National Flip Flop Day!

Today is National Flip Flop Day and in order to celebrate the only style of shoe we own and wear all year long, Tropical Smoothie was giving away free smoothies to the first 500 customers wearing flip flops!! =)

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps The Medicine Go Down.

Upon completion of our first two semesters of nursing school on med-surge floors, we recently entered our third rotation this summer. This semester consists of Mental Health where we spend every Thursday in the psych ward dealing with drug/alcohol detox, perceptual disorders (depression, PTSD, etc) and psychotic disorders. The second part of this rotation is Community/Public Health where every Tuesday we are in the community performing home visits and planning an anti-bullying program for third graders at a local elementary school that has a lot of behavioral problems. Each community health nurse has a bag just like Mary Poppins did to carry all our important assessment tools like blood pressure cuffs, gloves, spoons full of sugar and such. Our bag is red and pretty trendy, I must say.

Kiss Me, Kate!

Meet Kate. She is the most beautiful little girl in the entire world and I have had the honor of being her "personal assistant" for the past two years. She was only seven weeks old when I started as her nanny. She could possibly be the brightest toddler ever knowing all her colors, animals and their respective sounds and she can currently count to ten. Her favorite word is "actually" and she actually uses it in the right context. She is constantly making me laugh with her incredible sense of humor and her vivid imagination. She loves to dress up as a princess, have tea parties with "pinkies up" and she absolutely loves to read books. Kate's favorite places to visit are the zoo, the butterfly museum, the library and the park. She is the love of my life!

Everyone is the hero of their own story.

"Everyone is the hero of their own story." - It brought about much dismay when I recently saw this line published on a Hallmark graduation card as I have spent the last several years intending it to be the original first line of my own story - a book that I will write in my retirement chronicling all that my life has been and all that it will have become. One day I hope to be a national best seller.

Love & Be Loved

Megan, my roommate, spent the last two weeks with her boyfriend in Virginia where he is stationed in the Coastguard. She returned to Gainesville today with this momento on her foot... Love & Be Loved

Sweet Summertime

This summer I'm determine to get out of Gainesville each weekend to maintain my sanity. So far, I spent one weekend with Kara in Destin/Seaside where the Truman Show was filmed. It is the cutest town with beautiful white sand dune beaches, adorable colorful cottages and even a gelato place! Memorial Day Weekend, I visited Cedar Key which is a quaint, little fishing town 45

minutes West of Gainesville where I laid on the beach and put my toes in the Gulf before walking on the boardwalk and looking in the shops! I also went to St. Armand's Circle that weekend and laid on another beautiful beach with lots of pretty shops too! Kara and I went to Tampa last weekend for the Colbie Caillat concert where we had so much fun together!! We went to a dueling piano bar afterwards called Howl at the Moon. Pictured below was the first weekend of summer in which some friends and I slept on St. Augustine Beach under the stars. We woke up for sunrise and spent the day at the beach as well as walking around the historical town of St. Augustine. It's definitely sweet summertime...

SMILES ARE CONTAGIOUS =)

It was an easy decision what would be my very first post- Christopher Nicholas, my inspiration. This picture is proof that smiles are contagious.

Go Big. Train Hard.

This summer I began an intensive 6-month training program to prepare me for running the Walt Disney World Marathon - the race where dreams come true - on January 13, 2008. It is a run through the most magical setting in the world! While I currently cannot fathom running 26.2 miles without, well, dying..come January, Mickey and I are going to make it happen! =)

...Because Everyone Deserves A Lifetime

My roommate and I have committed ourselves to the challenge of individually raising $2200 to participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day in Tampa Bay, Florida October 19-21. The event consists of walking sixty miles over three days on a pink carpet of hope. Each night we will camp out in tents. Net proceeds benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the National Philanthropic Trust, funding important breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment. Please support me as I take an amazing journey in the fight against breast cancer! Donate today... because everyone deserves a lifetime. http://www.the3day.org/tampabay07/jkgator

Wish I Was There...

Last summer my roommate and I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. It was the most fabulous six weeks of our lives! We attended Apicius Culinary Institute of Florence where we spent the mornings making delicioso traditional Italian meals! Every afternoon we would venture through the Tuscan countryside and every weekend we would train to various incredible destinations throughout Italia. We hiked through the cliffside fishing towns of Cinque Terre, laid under the Tuscan Sun on the Almalfi Coast, rode a gondola through the Grand Canal in Venice and explored the Roman Forum and Vatican City. We also hiked to the top of Mt. Vesuvius and around Lake

Como. My favorite part was trying two new flavors of gelato everyday and the miraculous discovery of a chocolate-hazelnut spread called nutella. I've spent this summer daydreaming of the day I get to go back...