Rachel Murray, RN

Some might ask what those two letters behind my name are for. Well, they stand for Registered Nurse!! Yep, I finally made it. Thursday was officially my last day of school in my undergraduate career. It's been a long road, but I am finally here. As I attended my graduation dinner last night I was thinking about all I have had to do to get to this point. I am going list some of the things that top the list.

• Two years of prerequisites which I could not get less than an A if I wanted to get into the program.


• Taking my physiology final less than 12 hours before I got married.


• Having a baby on the last day of finals and starting Spring semester 5 days later.


• Starting back at 12 hour clinical days 10 days after having a baby.


• Doing more than 800 hours of free labor (aka clinicals)


• Jumping through every hoop the nursing program ask me to for the past 2 1/2 years.

These are just a few of the things on my list. Now that I am graduated I will return to the Intermediate Care Unit where I worked as a secretary for 2 years prior to having Mason. I will work 2 night shifts a week. I am so excited to finally be doing my second most favorite thing to do (being a mom to Mason is by far what I love to do the most). I do have to thank my wonderful and supportive husband Scott for helping me through the last 3 years of this adventure and my parents for all of their support especially all of my mom's help with Mason while I finished school. Now that I am kind of sounding like I have won an award I will end this post. The picture below is actually from August's convocation when Scott and I both walked.

The Windy City

Over Thanksgiving break my parents took all of our family back to Chicago to visit Brandon and Whitney who live there while Brandon is in law school at University of Chicago. We had such a great time and I wanted to post a few pictures from the trip. My favorite part of the trip was definitely going to see Wicked. If you ever have the opportunity to see it, make sure you do. Some other highlights included going to several museums, shopping, and of course Thanksgiving dinner. It was so fun to see where Brandon and Whitney live and work. We also found out some very exciting news that Whitney is pregnant and is due in June!!! Mason can't wait for another cousin.

Scott and Rachel at Cloud Gate.

Mason's first airplane ride.

Rachel, Scott, and Mason in front of Chicago skyline.

The whole family (back row) Chris, Kennedy, Val, Nancy, Brandon, Mason, Rachel, Scott. (front row) Whitney, Cannon, Kacie.

Home Sweet Home

With so many friends and family moving away I decided to start this blog so we can keep everyone posted with what is going on in our lives. I must admit I am still trying to figure out how to work everything so it might be interesting at first. Scott and I are really starting to feel like homeowners in a couple different ways. We made our first mortgage payment this week which is always a pleasant thing :) We should be finished with our basement and ready to move everything down there next week. I am very excited to have a complete house so I can finish unpacking and finally get settled. There is also a downside to being a homeowner, unexpected expenses pop up all the time. Our fridge died on Monday which totally took us by surprise. It was in good shape and we thought it would definitely last for a long time. I guess a new fridge will just complete the renovation of our kitchen. I am going to try to post some pictures of Mason. He is growing up so fast!!! With a whole new house of undiscovered territory he is very busy. I will post pictures of the house in the next couple weeks.

Crawling

At about 4 1/2 months Mason started doing a little inchworm crawl where he would bury his face in the ground, pull his knees up and then push forward along the ground. It didn't take long for him to perfect this method of movement and soon he was army crawling all over. Even at 6 months when he could get up on his hands and knees and pull himself up on furniture, if he wanted to go somewhere he would drop to his belly and army crawl away. It was funny to watch because it looked like he was swimming across the floor. He was so fast getting around with his army crawl that normal crawl just took too long. He is just now starting to crawl on his hands and knees and actually I'm really going to miss laughing at his speedy arm crawl. It has definitely been one of my favorite things about Mason.

Mason's First Halloween

I've never been a huge fan of Halloween, but now that I have a child to dress up I can see myself starting to like this holiday more. For Mason's first Halloween he was a Jolly Jack-o-Lantern. He thought the candy was pretty cool, even though we never took the wrapper off.

Grandma and Grandpa holding Kennedy and Mason

Mason with his Aunt Keyana and Aunt Karissa

Hale Cousins. Kennedy, Cannon and Mason.

Big Eyes

Mason has the most incredible big eyes! Never in a million years did I think we would have a blue eyed baby, but it sure looks like that's what we got. Top them off with his beautiful, long, dark eyelashes and he's got eyes some amazing eyes. Let just hope our daughters get the same genes. Here are some of the many pictures we have that highlight his eyes with the deer in headlights look that seems to be his favorite look for the camera these days.

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