i'll make you banana pancakes

Here's how I've spent the past 8 days:  

1) Battling sleep deprivation: Nothing new here. Slept 3 hours last Monday (late hockey + 5 am workout), and not many more than that on Tuesday night. There is a plus side, though-- I proved that the claims about there being a maximum amount of caffeine one can safely consume in one day are bogus. 

2) Savoring every moment that the Wild cling to 1st place in the NHL: No arguing with the fact that I'm a diehard Wild fan, but to be totally honest, I didn't think we'd last at the top quite this long. (It's been over 2 weeks!) Mike Yeo for MVP. 

3) Admitting that maaaybe peds isn't so bad after all: I had a breakthrough last week. All of a sudden, I realized I finally felt comfortable treating the wide variety of patients we see, babies included! You have to be active and engaged and creative and willing to fly by the seat of your pants when working with kids, and now that I'm so much more involved in treatment sessions, I have to admit that I might be having fun once in a while. 

Lake Mtka--gorgeous

4) Getting festive on Lake Minnetonka: Girls' night last Friday, hosted by Amy's friends with the awesome(ly huge) house in Tonka Bay (who happened to be out of town). We baked cookies (I attempted gingerbread cookies for the first time!), put together a tasty salad bar for dinner, consumed some vino, and watched Love Actually (or varying amounts of it, depending on how late we all managed to stay up). 

5) Making banana pancakes, then dancing them off: Ingenious Kristy concocted a yummy breakfast, inspired by the classic Jack Johnson tune. We didn't even have to pretend like it was the weekend. I was then introduced to Just Dance 3 on the Wii, and it was love at first move busted. 

6) Pawning off cookies: Between my well-dressed gingerbread men, Mac's pumpkin cookies, and Kristy's dark chocolate with M&M cookies, we had an abundance of sugary creations. We hauled 'em down to Northfield (after a stop at Caribou, my previous stomping ground/study hole) for Kristy's bros' bball game at Carleton. Pro: they won. Con: we didn't get rid of many cookies. 

7) Falling under the spell Northfield casts during a snow storm: That city is beautiful with a fresh coat of snow, and 10x more beautiful when the snow is falling, especially by the river and on a college campus. That didn't make for a pretty-- or fast-- drive back to the Cities, though. 

8) Jamming out to the latest and greatest Kristy & Anna CD: Music is life. And music you can sing to while driving with friends is as good as it gets. R. Kelly and Nelly and Kelly (Clarkson), oh my!

9) Exploring a hidden gem of a pizza joint with Kristy & Rachel: Because no one in their right mind would want to caravan during a snowstorm in which traffic was averaging 3-5mph on I-35, Rachel joined the dance party in the car. Starving, we found a cute little Italian restaurant in Plymouth to grab a bite to eat before braving the snow once more to spend the rest of the night in Uptown. 

10) Extending the Eagles' undefeated record: I feel like I should be knocking on wood right now, but my WHAM team is undefeated! 6-0-2, I believe. Big W on Sunday against a team that no one likes playing. Oh, and Katie Bennett is pretty good at putting the puck in the net. 

11) Decorating the tree: Paused the Wild game Sunday night to put up our 3.5 million ornaments. Ben was especially helpful when he decided to secretly hang my iPhone up on a branch, which would've worked if I hadn't gotten a text as he was in the process of stringing it up. He also tried his best to identify an odd ornament no one could account for...but gave up (and stapled his confusion to it). 

                 

12) Surviving the busiest day of my peds internship yet, and efficiently at that: Today I had a full 8 hours of patients, ran 90% of the treatment sessions, and did 100% of the documentation (including 2 evaluations, 1 discharge note and one progress note addendum)-- and still managed to get out of there at 5:30. Productivity was sky high aujourd'hui. 

baby Jack = best ornament on the tree

13) Trying to figure out how it's possible that Jack is turning TWENTY tomorrow...I mean really, when did this happen? Guess I should have picked up on the fact that he was approaching this milestone when he came home from college with a beard for the first time, but still, I feel blindsided. HAPPY B-DAY BRO <3