Christmas...Raps...Sedona

Christine here….
Well, seeing as I have only written on the blog once since our whole adventure started, I figured I was due!
I hope that each and every one of you had a wonderful Christmas that was spent with those that you love. Shawn and I had a great day that started with some gift opening, web-cam and telephone conversations with our family and friends, and a yummy breakfast!

It was definitely a strange feeling to be so far away from our family and normal Christmas traditions; however it was neat to have “our own” Christmas morning. After a little cat nap (I worked Christmas Eve night) we were off to Stacey and Joey’s house for Christmas dinner. It was a great afternoon spent watching the boys play Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii, and being thoroughly entertained by Isa (their 2 ½ year old). I even had a go with the Wii, and I do have to say it was pretty fun! Joey’s parents and brother & wife were also there, so it was great to visit with them as well.

On the Saturday before Christmas the Toronto Raptors were in town taking on the Phoenix Suns. So we took in the game down at the US Airways Center. It is literally a 10 minute drive from our apartment so it was super easy to get to. Before the game started we were able to go down courtside and watch some of the Raptors warm up. It was pretty cool to be that close to the players. Chris Bosh was out there and we were even really close to being able to get his autograph but he stopped signing right before he got to us.

Shawn’s highlight was “fist bumping” Chuck Swirsky, his favorite TV/Radio announcer for the Raps…it was pretty funny. Unfortunately the Raps couldn’t pull out a win, but overall it was a great night! My highlight came at the end of the game when we went back down beside the court. One of the Suns dancers was one of the last 2 ladies on the TV show “The Bachelor” and to my delight I was able to get my picture taken with her! Now, I know to many this may seem kinda strange and silly…but watching “The Bachelor” was a staple event among my girlfriends back home and it brought back many memories of times spent with my girlfriends laughing and eating Breton Brittle :)

Sunday took us up the I-17 north, through miles and miles of cacti to a town called Sedona. This area of Arizona is famous for its red rock, artisan boutiques, and hiking paths. We spent the afternoon walking through the uptown area, browsing in shops and eating the so-called “world’s best” hotdog! We enjoyed the beauty of the red rock and then visited the Holy Cross Chapel. This chapel is built into the side of the rock and gives you a beautiful panoramic view of Sedona and the surrounding red rock area.

Well, that kinda brings you up-to-date on what we have been up to. We are continuing to enjoy the beautiful weather and sunny skies and can’t believe how fast our time here is going.

Hope all is well with everyone….until next time.

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to say a quick Merry Christmas to anyone reading this. We have had some mixed emotions about Christmas over the last few days. A part of us is really sad not to be at home with our families and the normal routines we have had around Christmas time for as long as we can remember. But another part of us is excited to be spending our first Christmas together as a married couple. We are doing our best at trying to make it feel like Christmas for us. We have a little tree, a few presents for eachother underneath it, and we play a lot of Christmas music around the house and in the car. However, driving with the windows down and seeing Christmas lights on a cactus isn't the kind of Christmas we are used to. With that said, it really is a cool experience to have as I'm sure we will have many many more Christmas' with plenty of snow. We both hope that all of you are enjoying some wonderful time with family and friends.

We recently took a day trip over to Sedona as well as went to the Raptors/Suns game on the weekend. I will update again soon with some pictures from our trip and the game.

We wish you all good health and much happiness during the holidays.

Here is a pic of our little tree. Stay Classy.

John 3:17

a surprise visit home...

We arrived back in Phoenix Monday night after a whirl wind tour of events back home. Since late October we knew that we would be heading home to surprise my mom for her retirement. Back in early November we bought our tickets to fly into Detroit. We arrived on Thursday and stayed until Monday. Although our plans a few months ago only included heading home for my mom's retirement, there were a few other events that we ended up being home for. Events that took us through the widest array of human emotions. We got an early phone call from Christine's father last week with the sobering news that his father, Christine's grandfather, had passed away after 96 years of wonderful life. Although our initial reaction was one of wishing we could've been home just a few days earlier to see him one more time, we soon realized that the timing allowed us to be home for the funeral. Of all the days throughout the year, this event coincided with our one short trip home which we had planned months ahead...the good Lord was looking after us. Our original plan was to fly in on Thursday afternoon, get picked up by my brother-in-law Cameron and then spend the night in London where him and my sister live. Then on the Friday we would head home and surprise my mom just after dinner time. With the new turn of events, we switched up our plans a wee bit in order to be home in time for the funeral on Friday afternoon. Cam picked up my sister directly from work and headed to Detroit to pick us up. We went straight from the airport to Markdale...a long trip. We arrived by just after 11pm and proceeded to head into the house and announce "we're home!!!!". It took my mom only a few seconds to come darting out of her bedroom to see us standing in her kitchen. She squealed, and cried, and shook, and said numerous times that she must be dreaming. It felt great to have that surprise out of the way as it was getting increasingly more difficult to keep the big secret under wraps. And of course, to see the happiness in my mom's face was well worth every mile travelled. We stayed up visiting for a few hours as it took my mom a while for the sight of us sitting in her living room to sink in.

