Pie Day 2019



Zane has always been my baker. We use to bake cookies at least once a week when it was just him and I at home. As he's gotten older he's always asked to help me in the kitchen. Over the past year he's been getting Radish kits every month, thanks to Grandma, and he's been loving it. He could do most of this cooking by himself, but always wants me to cook with him, which I love. He's begun to branch out a little into creating his own dishes or putting his own little twist on the provided recipes.

So this year when the annual Spice Shop pie day competition came around Zane wanted to enter a pie. I think last year was the first year that there was a youth category, but Zane also wanted to make the meat pies that he'd made before from his Harry Potter cookbook. This meant he'd be entering in the youth category and the adult savory category. This also meant we spent all day last Saturday baking. Usually our pie day prep consists of making pies that we are going to bring to the shop so that there is pie to handout all day at the shop. This year Able outsourced most of the pie baking since Kari was going to be out of town the entire we leading up to pie day. This freed us up to work on our pie entries on pie baking day.

Zane decided to make the Maple Pumpkin Pie from last fall's Radish kit as his youth entry pie. This pumpkin pie involved maple syrup and as I recall from last year, it is amazingly good. I was skeptical about how tasty the radish kit meals would be, but a year into it and I've been pleasantly surprised at just how good all the recipes have been. Several of these recipes have made their way into our meal/treats rotation. Rowan also likes to help with cooking and is slowly getting old enough to do more things. He does, however, lose interest in the cooking process much quicker than Zane does. So Rowan helped on and off all day Saturday as well.

Let me just say that for years baking pies was one of those things that mom and Abbey did and so I didn't learn how to do it. Mom and Abbey made pies, I made mashed potatoes or something else easier. This is obviously ridiculous and over the past five years of helping make pies for pie day I have gotten really good at making pies as well. This year was the first year that mom hasn't been able to join us in the baking fun. I am happy to report that in her absence I was able to confidently step into the roll of rolling out the pie crusts. Unlike in previous years when this always ended in failures and mom would have to come take over the process. I was able to do it flawlessly. Practice and confidence makes perfect. This is one of those things that I really wanted to learn how to do while my mother was alive. Something I wanted to learn from her while she was still here to teach me. I'm happy to report I've now learned it with years to spare. Guys, have your parents teach you what they are really good at. The things that they always do, and no one can do that thing like your parents, learn how to do that thing as good as your parents while they are here to teach you.

First up was the pie dough making. There is a very specific, Blakley family pie dough recipe that is beyond compare. It's flakey, buttery, and has a tablespoon of vinegar which I think is the secret ingredient. I find myself buying pies sometimes, only to remember that no pies are as good as the pies I can make. Maybe I should post the recipe?

Blakley Pie Crust Recipe (per my mother)

Makes 3-4 crusts

• 4 cups of flour
• 1 TBS sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 sticks of butter
• 1/2 cup Crisco
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup water
• 1TBS Vinegar

Mix dry ingredients together. Combine the rest of the ingredients with the dry ingredients. This is where the little hands helping comes in handy. The mixing, in my opinion, is best done by hand. Once all is combined chill dough for an hour or so. The dough needs to be right out of the fridge when you roll it out, if it gets to warm the butter starts to melt and that's when the pie dough rolling out doesn't work nearly as well.



Miss Maggie is also quite the baker. She has been getting radish kits longer than Zane has and frequently creates her own pies, cakes, and meals. Maggie is a free spirit and has a clear vision of all sorts of wonderfully artistic, creative things that she wants to make. So obviously we had to have her come over for the pie baking fun.

We had enough ingredients and dough to make two cherry pies. Originally I had planned on keeping one for us to eat, because cherry pie is my absolute favorite, and taking the other one to be given away at the spice shop. However, my sweet, kind boy said that his best buddy, that lives in our neighborhood, father had back surgery the day prior and he wanted to take him a pie. After some talking with his mother it became clear that he hadn't actually had back surgery, but a procedure on his back to hopefully prevent back surgery, but still who doesn't want a pie. So we delivered our second cherry pie, hot out of the oven, to his friend and her family. On the way home from our pie delivery he said, "being kind feels really good mom." Yes, son it does and what is kinder than a freshly baked pie. I think will be delivering pies to more people this holiday season.

The heart cut out on top were a first for me and a new addition to this year's pies. Of course Maggie helped with the heart placement, because she's a girl after my own heart.

My little bakers with their first finished product.

Not pictured is the time between when the cherry pies were done and when we could start the pumpkin pies. Here's the thing with pie baking only two pies, that can be cooked at the same temperature, can be baked at the same time. So when you have multiple pies planned you have time to hang out and play some board games while you wait for them to be done. The kids decided to play scrabble and it was surprisingly fun. The kids came up with great, rather short, words and I was fully impressed with all of them, even little Rowan. Scrabble can end terribly, but everyone kept a good attitude and when everyone was over playing it was time to start the pumpkin pies.

