Signed, Sealed, {Almost} Delivered!

Actually got a Christmas card done this year!

~Ashley

Peppermint Sugar Cookies

I decided to try a new recipe in the kitchen. I got my inspiration from the peanut butter Hershey kiss cookie. Instead of peanut butter, I used sugar cookie dough and instead of chocolate kisses I used peppermint kisses. I unwrapped a whole bag of peppermint kisses, saved some to put on top of the cookies and chopped the rest of them up to put in the dough.

 I rolled the dough in sugar and then popped them in the oven to bake. When they came out, I added a little peppermint kiss to the top. Easy-peasy. A good holiday cookie that I'll likely make again :) I left the kisses off some of the larger cookies so there is a mixture.  The peppermint sugar cookies turned out great!

I must admit, I use store bought sugar cookie dough mix. I find that I don't have a lot of time to fuss over stuff these days and it was a lot easier to out a bag of mix, add an egg and some butter and mix :)

~Ashley

A place to hang our coats.

One of my Black Friday purchases was coat rack for our front entry way. It's been sitting in our living room since I brought it home. This past weekend I was able to take Ryan away from the Vikings game for 5 minutes or so to finally hang it.

Before

After

A close up.

It fits the space nicely :) It's starting to feel homier and homier as time goes by at our new place here in Omaha.

~Ashley

Good for some laughs.

I was looking through the pictures on Ryan's cellphone this past weekend and I came across one that I just had to share.

When I saw this, it immediately made me smile and laugh. This is a picture of our sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows from this Thanksgiving at Ryan's parents house. Ryan and his mom don't like sweet potatoes but Ryan's dad and I do. Renee is nice enough to make them for us on Thanksgiving. This year, our sweet potatoes were topped with an entire bag of marshmallows which runith over :)

~Ashley

Busy Busy

Last week was a rough week for me on L&D. I guess everyone is bound to have a week like that here and there. But all I can say is I'm glad last week is in the past and that's all I'll say about that.

I got to work Friday morning and things were pretty calm {famous last words}. At around 11am, the flood gates opened and the place was crazy busy. We had 8 outpatient triages show up within a matter of 15 minutes. I had a moment just shortly after 12 noon to take a picture of our fetal monitors.

This shows only 11 people getting monitored but we actually hit 14 people at once. That is the busiest I've ever seen it on L&D at one time. I was running around like a crazy woman, delivering babies and triaging  patients. Days like those sure keep us on our toes.

~Ashley

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Zoey was in the tub...

She needed a little tub time.

She doesn't look the happiest but trust me, she actually likes taking bathes.

...she's squeaky clean now!

~Ashley

Cuddle time!

One thing that I love about Zoey and Cooper is that they love to cuddle. Zoey will cuddle if you pick her up and hold her. Copper, on the other hand, has to cuddle on his own terms.

This is where she realized that there were sweatshirt strings she could play with.

She goes crazy over sweatshirt strings.

Here's Cooper checking out facebook with me :)

~Ashley

Theater Room Progress

Ryan and I have been working on our basement since we move in. We put up a screen a while back and have just had two recliners, a coffee table and an end table down there since. This past week, we went and got couches so more than two people can watch the big screen without sitting on the floor. I let Ryan pick them out since it's "his room." We ended up going with a couch that reclines and then a love seat which has a center counsel with drink holders and the seats recline and rock. They are pretty nice, if I say so myself.

In order to accommodate the new couches, and to ensure optimal viewing, we built a riser for the back sofa in true movie theater fashion. Here are some pictures from our work.

Getting a frame established.

Ryan hard at work.

Making progress.

An almost finished platform.

Still not finished, but getting close. Zoey approved!

Now we just need a black-out curtain on the back window and we'll be set!

We did a little bit a rearranging this weekend but I've yet to take any new pictures. They will come eventually.

~Ashley

Let it Snow!!

We got our third snow fall of the season but it is the first snowfall that is sticking around. We got four inches of nice heavy, wet, perfect snowball snow on Saturday.

Needless to say, Ryan and I have sore back muscles after shoveling. Ryan shoveled the first one to two inches. I shoveled the second couple of inches and then also shoveled the end of the driveway after the plow dumped a bunch of heavy snow there. I hate when the plow comes through and dumps all the snow at the end of the driveway. When that snow freezes, it gets rock hard and is really hard to shovel. I was on the look out for the snow plow on Saturday and went out and shoveled after it came through at 9pm.  It was a slow process as the snow was super heavy, there was no way to push a bunch off to the side. I had to clear to snow shovelfull by shovelfull. But it's done, and as I look out to the end of the driveway today, I'm glad that I got that mess cleaned up. Happy Winter! I think it is here to stay.

~Ashley

Thanksgiving Time

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! It was just what the doctor ordered. *wink* We left Omaha Wednesday afternoon and drove straight through to Austin. Cooper wasn't too excited about us leaving and I think he was trying to tell me that he wanted to come with.

Even after I kept moving him off my bag so I could pack it with all my stuff, he was fairly persistent about wanting to come with us...

We got to Ryan's parent's house around 7:00ish. I was so tired. His parents got home around 8 and I had a heck of a time staying awake until then. After we said our hellos, I promptly fell asleep on the couch only to have Ryan wake me up and make me go sleep in the guest room {with the heated blanket on the bed!}. Ryan and his parents stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning! They are such night owls!