Friday was a somber, but wonderful day. It was a day filled with family, sharing memories of Christine's grandpa, and celebrating his life. The traditional funeral service was a testament to a man with strong traditional and wholesome values. However, the heartfelt messages delivered during the service perfectly articulated James Kenneth Fraser's loving and caring side as well. His love for his wife of 71 years, his family, and his community. He was a very proud man, in every good way the word "proud" can mean. He was proud of where he grew up, proud of his children, and definitely proud of his grandchildren. He was the kind of man that leaves this earth with a legacy that makes everyone who knew him, everyone sitting in that tiny church in Dundalk, want to be a better person. I can't think of a greater thing to be said of a man after he passes.

Christine and I felt so privileged to be able to be there with family members to pay our respects and say goodbye to Grandpa Fraser. I look forward to carrying his legacy, and stories of him, into many future generations so that our children's children will know what a man of character he was. Here is a picture of us with Christine's grandpa and grandma from our wedding in the summer.


Saturday brought a few more surprises for my mom and the feeling of Christmas for Christine and I. Every year we get together with my whole family, including my sister Sandy, her husband Brian, and my nieces, to open presents and spend the day together. The only weekend that worked for them this year just happened to be when we were home as well! The timing of all these things was crazy I tell you. Before we opened presents at home we had a surprise lunch party for my mom at Steven's Restaurant in Markdale. My mom's brothers were there as well as some family friends. Since my mom thought that the lunch reservations were only for our immediate family she was definitely shocked to see all of the people waiting for when she arrived.

It feels good to surprise people, and to celebrate people. I'm so happy that my mom can spend her time as she wishes now. Knowing her, she will probably be more busy in retirement than when she was working. I know it will be hard for her at times, she had such a wonderful rapport with the staff and students at the school. I also know that she will be dearly missed in many ways that will only be apparent now that she isn't there anymore...what a way to leave.
The rest of Saturday was spent doing Christmassy things with family and playing with my mom and dad's new puppy...it was great.

One more unexpected event that we just happened to be home for was a huge snow storm. Although it was fun for Christine and I to see all the snow, the thought of making it back to Detroit safely really started to concern us. We decided to make a go of it on Sunday to see if we could make it back to London. The visibility turned out to be ok, but the amount of snow falling still made it a very slow drive. It normally takes about two and half hours to get back to London from my mom and dad's house, but this time it was about four and half. The most important thing was that we made it back safely. We had a nice drive on Monday back to Detroit and a safe flight back to where we are now, in sunny Arizona. We have to thank Kerry and Cam for picking us up and driving us around for the weekend, through the snow and across the border, I don't know what we would do without them.

I videotaped a bit of the snow on Sunday so I will try to upload it here when I get the chance.
We hope everyone is enjoying the snow back home. It was so wonderful to see so many family members in such a short amount of time. Drive safely and stay classy.

when it rains, it pours (and Isa's First Game!)

It rained! That is big news around these parts. We thought that we might go our entire time here without seeing any rain at all. Cathy was telling us about a part of Arizona that hasn't had rain for over a year! However, for us the rain started on Friday and barely stopped right up until last night. It's a good thing it stopped when it did because we were able to head out to a big light parade that was passing by just down the street from us. So we bundled up a bit (we don't have heavy coats with us, but we had sweaters on) and we took our lawn chairs and set them up right on the side of the road where the parade was passing. Neither of us had ever been to a parade at night before and it definitely surpassed expectations! The lights were amazing. The parade lasted just over an hour and had about 75 floats. It was definitely a bonus to be able to walk to it as roads were closed off and parking would've been a nightmare. There is an estimated 200,000 people that go to the parade every year...so it's a big event in Phoenix for sure. It was so nice to see so many kids running around excited about Christmas.

I noticed that I hadn't updated since the hockey game I went to. It was a lot fun and especially good because the leafs lost! Going to a hockey game down here in the south sure is different than back in Canada (even though about half of the fans at the game were leaf fans). The stadium is brand new and built out in the middle of nowhere. It was actually kind of nice because it wasn't congested getting in and out of the arena. Also, for people who go to games in Toronto you might find this hard to swallow: Tickets were $28 each for our seats (about 5 rows back on first balcony), parking was free and there was plenty of it, and programs were free. Of course, the biggest difference between a game at the ACC and here was the 5000 empty seats. Hard to believe that the same organization that has a mile long waiting list for seasons tickets back home can be watched here for $28. I guess that is hockey in the south. Isa (Stacey and Joey's 2 year old daughter) was with us for the game. She behaved herself very well and enjoyed all of the action during the breaks in play....they even had a dance pack that danced on the ice in regular shoes! Only in America. Anyways, here are a few pics from the game. A great time with Ron, Cathy, and Isa!