Zane and Maggie cooked the pumpkin pies all by themselves. They followed the radish kit recipe, measured all the things, rolled out their dough, and put everything in the pan by themselves. Our day of pie baking inspired Maggie to go home and make her own pie entry for the following days competition.

Saturday night, after dinner, the second round of pie baking began. The Hogwarts hand pies are a recipe from the Unofficial Harry Potter cookbook. When I'm at work Zach and Zane frequently take on more difficult, more time consuming, recipes. God love Zach and his endless patience. This recipe takes a solid three hours to complete, hence why they started the process on Saturday. They did all the chopping, and two hours of simmering, Saturday night followed by pie assembly and baking Sunday morning. Zane did all the chopping and measuring and Zach helped with the assembly on Sunday morning. The recipe calls for each individual pie to be in it's own little miniature pie pan, which we couldn't find. So they made them into hand pies instead, which seemed much more fun to me.

The finished product. Some pies were prettier than others, but they all tasted amazing!

Sunday morning the big boys and I headed down to the Spice Shop for the judging. Maggie and Zane were the only two youth entries and there seemed to be quite a few entries in the savory and sweet adult categories this year.

Maggie's Berry Bonanza Pie and Zane's hand pies, ready for judging.

The whole spice family.

These two goober heads did lots of pie tasting.

Zane and Maggie where nervous wrecks while the judges were tasting the pies. I had prepped Zane repeatedly about the fact that we were just entering for fun and it was not going to be a big deal if he didn't win anything. I sincerely didn't think that he would win anything and that was going to be a good life lesson.

I obviously under estimated the talent of these two little cooks. As it turned out Zane won the savory category and Maggie won the youth category, which worked out perfectly. I know what you're thinking, their Uncle owns the shop, wasn't that rigged? No, the pies were judged by unbiased third party judges that did not know whose pie were whose or whose pies were the owners niece and nephew's. Zane's hand pies won in the adult category so he got a $100 Savory Spice Shop gift card. He was beyond thrilled and I was so proud of him.

It was such a fun day and so neat to see these two go from little kids hiding in the spice cabinets to winning pie baking competitions at the shop. It was so touching and I couldn't be more proud of these two brave kiddos. Zane bought a bag of cheddar cheese powder, which I later found out he thought probably took half of his $100 gift card. It did not.

I've said it before, I want to be Zane when I grow up. This kid exudes confidence that I could never even begin to imagine having. He chatted up the adult judges and told people in the shop about how he made his pies. When I asked him if he thought he was going to win he said, "well yeah, those were really good pies." He continues to become his own little person with total disregard for what other kids his age are interested in or doing. He knows what he likes and what he wants to do and goes for it, with no fear, always giving one hundred and ten percent to whatever he is doing. I pray daily that this never changes.



Ten Things to Tell You: What is your mantra?

There is a new podcast that I've started listening to call Ten Things to Tell You. There is an episode a week that is usually only thirty minutes or so long and usually asks a simple question. They questions vary from things like Where do you live to What are your family rules? The host then lists ten things about that question or topic. Sometimes it's a list of her ten favorite books at this time or her ten favorite things currently or her ten thoughts on turning forty. Before each episode starts she encourages everyone to share their list of ten things about each topic, whether it be journaling them privately, sharing on social media, or just sharing with friends. Some weeks the topic doesn't really apply to me and I don't listen. However, some weeks there have been great questions that I have lots of thoughts about. I think I'll share some here. I'm only mostly sure people still read this, but it's a good memory keeping journal for me either way. Maybe you'll enjoy the questions and want to share your answers. Maybe you'd like to check out her podcast Ten Things to Tell You with Laura Tremaine. I listen on Sticher but I'm sure you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

What is your mantra?

I love this question. What are the go to sayings or quotes that you find yourself falling back to repeatedly in life. What's you and or your families mottos? Over the past few years I've really honed into my life mottos or mantras. I'm not sure there are ten of them but here is some of the favorites for my life and in turn usually our whole families life.

