SI-- WEEK SEVEN

This week was backwards from my normal workweek --> we were super slow at the hospital and T and I were super busy in the evenings! This week:

+ we started by having two of my besties (love them!) over for dinner. T grilled us chicken and vegetables (the usual around here!). We ended the meal with a variety of leftover homemade ice cream we have leftover from family gatherings this month. I love! love! love! getting to catch up with my friends and hear all of the amazingness they are accomplishing in their lives. I have the best friends!

+ T spent a few evenings painting houses around town for a city-wide service project. He'll also get a paycheck from Wells Fargo for those hours (bonus!). T takes full advantage of the "big business" perks - awesome benefits, paid community service hours, matched 401k, etc.

+ We had two super sweet visitor out our back window this week. We've seen plenty of deer over these last 3 years but these were the first fawns we've spotted. I love the polka dots in their fur!

+ Tuesday I was supposed to see Ingrid Michaelson with one of my best friends, but sadly the concert was cancelled. Huge bummer! I don't get to see my medical school girls nearly enough now that we all rotate on totally different schedules so I was really looking forward to the concert.

+ It doesn't make up for it, but I was able to meet quite a few of the new families in our neighborhood. More awesome young-profressional couples and cute kiddos! We love our neighborhood :)

+ I was able to sneak and lunch with my Mom and brother between errands and appointments on Saturday! R is back to school in Lincoln so it was fun to see him while he was back for a hot minute :) We bonded over past & present UNL Housing news. He is going to rock it again as a RA!

+ Then today we were able to get together with T's family in Lincoln to celebrate the 74th birthday of his awesome "Grams". She is just the sweetest! T and I spent a lot of the day jumping on the trampoline, playing polish horseshoes, walking to the dock in the neighborhood, and playing made-up games with balloons. Our three cousins keep us busy :)

+ Finally, I want to document how T and I spent a large chunk of our Saturday. He was such a camp and helped me work through the black hole which is my closet. My close family/friends know that I have worn the same sizes since high school.. and I have kept nearly every piece of clothing over that timespan. yuck. I've also acquired a bunch of family/friend hand-me-downs over the past few years that have only added to an over-stuffed closet of worn out clothes. This probably sounds silly, but it's been to the point that my closet makes me stressed and overwhelmed. Plus! Someone else could be enjoying these clothes instead of them collecting dust on my closet rod. I've been whining to T about the concept of a capsule wardrobe for weeks - simply put, a small versatile collection of clothes that you love. I've been super excited to toss the majority of my clothes and instead invest in a few quality pieces. In high school, I would have called a small, classic wardrobe boring - but I am so over trying to wear something new and creative at every outing. Totally over it. After weeks of whining, T helped me finally begin to weed through my clothes. Here is my donation pile (so far!):

This next week will be more of the same: Monday through Friday at Children's Hospital working with the Infectious Disease consult team except for Monday, when I'll be at Bellevue Medical Center in clinic with my patients. Maybe I'll also get through the rest of my closet.. Enjoy your week!

xo,

Krista

M3-- WEEK FOURTEEN

Today completes week five of being in Grand Island! This guy was by far the best part of my week:

We snagged a few free minutes this weekend for a long walk. I can't wait until I am back in Omaha with him everyday! He was here to hang out, but he also did his fair share of work:

T helped man the annual garage sale, move living room furniture, reroute cable in the living room, remove the old tv, and purchase & install the new tv!  I was not very confident that the living room set would sell in the garage sale (and we have new furniture being delivered in two weeks!). But whatdoyaknow? There were multiple offers! So we are going for the "minimalist" look in the living room right now - aka - the no furniture look :) And for the record, I helped a little this weekend by putting together the new tv stand. (You can see the old tv in that second picture. Grams won it in 1981 and it still works like a champ! The square formatting is just not very football-friendly.. so we can't have that!)

This weekend wasn't all work. Grams spoiled T with one of his favorites - homemade fried chicken with "white gravy". The proper way to eat white gravy is to (1) take a boiled potato (2) smash it with the back of your fork (3) sprinkle on minced, raw onion and (4) add a generous scoop of gravy on top.

Overall, life is good! I am getting super sick of living out of a suitcase and being away from T. I probably whined about this last week as well... but time is going fast - so I have that to be thankful for. I'm looking forward to another week full of learning and then hopefully a trip back to Omaha to celebrate T's birthday next weekend. Hope your coming week is fun as well!

xo,
Krista

End of April 2012

[life]

This week was my last week as a first year medical student, at least in any classroom-type setting. We took our last graded test on friday/saturday and only one test is between me and summer vacation. We have a comprehensive final for the. whole. year. However, the requirement is only to pass to move on to the next year. There is also a second opportunity to retake the test if it doesn't go so hot the first time. According to older students, this week off to study doesn't have to be hard core. We have normal life social plans throughout the week.

This weekend I was able to celebrate two of our favorite people and their upcoming wedding! I met the bride-to-be in undergrad where she listened to me struggle with wedding plans and now we study together in medical school.. where we still struggle with wedding plans :) People like her are what make medical school manageable.. because, lets be real, I see my classmates quite a bit more than I see my dear husband.

The happy couple! We love these two!
Photo credit: Jessie Petersen

[car show]
(written by T):
There was an awesome auction on Saturday in Grand Island that I went to with my grandpa. There was a beautiful 1940 mercury convertible that you see below. My grandpa really wanted it and was really close to buying it. It came down to him and one other bidder. It was so much fun getting to spend the day with him looking at so much cool stuff. I really wanted to buy the Buick that you see below. No one was bidding on it and it is the biggest car I have ever seen.

