An Update In Pictures

Just a few random things we've been up to over the past couple weeks or so.

I made some sugar cookies for my resident-mates. They were yummy :-)

The cupboard got left open and received a visitor. Can you see who decided to stop in for a visit?

Yep, Mr. Cooper decided to check it out while he had the opportunity.

Ryan won this MVP trophy at his pre-hocky-tournament scrimmage.

I sweat my way through a c-section in a really warm OR the last weekend I was on call :(

My Ford Explorer reached a new milestone!!

The weather has been so nice here that we decided to start on some yard work. {Don't mind the grungy little picnic table that the previous owners left us.} We cleaned all the grass out of the rock and planted some hostas. More details I'm sure will come later.

The cats love when we open the sliding door for them to enjoy some fresh air.

We took the cats outside and de-fur-minated them. Cooper was up first...   {We can sort of see the hostas we planted in the background. They've grown so much in just one week!}

 

 

 

...followed by Zoey.

We left the fur in the yard for the birds to use building their nests :) {Glad all that hair isn't in the house! If you have animals and don't have a De-fur-minator, you need to get one. They are the best pet brush ever and they get a lot of the undercoat out.

OK, you can't judge these next pictures...
Our ceiling fans needed to be cleaned and when we moved into the house, we didn't realize they needed to be cleaned. It wasn't until several months later that I looked up and saw what I'm about to post. We've just been putting off cleaning as we haven't used the ceiling fans all winter, but now that it's nice we'll be using them to save on our house cooling expenses.

Gross!

Double Gross!!!

We cleaned them today so we can turn them on without the fear of big clumps of dust flying everywhere. That's about all we've been up to lately.

~Ashley

Sometimes Life is a Roller Coaster Ride

This past week has been an emotionally draining week :( It started out with me working the weekend of St. Patrick's Day. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be out partying that Friday night; one set of neighbors were having a bonfire, the other was having a house party with loud music and yet another set of neighbors were outside enjoying the weather and drinking cold beverages. Me - I was trying to sleep. Ryan - he was in Minnesota for a friend's surprise 30th birthday party. So, after little sleep that Friday night, I got up early and went to work. I worked all day Saturday and got home around 7:30 pm just to go to bed, wake up early and do it all again Sunday. It was getting towards to end of my Sunday shift when my sister Kristin called to tell me that Grandma Frost had a stroke and that they were going to be transferring her to a hospital in the cities and they didn't know the extent of the stroke. I didn't get much sleep Sunday night as I was literally worried sick about Grandma. Cooper even came and snuggled on my chest as he likely sensed that I needed someone.

Monday morning came to soon. I laid in bed not wanting to get up as I'd barely slept. I was a mess when I went into work. I was still so nervous about Grandma that I could barely function without her on my mind. Kristin called me late Monday afternoon. Grandma's MRI showed three separate areas of infarct - one in the occipital lobe, one in the thalamus and one in the midbrain. Thankfully my program director was very understanding of the situation and let me go back to Minnesota. I left work, drove home, scooped the cat liter and stock piled their food and water, threw all my dirty clothes in a laundry basket {which was a lot since I had worked all weekend and got zippo laundry done} grabbed a few clean clothes, tossed everything in my car and hit the road back to Minnesota. By the time I picked Ryan up in Austin and got up to the cities it was nearly 9:30 pm. I was able to see my Grandma but didn't want to stay long so she could rest. It was so good to see her though.

The next few days were filled with a roller coaster of emotions. Up and down, up and down, up and down and then repeat. I was back in Minnesota for five nights and I never slept in the same place twice {cousins house, Ryan's parents, Grandma's hospital room, my parent's, Grandparent's apartment}. Overall, Grandma Frost has been making progress. She sure is a fighter! The way the plans are now, she will be discharged to the nursing home in LeSueur hopefully tomorrow. It was supposed to be today but the "permanent" feeding tube that was placed malfunctioned from the sounds of it and came out today :( So she is having it replaced tonight. Say a few extra prayers for her. I hope the procedure goes well and that she has minimal pain.