1. We can do hard things. If you've spoken to me or read anything on this blog for the past two years you know this is my ultimate go to motto currently and honestly wish it had come into my life sooner. This phrase came into my life through Glennon Doyle, the writer of the book Love Warrior, a blogger, a philanthropist, and all around amazing women. Lots of my life lessons have come from her. This became my mantra in the midst of life's hardest thing, but it can really apply to anything. For instance in my life I've used this mantra in a wide range of situations from literally trying to calm my child's fears about actually dying to getting my kids to pick up their shoes. It was the most useful to me as our mantra through all of Zane's heart journey. I'd wake up each day, look at what nightmarish scenario I was facing, "oh I'm going to go show my son the room where his heart surgery will be taking place today, awesome." Then I'd remind myself, we can do hard things, here we go. However, this mantra can also be applied to things like not murdering your irrational toddler who has thrown his 100th fit of the day, is punching you, and screaming. This scenario is a very hard thing which I've done a lot this past week. I have a sign that says this in my living room and pretty much every night when I've fallen on the couch in exhaustion, unsure how I am going to make it all the way into my bed, I see this sign, and am reminded I can do hard things, like walking to my bed. My kids use it in their lives all the time now too, which is perfect. Children need to know there will be hard things they have to face, there is no way around it, they are brave, and strong, and we will help them do all the hard things life throws at them.
2. Make time to do it twice. This has been my mantra for probably the longest of any of these on the list. I'm unsure of when or where it originated I just know it always rings true in my life from the large things, like picking a career, to forgetting stupid things and having to frequently go to the same store twice in one day. This rings true for lots of things like repair projects in the house frequently take two tries, people coming to fix something usually have to return a second time before it's done, medical treatments always seem to require a second, or third try before we find the correct thing to fix the problem, and the list goes on and on. My life is frequently full of struggles, large and small, and I feel like I spend a lot of time doing things over that really should have just taken one time to accomplish. Over the years I've become accustom to this. I am no longer enraged by these misfortunes, it's all part of life, and I have generally prepped myself to have to do said things again. I haven't always actually made time to do the thing again, so it maybe should be rephrased to, be mentally prepared to have to do things twice.
3. If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill I read this somewhere in college and this was kind of my mantra through undergrad, which tells you a lot about how fun my undergraduate experience once. I was studying a lot and everything was hard, my boyfriend lived 500 miles away, and I just needed to get through it. The only way to get to the other side of a hard thing is to keep going and then eventually you get through it. During the hardest parts of my heart mom journey there have been moments where I felt like I was in the middle of a fire and if I stopped, even for a second, I'd burn up. I wanted to fall on the ground and just give up, even for just a minute, but I truly felt like if I ever did that I wouldn't get back up. So those are the times people walk with you. My family, my friends, my people, held me up so I could keep walking, so the fire wouldn't consume me. I have had a magnet with this quote on it it on my fridge since we got married. Some exhausting days I find myself reading it while getting water. There are days where it has come as a much needed reminder to keep going.
4. Just do the next right thing, one thing at a time. This came from a few places really. Dad use to tell me to take things one day at a time and if that was too difficult to face then take it an hour at a time, or five minutes at a time. Glennon Doyle also mentions this a lot and I have a this quote from her up by my bathroom mirror as a reminder as I enter each new day. All these things are related. While it's good to look at the big picture of situations, especially difficult ones, so you can figure out a way through it, it is equally as important to just take it literally one step at a time. One small decision, followed by the next right decision. That'll get you through without getting overwhelmed with the whole situation. Also, I've found that a lot of tough decisions cannot be made until you've made the previous five or ten tough decisions and have seen how those play out. Maybe the hard decision you're dreading doesn't even turn out to be a thing. Take it one thing at a time. Make the best decision you can, with the information you have AT THAT POINT, the move on.
5. Treat everyone you meet like it's the worst day of their lives. This one became a mantra in 2010 when everything was terrible and a strangers kindness, or hatefulness, could either make my day bearable or push me right over the edge. You have no idea what someone is going through. People who are having the worst day of their lives generally look a lot like people having a normal, uneventful days, so it's always a good call to error on the side of kindness. It's like Atticus said in To Kill A Mockingbird,  "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
6. Choose to be happy. My parents use to preach this to use as children and now I preach this on the daily to my boys, but it also always makes me think of my Grandma Blakley. I remember in college when she was probably 93 years old, unable to do really anything, and she told me "you know Audie I just have to choose to be happy everyday." If she can live that as a 93 years old I can too. There are days that this is a hard work, and it really is a conscious decision, but it's an important decision to make everyday.

I've thought about it a lot and  I think those are the main ones. As I was contemplating this I realized these are the words that fill my home. There are multiple choose kindness signs hanging up, along side my, we can do hard things, sign, right next to the choose happiness sign, and the just keep going magnet, and the one thing at a time card pinned up in my bathroom. Apparently I need constant reminders of all these things and I'm secretly hoping somehow these will soak into my children's subconscious as well. Basically be nice to everyone, you can do anything, just keep going. Oh and frequently you'll have to do the hard things multiple times. That sounds about my life summed up. Remember that you've lived through 100% of your worst days so far, so I'm sure you can make it through whatever it is you're facing now.

Ten Years of Nursing: Oklahoma

When my father died unexpectedly after Zane was born I told Zach I didn't want to make any big decisions until the fog of grief had lifted from all our 2010 trauma. We would stay where we were, because we loved it there. St. Louis is a gorgeous city. I adored the people I worked with, who through all of our tragedy had become our second family. However, after five years of working on that intense, depressing floor, I knew in my gut I couldn't work there forever. I rotated day shift and night shift, which wrecked havoc on my life and my body. I had also grown far too accustom to children dying. We had decided to have another baby and couldn't fathom maintaining that crazy schedule or emotional stress with two kids.






