago, who is awesome and graduated from my program 7 plus years before me, and got some cyclobenzaprine just for this occasion. I knew we were heading in this direction.

So yeah... had another church plant meeting tonight. Totally awesome. We're going to start looking for more core group members now that we have the main focus down on paper. We wanted to stay small at first- kind of a too many cooks in the kitchen kind of thing. It's going to happen! Pray! Pray! And I think I might start taking guitar/keyboarding/drum lessons so that we can beef up our worship team. Can't decide which one. I already have a guitar so that may be the least expensive to start!

So since I mentioned my mom and haven't been posting a lot of pics lately I thought I would post some pics of Ecuador around this time last year.

My mom taking a steam bath in a box in banos... She came back the next AM for another go.

My mom standing on the Equator... She is such a trooper. Right after this we got on THE MOST crowded bus I've ever been on and booked it back to Quito. We didn't want to miss our flight. IT was so crowded we didn't actually get in the bus cabin and stood with 7 other people in the cab with the driver.

All the leaves are brown

It's definitely fall here as the pile of leaves waiting to be picked up in our backyard attests. They were beautiful when they changed colors yet stayed on the trees. I'm waiting for the final leaves to fall off so I don't have to rake twice and also for it to stop raining!
The rain is nice though. Earlier in October I posted about planting grass seed in the dead spots of our front yard. Well I no longer have to put the sprinklers on it since the rain is watering my little seedlings and they have filled in the patches so nicely. I have little green sprouts all over the patches I did in the front lawn.

Unfortunately I only got around to doing half the front lawn. It was tiring work! Plus it started raining. I figure the lawn is not really a focal point throughout winter and the next prime opportunity to plant is spring time anyways.
This is me: I always have a few halfway finished projects.
Last week I was folding a bunch of laundry and in my mind I'm like this is boring... maybe I'll come back and finish it later. But then I told myself... Sunshine you are doing it again... you are going to come back in 30 minutes and look at this pile of clothes and think what possessed me to not complete that task??? Since I really had nothing else pressing to do so I made myself complete it.
I leave things halfway done all the time. Like I will unload half the dishwasher. and Clean half of the house. And do half the laundry...

I have been making a window box to go over our back doors for a few years now. A couple years ago I bought the wood and screwed a nice little box together. Then I hit a roadblock and left it sitting in the garage for two years. A few weeks ago I finally covered it with fabric and it is almost ready to go up. But what is it doing? it's sitting in our spare room now. Because I haven't put one final touch on it and I can't find the brackets to hang it anymore and I know I bought them a few years ago.... The eye opener on the window box came when Gene was home from Afganistan and I mentioned the possibility of him helping me hang the thing. He said: Oh you are still making that box? I think I helped you with that last time I was home on leave. So now I have a goal. Have it hung by the time Gene comes home.... 11 months or so away. That might be a bit speedier than the pace I have been going.

Yesterday I looked at my charts I had to still chart on and thought.... maybe I'll go do something else before I finish charting. So I went to talk to one of the Pediatricians about a case. Halfway there I noticed several of the docs had already left including her.... and I thought to myself.... Sunshine: you are going to be here all night if you keep avoiding charting... you could be done by now!
Plus poor Brian was calling me sick at home. Our first cold is upon us. I have a touch of it but it always seems to hit Brian more. He wanted me to bring home food.... and what am I doing... ignoring my charts while the person I love is home, miserable, and waiting for me.
So I'm proud to say I finished my charts in about 15 minutes!

Anyways. Work is still going well. I had a day where I walked out so excited about my job and just feeling like I made the best decision in the world by choosing to work there. Yesterday I had one particularly difficult patient where my supervising physician pointed out a few things on her extensive med list that I should be thinking about that I wasn't and I had a great learning experience. I'm finding in this profession that I have to humble myself. it is inevitable that I will make mistakes and when I realize them I have a tendency to want to just hide them and hope my patient miraculously gets better and no one notices that I made the mistake. But I can't do that. So several times this week I've noticed something minor I should have done differently and sucked it up and called the patient... Umm... Mr. So and so... I reviewed your case a little more and there was one thing I thought we should do differently.

Why can't I just do everything perfectly??

