San Antonio: Food, Friends, and Legal Nurse Conference

I went to San Antonio, TX in March for a legal nurse consulting conference. There were approximately 1,000 legal nurse consultants in attendance. It was rejuvenating and exciting. I came home with new ideas for my business and I was motivated once again.


I left on a Wednesday and did not come back until Monday evening. It gave me the opportunity to hang out with friends from college. I stayed at the Marriott Rivercenter hotel. The hotel sat right on the river walk. I checked in late to the hotel and because I checked in late, my room was "upgraded" at no cost to me. It was HUGE!!


I had a king sized bed, a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a 52 inch T.V. screen. Pretty soon the room was covered with my clothes!


Shelai drove from Dallas to spend the weekend with me! She is pregnant with her second baby and it was great for her to get away from home for a little break. We ate WAY too much and laughed until we almost wet our pants. Here we are eating at a Mexican Restaurant.

The restaurant was decorated with a lot of lights and streamers. It was very fun and the food rocked!

All over San Antonio there are skeletons representing the Day of the Dead. To be honest, I find it a little creepy!


It just happened to be the San Antonio Luminaria (arts festival) the weekend we were there. They had the streets downtown closed off and had multiple stages set-up with all different styles of music. We saw the San Antonio Three Tenors (who were pretty dang good!) The San Antonio Symphony, jazz groups, and rock and roll bands.

Here is a short clip of this awesome saxophone solo. I had difficulty figuring out how to use the new camera (as evident by this EXTREMELY short clip!)



They had fireworks at midnight. My camera was slow to shoot so I got a lot of black screen shots. But here are some of the ones that worked out...



We've decided to make attending the Luminaria an annual trip for us all. It gives us a good excuse to get together and play.

I also saw Kristina and her cute family! Kristina was a great host! She picked me up at the airport, let me stay at her house Sunday night, and took me back to the airport Monday afternoon. I'm going to steal some these pictures from Kristina's blog...

Here I am with Robert & Scott. They had to wear glasses like me.


Kristina and I have been friends for 13 years. That is a LONG time! I wish she lived closer! Robert actually took this picture. Pretty dang good if you ask me. :)


Kristina and I took the boys shopping and to lunch on my last day in Texas.


The boys liked to play with my hair. Let's face it, everybody likes to have their hair played with. I must say they did a good job. I didn't even have too many knots after they were done!


I suck at playing the Wii and had an age of 54 when I first tried it. Robert made my character Mii with a Hitler mustache - - I was super hot!

By the time I left, I had an age of 34 (at least that is what I remember).


I had so much fun and I'm looking forward to going back next year for Luminaria!

Thanks again Kristina, Ryan, Robert, Scott, and Shelai! You guys made this trip really fun and special!I look forward to seeing you all again real soon!

Indecisive & reality junkie

Okay, I hate to admit that I watch the "bachelor". I got sucked into the 3 hour event last night and wondered what the crap was up with the drama associated with the After the Rose Ceremony until I saw it and I must say...WHAT THE CRAP??Talk about a way to boost your ratings. If I were Melissa, I would probably have kicked him in the junk and on national T.V.! And yet as I'm blogging this, there is a Part 2 of the Bachelor. Can I pull myself away from the T.V.? Nope, I'm a sucker that is still watching. Please someone help me cut the reality t.v. cord!!

651 Miles later...

This weekend had nothing spectacular planned at first but it quickly turned into a whirlwind of a couple days.

Thursday morning started at 5AM with me snoozing my alarm 3 times. (I'm sure Al just hated me snoozing so many times). I seriously contemplated calling into work. I had the beginnings of a migraine and just was tired. But I dragged my butt out of bed and headed to work.

Oddly, work was moving along really well and I had a couple meetings get canceled (which always makes me happy). This all changed when I got a phone call from my Dad. He said my Mom was having problems with her eye and her eye doctor thought her retina was tearing. The eye doctor wanted to her to see a specialist in SLC that same day. He told her the specialist may have to laser her eye and she would not be able to drive. Dad was in Hailey and couldn't get home in time to get her to SLC. I was more than happy to help out but didn't want to juggle 2 cars in SLC with someone who may end up not being able to drive. I left work at approximately 11AM to meet my Mom in Treamonton. A nice neighbor of my Mom's offered to drive her to Treamonton. I picked Mom up and turned around and drove to Murray to see the eye specialist. He examined Mom's eye and thank heavens her retina was not tearing...yet. So now he just wants to "watch" and "wait". No interventions were made...so Mom could drive but she has no car. Oooppss! So I decided to drive her home (to Burley, ID) vs having her wait for my Dad to come get her.

On our drive home, we get a call from my brother telling me the roads across Sweetzer Summit were a solid sheet of ice. We were almost to Sweetzer Summit when he called and the sun was shining and the roads were dry. I seriously thought he was full of it. Then WHABAM! Out of no where it starts to snow and as we rounded the bend, the roads were solid ice! A truck with a car attached were stuck in the median and a white car had rolled off the road. I tried to stop but couldn't. I found the next place to turn around to head back to the white car (to see if I could help). Before I could make it back to the white car, we saw an SUV that had just rolled. A highway patrol man had stopped right before us. So I stopped to see if the people in the SUV were okay. I told the police officer about the car that I originally turned around for and asked if he had been there yet. He said no and asked me to examine the family and stay there until an ambulance could come. For those of you not familiar with where Sweetzer Summit is, well... it is in the middle of NO WHERE!! Seriously, there nothing for miles except for farms and deer in the road. It takes forever for "help" to arrive.

The rolled SUV had a family of 5 and none of them could speak English. I only say about 15 words in Spanish and none of them were that helpful or appropriate. I was able to get out of them that they all had on seat belts and the infant (8months) had been in her car seat appropriately strapped in. They only had minor bumps bruises and superficial wounds. This entire conversation happened with a lot of hand gestures and role playing. I looked like a moron trying to communicate with them. The Dad was in shock wandering around trying pick up their personal belongings out of the dirt. I tried to get him into my car where there was heat and blankets. (Did I mention it is snowing and blowing and BUTT cold??) I called my Dad who speaks fluent Spanish and told him what I needed to tell the family and then I would hand the phone over to one of the family members to translate what the crazy pantomime lady was trying to say. I seriously need to learn another language...

Dad was able to tell me that they were looking for work and were driving to the coast to find work. All of their belongings were in the car (and scattered in the dirt) and now the car was wrecked. I felt completely useless b/c no one was really injured and I can't speak the language. I waited with the family until the ambulance could come to evaluate the scene. Come to find out the accident that I had originally turned around for (white car) was quite serious and the people were rushed off the scene...the police officer never returned to our scene. I'm not really sure why I felt so impressed to turn around when I wasn't able to help much. All I did was evaluate for injuries, send the police officer to the other accident, and sit with the mom and comfort her that her baby was okay.

Mom and I got home safe and sound around 8PM and I killed over in bed. I was so tired. The next morning I woke up and went to Pocatello to visit my sister and her baby. I stayed there Friday night and drove home to Utah on Saturday.

Thus 651 miles later...

Man it was good to be home.

Blogging here we come...

Okay...so many of you have bugged me until I broke. I am going to try this blogging thing. I really don't think we are that interesting, but I guess we will see!

Maybe this will motivate me to be better at taking pictures. I swear we drag our camera everywhere and never break it out. We received a new camera for Christmas from Al's Mom and Dad. We hope to be better at capturing some of our moments now! Have we used it?? NOPE! Sometimes we are seriously lame! LOL!

So blogging here we come!