After a few years of dealing with the loss of my dad the lesson I took from that loss was I did not want to have the same regrets I had about not seeing my dad very much the last five years of his life, when my mom died. I had lots of big regrets with dad and this was one I could try to change for the better where my mother and siblings were concerned. I wanted my kids to know my mom and my siblings. I wanted them to see them and their cousins all the time, to have them as part of their life. I wanted to not make the same mistakes again.






So as much as I loved SLCH, our St. Louis family, and the whole town, we decided to move to Oklahoma. I'll spare you the drama of the move and the horrific rental house stories and jump to getting a job here. Turns out nursing in Oklahoma is quite literally night and day from nursing in St. Louis. In St. Louis there were two world renowned Children's Hospitals within a few miles of each other. The was a line around the block to work at both of the hospitals. They had won all the awards, had all the best nursing ratings, and scores. When I started nursing I just assumed those were all things that every hospital had, this turns out not to be true. The flip side to this was that nurses in St. Louis didn't get paid a ton because everyone wanted to work at those amazing hospitals, so they could get away with paying you nothing. When I started looking at contract jobs in Oklahoma I seriously thought the pay was a typo, double what I was making in St. Louis. I had hoped to be a nurse at pediatric neurology/neurosurgery clinic, but quickly figured out that neurologist and neurosurgeons here didn't just specialize in pediatrics, they did adults as well. My heart sunk at the realization at just how spoiled a neuro nurse I really was, having started my career with the absolute best.







I took a job on the brand new "neuro unit" at The Children's Hospital at OU Medical Center. It was a new unit that had literally been modeled after the neuro floor I had worked on in STL, with video EEG monitoring rooms, that were supposed to function like the video unit in St.  Louis. Management was thrilled that I had dropped into their laps just as they were opening it. I was thrilled to be taking care of neurology kiddos again. They called me in to ask me about policies we had in St. Louis, how we admitted patients, what the nursing protocols were for that type of patient. I answered all these questions, feeling really good about potentially shaping this new unit for the better. As time passed I realized that none of what I said was being put into practice. They were doing things their own way, in my opinion not in the best way, and I quickly became frustrated with the neurology staff and unit as a whole.







After about eight months of working a ton, getting paid a ton, and owing a tons of taxes, we finally sold our house in St. Louis and I was ready to find a different working situation. They had offered me the supervisor position on that floor which I politely declined and decided to join the flex pool instead. As a flex nurse I would make more money, have complete control of my schedule, I could work only days, work less holidays, and not have to do on call, it was frankly an amazing set up. It should be noted that in St. Louis we floated to different floors about three times a year. The days I walked into work in St. Louis to see that I had to float were the absolute worst days. It was terrifying. I knew no one on any other floors. All the other floors were just as specialized, but in things I knew nothing about because I was in my neuro bubble. It was the absolute worst case scenario and I hated doing it








Needless to say my friends from St. Louis could not believe I was willingly signing up to be in a float pool. However, in my eight months of the "neuro floor" here I took care of all sorts of different kids, floated to different floors, and learned very quickly that when you start your career in the absolute deep end of nursing, with the sickest kids in the country, with the most complex medial issues, you realize you can do ANYTHING. Asthma kiddos are a breeze, post op children who had routine surgeries are no big deal, GI bugs are grouse, but totally fine. Also at this hospital my five years of nursing experience immediately made me one of the most experience nurses in the whole hospital where as in St. Louis five years was nothing. Starting my career off in such an amazing setting had given me all sorts of confidence and I felt sure I could handle anything Oklahoma had to throw at me at me, nursing wise.






Five years later and that has been completely correct. I no longer cry on my way to work or stay up at night terrified about what horrible things await me at work the next day. For awhile I use to get stressed out wondering what floor I would be working on, but now, for the most part having no idea where I will be working the next day doesn't bother me at all. During the past five years I have met virtually everyone, on every floor at the hospital. I know all the clinical coordinators, who run the show for the whole hospital, as far as staffing goes. I have worked on every floor, except the PICU and the ER. I worked in MRI, pre-op, post op, surgery, hematology, and much to my surprise cross training to the NICU was the best decision I ever made. I love the tiny humans there and get my fill of baby cuddles there as well.










