Appreciation

This week is Teacher AND Nurse's Appreciation Week!!

What I wouldn't do for a night out with my old nursing friends!!!

There are so many of you guys though -- we'd have to rent a place out for the night for sure! I really feel like teachers and nurses have so much in common. One of the most overlooked aspects of a nurse, in my opinion, is the teaching part. It is our job to teach our patients about their health, present condition, medications, procedures and so forth. Sometimes that part of nursing is taken for granted but it's very time consuming. I'm so fortunate that I've had amazing teachers throughout my entire life to shape and mold me, to encourage and inspire me, and to simply expect excellence from me. That is part of where I get my attitude towards life from.

But I digress.

Since I love doing crafty stuff and wanted to make our new found teachers feel special {or that was my goal anyways}, Jocie and I made some gifts for them.

For Jocelyn's teacher, Mrs. Baker, we made this:

{Boogs picked out the paint color for the frame & made it her own with her sweet little hand print. This turned out to be quite a bit of work, so I'm pleased that it came out so wonderfully!}

And because the paras work just as hard and are the most "hands-on" with Jocelyn, we made these for them:

{We went through A LOT of crayons folks!}

{While in school, these ladies truly are Jocie's "hands" & "feet." We wanted to remind them that we recognize this and are grateful that they try so hard with helping her learn and succeed.}

 Just for a little something extra, when we were at Hobby Lobby {which is the money sucking Devil in disguise!} we found these little light bulbs for less than $1.50 a piece and turned them into this:

{I printed some tags from the Internet, filled with M&M/Skittles & added ribbon - EASY!}

{I think they turned out REALLY cute & were unique :)}

I'm sure this was more than enough for the ladies, but I had to fill the basket, so we made one more gift. A tasty one at that!



{They really got a kick out of this one! Each bag was filled with 4 different kinds of donuts}

{Here was the final result! It turned out so nice!!!}

This "little" project took longer than I anticipated, but I really did want them to feel appreciated and like we care. I know teachers work hard -- they really do -- and I believe they think and worry about their kids well after the day is over.

 

Today was particularly challenging for everyone because unfortunately, Jocelyn is incredibly weak from Botox ... already. In fact, she can barely sit, grab or hold anything, and the worse? She can't seem to hardly hold her head up. Its so heart-breaking and frustrating for us both. Probably more so for her because seeing how she could do this prior to the Botox and now suddenly can't ... she just doesn't understand. I mean, I workout and I can tell where I'm weak but that's only for a certain period of time, not all day every day!!!

 

How do you perform in school like this? Or anywhere for that matter? I sent the teachers an email this morning with a heads-up, and they were very accommodating today which put me at ease. Jocelyn actually didn't scream and cry like she has been doing since the Botox, and was even relatively calm and receptive to their activities until about 11am. I expected she wouldn't last the whole morning with all this going on {especially since its hard to last the morning without all this against us!!}.

 

The gifts were well received and one of the paras even got teary-eyed. The smiles on their faces made it worth it.