Ashley

An early morning wake-up call

It was really in the morning yesterday. Ryan and I were both sleeping peacefully and were startled awake by the most blood-curdling cat screaming/screeching/whatever-it-was I have ever heard in my life. Just to back up a few steps. We've been having fantastic weather here and we've been sleeping with the windows open. Well, Zoey and Cooper love when we leave the sliding door open so they can enjoy the fresh air. And now that Ryan and I have figured out how to lock the screen door {ahem, cough, cough} we sometimes leave it open for them at night. Ok, so fast forward to us sleeping peacefully.  At 3:30 am we literally wake to hearing the worse cat cry/screaming/whatever-it-was ever. Ryan and I both fly out of bed. {We've never got out of bed so fast at 3:30 in the morning before!} Ryan is running down the hallway, my left calf rebelled at my attempt to move so fast so early in the morning and gave me a nice charlie horse all the while I'm thinking that something is in the kitchen eating one of our cats. No joke. I seriously thought something busted through the screen door and was eating one of the cats alive. That is how blood curdling those cat screams were! {It was so awful!} We make it to the kitchen in about 0.01 seconds flat, the screen door is still closed and intact, there's no other animal in our house eating out cats but Zoey was about to kill Cooper. I don't kid, I'm serious. These cats never fight and Zoey was attacking Cooper. They never fight, let alone Zoey rarely moves! If they are playing with each other, it's always Cooper chasing Zoey or Zoey laying there like a big blob because she is lazy. Well, not yesterday morning. Both Zoey and Cooper were huge puff balls and Cooper had a giant mohawk all the way down his back.  {He was freaked out to say the least.} Even after we broke up their death match by turning the lights on, Zoey stalked Cooper and they sat hissing/growling at each other like we've never seen before. I took a video of it with my cell phone {because I was clearly not thinking clearly at the wee hours of the morning if I thought video taping was a better idea that getting these two kiddos separated!} but we've never seen this behavior out of either of them. I thought for sure Zoey had rabies. Honest, she's never been like this before. Zoey cornered Cooper behind the table but he somehow was able to escape past her. Zoey even attempted to go after him after he was downstairs. Ryan and I are both freaked out at this point, not knowing what in the world was going on. I grabbed a towel so I could wrap Zoey up in it and hopefully settle her down. I also wanted to make sure she wasn't going to bite me {remember, I'm thinking rabies}. So I wrapped her up in this towel, nice and tight so she couldn't bite or scratch me and held her until she settled down. Ryan went to make sure Cooper was okay. He apparently had hunks of hair coming out from where it looks like Zoey may have bite him - poor Coop. We separated them in different rooms for the night so whatever was going on didn't continue. Talk about adrenaline! I would be perfectly content NEVER waking up to that sound again in my entire life. It was awful. I think that there must have been some animal that came up to the screen door or something to make our cats acts so crazily.  Anyways, poor Cooper was caught off gaurd by the whole thing as he may have, umm, he may have lost control of his bodily functions during the whole ordeal :/ So there we are at 3:30ish in the morning cleaning up the floor while keeping our cats seperated.  Ryan and I both went to work pretty tired yesterday :( When Ryan got home, he sent me this picture via text with the caption 'They're bff's again.' Seriously?!? I don't get what happened but these certainly aren't the same cats from that morning.

And there they sit where it all went down in the early hours of the morning. Geez cats, please don't do that again. When I finally got home last night 9:30-10ish pm {I was in the OR late and then grabbed dinner with my chief}, tired as could be since we had this unexpected 3:30 wake up call, I then spent over two hours shampooing the carpet to be on the safe side since there was that little additional incident. I definitely did not get enough sleep last night but at least we didn't get woken up in the middle of the night again lastnight. We have made the decision to just forget about sleeping with the sliding door open...

~Ashley

March showers bring march flowers?!

That may not be the way the saying goes but that is certainly what is happening here in Omaha. Spring is here! I love it! Ryan left Friday afternoon for a hockey tournament out in middle-of-nowhere west Nebraska so I had the place to myself this weekend. Friday I stuck around work a little later than normal as one of my chief residents put together a LEEP skills lab for us interns {we were supposed to do this in July...but....better late than never!}. Here is a link to what exactly a LEEP is because WebMD can likely explain the ins and outs more than I would care to write about on here: http://www.webmd.com/cancer/cervical-cancer/loop-electrosurgical-excision-procedure-leep-for-abnormal-cervical-cell-changes

Here is the 'A Team' as my chief Ashley and I like to refer to ourselves practicing LEEPing on beef tongue.

I'm pretty sure the clinic staff appreciated us doing this Friday evening so the procedure room had a few days to air out - ha! It smelled like burnt roast beef after we left because well, basically, it was!