Last year when it became clear we were heading towards another heart surgery all of these years of floating and meeting everyone all paid off. As we started doing tests and coming to appointments I realized that just how beneficial my job was to preparing my son for what lied ahead. I had worked in MRI so I could tell him exactly what to expect, down to the colors of the walls in the holding room. I knew child life specialists on every floor so I knew just who to call in favors from to get Zane a tour of all the places he would see during his hospital stay. I had become good friends with the clinical coordinators who whisked me in the back door of the ER when I brought Zane in for chest pain in February, the height of flu season. I had a private room prepared, right next to the bathroom, never coming into contact with the  coughing masses of the waiting room. When surgery day came nurses from every unit of the hospital came to visit us as we waiting. A good friend was his pre-op nurse and I knew most  of our day nurses for the rest of our stay. The coordinators were just a phone call away to talk me off a ledge or get a waiting room cleaned when I requested it. We got the biggest room on the surgery floor which came complete with a picture of a penguin because the nurse knew my son liked them.






Ten years later and most days being a nurse is just my job. Some days it's exhausting and demoralizing and I leave having lost all hope in humanity. Some days I leave the hospital feeling like I was able to make a families worst day a little bit better. There are days that I am able to talk to heart families and give them hope. Usually I'm not these patient's nurse, but people at the hospital know my story and I am happy to talk through what they can expect in their future. I'm happy to welcome them to the terrible heart mom club, and it's a blessing to share Zane's hopeful story with them.


After Zane had surgery at OU coming to work and walking those halls frequently felt  like it triggered my heart mom PTSD. No one ever wants to go back to the place the scariest things in their life happened, but I work in that place. I don't think there will ever come a day that my stomach doesn't drop just a little bit walking past the cardiac ICU. However, being a heart mom and having spent days in the hospital, having faced the reality of a sick child, has made me a one hundred percent better nurse. It goes beyond empathy to having literally walked in their shoes. I've slept in those chairs. I waited hours upon hours to see a doctor or to be discharged. I've seen my child struggle taking their meds and be in terrible pain. I know that it can feel like your nurses leave and forget about you. I've faced my worst day in a hospital and on those days there were amazing nurses who made those days better, who made them bearable, who helped get us through it. It's an honor to get to do that for other people on their worst days.






I cannot say that nursing is my passion, by no means is that true. However, nursing has afforded me the opportunity to stay home with my kids the majority of the time. On the days when I regret choosing this career, and believe me there are those days, I remember all that this career has done for my kids. Every fear I was able to calm, every situation I was able to explain to them, every favor I was able to call in when we desperately needed it, every last piece of medical jargon I could translate, every time I could confidently walk through the hospital to specialty appointments without getting lost, every kind coworker who took extra good care of my kids, either in patient or in the ER, because they knew me, has made it all worth while. I walk through the PTSD twice a week, and I stomach the student loan debt because on the worst day it's just a job, but on the most important days it's been a life saver for my children.

Ten Years of Nursing: SLCH

January 9, 2009 I started my first nursing job on the Neurology/Neurosurgery/Neuro Rehab Unit at St. Louis Children's Hospital. Every nurse I talked to during nursing school told me the same thing, "you really don't learn anything about how to actually do the job of nursing until you start your training on the floor where you will be working." This is what I tell every nursing student I talk to now as well. The real world is nothing like the tests. If I went and tried to take the test to get licensed now I would fail for sure because the real world is nothing like the test. The real world I started in was all about the brain and it was terrifying. The nurses there were very nice, but also very intense. I would soon learn they were intense because the job was intense. With neurology you have to be attuned to every tiny detail. It's the tiny changes that mean big things, so everyone had to be on their A game at all times.





For the next five years I learned from the best in the world about every rare genetic disorder imaginable. I learned about the nuances of every different form of seizure and how they should be treated. I took care of post op patients who had come to our hospital to have a surgery done which was only performed there, by one particular neurosurgeon. I took care of all sorts of families who literally traveled across the world to be treated by us. We were their last hope, which made the job that much harder. I witnessed every parent's worst nightmare, repeatedly, day in and day out. I prayed fervently on my way to work each day that the good Lord work through me to keep these sweet babies alive. I didn't have the confidence in my nursing skills that I do now. I needed a higher power backing me up. I often cried on my way to work, afraid of what my day or night might bring. As time passed I continued to pray but became more confident in myself and more confident that I was surrounded by coworkers who had become great friends, who wouldn't let me drowned.





During my five years at SLCH I met the bravest children, who arrived with the most adoring parents, and I stood with them while they received the most devastating news imaginable. A child who had thrown up a few times and whose eyes "looked a little funny" turned out to have an aggressive, deadly brain tumor. A child who liked to walk on his tippy toes was dead within a month from his brainstem tumor. The child who we'd dangled over the edge of death, and managed to survive that, only to have his cancer come back and kill him. I saw children who never should have woken up, not only wake up, but walk out the door months later. I got to be witness to every step of their miraculous journey, falling in love with these families and these patients as they walked through their toughest journeys. I also saw patients whose scans didn't look bad at all, whose parents sat and waited for their baby's eyes to open, and they never did. No one could tell them why. The brain doesn't always make sense, it's not predictable, which makes that specialty so difficult.