That's all for now. We are keeping busy...the days are flying by aren't they!? It's December already! Hope you are all finding parking spaces at the mall. Stay Classy.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Even though we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving back in Oregon, we didn't hesitate to celebrate it again here in the states a few days ago. For those Canadian folks who don't know, American Thanksgiving is a big deal....huge. I would say it is on par with Christmas, if not bigger. It's a four day weekend starting on Thursday (Thanksgiving day). It is the official beginning of the holiday season. We spent a good part of Thursday over at the church that our friends Stacey and Joey work at. They're organization (Masters Commission) had thrown together a huge meal for hundreds of foster kids from around Phoenix. So Christine and I took some pies and met up with Ron and Cathy to help out in any way we could. It was a pretty amazing event to pull off. They were insistent on creating an environment for the kids that felt like a family meal around the table (there were many many tables). That meant no buffet lines. Everything was passed around on nice serving plates and we ate with the fanciest plastic knives and forks that you have ever seen. It was such a wonderful event and it was an absolute honour to be there to experience it. Sitting at the table with strangers and seeing all of the kids laughing and having fun was priceless....truly what Thanksgiving is all about.
The day after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday" here. Historically it marks the day that business' would get out of "the red" and into "the black". Over time it has become the biggest and craziest shopping day of the year. There are many amazing deals to be had if you are willing to wait in lines outside of box stores for hours on end. Most stores open at around 5am, but the lineups outside would've started long before then. So in the true spirit of us embracing our time here in America, we got up early and went out to see what it was like. We were at Circuit City by a few minutes after 5am...just in time for the doors to open. There were a few hundred people lined up outside but once the doors opened we were all able to get in. Once in the store people form even more lines depending on what they are buying (TV's, Cameras, computers, etc). We only grabbed a few small things and then waited in the checkout line for about an hour. It was crazy for sure, but kinda fun to experience at least one time in our lives. It was just a really strange feeling to wake up at 4:30am and head out to see parking lots full and people lined up outside of these huge stores. It was cold for Phoenix standards, the moon was bright, and the people were out by the thousands. We hit up a few more stores and then we were back in bed by 7am for a few more hours of sleep. What a day!

Anyways, we are doing great here. Still enjoying the sunshine even though it has cooled off a bit. I am off to the Leafs/Coyotes game tonight with Ron and Cathy. Go Coyotes!

Stay Classy.

Grand Canyon

So we finally got out of Phoenix and headed to one of the seven wonders of the world. It was great to be back driving on roads we have never been on before. It was truly amazing to see the landscape change as we drove. We got to drive through Flagstaff which is a couple of hours north of Phoenix. This is a very cool little city...it felt more like Oregon than Arizona to us. It was amazing that within a few hours we felt like we were out of the desert and into ski country. The rest of the drive to the Canyon was equally beautiful. The total driving time was under 3.5 hours which was shorter than we had expected...a pleasant surprise.
No amount of pictures or reading can prepare you for the vastness of the upside mountain that is the Canyon. It is no less deep from any angle or lookout you choose. The donkey's that take people to the bottom of the canyon look smaller than ants and the hiking trails that switchback down the sides of the canyon wall look like thin lines of dental floss that eventually disappear the closer they get to the bottom. Often the canyon only seemed like a painting or a backdrop, most likely a testament to how little our brains can comprehend what we are seeing.
One really interesting aspect of being inside the Canyon park is to see how it operates, partly like a small city, but often has the feeling of an amusement park or tourist trap. Tour buses can pick you up and drop you off anywhere around the rim. There is a fully working grocery store, bank, library, and post office. And there is also no shortage of grand canyon trinkets and collectibles that you can get with your name printed on them. Still, even though the commercialization exists, it can't take away from the sheer beauty of such an amazing natural wonder. We will post pictures here, but like I said, nothing can compare to seeing it in person.
We stayed at one of the lodges within the park, only about a 10 minute walk to the rim. It was a nice change from the hotel chains that Christine and I are so used to staying in at this point on our travels. We took a different route on the way home so that we could stop at a few different lookouts that we didn't get to see the day before. We still can't get over the difference in landscape and wildlife that a few thousand feet in elevation can make. While on our way out of the park we saw 6 or 7 Elk (those things are huge), as well as lots of deer. By the time we had driven about 30 minutes out of the park we had dropped about 2000 feet in elevation and found ourselves in the Navajo reservation where signs warned us about snakes and lizards. Pine trees had turned into desert shrubs again, and eventually into the cacti we see in Phoenix all the time. It was like travelling through the forests of Oregon to the desert of Arizona, all within a few hours.
It was a wonderful trip and definitely gave us a new appreciation for Arizona as a state. Here are a few pictures. Hope you like. Stay Classy til next time.

Oh! one more thing! We almost saw rain last week. Supposedly it spit a bit in the morning...but we didn't see it. So we have still only seen it rain a few times in the past 4 months. oh well.

checking in...

just wanted to write a little message to let you know we haven't dropped off the face of the earth. We haven't been out on any major excursions but we hope to hit up the Grand Canyon and some other places over the next while...we are just trying to look at Christine's schedule and see when we can do it.
Things are pretty good here. I know that most people back home in Ontario like knowing the weather in other places...so for those of you who fall under that category, the weather for the next week is 88 degrees and sunny...every single day. I know that I should never complain about weather like that and believe me, I'm not, but I must say that we do miss the odd rainy or gloomy day. It is very possible that we might not see a drop of rain the entire time we are here which would be crazy for us. It's not really sinking in to us that it is November and Christmas is around the corner. We are going to try to do a few "Christmasy" things over the next month and a bit, so hopefully that will help get us in the Christmas spirit.
One of my new daily routines is checking on the value of the Canadian dollar at least twice a day. Today it traded at almost 1.09 US...unbelievable!!! We never could've predicted that.
anyways. We love you all and hope you are enduring the beginnings of winter with a smile on your face. stay classy til next time.