 

Since we were kind of down that we didn't get to bring home the convertible, we went for a ride in my grandpa's 1947 Lincoln Coupe. This is one of two old cars that he has restored. 

[basement plans]

In between writing this post we are measuring, budgeting, and planning how we are going to finish our basement next week. (next week!) Our place has some .. what shall we call them .. quirks .. so we have some decisions to make about the details.  We are thinking of recessed lights (to help the low ceiling appear as tall as possible), drywall instead of cement brick walls, a warm tan paint job instead of stark white, molding- both crown and around the base, a half wall on the stairs that matches the style of our other stair case, and possibly a curtain room divider (still trying to convince T of this detail). I think I am most excited about the lighting. Right now our track light is as dependable as [insert something/someone really not dependable]. It thrills me to think about going downstairs to do laundry in a well lit basement. total bliss.


[summer plans]

Today we are also working on plans to use our fabulous tent we were given for our wedding. It sets up in 60 seconds! And tear down? 60 seconds! I will warn you, there are bright red stickers on some of the rods that say CAUTION! PINCHING HAZARD! Yeah, take those seriously. The tent pinches.. hard. And if you wiggle your fingers to get them out the tent closes tighter. Don't worry. I learned my lesson. It only took once to teach me! We are looking at these campsites: Louisville, Gretna, Walnut Creek, Two River, Platte River, Mahoney, and Branched Oak.

Other plans for the summer? We love the free concerts (Friday nights @ Rockbrook, Movies/music @ Sumpter Amphitheater, Jazz on the Green, live bands @ (assuming they will do it again...) Village Pointe & Shadow Lake). We also love walking around the farmer's markets at Village Pointe and in the Old Market.


But now I am going to enjoy the amazingness of sitting here on the couch, catching up on the last five episodes of SMASH with my fantastic husband, eating our favorite lettuce wraps from Costco, all the while knowing that I don't have classes tomorrow. Life is so good!

Our First (Married) Christmas

Did you all have a fabulous Christmas? We did! Because for the first time, we were married.

We were lucky enough to celebrate Christmas [including opening presents] three different times this year! We started on the 23rd at T's Uncle's house:

Remote control bumper cars were a hit!

The we migrated down I-80 to Grandma and Grandpa Stoecker's in Grand Island:

The tradition at Grandma and Grandpa's house is to eat chili and oyster stew for dinner on Christmas Eve, open presents, and drink Tom and Jerrys. This year, the local store was out of Tom and Jerry batter so we had to resort to the homemade stuff. We used this recipe:

Finally, we spent Christmas Day at my family's house. This year after we opened presents (and took naps) we played some holiday-themed minute-to-win-it games:

Games (as the name says, you must complete the task in one minute):

-Hanky Panky: pull all tissues from a box using only one hand

-Christmas Cliffhanger: blow Christmas Cards across a table and get one to hang on the edge

-Name that Carol Race: Use this document and see who can name the most

-Stack Attack: build a cup pyramid with 28 red, Solo cups

-Hung with Care: balance candy canes on a taught string

-Mega Bubble Blower: choose any number of bubble gum and blow the biggest bubble

-Christmas Ball Conveyor: Using scarves wrapped around two players, move ornaments to the string

-Face the Gingerbread Man: Using only your face, get the gingerbread man cookie into your mouth

-Jingle Box: shake all of the jingle bells out of the empty kleenx box tied to your waist

Christmas Cliffhanger

Stack Attack

Name that Carol

Mega Bubble Blower

And a taste of what these games are like with our wild bunch: 

Maybe next year I will get out my video camera so you don't have to watch the grainy digital camera videos.. whoops

Finally, if you are wondering, we got "hooked up fat" this year:

Our two favorite gifts are probably our new mixer and fryer:

I know, it's basically a sin to use a fryer as a steamer-- but delicious!

 The first thing I made with the Kitchen Aid:



Don't get too impressed, its just instant butterscotch pudding.

But, then I made Ryan a birthday cake:

Recipe here

 Lunch at Hu Hot for Ryan's birthday:

 We hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and we wish you a fantastic New Year!

Six Months of Bliss

Today is exactly six months since we tied the knot! As an 0.5 anniversary gift (okay, probably just a coincidence) we got to see our wedding photos yesterday! We added a link on the side of the blog if you want to browse through all four hundred and twenty five !!

Yes, we really did take pictures jumping on the bed

If you'd rather have an abbreviated view, I took screen shots of a few favorites:

        [disclaimer, this is in NO way a recap of the day.. just a hodgepodge of pictures that stood out for one reason or another] 

Fun fact: we took this picture in a cemetery

We expected some fabulous pictures from the shoot in Lauritzen Gardens. Isn't that a major purpose of a wedding photographer? To take pictures of the bride + groom? However, some of our favorites from the day are the candids of our family our photographer snagged:

There are some great candids from the reception as well:

The story behind this picture: Travis loves raspberry-jelly-filled doughnuts almost as much as he loves me, so after we cut the cake, we shared a heart-shaped doughnut :)

Mother-son dance!

Father-daughter dance!

A rare shot of Travis dancing! HEEEEY macarena!

We have thoroughly enjoyed these last 6 months and are excited for many, many months to come! Tonight, we are using our 0.5 anniversary as an excuse to: (1) not do too much house work (2) eat those Omaha Steak filets we have in the freezer and (3) watch a Christmas Devotional! (you can find out more here)

Have a fabulous week!