I got up bright and early Thanksgiving day. Everyone was still sleeping so I was able to veg out and watch tv. We didn't do much besides eat a big 'ol turkey and watch lots of football. It was nice to not have anything on the agenda. After we ate our big turkey dinner, Renee and I made sugar cookies while Ryan caught some post-dinner Zzz's.

I don't know what we were thinking but we made a ton of sugar cookies. {I guess I should take the blame because I was the one mixing up all the dough.} Renee and I actually bake pretty well together. I was rolling the dough and cutting out the cookies, she was in charge of putting them in the oven, setting the timer and putting them on the cooling rake. Since the cookies only took 7 or so minutes to bake, we put out a lot of cookies in a relatively short amount of time. We came to the conclusion that it is better to back sugar cookies with someone else than by yourself. We had a pretty good system down and baked all of the cookies in less than two hours.

Renee manning the oven.

See those little stars that are a little crispy? Those were the only slightly overdone cookies of the whole night. We told Steve we made those specially for him as he likes crispy cookies :)

Our almost-finished product. {I guess I didn't do the best job hiding the over-baked ones.}

Black Friday is up next. Renee and I decided to join the craziness on Friday morning and do some shopping. Main Street in Austin is a pharmacy but they have the best little gift shop. There Black Friday deal consists of giving you a big holiday gift bag and everything you fit inside is 50% off. They opened at 8 am so Renee and I headed into town around 8:30. Main Street was busy but it wasn't too terrible {not like the craziness of department stores like Target}. I picked up a Christmas tree topper, a couple of puzzles for my family's Christmas get together, a Christmas ornament and a big coat rack for the house here in Omaha. Everything, 50% off!! After Main Street, Renee and I went to Yonkers. Their door buster sale went until 1pm. The nice thing about shopping in Austin as compared to Mankato or even Rochester is that it isn't super crazy so the parking wasn't bad at all. At Yonkers, I got new pillows for our bed and a few other miscellaneous items and I didn't pay over 50% for any of it! After Yonkers, it was time for some pampering. We went for pedicures and manicures. I love getting pedicures although I've only probably done them three times in my entire life. I love soaking my feet in the nice warm water and the leg massage. After the pampering, we stopped at Target so a few things and then were on our way home. All in all, it was a successful Black Friday shopping experience.

Once we got back to the house, Renee and I had all of those sugar cookies waiting for us to decorate them. So we got to it. Agh! Why did we make so many cookies?! Towards the end of decorating all the cookies, I was ready to not decorate another single cookie for a LONG time. Again, Renee and I agreed that we made a pretty good sugar-cookie team as if we were decorating by ourselves, we would have been miserable by the end. Decorating with someone else makes that process a lot less painful especially when you are decorating what seemed like thousands of cookies.

Our finished product!

Look at all these cookies!

Good thing cookies freeze and last for a while. I took a bunch of cookies for Ryan and I in Omaha and then also for my parents. We packed up some for Ryan's grandma and the rest will be frozen for a while. I don't think we will make so many next year :)

Saturday was another busy day for Ryan and I. First we stopped by the house in Owatonna to pick up a few things and then we drove to the cities. Kelsey and I had a shopping date planned and Ryan was going to spend the day hanging out with AJ. Kelsey is in Family Medicine residency in the cities so we stopped by to see her new apartment and also her cat Amelia who is so incredibly patient and let us dress her up in all of her new holiday outfits.

Oh Amelia, you are so cute.

Amelia is ready for the holidays!

Kelsey and I had a great day hanging out. I miss being in Minnesota and hanging out with people :( Residency is a whole new ballgame. *sigh* It's only four years I guess. I will eventually be back in Minnesota. Kelsey and I did a lot of shopping. It was so much fun and reminded me a lot of our 4th year of medical school when we lived together and went shopping. We went all over and I bought a lot of things. I don't like shopping in Omaha - they have sales tax on everything including clothes, so I was making my shopping experience in Minnesota count.

After we finished shopping, Ryan picked me up and we started our journey south to Ryan's grandma's house in Luverne. We made a pit stop to see my parents. We weren't at my parent's place for too long but it was so nice to stop in and see them. I miss being in Minnesota :( We got into Luverne late Saturday night around 11:30pm. We checked into our hotel room and I fell asleep within 15 minutes :) Sunday morning we woke up, ate a little breakfast and then went to Ryan's grandma's house for a visit. It was nice to see Ryan's grandma - we don't make it over there often enough!

By late morning, Ryan and I were back on the road driving to Omaha. Ryan got tickets to the UNO Mavericks hockey game Sunday afternoon. So we drove straight from Luverne to the arena. UNO was playing St. Cloud. It was a good game and ended up a tie after going to overtime. After to game, I drove straight to work and worked the Sunday night shift during which I delivered three babies! {Back to reality}

All in all, Thanksgiving break so just what I needed. Some time off to hang out with friends and family and regain some of my sanity. It was also nice to have more than a day and a half off from work! It was nice to come home from work and have the cats excited to see me. They were quite the little snugglers - they missed us.

~Ashley