Musings of a Working Woman

I've got two days of work under my belt! So exciting. I wasn't too nervous on the first day and saw seven patients. I've decided Internal Medicine is a tad complicated and they tried to give me not too complex patients. The simplest thing I saw the first day was a urinary tract infection and even then they had dementia, was more confused due the infection, and were on Coumadin. So then I'm like oh crap... what can antibiotic least interferes with Coumadin?? So I run out and ask the Coumadin clinic PA and she says just pick one... they all interact.
Every patient I saw on my first day I asked a provider something about so there is definitely a huge learning curve. Luckily where I work I have 9 providers to choose from and all of them pretty much know my knowledge base and are open to me asking questions that I feel as if I should know.
The first day I spent the lunch break tapping a joint that got diagnosed with pseudogout. Now I hate orthopedics with a passion. I'm on my 3rd patient and I have this huge swollen knee in an elderly man. So I get an X-ray and I'm like arthritis, meniscal tear... Luckily I got to go ask my provider and he's like looks like pseudogout let's tap it. I didn't get to tap the joint my first day but it was cool to be involved in. Maybe I'll get to tap the next one :)
Later on my first day I had a patient newly started on prenisone for a different diagnosis who was now short of breath. I'm like.... prednisone is supposed should make her asthma better.... eek..... Anyways.... got through it.

My nurse is awesome... She recently graduated from Dartmouth and wants to go PA school after re-evaluating her pre-med track. So basically super smart and very capable. I already love her.

So today my second day I only saw 4 patients and had much more free time. Did spend two hours on a physical just for fun... Hey I had all afternoon. My patient was soaking it up. Will try not to get in the habit in the future. I think my employer is looking for productivity.

IT is the weirdest thing to hear people call patients for me and say hey I'm calling from Sunshine John's office. I'm like I have an office.... responsibility...

Anyways pretty excited. I really like where I am working. Feel pretty supported by people. But worn out. Glad tomorrow is Wednesday and it's my day off! sweet!

Another note... God is doing amazing things.
Just got back from Women's Bible study tonight. We talked about God's big heartedness and how while we were still sinner's Jesus to died for us. I just felt a closeness to the wonderful women there and felt like the Holy Spirit was really speaking to us and moving us to a closer relationship with God.

We also had another meeting about church planting Sunday night. Our pastor came to this one and we have a meeting with people from the Oregon conference tomorrow about what steps we need to take towards church planting. God is doing awesome things. WE have been praying about this for 5 years and I feel like God is finally saying now is the time and these are the people. So keep praying.

Musings on a fall Sabbath day

Pictures... Pictures... I've actually taken a few recently.

This is Brian's Halloween/ Birthday/ Blackmail costume.

It actually scares me how well he pulled it off.

This is Shantel and I last weekend

My street! It's gorgeous in the fall.

Unfortunately most of the leaves have fallen by now.

It was my last week before I join the productive money earners of society. Eekk... my first patient day is Monday! For now I'm bored and I've been creating my own kingdom on knighthood. Kind of getting addicted. We shall see how this changes once I don't have so much free time.

Yesterday was Brian's Birthday / Halloween. The night before we went our for Morrocan food. Way fun. We had to sit on pillows on the floor and eat with our hands. The food was really really yummy. And there was a belly dancer. On his birthday he actually dressed up as above and went to work. EEK!! Then we went out for Chinese and I answered the door to all the trick-to-treaters. Wow.... I got him a bunch of stuff for his birthday but one of the things he was really excited about was a nativity set. It is really cute and I am excited about displaying it for Christmas as a reminder of the Christ's sacrifice.

Speaking of that... church was pretty awesome today. We are holding evangelistic seminars so the place was packed and we sat in the overflow room with the needs to be replaced speaker. Our guest speaker was talking about God sending Jesus down to die for us and what a sacrifice it was. He had some points I hadn't thought about lately such as if Jesus had sinned while he was on earth then God would have had to excommunicate JEsus and all would have been lost. Basically sin separates us from God. Jesus came down to be a sacrifice for us so that he could be the bridge between us and the Father. IF JEsus had sinned and not lived a perfect life on earth than all would have been lost and he would have never seen his son again. He was talking about the difference between a gift and a loan and how God gave his only son to us. He gave him not knowing if he would ever see him again.
Then my head springs up with arguements like okay... if God doesn't exist in time such as we do was it really that much of a sacrifice since he knew the end from the beginning??? I do not know how God works... I think that's what it means to walk by faith. God is so big and I am small.

One of my favorite Ellen White quotes from the Great Controversy is this one:

The plan of redemption will not be fully understood, even when the ransomed see as they are seen and know as they are known; but through the eternal ages new truth will continually unfold to the wondering and delighted mind. Though the griefs and pains and temptations of earth are ended and the cause removed, the people of God will ever have a distinct, intelligent knowledge of what their salvation has cost. The cross of Christ will be the science and the song of the redeemed through all eternity.

Right now (As it says in Corinthians 13) I am looking through a glass darkly. When I see Jesus face to face my understanding will increase in regards to salvation and what a sacrifice it was. I look forward to learning more and more about what it means to be redeemed.
Right now I take it for granted more than I am amazed by it.