I saw every possible freak accident ending with horrific results. I became weary of sledding, ATVs, bicycles, tree climbing, ladders, swimming, diving boards, driving cars, riding in cars, the list goes on and on. I could turn anything into a potential head injury or brain tumor symptom. I witnessed horrific abuse and neglect. Unspeakable things done to the most innocent babies and children. I also took care of teenagers and young adults who had started as an innocent baby, then became a victim of an adult's rage, whose bodies had grown, but their brain never would. They were trapped in their broken bodies, with no on to love them or take care of them except the amazingly wonderful nurses of the twelfth floor. We loved these patients and took great care to see the sweet child in their soul, not just their broken bodies.





I met parents whose lives had become their children's medical problems. Parents who could tell you their child was about to have a life threatening seizure by the look in their child's eyes. Parents who could recite their children's medication list in their sleep, and who had spent more time in the hospital than at home. Parents who never got to celebrate the normal things like birthdays, milestones, and holidays. Who instead celebrated their children breathing on their own, opening their eyes, or moving their hand. Discharge days were the biggest days on their calendar, but these were frequently followed with another admission. Probably the worst thing I saw were parents who truly believed God was going to save their baby, no matter what the medicine, or the doctors were saying. No matter how bad the scans looked they knew their Savor was going to work a miracle on behalf of their sweet baby. Generally He did not. This led to one of the hardest lessons this five years taught me, not everyone gets to grow old. Old age is a blessing not granted to everyone and guaranteed to no one. It's not God refusing to work a miracle or God choosing to make your baby sick, it just happens. It happens all the time and it is horrific to witness. God will walk you through that horror, but He isn't to blame for it.





I was in awe of these parents that I met. At the time I couldn't imagine having a sick child. I couldn't fathom my life being so defined by my child's illness. I couldn't even begin to understand how quickly their lives must have changed and how they never imagined any of this being their story. I could not even begin to imagine sleeping on those chairs, in those tiny rooms. In the beginning of my career these parent's constant questions and hovering was probably an announce to me. Then in October of 2009 I got pregnant. The whole time I was pregnant I felt like something was wrong with my baby. My beloved coworkers kept reassuring me that most babies were born perfectly healthy, that I was just overly paranoid because we saw the worst case scenarios everyday. I was crazy, I was being negative, he would be perfect. He was born on the day my coworkers were having my baby shower at work. Ten days early, and definitely not perfect.





This is where my random decision to go to nursing school started to not feel so random. It started to feel like God's plan all along. I miraculously found myself a mother of a heart baby, working at a hospital with one of the best heart surgeons in the country. Had we been living in Oklahoma at the time, they would have sent us to St. Louis to have his repair done. I also found myself surrounded by a whole new set of amazing friends, who were all pediatric nurses, all of whom could come and watch my heart baby without me having to worry about him at all. I found myself a year and a half into being a pediatric nurse, now needing to be a pediatric nurse twenty four hours a day for my sweet boy. I knew the questions to ask, I understood the medical jargon, I knew the signs and symptoms to look for that meant he was getting worse, and God forbid I knew what to do if the unspeakable happened at home. I knew people at the hospital and knew my way around the huge scary building. My boss called in favors ensuring we had the best nurses taking care of him after this repair. Suddenly, the nursing career I so resented, was making our heart journey just a little less scary.

Ten Years of Nursing: Part One

From as early as I can remember I wanted to be a doctor. I played doctor for years. Setting up my own hospital in my parent's bedroom, tending to my stuffed animal and doll patients everyday. I printed off a name tag, using our first computer which somehow had a panda bear graphic. I used that to make the perfect Panda Hospital name tag; Audra Blakley, MD. Everything I did in school, in my mind, was working towards becoming a doctor. I vividly remember the anxiety I had in sixth grade, every Friday, when I had spelling tests. I was so terrified that getting a C in sixth grade spelling would determine my entry into medical school, that I started getting bloody noses every Friday afternoon at spelling test time. Every test I took in high school, every minute I spent studying instead of having fun in college, was all working towards one goal, becoming a physician.





I don't remember what inspired this drive to become a physician. I assume it came from my Grandfather, who was a small town doctor. I had the pleasure of watching him work numerous times when I was growing up. He knew all his patients, he had even delivered a lot of them. He had delivered my siblings and I. He spent a lot of time at everyone's bedside, sitting down, holding his patient's hands. He saw patients that were admitted, he did surgeries, and he saw patients in the clinic, all of whom he had known most of their lives, their detailed medical histories memorized after years of treating them. I loved how well respected he was in that small town. I loved how his mind worked, figuring out problems, finding solutions that weren't always obvious. But mostly I loved his connection with the people. I remember him telling me how he use to make elderly patient's families bring in pictures of their loved ones, from when they were young, and hang the picture above their beds. I remember him telling me how he instructed everyone taking care of these people to look at that picture and remember that they are treating that same person, even if their body had grown old and was failing them. These were the stories I remember most, and those were the stories that inspired me more than the emergent surgeries he had done to save people lives. This is what I wanted to do with my life, this was the goal, this was why I worked so hard.