Episode 5 with Rich

Here is the 5th episode in season 1 of our little adventure we are on. We had such a wonderful time with Richard when we came to visit us back in Oregon. We did so many things in such a short amount of time that it's great to have this video to remember it all. From Crater Lake, to the Coast, to the Columbia Gorge to watch the Dave Matthews Band...it was definitely a lot of fun. The video was too long to upload as one big video..so that's why it is split into two parts. Hope you enjoy it. Stay Classy.

Mike Weir Wins! What a great day to be a Canadian

So sorry that there hasn't been an update in over 10 days...for some reason we have been a little slow at getting ourselves organized and settled here in Phoenix. However, we have finally taken some pictures of our apartment that I will put up at the bottom of this post....but first things first! Mike Weir won his first tournament in over 3 and a half years and we were there to see it! Not only did we get to watch it happen live but due to a crazy turn of events we ended up at the after party with Mike and his Wife and a bunch of Canadians. Here is how the whole situation happened from the beginning: We were at our friends Stacey and Joey's place for dinner the other night with some kids from their church as well as Ron and Cathy. Stacey and Joey are very good friends with Aaron Baddeley and his wife Richelle. For those of you who don't know, Aaron plays on the PGA tour and has had a really good year. Well, Aaron missed the cut which was pretty disappointing but it meant that Joey and Stacey weren't going to use the passes that Aaron gave to them. So Christine and I jumped at the opportunity to use the passes that Aaron left in order to go watch Mike play since he was playing pretty well. The passes were good for all of the days of the tourney so we went on Saturday to see how Mike did to determine whether we would go back for the final round on Sunday. We had a wonderful (but hot) day on Saturday as we walked all 18 holes with Mike and cheered him on.

It was amazing how many Canadians there were there!! Every conversation we overheard while walking by people was about where they were from in Canada...it was truly amazing. One group of guys that we walked around with had construction hard hats on that were painted in red and white with the maple leaf on them....I will come back to those guys in a bit. So because Mike played so well on Saturday we decided to go back on Sunday to watch the final round. Ron and Cathy also came with us so it was nice to share the experience with them too. So if you follow golf you saw Mike win in Scottsdale yesterday. It was a close match but Mike played very well and ended up beating Mark Hensby by 1 stroke. While Mike was doing his interviews on the 18th green Mr. Pegg and I were waiting down on the walkway hoping to snag a few autographs from him as they get used for charity auctions that Ron is involved with. While we were waiting for Mike, Aaron happened to be standing there waiting to congratulate Mike on the win...so I explained who I was and my connection to Stacey and Joey and I thanked him for the tickets. Mike took a while so Ron and I had a nice visit with Aaron and Richelle and Richelle's cousin....super friendly people and an honour to meet them. Well, Mike eventually made his way down to us (there were maybe 15 or so of us Canadians left) and he signed our stuff and we congratulated him and thanked him for signing. Just when we were getting ready to leave, the guys with the Canadian flag hard hats told us that we were all going to sing "O Canada" to Mike and invited us in to the fancy clubhouse area where women walked around asking us if we wanted champagne. It turns out that Brian Savage (formerly of the Montreal Canadians) was one of the guys with the hard hats that we were walking around with for a few days and he is good friends with Mike (Mike was staying at his house for the weekend).

So before you know it we were swept into this little after party with Mike and his wife and a handful of Canadians that hung around. I couldn't believe what had just happened!!! So we serenaded Mike (he started singing near the end) and then had a great time just talking to all the other Canadians.


It turns out that one of the guys that was hanging around Brian Savage used to play with my friend Chris Neil when Chris played for Grand Rapids....it was a very small world yesterday. I was so excited last night that I could barely fall asleep. When I woke up this morning I had to look at the pictures again just to see if it was all real. So, yesterday has to go down as one of the biggest highlights of our trip so far. Christine and I just had to look at each other and laugh yesterday as we were standing there with Mike Weir as people were sipping champagne....what an awesome day! I'm still in a bit of disbelief. I wondered if there was any way of getting Mike to sign the back of his cheque and then sneak it into our car.

Anyways...it was all amazing...but I will move on from that for now.

We are doing just fine here in Phoenix. Really enjoying our time with Stacey and Joey, and Ron and Cathy. It's so wonderful to have such good friends around while we are so far from home. Christine has only had one shift on her unit so far, but it went fine. She heads in for three night shifts in a row starting on Tuesday night...so we will know more after that. Here are a few snapshots of the inside of our appartment here...we really like it.

