Shannon Kate is an RN!

This is a great day for my cousin Shannon. She graduated with her nursing degree in May and yesterday, sat for her boards. The boards have some official fancy name but I have no idea how to say it or spell it. At any rate, she didn't have the best feeling after the test and was concerned that she may not have passed. She is starting an ER residency down here at Florida Hospital next month so what would happen with that? Not to mention that she was scheduled to move down here tomorrow! She was supposed to find out the results tomorrow. However, this afternoon, her proctor from the program called her and told her she had passed!! Shannon had talked to her this morning about what would happen if she didn't pass. The proctor obviously sensed Shannon's concern and on her own, called the Florida Board of Nursing (or whatever it is) and found out on Shannon's behalf that she had passed. So major relief! I know she is going to be an awesome nurse. And I'm so excited that she is going to be living here! Toni and Alison are coming down here with her so she doesn't have to drive her car alone. Please note that the picture above is from the Grodack archives. It is obviously not a current picture of Shannon and Calleigh.

Calleigh got to meet a new relative yesterday. Duncan's brother, Russ, and his girlfriend, Saray, are visiting from Pennsylvania. They were staying at Disney over the weekend and then stayed at Ron & Elaine's last night. We went over late afternoon to go in the pool and then eat dinner once Duncan got there. If you've never seen him, Russ looks quite a bit like Duncan or maybe I should say Duncan looks a lot like Russ since Duncan is the younger one. When Calleigh saw Russ, she seemed to be a little confused. I think she was thinking to herself "He seems like my daddy but something is a little different." She did some staring but then came to the conclusion that he wasn't Daddy. We had a very nice dinner of steaks for the flesh eaters and a great salad bar for everyone. Elaine is the master of the salad bar. So we had a very nice visit and were happy to meet Saray who seems to be a good match for Russ. After dinner, they came over for a short while to see our place. Today, they were off to Cocoa Beach and other nearby jaunts for the rest of the week to do some treasure hunting with their metal detectors.

Calleigh and I had a great afternoon today. We went over to Lauren and Caroline's for lunch. Lauren's friend, Trish, was also there with her 10-month old daughter, Grayson. Lauren made a veggie quiche for lunch and it was fantastic. Sadly, Calleigh did not try it so she missed out. I've been meaning to make some quiche myself but I guess I'm not in such a hurry now if Calleigh won't eat it. After lunch, the girls went into the little baby pool that was on the deck. I think they were in there for about an hour and Calleigh really enjoyed herself. She was a prune when she finally got out!

Something that happened over the weekend that I forgot to mention in my last post - -Calleigh is really saying "Mommy" now except she says it as "Mum-Me" with the emphasis on the second syllable. I think she started saying it because she was trying to say "Nuby" (her sippy cup) and that sort of morphed into "Mum-Me." She's also added "duck" to her vocabulary.

On a completely unrelated note, I ended up making car reservations for our 4th of July weekend up in Detroit for Rad's wedding. I was going to go through Rad and Enterprise but it seemed cheaper to just book it on hotwire. We got a midsize car for $18.95 a day through Hertz. So I called them and asked them if they had car seats you could also rent. They did - - FOR $12 A DAY. Are you kidding me? I should have said that she just wanted a little seat that fits in the back, not her own car. You could actually rent a whole other car (albeit a compact one) for $13.95 a day. Needless to say, we'll be bringing our own even though it's a real pain to lug it with us.

Things aren't looking so good here in Game 3 with the Celts. They're down by 10 with 2 minutes left in the first half. But as long as they can one of the three in LA, they'll be in good shape. Oh, one other thing. As you may have gathered from previous posts, I'm not a fan of Kobe Bryant mainly because he's a jerk. My sentiments were backed up by these musings of Curt Schilling who sat court side at Game 2. Check it out here.