Fast forward twenty years, turns out this was not what I was supposed to do with my life. It is a really strange thing to work towards one goal for twenty years, sacrificing so much, only to realize that you it had been the wrong goal the whole time. It was tough to work as hard as I possibly could and fail. It wasn't that I decided I didn't want to be a doctor, I failed the MCAT, I couldn't be a doctor. However, twelve years out from that experience this is what I have learned about myself. I am not great at hearing God's whispers. There were a lot of whispers. Grandpa, my all time hero, took me aside as I was filling out medical school applications, to tell me I did not want to be a doctor. What doctors had become was not what I thought they were, it wasn't what I was imagining, and he knew I wouldn't be happy in it. A lot of people said things like this. They were trying to save me some pain and heartache, but all I heard was " You can't make it. You aren't smart enough." So I missed the whispers and failing the MCAT was the brick wall falling on my head. THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO!!!!





It took a long time, and a lot of tears, to actually accept this statement to be true. Long before I truly believed this I had to decide what I was going to do for a living. The decision was made in a panic as I had graduated college with a useless degree and needed to quickly find an actual career. Eventually I decided I'd go to nursing school. There was a one year program at a private university in St. Louis where I could get my bachelors in nursing in just twelve months, never mind the hefty price tag that was attached to this fancy private school education. Lesson number two, which I learned years later, after lots of tears over my huge amount of students loans; pride can cause you to make some bad decisions. Every nursing school is the same. I don't get paid more because I went to a fancy private school vs people who went to a community college. We both have the same job, the same degree, only my bragging rights about my fancy school comes with a huge amount of debt I will be paying on for a long time.





It should be noted that the school, all be it private, was in no way fancy. My class was the first class doing the twelve month bachelor degree program there, in a brand spanking new building, with all sorts of fancy new technology, none of which anyone there knew how to operate. The teachers were terribly unorganized, there was no time to actually learn anything, so I spent a year in a panic about how I would pass my classes, not giving much thought to what I wanted to do when I was done. All I knew was that I wanted to work with children. I couldn't quite envision handling being a nurse at all, but I definitely couldn't stomach being grown up nurse.





The year passed in a blur of tears. I had learned one major thing during my four years at OU. I had learned how to study. I had mastered the art of how I could prepare for a test. The process wasn't simple. I had to write everything I was reading down, in grave detail. Then rewrite and rewrite some more until I finally had memorized my notes, seeing what I had written down in my head. I knew this and in nursing school I didn't fight it. I immediately just wrote and wrote and wrote. Turns out I don't really remember things I'm not using long term, so I can't recommend this method.


However, some times pages of notes pop into my memory. For instance, a year and a half after graduating, when the cardiologist handed me a diagram of a heart and began describing the four parts of my son's massive heart condition to me, the page of notes where we learned about congenital heart defects popped right up. There were three of four conditions before TET, probably PFO, VSD, ASD, all small holes in the heart that may or may not need to be surgically repaired. Number four on the list was Tetralogy of Fallot, beside which I wrote "Totally effed!" Thus sealing my fate in having a TET baby in my future.





When it came time to start applying for jobs there were only two floors hiring at St. Louis Children's Hospital. The Cardiac ICU and the Neurology/Neurosurgery Unit. I interviewed in the CICU and HATED IT. What a terrible place to work. The kids code all the time there. There are kids there forever, just waiting on a new heart. Heart babies are too sad, too horrible, and the nurses were way too serious. I DO NOT like heart kids. So I interviewed on the neurology unit, which in reality seemed terrifying, scary, and also equally as awful, but the people were unbelievably nice. So I took the neuro job. I was scared to death of being a nurse at all and unknowingly I was jumping directly into the absolute deep end of nursing. Unbeknownst to me I had taken a job at one of the top five pediatric hospitals in the country, on the, at the time, number two neurology/neurosurgery unit in the country, so in turn the world. I was getting ready to take care of the sickest of the sick, the scariest of the scary, without even knowing it.

First Week of September

The first week of September and Labor Day are not my favorite. They are never going to be my favorite. It's when dad died and it's just difficult. There is no way around it. This year we had planned on going to the lake on labor day weekend, a fun last hooray of summer. Well that went directly down the tubes after a broken arm and a neck injury. So we spent a long Labor Day weekend doing all sorts of things around the house, selling popcorn, and trying desperately to keep anyone else from being hurt.

Here are my scouts ready to go sell popcorn, in a cast and a neck brace. It really looked like some sort of sales scheme. If only that was true. They sold a lot, I'm sure with some sympathy sales in there as well.