Hope this update finds you all well...thanks for reading all about our crazy experiences, we really appreciate it. Stay classy til next time.

Phoenix.

Hello from Phoenix...we made it!

We had a great drive down through California and across to Phoenix...sunny skies and straight roads. One thing that stands out most from our trip is how HUGE the greater Los Angeles area is. We travelled around 70mph the entire time and it took over 2 hours to get from one side of LA to the other...just amazing. The landscape was also pretty interesting as we watched the green hills of Oregon turn into the cactus filled deserts of Arizona. The most amazing sight from our road trip this time was driving so close to Mt. Shasta in California...an amazing thing to see(pics below).

Well, We are settling in to our new apartment and still unpacking some boxes and getting things organized. I'll post some pics of our new place once I take some...but it is very nice, big with good air conditioning! It was 99 degrees here our first day and 96 today....definitely different than what we left behind in Oregon. I think we are in a bit of culture shock still. When we were in Oregon it was easy to forget that we were in the U.S. but now we definitely feel like we are in a different country. Just so many things that are different from the west coast...it'll take some time to get used to.

We had a wonderful lunch today with our friend Stacey and her husband Joey (and daughter Isa). Christine and I haven't been to Phoenix to see Stacey in about 10 years...so we can't say enough about how great it is to be able to see her and her family and just be around some people that we know. We will see them again at church on Sunday.

I'm going to sign off for now because we are about to eat some dinner. We will check in again soon. Here are a few pics from our first "Canadian Thanksgiving" together...yummy.

finally Christine updates!

Happy Thanksgiving!! It is Christine writing today. I know, you are probably shocked! I figured I should probably make at least one entry seeing as we are leaving for our next placement in 2 days!!! The time we have spent here in Eugene has really flown by. It is hard to believe that we have been here for almost 3 months! It has been a wonderful 3 months though, and we both feel that Eugene was the perfect place to start our travel journey in. Shawn has done a wonderful job at keeping you posted on our road trips and sight seeing adventures...so I thought I would talk a little about the hospital that I have worked in and the experience that I have had.

So here we go...

A bit of info about the hospital: For the past 2 1/2 months I have been working at Sacred Heart Medical Center. It is the largest hospital between Portland and San Francisco (432 beds) and the only Level II trauma center in Lane County. The hospital is know for its 32-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Oregon Heart & Vascular Institute. I was hired to work in their pediatric unit with the ability to float to the NICU.

I started with two days of general hospital orientation and computer training, which was rather boring on the whole...but the computer training was ESSENTIAL!! This hospital does EVERYTHING on the computer! Which, to be honest, towards the end of the placement I grew to like....but in the beginning it was a little frightening. For those nurses who are reading, or just for general interest, here are the things that were done on the computer: documentation, nursing kardex, lab work, ALL order entry, medication records, image viewing (diagnostic tests), all physician's history's & physicals, any consult by any other discipline and many more things. The only units that still do paper charting is the ICU and NICU. So when I worked in pediatrics I would not write anything on a piece of paper all day long!! Now, I came from a hospital that was pretty advanced with computers but this was still quite different for me. There is something about not actually signing off on your physician's orders with ink that freaked me out a little bit....but I adjusted.

So after those 2 days I received 2 days of orientation on the unit. I was paired up with another nurse, basically got a tour of the unit and then jumped right in! On my first day we had probably the sickest child on the unit...of course!! She was a post-op patient and had an epidural catheter with Fentanyl infusing for pain management. Working for the past 2 years with neonates...I have never had a patient with an epidural or fentanyl. But once I had a brief overview of the machine that delivered the pain medicine I was ok. On the unit in which I worked the patient to nurse ratio was 3:1...so it is quite nice...but that day pretty much all of my time was taken up by the computer charting!! There were a few moments throughout the day that I thought to myself "what am I doing here?"...mainly those moments came when I was trying to navigate my way around the unit trying to find essential equipment, or when I was trying to figure out how to use the PYXIS machine(it electronically distributes medication), or when I would answer the phone and have NO CLUE how to help the person on the other end because I didn't even know anybodys names!! However, at the end of the day the computer charting did not get the best of me and I walked out the door feeling good about how things went...knowing that it was going to be ok!

Each day got easier and I couldn't have asked for better staff to work with. When we decided to come to the U.S one thing that I was worried about was how the staff would treat me...as an outsider coming into their unit. But I can truly say that the staff were amazingly welcoming, friendly and helpful. Not one person ever hesitated to answer my questions or point me in the right direction when I couldn't find something that I was looking for. They made me feel right at ease, and after one week I felt like I had been there for months. I am convinced the friendliness stems from the fact that Eugene is a smaller city with very down-to-earth people. I have a feeling it would be quite different if I was working in downtown L.A.

