A few of my favorite places in Texas!

Well, first off, I passed my final that I had on Thursday! So, I'm still in nursing school and I only have about 8 weeks till I graduate! Now, it's time for Spring Break and I'll be traveling to some of my favorite places in Texas with some of my favorite people! Here's a great song by one of my favorites, Josh Abbott, to go with my blog!



Tomorrow, I'll be taking that Highway 20 ride east to Allen, my hometown! I love Allen because it's where I grew up. It's a big small-town, it has pretty much everything you would ever want, and it's 20 minutes away from Dallas. It's perfect! Some of my favorite things to do in Allen are: 1) spend time with my family. 2) lay out by the pool. 3) go shopping at Watter's Creek (www.watters-creek.com). 4) eat dessert at the Cheesecake Factory. 5) take the train to Dallas' West End and go sight seeing! I love walking into my parent's house, and the way it smells tells me I'm home. Mom loves potpourri and plug-ins and it always smells like cinnamon and apple pie! It's so comforting! I'm always greeted with lots of kisses and howls from my two puppies, Jett and Bailey. They have such amazing personalities for dogs! Bailey is a girly-girl...her favorite thing in the whole world is kissing people right on the mouth! She would rather lay out in the sun or cuddle up next to someone. Jett is 100% boy! He thinks he's a hound dog, so whenever anyone comes in the door, he'll start howling! Anything my dad does, Jett is his little shadow. He loves doing guy stuff. If my dad is headed out the back door with a hammer or some kind of tool in his hand, Jett is right there behind him! I can't wait to see my lil cuties!


I'll stay in Allen all week, then my mom and I will head to Waco on Friday to see my sister and my brother in-law (and my nephew, Toby). While in Waco, we're going to visit my sister at Robinson High School and hang out with her while she teaches one of her geometry classes! I'll also be going to Hillcrest, and Providence Hospitals in Waco, and Scott & White Hospital in Temple to apply for jobs! I'm hopefully going to be moving to Waco when I graduate in May and I need a job as a graduate LVN or an nurse intern. I'll also be going to look at McLennan Community College and maybe Temple College to learn more about their RN schools.

On Saturday, my mom and sister and I will be going to another favorite place of mine, Fredericksburg Texas. Fredericksburg is the cutest little German town and the thing to do there is go shopping! We'll go sight seeing and shopping all day long and enjoy the hill country. That night we'll either stay at a hotel or a bed & breakfast and Sunday morning we'll go to my most favorite place in all of Texas! Gruene.

Gruene (pronounced "green"), is the most beautiful place in Texas in my eyes. It is in the middle of the hill country and it's located right on the Guadalupe River. It's the tiniest little town but full of personality.
There's tons of little antique shops and of course, there's Gruene Hall, a dancehall that all of the great's have played at (George Strait, Pat Green, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and so many more). We'll eat lunch at The Gristmill, an old cotton gin turned into a restaurant overlooking the river. From the lush gardens outside, to the delicious food served on the patio, it's undoubtedly my favorite place. (The picture is the dining on the patio of the Gristmill, overlooking the Guadalupe River).

Then, we'll go back to Waco to drop my sister off and I'll head back to Abilene (hopefully I'll get to go through Dublin to grab a Dublin Dr. Pepper...best in the world!)

That's my spring break at a glance! I'm so excited about this relaxing week ahead of me and I'll try to post pictures from our trip once I get back!

Kelli :)

Overload!

I feel like I need to blog something because it's been a week since my last post. However, my brain is currently on overload because of finals this week and I am sad to say that I will be studying instead of blogging this week. Next week is spring break, and I'll be going to Allen for most of the week and my mom and sister and I are going to Fredericksburg for one weekend, so I promise to blog something fun about our trip! Hope everyone's week is a little less stressful than mine!

Love,
Kelli :)

Man, I have a lot to talk about today!

Today in school, we started our Oncology unit. It's scaring the stuff out of me because based on sign/symptoms, I have about 4 types of cancer right now.... not really, but it's still scary to think about. It's very depressing. It's also supposed to rain 7 of the next 10 days so this should be an interesting/gloomy couple of weeks. Anyway, we have oncology lectures today, Thursday, next Monday, then the unit test is Tuesday, and our Med/Surg 2 FINAL (which covers surgical orientation, orthopedics, gastrointestinal, and oncology) is next Thursday...after that is SPRING BREAK!!!

So, today I learned a few things. I'm pretty opinionated at times (but I try not to be rude), so if you feel that you might be offended by some of the things i'm fixin' to say about cancer, nutrition, and smoking, stop reading now. :)

1) Cigarettes kill more people in a year than illegal drugs, alcohol, AIDS, homicide, suicide, and MVC's (motor vehicle crashes) combined. They kill more Americans in a year than World War II did. Smoking cigarettes is a leading cause of heart disease, and heart disease is the # 1 cause of death in the United States. And, smoking can lead to so many types of cancer, it's ridiculous. In my opinion, cigarettes should be illegal.

2) Good news for some, bad news for others: Cancer mortality rates have dropped nationwide in the past few years. More people are surviving and more people are going into remission! This statistic says "nationwide" but the exception to that is Abilene, TX and the rest of the Big Country (Brownwood, San Angelo, and other tiny lil towns around here). Why? I have no idea....all that I know is that I'm gettin' the heck out of Abilene ASAP!

3) This one is TERRIBLE news for me! The FDA (food and drug administration) recommends cooking on a BBQ grill only TWICE per year. This is because the chemicals released from the charcoal and the gas used in bbq grills is thought to lead to some kinds of cancer. That means, what, maybe Memorial Day and the 4th of July we can cook out? Um, no! I'm just going to have to deal with it and get cancer because I love barbecuing. That's what we do almost every summer night.

That's all I have to share about what we learned today. Some of these statistics are super scary.

Happier news, I have one of the best moms in the whole world! She's a great mom overall, but especially in how she and my dad raised my sister and I. I feel so blessed to have the parents that I do, and I hope that when I have a family of my own, I will be the kind of mom that my mom was.

Because I miss my mom's home cooked meals so much, and because Mrs. Cook was talking about what she made for dinner last night, I am going to attempt to cook some pork chops, mashed potatoes, and peas tonight for dinner! Yummy!