piano lessons....

i know i am WAY overdue on updating this blog. i've been crazy busy. one of the things that i've been doing with my time is giving kylie piano lessons! i never in a million years thought i would do that, but i am. stacy asked me one night if i would be interested in teaching kylie and i told her to let me think about it. obviously i have never taught anyone before so i wasn't sure if i would be able to do it or not. it's like teaching someone a brand new language. i called stacy back the next afternoon and left her a message and told her that if kylie was interested we would try it out for awhile. kylie called me that night and was SO excited! she said she couldn't wait to start! mom got out some of my old piano books and we were ready to go.

me and kylie at her first lesson

kylie has been doing so good at the piano! she has really picked it up quickly, and she has an ear for music. she tries to play by ear so i have to make her read her music and then she does a great job. she's learning how to count out her notes and how to put her hands in the correct position. this week she is learning to recognize the different notes on the keyboard. she loves to play her songs for anyone who will listen...i know that's a shock!! : ) it has been so much fun for me to get to share my love of the piano with kylie and to get to see her learn to love it too...before to long i will have taught her all i can and stacy and drew will have to find her a new teacher!

what a week...

loving what i do is what has gotten me through this past week. we have 3 total sixteen (TOTXVI) research nurses. that is the leukemia protocol we work on. it is me, kim, and gheri. gheri is pregnant and due at the end of january. she went to the doctor on thursday of last week and found out that she has already started dilating and has now been put on bed rest for the rest of her pregnancy. i feel so bad for her! her little girl addisyn is only 16 months old and gheri doesn't even get to go home...she has to stay in the hospital until she has baby gavin.
on monday of this week kim and i met with our boss linda and decided how we are going to divide up gheri's patients. she has 59 active patients that she is responsible for, so we split those up and kim took 27 of them and i took 32. kim and i each already had between 50 and 55 of our own patients so now we are both taking care of about 80 patients indefinitely.
on tuesday kim called in with bronchitis and was out the rest of the week. so...i was responsible for about 160 patients all week by myself. and i just moved into this position at the end of march. needless to say, i was pretty frazzled by the time friday evening rolled around.
the good thing through the whole week was that i really love all of my patients and their families. i'm getting to meet lots of new kids now too since i've picked up gheri's patients. i can't imagine working in a field that i wasn't passionate about. i absolutely love my job and i know that i'm blessed to get to work at st. jude and take care of these precious kids.

...of course, some days i still wish i was here...