I worked a couple of shifts in pediatrics and then a decrease in pediatric patients allowed me to spend some time in the NICU. Ahhhhh...it was great to be back with the babies!!! It was so comforting to me...and it was a very easy adjustment. And the good thing was that I was back to paper charting...YEAH!!! The NICU at this hospital is a level 3 NICU. NICU's are broken down into three levels. Level 1-very stable babies requiring minimal interventions. Level 2- more complicated and acutely ill babies, sometimes requiring respiratory support. Level 3-very acutely ill babies and micro-preemies (ex.24 week gestation babies), requiring ventilators to breath. Now, in saying this...NICU's can be labeled a "level 3"...and not always have those types of babies...it simply means they are capable of caring for those types of babies. So, this hospital was a level 3, however functioned between a level 2 & 3...so I fit in well as the unit I worked in at North York was a level 2 advanced. Ok, so hopefully I haven't confused everyone! Overall I really enjoyed working in this unit. Many people have asked me over the past couple of years what I enjoyed more, pediatrics or NICU...and by being able to work both once again, I have realized that even though I enjoy interacting with the kids, my heart is really in the NICU. I love those babies...they are amazing fighters and you get to build wonderful relationships with their families. The best thing of all is that I see the beauty of God's creation in its purest form everyday that I am at work...not too bad eh?

ok...wow...this is a VERY long blog! If you made it this far...thanks for hanging in!

The remainder of my shifts at Sacred Heart were split about 3/4 in the NICU and 1/4 in pediatrics. Overall my experience was great!! I worked my last shift on Friday, and it was weird to walk out the hospital doors for the last time. I will more than likely never see any of the people that I have just worked with ever again...and it feels so strange! But that is how this travel nursing works....on to the next place! We are really excited to start in Phoenix and I am even more excited to be back working in a level 2 NICU full time. It should be a great placement.

Well, I think I am going to end this post...but I will write again soon! I still want to talk about some differences I have come across between working here compared to back home...but my fingers are starting to hurt from typing so much (haha).

I hope that you are having a fabulous thanksgiving weekend...we think about you all often! Thanks for all of your support :) And as Shawn says...."stay classy"

Hockey Night in Canada....I mean Oregon!

So you can watch Hockey games over the internet these days. It usually costs quite a bit of money for the season but they are doing a free preview for the first week of the season...which means that we have been able to watch the back-to-back Sens/Leafs games to open the new season. I can't tell you how great it is to watch CBC and see some Canadian content...even to see people in the crowd drinking Tim Horton's is enough to make our bodies ache for home. However, it is a bit strange being on the west coast because the games are over before we even eat dinner....it's actually kinda nice. Anyways, we were just so excited to be able to watch the Sens that I had to blog about it. Here is a video of me watching the introductions of the game in Ottawa. Seeing my friend Chris playing on CBC makes home not feel so far away. Go Sens!

Episode 4

Vancouver, White Rock, Portland, Astoria, Seaside, Ecola State Park, Cannon Beach.

a great visit...the Office...and Phoenix bound

It is so great to have visitors, especially when those visitors are family. We had so much fun travelling all over Oregon with Christine's mom and dad (and my new in-laws!). For Christine and I it was great to head back to Crater Lake and the Coast for the second and third times respectively. You notice something different about a place each new time you head back.

But more than anything else, it was just nice to have a big piece of home here with us for a few days.

People who know me very well know that I have a moderate-to-large sized obsession with the television show "The Office" (Christine loves it too). We had been counting down the days for four months until the new season started...and the countdown ended Thursday night. To mark the occasion I put on my "Office" tshirt, we drank from our "Office" mugs, and ate some of the Canadian treats that my in-laws brought for us. You really don't realize how much you miss ketchup chips and Mars bars until you can't get them anymore! It was a perfect night of laughing and munching....and I think there is enough chips leftover for the next episode too!

So, I know some of you are wondering what is next for us....well, Phoenix Arizona it is! It's hard to believe that time is moving this quickly. As sad as it is to leave the west coast, which we have loved so much, we are very excited to head south for the next part of our adventure. One of my best friends from childhood (Stacey) lives in Phoenix with her husband and little girl so we are so excited to be able to spend some time with them...as well as Stacey's mom and dad who will be in Scottsdale for the winter. Christine will be working in an NICU level II nursery in Phoenix Baptist Hospital. I could attempt to write about the hospital and the things that make this a great fit for Christine, but I have been after her to write a blog entry here and I know she wants to....so I will leave that up to her. For now we are trying our best to really enjoy our last little bit here. It hasn't sunk in that we will soon be packing up all of our stuff (again) and heading on a road trip to Arizona...leaving our very first home behind us. However, we knew heading out on this adventure that you can't stay and go at the same time. For us, it's time to go. Our move-in date for Phoenix is Oct 10th which means we will be leaving Oregon on the 7th or 8th. Christine's first day of work is the 15th. We hope to get home for a quick visit after our placement in Phoenix... but it's too early to figure out those details as of yet.
We want to say a big thank you for coming here and reading our blog. We have friends with blogs that we check often to see what is new...so we know what it is like to go to a page and not see any updates for days and weeks. I want to say thanks for sticking with us...if you are reading this it means that you didn't give up checking for updates from us. It means a lot to have you interested in what we are doing, humbling in a way, and ultimately we are so thankful. stay classy til next time.

Ducks Football...