After my LEEP practice, a few of us girls went out for dinner and drinks. We ate at Cantina Laredo. It was pretty tasty but I was also pretty hungry by the time we got there. On the way to the parking garage, I noticed that the daffodils in Omaha are starting to come out. There were daffodils sticking nearly 5 inches out of the ground down by the restaurant. Yes, spring is here!!  After our group therapy girl's night out {sort of, I think I was home by 9:30 or 10 at the latest} I went home and slept like it was going out of style.

When I finally woke up at noon on Saturday {hehehe...what?! Don't judge, I work a lot of hours!!} and spent the majority of the day studying and working on presentations, etc for work to get a little ahead since I have a feeling that these last three months of intern year are going to be quite busy. I spent most of Sunday doing the same thing. Good thing I had stuff inside to occupy my time as it rained all day on Sunday {Omaha's version of April showers}. I managed to make quite a dent in my to do list and even managed to wash and put away all the laundry, clean the kitchen, put away and organize all of the papers that needed filing from 2011 and organized a bunch of my junk in the office. It was a very productive weekend, if I say so myself. But it didn't stop there, I cooked dinner for us when Ryan got back from his hockey tournament and then I went and watched Ryan's old-man's-league hockey game and then mixed up a batch of sugar cookies {possibly more on this later if the idea in my head actually turns out} before heading to bed.

Hoping Spring isn't too far behind for all you Minnesotan folks :)

~Ashley

Counterproductive

Apparently Cooper thought I was studying too much and not paying enough attention to him!

He's apparently had a tiring day!

What's new lately?

Not much has been new around these parts lately. We've been living pretty uneventful lives :)

My parents and Sophie were down to visit this past weekend. It was so nice to have family down. I miss not being closer to home :( It was a good time. They made it down in time of dinner Friday night {we had a yummy roast that had been slow cooking in the crook pot all day long}. After dinner we just vegged out and relaxed. Saturday morning we took a little road trip to Blair, NE to the largest Ford truck dealer ship in the United States and likely the whole world. There were hundreds upon hundreds of Ford trucks. Unfortunately they were all within a secured gate so we weren't able to drive around looking at vehicles but it was interesting to see all of these trucks out in the middle of Nowhere, NE.

This isn't the best picture of the Ford dealership but from where I took the picture, we were in the lot next to the dealership building. The trucks in the background were across the interstate and this is about 1/3 the length of the line of trucks that you could see from the road {each row you see is actually two trucks deep}. What we couldn't see from the road, that we later looked up on Google Earth, was that on top of the hill was a whole other parking lot of Ford Trucks. Not to mention, there was an identical set up behind where I was standing to take this picture. They be selling lots 'o trucks there.

After seeing the Ford trucks, we drove by the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant before dropping Sophie off at home and heading to eat at California Taco which was featured on the Food Networks Diners, Drive Ins and Dives show.  We then had a low key Saturday evening, rented movies from the local Red Box and watch movies all night in our downstairs theater room.  Sunday was also low key. I love having low key weekends! We grilled out for lunch and then my parent's and Sophie hit the road back to Minnesota.

Sophie was being stubborn and not wanting to take pictures. {I believe she did this exact same thing the last time she left my house.}

Zoey just relaxing.

This was the best picture of Sophie. She just didn't want to look at the camera.

Oh Zoey. She just doesn't get excited about anything.

See, just relaxing, no big deal.

In other "news" we've slowly been making some changes to our house. We installed a new shower curtain rod in the main bathroom. One of those rods that bow outward and gives you more elbow room while in the shower. It's nice. The shower is a lot more spacious now :) Ryan and I also built some shelves for one of the walls in the kitchen. We have a vaulted ceiling so this wall in the kitchen has a bunch of height to it. Here's what it looks like right now.

It is no where near complete and not to mention I hate the orange-ish color. We literally were drilling the drywall studs into the wall just a few hours prior to my parents arriving Friday evening. The shelves are currently just sitting on the braces, not secured. The poster is my St. Patrick's Day poster that I got off the internet. {I have a different poster for all the seasons.} The jars on the bottom shelf are filled with sand from all the different beaches I've traveled to in the past couple of years {they are all from Hawaii - ha!}. Anyways, some day I'll actually fill these shelves with decorations. No need to rush :)

~Ashley