SI-- WEEK NINE

T and I had a lot of fun this week! It was one of those work-hard-play-hard kinda weeks:

TEMPO OF TWILIGHT
Tuesday night we grabbed our folding chairs and walked down the hill to Lauritzen Gardens where they had a concert on the lawn. We bought gourmet chicken salad sandwiches from the vendor to go with our cooler of drinks. We were easily the youngest in the crowd - but let's be real - these are our people :) It was like being back on the Alaskan Cruise..

pixelated selfie!

GIRLS NIGHT
A group of us neighborhood girls had a "favorite things" party this week. The idea is: you bring a list of 10 things you love and an inexpensive item from the list for the gift exchange. Each girl has the floor to share a few things from her list (many people shared favorite beauty products, sweets, books, etc) and then you draw a name to give your gift to! I brought a travel-size Aquage Uplifting Foam and Cracker Jack'd PB and Chocolate to share -- I left with a new lip gloss and lots of new ideas of products to try!

HUSKERS VS OWLS
I was given a pair of tickets at work for the Husker game - T was working, so I asked my brother to go!

I got to Lincoln early and we spent a couple hours walking around campus/downtown and grabbing lunch. It was awesome to see the changes since I've graduated!

I didn't realize how much I missed the sea of red on game day!

Our tickets were not in the student section, so I got a whole new view of the stadium as we entered:

Our tickets were the 35th row in North Stadium in the corner so the big screen and fireworks were just over our right shoulders.

When I used to work Saturdays in the dorm, I would often have to order the game on pay-per-view and watch it in my room. The recording of the game was always slightly delayed so I would know the result of our redzone plays before I saw it on TV due to the thousands of balloons in the sky :)

R and I got absolutely fried in the sun! It was low 80s but the sun was out in full-force with only one cloud ever blocking the sun (the crowd erupted when we had that moment of shade!). At halftime, we sought out a water fountain to refill our bottles and found ourselves down at the tunnel walk! We stayed down there to see the team run out for the second-half and then watched part of the 3rd quarter in the shade on the edge of the field:

That wraps up a quick recap of the highlights of our week! I just found out I am spoiled and have tomorrow off work! Tuesday, I'll dive into 2 months of rotations with nights & weekends & call - so I'll take every second with T I can find this weekend. Have a great Labor Day!

xo,

Krista

A New Toy to Blog On

T and I spent some of the money I made working at UNMC these last few weeks on a new computer! :) We are trying to graduate from laptops all over the house to actually using the long-neglected second bedroom, aka our office! We've talked about upgrading for a while now and we are super happy with it. There is still some adjusting & learning to do.. but we will get there!

SCHOOL
I officially started my second year of medical school. I severely dislike the first little while of any class. All that awful stress about if you are on the right track? Are you spending enough time studying the material? How will this be tested? Should you be using supplemental material?

Bahh

It is so not my favorite part of school. But soon all of the "firsts" of this year will be over and life will be peachy again.

BUT- there are some positives:

1. I have a leadership role in the Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG) and we met at our sponsors' cabin to plan out our year. So before we talked business we had fun water skiing, kayaking, playing bag-o, and eating some delicious food. It was a great last hurrah outdoors. (I am also part of the Pediatric Interest Group.. but our first planning meeting wasn't nearly as exciting.) In both groups I am working on programs we do with young kids.. are you surprised? :)

2. Another positive for this week- I spent Saturday morning at my preceptor's clinic :) i love pediatrics. A morning in the clinic helps me stay focused on the end goal and not get too discouraged about all the book work in between. At this point, she allows me to go do the initial interview and physical exam before she goes in. UNMC is great about giving us patient contact at such an early stage of our careers. I can fake my way through most interviews/physicals at this point. It is a fun stage since I don't have any real responsibility yet!

3. I've also been studying at home this semester which means comfy clothes, comfy furniture, and good eats:

Saturday I was also able to watch my brother dance in the first round of Nebraska's Got Talent:

He is is amazing. He has zero professional training and just freestyles! It gives me anxiety just thinking about stepping on to a stage without rehearsing. My favorite part of this performance was the glide at 3:02. If you are local, the top 15 are competing September 15th at Burke High School.

So, for this next week, it looks like much of the same: school, work, eat, sleep... repeat. Hopefully a work hard/play hard deal where we can enjoy Labor Day Weekend! How do you like to celebrate Labor Day?

School's out... for the summer! Well.. almost.

Monday we have our final test of this school year, well, as long as we pass. Otherwise the final test is when you retake the test later this summer. We start at 8:00 am, have a lunch break from 12:00-1:00, then we resume testing until 5:30. Yuck. It's all good though. Having this test forced me to review what we've learned this year which will be helpful for board exams in the future. We were given the entire week to study and I took it pretty easy. I met with two other girls at 8:30am everyday this week to review. We started at Panera at Monday with plans to rotate through coffee shops and bakeries.. until we realized their tables are small and chairs are uncomfortable. We finished the week rotating though our own kitchen tables. But don't worry, we had some fun too! Monday T and I had dinner at another couple's house and on Wednesday, I stopped by the zoo to see the new aquarium with my study buddies. There was a lot of excitement from one of my friend's when she saw they now have her favorite fish, the cuttlefish:

picture source

This week T and I accomplished a really important mission.. to catch up on the recent Marvel comic book movies so we are ready to see the new movie, The Avengers. We rented both Thor and Captain America (yes, of course we used this month's free redbox code!). I did feel old when I fell asleep during Thor. It was good, promise! I just like to sleep. :) But no, we haven't seen The Avengers yet, but we are ready when we get a chance!

picture source

Finally, I need to give a shout out to my younger brother who graduates from High School this Sunday.

Yes, they are letting this guy graduate...

He had his graduation party this Saturday so we got to hang out with lots of awesome family & friends while indulging in more gelato then I want to admit. The best part? Hanging with these two:

And in honor of Mother's Day next week (which gets a little overlooked when it is shared with graduation) I should include a pretty picture of my awesome mom and the soon-to-be-Papillion-La Vista-alumni:

So what do we have planned for this upcoming week? After my test we have a grill-out to celebrate with the rest of my class. Then we are excited to start on the basement! It feels like all talk at this point. But for real, we are starting this week. I am also excited to cook some real meals. Do I have recipes in mind? Nope. I'll figure that out as we go. Have a fantastic week! Hope you are getting enough sleep with these loud storms!

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!