Bev's Birthday

Chuck flew up to Vancouver on Saturday to help his mother celebrate her 81st birthday.  We had more of a birthday festival as Bill likes to say.  We celebrated for 4 plus days with plenty of food, wine, margaritas and dessert.  Bill always loves when his brother comes to visit.  He tries to think of all kinds of ways to keep him entertained.  On Sunday, the three of us went out to the Gorge to do a little hiking.  The guys did the whole 7 mile round trip between Bonneville Dam and Cascade Locks.  I did a one way trip.  We ate breakfast in Cascade Locks and then the guys hiked back to the car and I explored Cascade Locks a bit while I waited for them to come back and pick me up.

After we came home, we worked on Grandma's birthday dinner.  We wanted Cindy and Jim to join us for dinner and Sunday was the day that they could come.  So we celebrated a couple of days early with them and skyped Tom so that he could say hi to all of us too.

On Bev's actual birthday--the guys took her to Olive Garden for lunch and then we all went out to Mexico Lindo for dinner.  Had a great visit with the brother-in-law!

AORN 60th Congress

I decided I wanted to go to AORN (Association of periOperative Nurses) Congress this year.  I usually try to go every five years or so to get a lot of continuing education hours toward my certification.  But somehow, it has managed to become nine years since my last congress.  The last one was in 2004 in New Orleans when I was the president of our chapter.  It was the 60th year so there was a lot of excitement for hitting that milestone.  And Mary Russell from our chapter won a national office--on the nominating committee.

I spent the first couple of days and nights on my own.  My roommate's husband came down for the weekend so they spent it together until he left for his business trip to Phoenix Monday morning.  I didn't really do any sightseeing as such.  But my hotel was about a mile from the convention center so I would walk different routes to get between them to check out what the downtown area had to offer and do some "walk by" photography.

The Gaslamp Quarter was very cool.  I love old buildings and architecture so it was fun to walk through that neighborhood.  A lot of the buildings were from the 1800's and some with more '30's art deco architecture.  I loved the Victorian gingerbread look to some of the buildings--especially the Horton Grand Hotel.  And there was restaurant after restaurant lining 5th Ave. 

Sunday morning I walked along the waterfront and saw the Star of India--a ship built in 1863.  I came across the USS Midway Museum and the Greatest Generation Walk with several monuments and memorials.  I loved "Unconditional Surrender"--a recreation of the famous photo of the sailor kissing the nurse on VJ Day in 1945.

My hotel was near Little Italy.  Sandy and I skipped one late evening session to eat at Davanti Enoteca in Little Italy.  We had the best happy hour meal and ended it with a to die for salted caramel pudding.

I had a great time but was very happy to get home.  It is always good to get rejuvenated and excited about your career again but it can get pretty tiring.