It is now February 3 and it is starting to soak in that I have been here in Nebraska for over a month now. (Was a month on the 22nd of January) It is crazy how time flies! If you are still following me on my journey I am excited to continue to share this adventure with you and so glad you are partaking in this journey with me! I spent the past week doing my normal shift of three days at Bader Cottage and three days at Girls Cottage. That was my last week doing that. Now that we have enough staff we are going to be splitting 3 staff at each cottage to be primary. So I am now a primary staff at Bader Cottage. Which is exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. It will be nice for a few reasons:

1. I get my own room that I can make my own!
2. I get to see the girls everyday I work so it is consistent for both the girls and the staff
3. Build better relationships with the girls who are in the cottage

However some of the cons are:

1. Don't get to build relationships with the other girls at Girl's Cottage anymore
2. I get to see the girls everyday I work....which after day three they start to get annoyed with the staff on duty and we sort of get testy with them as well...I guess patients is really a virtue! :)

But overall, I think it will be for the better. It will just take some adjusting like everything usually does. So this past week I spent the first three days at Bader like usual and for the most part things went pretty smoothly. We had a few issues with a few of the girls and listening to us but that is not out of the ordinary especially with certain girls. But you make the most of it and try to be patient...which let me tell you with teenage girls is especially hard, but perhaps this is one of the many tests God is teaching me while down here is to have some patients and really test my faith in Him. Saturday most of the girls were gone on visits and so we worked on some seasoning for smoking chicken we received. And let me tell you that was a lot of chicken!! to be exact about 21 pounds worth!

 Then of course my fellow staff members Becca and Hannah along with the Program Manager Thayne tried to wrap it all up so they wouldn't fall on the way to get smoked...

And here was the result of A LOT of saran wrap! That was a fun end to my three days at Bader for sure! And I made zucchini muffins too! :)

However, my patients was truly tested the last three days of my shift when I went over to Girl's Cottage. To start off I got over there on Monday night so started Tuesday. Well, it started out well enough until one of the newer girls continued to bad mouth my fellow staff member. And it hurts to see your friend get hurt and so you have to step in, but the thing with this girl is she likes to be in charge and so it emotionally takes it out of not only the staff she is lashing out to but the staff that is also defending. She chose to bad mouth her on the way home from school one day while the two of us were talking and walking back and let me tell you I was having NONE of it....if ever I was needing to be tested in my authoritative juices...well this girl is DEFINITELY pushing those buttons. I told her like it was, that whether she liked it or not, we all are her staff and we will do many things she doesn't agree with but we are doing what is best for her whether she chooses to believe it or not. But she needs to listen to us and work on herself if she wants to get out of here anytime soon. She is not allowed to bad mouth the staff anymore and is not to talk about her unless to her and in a calm matter, end of story.

So that was the end of my 4th day of this shift, my first at Girl's Cottage. Then that night it started to snow like crazy with massive wind! We were so nervous that school was going to be cancelled because one thing I have learned about Henderson is they don't salt their roads!!! Apparently the old people in town are more worried about keeping their cars cleaned from salt than to salt the roads! Crazy right!? And so we were waiting all night thinking they would post online that the kids had school cancelled, and at 6:00am the phone rang and both of us just thought "Ugh there it is..." but THANKFULLY it was only a 2 hour late start. Which gave us the opportunity to get the girls all dressed up and we all went out and shoveled and salted the sidewalks and shoveled the driveway...all of 20 minutes with 6 girls staff included! Not bad!

Well the kids went to school and about 3 hours later at 1:00pm we get a call from one of our girls stating she was "sick" well we knew she wasn't sick but we still went to the school and had a talk with her and long story short she refused to go back to school for other reasons and we ended up taking her to the office to talk to the program manager because we didn't know what else to do, we didn't want her to blow up in school and it was definitely heading there. So she stayed there the rest of the day until we picked her up after school with the other girls. Well the deal for her to get her school card signed is that if she gets it signed we will let our bosses dog stay the night at the cottage while he was out of town. Well that didn't happen that night he only stayed a few hours so we said worked towards tomorrow then...well same time Thursday the same thing happened at school and the program manager was NOT happy with her. They had a big talk and she thankfully went to school on Friday! Made us happy to see her finally go the entire time! Well the dog did get to stay with us the first night I was on duty there but that was it...and she refused to stay off of my fellow staff member Caitlain's clean clothes on her bed! Everytime she tried to move the close the dog growled haha. So needless to say guess where the dog slept all night!?

I would say Spunky won that round!

Thursday I went out to lunch with a fellow staff member Jess P. While the kids were at school we spent time together getting to know each other more. She works at Girl's Cottage now and used to work at Boy's. We went to The Dutch a small restaurant in town and seeing as it was Thursday they were serving Verenika...which apparently is a big deal down here in Henderson! It was actually really good though!

The rest of the week went by smooth sailing Friday. Caitlain and I went off duty on Friday night and after that long emotional week we were so ready to go off! I think that the weather plays a lot into people's moods and this past week it was like their was a full moon and everyone just had problem after problem, which is emotionally draining. Plus I had a few personal issues to deal with back home with my mom so you add that to the emotional list problem and it makes like a headache and you are leaping for a break! So on our first day off I went to York to do some thrifting well my fellow staff Jess and do some grocery shopping at Walmart it was super fun! I got a new comforter and pillow cases, etc for only 18.00!!! Queen size! I am super excited to add it into my new on duty room! :) Then Jess found this adorable rocking chair for her on duty room at Boy's Cottage...take a look and you will find it adorable as well!

Jess of course had to test it out and see how it worked! It was an adorable chair! We also went out to see her horse and I got to ride her around for a bit...was my first time riding a horse since middle school!! LEt me tell you once I got on that horse I felt so at peace looking out at the fields around me and the country life that was so peaceful and silent...it made me truly realize that I was meant for country life and I love it! It just takes you over and you feel this calm and happiness surround you!

So then yesterday I spent the day with Caitlain and it was SO nice out! It was simply just sweater weather all day so we walked around the town of Aurora exploring the little town. We got coffee at this adorable coffee shop!

Clever name right! IT was so charming and small which are the coffee shops I love the most! Then we just walked around town taking in all the shops. We stopped in the scrapbooking store which I feel is going to be a death trap for me! Then we went to the local used book store where the owner is so sweet and her kids run the register and they are only like 10! She came up to us right away and asked if she could make us some coffee! How cute! We said maybe next time since we already bought some coffee...but then we got to chatting and talked about where we worked and what we do, which she knew all about and she told us that anything in the store was half price anytime we come in! How sweet of her was that! We ended up getting some devotional books for our kids...I got three books that looks for the most part like new for 7.00!!! :) I am excited to start reading them with the girls for devotions! We then got back to town at 2:00pm and we spent 5 hours scrapbooking with Jess C at Greenhouse! It was so much fun just hanging out with my new friends just scrapbooking and chatting. Then Jess made dinner and Caitlain, Jess and I had dinner and later had some lemon dessert we had made earlier from pintrist! To end the night I got to have a Skype date with my best friend and former roomie Rebecca! It was great to chat and catch up with her and vent on both of our parts, I definitely miss her a lot and can't wait until she can come visit.

So to end my break since I go on duty tonight at 9:30pm as most of you should know is I plan to get Starbucks and watch THE SUPERBOWL!!! Duh! What better way to end a break than some football!! :)

Enough said...now bring on some football and the next week of work!!!