 Zane's sweet classmates made him get well soon cards, again. They all did this in first grade and judging by some of the pictures of EKGs and hearts some of them were confused as to what was wrong with Zane this time. I had a mom tell me that her daughter told her that Zane had fallen down and hurt his heart again. He has the sweetest classmates and I couldn't love his school anymore.

Fun fact, if you have a heart kid who is in a c-collar their stripe is a great landmark to tell if their collar is on straight. I realized this after taking this picture, then had to make some adjustments to his collar. These are the moments that my life is just too much. 

 Over labor day Zach finally finished his pergola. He's been dreaming of this since we moved in. Thanks to his parents for a generous gift that paid for most of this beautiful thing. Zach's very happy and we are enjoying some more much needed shady space in our backyard.

 One of my favorite things about little toddler boys is when they help Zach "fix" things. This particular weekend there was lots to be fixed. Our washing machine needed fixing, shortly there after our dryer needed fixing, and the pergola has required lost of toddler help. The cuteness is taken to a whole different level when their are only wearing diaper.

 Tuesday after Labor Day Zane and I headed to see the neurosurgeon. In the waiting room there were only two kids (there are no purely pediatric neurosurgeons in OK). Both of the kids in the waiting room were named Zane. Why didn't anyone warn me about the craziness of Zane's and their constantly being hurt or ill?? It's a thing and I sure wish I'd gotten a heads up before naming this wild child.

 His c-spine was cleared and he got to take his collar off so he could return to normal life. I'm hoping some lessons were learned about not doing stupid things that could potentially kill you, but I'm doubtful that they were.

 The collar came off just in time for his first baseball game Tuesday night. This is Zane's first season of kid pitch. This means that the games last an hour and fifteen minutes so they start later and last longer. Tuesday nights game started at 7:30pm. Zane usually goes to sleep between eight and eight thirty, as do the rest of his teammates that are a solid year younger than him. This also means that Zane's baby brother cannot hang for an entire game. I have a feeling I won't be getting to see very many of Zane's games this year unfortunately.

 The late start did mean that Zach could host an entire cub scout meeting at our house and have time to make it across town and not miss really any of the game. The Tiger Scout den has grown by leaps and bounds and I'm questioning whether our house is big enough to contain them all. I hear they had a great meeting and they really were the cutest little bunch of kiddos. Yes, Zane helped with the den meeting right up until it was time to load up for the game.

 And Thatcher was right in the middle of it all before he had to leave with me. Look at him holding up his little hand, I mean come on, so cute.

 Baseball time! I was worried about how Zane would do since he hadn't thrown a baseball in almost two weeks at this point, but he did pretty well. He struck out once, walked I think once, and then ended up pitching the last inning of the game.

 I got to see him throw a few pitches before I had to take Thatcher home. I think he ended up about fifty fifty strikes and balls, which seems like where all the first time nine year old pitchers are at currently.

 I woke up Saturday, Zach's birthday, to this lovely thing in my front flower bed. Grandma Dotter saying hello no doubt. I've thought a lot about whether it would be better or worse if dad had died on a different day. I think if it had been a random day at some point that day might pass and I not think about it. Maybe not, but as it is I get email updates from Amazon reminding me that Zach's birthday is coming up, it's on calendars, and it generally falls on labor day. The fan fair around it makes it worse, being by a holiday makes it worse, and who knows if it wasn't around those things if it would be any easier. I do wish I could fully enjoy celebrating Zach. I wish his birthday dinners weren't always laced with a bit of sadness, no matter how hard we all try to put on a happy face. Zach's a great sport about it all, God love him.

 Zach spent the morning of his birthday back at it with the popcorn sales.

 The boys were extremely adorable all day, which helped with cheer me up.

 Then Saturday evening we had a big family celebration for the birthday boys. The children were unbelievably cute and I just love them all so much. It did my heart good.

Here's sweet Alice with her Godfather. She brought party hats for the occasion. Alice has the cutest little voice I could listen to her talk all day. 

 Baby Worth is toddling around like a champ. Three toddlers are  always better than one??

 Sunday everyone went back to Sunday school. This meant that T got some time to run around outside all by himself. He's so adorable.

 The rest of the afternoon I did a whole lot of this, under the pergola most of the time, trying to will fall to come. It was blazing hot, but I thought maybe if I pretended it was fall it wouldn't be so bad. I might have a sunburn today.

This week Thatcher goes back to the ENT for another hearing test. Hopefully his ear tubes have fallen out so we can stop doing those. Also Rowan goes back to the orthopedic surgeon to see how his arm is doing. There is a potential that he gets the cast off, but I'm betting we get a second, maybe shorter cast. There's baseball games, family fun night, and the walk-a-thon this week as well. It's nonstop at our house for sure.