Well, time continues to pass at a rapid pace. We are still loving it here on the west coast as the weather becomes cooler...it's nice to feel a bit of fall in the air. We have been pretty low-key lately but we have had a couple of events worth noting here on the blog. Friday saw Christine turn 27. It definitely felt a bit strange without our families and friends around, but we did the best we could with just the two of us. I managed to find a little cake for two and we had a nice dinner out at PF Changs here in Eugene...a very cool restaurant. We experienced one of our biggest highlights of our travels so far on Saturday. We got our University of Oregon Ducks gear on and headed to Autzen Stadium for a game against Fresno State University. No amount of describing will do this experience justice. Our little city here (about 150,000 in population) becomes completely enthralled with the Ducks, and nothing but the Ducks, for an entire weekend. After running around a bit in the morning we headed to the Stadium about 3 hours before game time. Even though we live about 5 mins from the stadium we knew that there would be no hope of driving right to the game. The sheer amount of cars coming into the city is enough to shut everything down for the day. So the city sets up shuttles (called the Duck Express) that pick you up at various spots around the city and then take you to the game. We parked at the mall by our house and then crammed ourselves onto a bus filled with people covered from head to toe in green and yellow. Riding the Duck Express was a cool event in itself....but nothing compared to what was to come. As you get closer to the stadium you see more and more parking lots filled with RV's and campers and people having bbq's....tailgating as far as the eye can see. Without a doubt, Duck Football is the biggest thing in Eugene and every other weekend the city shuts down and people come together as one massive community to cheer on the team that they have cheered on for as long as they can remember. I have been to hundreds of professional and amateur sporting events in my life so far...and I can say that nothing can even come close to the atmosphere that is created at Autzen Stadium. It is pure mayhem from kickoff to final buzzer. We were fortunate to get tickets as Ducks games have been consecutively sold out dating back to 1999. The attendance at our game was about 60,000 and there wasn't a spare seat in the house. The game was also a fun one to watch with lots of scoring and the home team coming out on the winning end of a lopsided game. 52-21 Ducks. The atmosphere was contagious and we could finally begin to understand why people are addicted to Ducks football...if we lived here permanently I know that we would be at every game. We got the camera into the stadium...so we hope you like the pics (click on the stadium panaroma picture...it's cool). That's all for now. Stay Classy....Go Ducks!

finally a moment to write...

It is really hard to update the blog when we are travelling all over the place for days on end. Finally I have a minute to sit down and type something.

Christine's brother Rich has come and gone...he was here for almost a week and it was so awesome to have him stay with us and travel around to see so many cool things in such a short amount of time. Besides touring around Eugene and showing him the local sites, we also made it into to southern Oregon to check out the deepest lake in the US called Crater Lake. Over 7000 thousand years ago there was a huge mountain/volcano that collapsed in on itself leaving a hole about 1200 feet deep. Over the years the hole filled with precipitation to create a lake...it really is unreal to see. You can drive around the entire outside of the lake (we didn't) and it's over 30 miles so it takes a while. Instead of driving around the outside, we parked the element and hiked up one of the peaks of the outer rim of the lake to get some better views. It was worth it... amazing to be up so high and see over the entire thing. The water is an amazing blue/dark purple colour and seems like glass at times. There is also an island called "Wizard Island" that sticks out of the lake and has some cool water colours around it as well. To give you some sort of reference point as to elevation, the rim around the lake ranges between 7000 and 8000 ft elevation. We had a hard time fitting the lake into pictures...so instead we set up Rich's camera on a tripod and snapped a bunch a pics of the lake and then stitched them together using some software when we got home....the result is extremely cool and is below.

After a day of touring around Eugene we headed to Seaside and Cannon Beach on the coast. Christine and I never get sick of being at the coast so it was great to be there once again and share the experience with Rich this time. We stopped a lot along the way and on the way home to check out some waterfalls...

very cool.

We stayed in Portland that night and then woke up early Sunday morning and headed for the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington to see the Dave Matthews Band. We have had tickets for months and was just hoping so much that it would all work out that Christine would have the time off work and that Rich could be here. If you have never heard of the Gorge Amphitheatre I have to say that it is the most amazing concert venue on the planet. You have to drive into the middle of nowhere in the desert with nothing around you and all of a sudden you happen upon a massive campground and concert venue with a stage that hangs on the edge of a cliff overlooking 20 miles of the beautiful Columbia River Gorge.

It has always been a dream of mine to make it here one day to see Dave Matthews.

The experience was amazing but all very surreal. After the show we camped at the venue campground with about 10,000 of our newest friends. It was hard to fall asleep with all the crazy noise of other people...but we managed. We headed for Eugene the next morning...about a 7 hour drive.

AND before we knew it, Rich was headed back to Canada.
I just figured out that we travelled over 1400 miles (or 2241 km's) in the handful of days that Rich was here. We got pretty road weary by the end of it... but it was worth every mile to experience such amazing things. Christine and I aren't heading off for any road trips for the next little while...or if we do they won't be very long. Hopefully it won't be long until we update again. Thanks for reading...stay classy.

time flies by...

