Gosh it has been a while…. Life all the sudden took off full speed about a month ago and I haven’t had a chance to just sit down and reflect on all that’s happened. I want to start off by praising God for all that He has and will continue to bless me with; it’s unreal. My heart is beaming with joy!
So where to begin… A little over a month ago I was offered a job as an orthopedic nurse at Texas Children’s Hospital. To many people that may not seem like a huge deal, but if you know my heart and calling as a nurse, you would know that it was the PERFECT fit for me. When God called me to nursing it wasn’t just because I liked to work with people or because I was interested in medicine; it was so so much deeper. He gave me this passion to connect with people on a deep level, share their pain, and walk with them through it; to encourage patients and their families and bring joy in sad situations. He also gave me a desire to work with children which I had not yet been able to fully experience. I told people as I applied to jobs here in Houston that my dream job would be to work at (believe it or not) Texas Children’s Hospital ideally in orthopedics since I had experience in the department. When I started applying there actually wasn’t even an opening for an LVN position in the ortho department so I just applied to whatever I could find. After about a week of no call backs and not finding anything that really even fit what I wanted I became super discouraged and started to question what the Lord had for me. Well it was about that time that I decided to google search one more time and BAM there it was, freshly posted “Pediatric Orthopedic LVN, Texas Children’s Hospital.” WHAT?!? God, no way… yep sure enough He just laid it out there for me. Well long story short I walked in my resume and the lady said it would be about two weeks before I heard anything about an interview (that was on a Friday and Monday was a holiday.) Got a call first thing Tuesday morning for an interview, interviewed Thursday(ish), and was offered the job the next morning. Side note— this is the ONLY LVN position in the Orthopedic department at Texas Children’s in downtown Houston!!— Some may call it luck, I call it favor.
So I have been there about 5 weeks now and have had up and down days. I constantly catch myself comparing it to my old job (which I loved and miss so much.) The department is currently experiencing a lot of growing pains. They grew from 4 physicians and PAs, to 18 in a just a few years. So right now the way things are run is a bit rocky and with that comes stress and tension between co-workers; but in the coming months I have hope that things will get better. There are so many more thoughts about it, but I will leave it at that.
Daniel has started school again. His first year as a graduate student at Rice University!! We are so proud and honored to be a part of this school. I have never felt so spoiled from a college before, and I technically don’t even attend. Let me tell you a few benefits I get just for being the wife… my very own Rice ID card, $10 a month membership to the gym (which is super awesome), student discounts, free food to the events that Daniel is a part of, cheap food and drinks, cheap insurance (Texas Children’s is better though), awesome friends, the right to say my husband goes to Rice, and so much more. We are living the good life here at Rice! Haha!
Also we haven’t just been doing work and school. We had lots of visitors. It seemed like every weekend for a while! We loved the company… I’m learning that I need to get better at taking pictures because we didn’t get any pictures with some of our visitors. I can’t remember the order anymore, but my parents came one weekend; then Daniel’s parents; then Jason, Val, and Josh; and our last ones were Jake and Lauren, and Matt and Sarah.
When to a Rangers vs Astros game while they were here! Rangers dominated!
Scattered throughout we got to see a few passer throughers too; David, the Ccsa youth, Boyd and Elizabeth, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some.
We have fellow San Angelonions that have move to Houston too! Which has been so good to have some familiar friends here. Olivia and Haden moved here in August. She is going to MD Anderson (went to ASU with Daniel, she’s a smarty pants too!) We hang out with them pretty frequently. It’s actually been really good for all of us because we have been able to (and also plan to) explore some of the fun things to do in Houston. We all have been keeping an eye out for fun things to do. It’s fun to have married couple friends!… So far we have gone to the Studio Movie Grill (you watch a movie and the serve you dinner. Way cooler than it sounds. You just have to try it!), Olivia and I have gone to the Galleria (got our hair cut at this “New York feel” salon.), and we plan to go to broadway show, stand up comedy, and a few other cool places. I’ll try to remember to take pictures!
We went to San Angelo for the first time since we moved here. It was kinda weird; it felt like it had been so long but at the same time everything was so familiar. We enjoyed seeing all of our friends and family, especially our little nephew Joshua. I can’t get enough of that little guy!
We officially have veggies and fruits in our garden! Not many, but a few 🙂
We have started small groups for the semester. It’s been wonderful so far. I am looking forward to all the memories it holds!
~Jess
awifeandherphysicist 