DC and Philly

The last 2 weeks have been very busy for me and the next few will not get any less busy it seems. I spent a decent part of last week in Washington DC and Philadelphia to attend the Academy of Neonatal Nursing conference and visit my family. (at my sister's birthday dinner)

I love visiting DC - it's one of my favorite cities and I wish I could live there. There's such a mix of cultures and a ton of great places to see and fabulous restaurants. It's also easy to get around the city thanks to the great transportation. Luckily my Dad lives in the district and only 2 metro stops from the conference hotel, so it was really easy to get there. Of course, this made me miss city living even more. And the weather was absolutely gorgeous all weekend (70s and sunny), so I did not even miss California.

The conference was great, and really motivated me even more to become further involved in more at work and begin my master's next fall. I learned a bunch of stuff, and got some refreshers in neonatal care and got the motivation to help improve the standard of care in my own unit. Hopefully I can get a place on the practice counsel board which helps to decide nursing practice in the unit and review our practices.

The other great thing is that I got to see my friend John Michael and my cousin for dinner in DC and then spend my sister's birthday with her. It was really great to see everyone, but especially my sister. As adults, we really have become good friends and I miss her so much now that I live in California. It was great that she got to come out to California and be my maid of honor, and it made me miss her again all the more. I was so happy to go and spend her birthday with her and we had a lot of fun. Dinner with her friends was a blast. We spent the whole evening laughing about all kinds of things and I got to meet her new boyfriend (who is really very nice and a cutie too). All in all, it was a fabulous vacation and now I miss everyone again (but I'm happy to come back home to spend some time with my wonderful husband).