Yay for PTO payout!

The company I work for is awesome and pays out any PTO we have at the end of the year over 40 hours at 100%, and since I rarely (if ever) use PTO for time off I had 111+ hours to spare. This is awesome for several reasons but most importantly because it will let us buy our Tumbleweed workshop tickets for April and make a nice start to preparing to buy our trailer. I was also able to get my Colorado RN license verification taken care of (yay to being in a compact license state!) for the low, low price of $30.

Progress!

1/25 Update:

Tickets for the Austin Tumbleweed Workshop April 12/13th have been purchased!! Now we’ll have to wait patiently to see what place they pick for it to be held so we can plan hotel arrangements. We won’t be bringing the little man with us (major shout-out to my dad for agreeing to watch RAD over the weekend for us!), but we will definitely be brining a notepad so we can jot down as many tips and tricks as possible. I’ve set aside $2000 to put towards our trailer purchase as well, and we should be ready to pick one up from Colorado after the workshop. That will also give me a chance to go scope out where I would be working once we move up there for a few years.

Speaking of Colorado and on a nursing side note, I also got to see the blueprint for the first Colorado mini-hospital my comapny is going to build in partnership with an established CO hospital system this morning, and I’m excited to see that we’ll have basic labor & delivery services and even a surgical suite. If I wasn’t an ER nurse I would be an L&D nurse, so it’s exciting to think I might have the opportunity to work closely with L&D staff to learn more about their methods. I was particularly excited by the prospect of it being staffed like a birthing center with nurse midwives, as I’ve given TONS of thought to pursuing Certified Nurse Midwifery in the not-too-distant future. I’m all about modern technology and science and how advances in both have literally saved billions of lives and extended the human life span by more than double in the last two centuries, but there’s just something about letting nature take its course with labor and delivery with the support of midwives that really strikes a chord with me. I wish I had stuck to my guns more with my own attempt at natural childbirth that devolved into a c-section, so the idea of working closely with midwives in my work environment is exciting.

Now if only I could figure out how to combine midwifery with tiny houses. How cool would it be to deliver your sweet baby in a fully customized TH birthing suite surrounded by nature and your loved ones?! Sign me up! 😉