I have meant to update the blog since we returned from our trip to Portland and the coast but we have been super busy and haven't sat down to write anything lately...my apologies. We have been getting ready for Christine's brother to arrive here tomorrow...we are so excited to have another visitor and we will be super busy taking him around and showing him our piece of the west coast. So this post won't be as detailed as I would want but it will have to do for now.
A little while ago we went to the Lane County Fair here in Eugene and it was pretty cool to see what a big event this is for this community. There was everything from cows to artwork, public skating to pig races. We had a good time doing the things you are supposed to do at a county fair...like eating cotton candy and other food that isn't good for us. To the right you will see the massive order of curly fries we got...tasty.

To the left is a picture of people lining up to meet and get autographs of the university coaches for the men's and women's volleyball, basketball, and football teams....university sports sure are a subculture all their own here. All in all, I'm really glad that we went so that we could soak up a bit more of Eugene before our time here is done.

This past week we took advantage of Christine having 3 days off and we headed for Portland for one day and then the coast for another. Portland is a very cool city. It is known as the city of roses and it lives up to the name. We spent a good amount of time at the Chinese Rose Test Garden that overlooks the skyline of the city. There are over 6000 rose plants in the garden in over 700 different varieties. We also went through the Japanese gardens there as well. There aren't many flowers in this one...but it is about 4 acres of land that has been transformed into an authentic Japanese garden. At times you can forget that you are in the US because of all of the different types of trees and plants that aren't native to North America.

And finally, words can't describe how beautiful the coast is. We were able to see a bunch of different beaches, one of which was a long walk down a windy dirt path that eventually opened up to a beautiful beach filled with well over a hundred surfers. It was like a little surfer's paradise.

I'm going to have to cut this short as there is still some stuff to do tonight. Here is a link to our pictures from Portland and the Coast.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017840&l=4b4d9&id=158302007

The picture of Christine writing "Oregon" in the sand is my favourite from our travels so far. Stay classy...I will be sure to update when things have died down a bit for us. Hope you are all well and thanks for checking in with us.

gone for a few days...

We have decided to go on a little road trip for a few days...so there will probably be no updates until we get back. We are headed up to Portland today to explore the city. Tomorrow we are getting up and heading to Astoria, Seaside, and Cannon Beach on the coast. I'm sure we will have tons of pictures to share when we get back. Stay classy and enjoy the upcoming weekend everyone.

Episode 3...

Here is the video from camping in California with my sister and her husband. You will see a bunch of beaches, the amazing redwood forest, and some of the oregon sand dunes. I will update with pictures of the Lane County Fair sometime real soon. stay classy til then.

back from BC...

We had such an amazing time back in Canada...it's too bad we couldn't have stayed longer. We were treated royally by the Andersons and couldn't have asked for a better trip. After spending some time down at White Rock beach on the Friday night when we got there, we went to a restaurant called the Boathouse and had some appetizers up on the patio which gave us a good view of the water. We were up early on Saturday and eating some delicious scones down at one of David and Janette's favourite little bake shops in White Rock. We headed directly from there to downtown Vancouver and started our day of seeing as much of the city as you can see in one day. It was gorgeous...I'm not sure what I expected but it surpassed expectations aesthetically speaking. We started our day by rollerblading along the sea wall in Stanley Park which gave us amazing views of the city skyline. We couldn't rollerblade around all of Stanley Park because wind storms had knocked down trees and parts of the path were closed. But we made it as far as Lions Gate Bridge and then turned around and went back...something like 8km in total.

From there we grabbed some lunch Downtown and then walked Robson Street. We compared Robson street to a kind of hybrid between Queen st and Bloor st in Toronto. There are some high end stores and some cool restaurants, as well as some more unique stores. From Robson St we went to 4th ave where there are lots of surf shops and a really cool record store. We didn't buy much because everything was so expensive. After living in Oregon for a bit we have gotten used to the cheap prices of everything and the lack of sales tax. We then went to Kitsilano beach and walked around...so beautiful down there and lots of basketball and volleyball courts...very cool.

We ended our day by heading down to Ganville Island to check out the market. I'm so glad we made it to Granville...it was a really cool place with so many cool shops and things to do. It was really cool for me to be in the market since this is where my Grandmother did her grocery shopping when she moved to Vancouver at the age of 80! After having dinner down by the water we headed back to White Rock...we were super tired. Sunday was a great day spent with the Andersons. We went to Church, had lunch at Morgan Creek Golf Course, and dinner at home with David, Janette, Kim, and Janette's mother (Cam and Kim's Grandmother). We can't tell you how much we enjoyed spending time with the family. By far the highlight of our trip was having Janette's mother play the piano for us. She was an amazing piano player for any age...but to play like that at the age of 91 was just unbelievable.

We ended our last night there by walking along Crescent Beach with David and Janette and taking some pictures of the sun going down. All in all it was a fantastic time and we can't wait to get back there ...sometime soon hopefully.

We have the Lane County Fair going on in Eugene this week so I think Christine and I will be heading down there over the next couple of days. We have still only seen one day of rain since being here... clear skies every day. Hope you are all doing well. Thanks for reading...stay classy.