The Match, March Madness, Easter Weekend, and The Eggstravanganza

Well folks it has been a busy few days. With all else going on I have paid less attention to the NCAA tournament than I can ever remember (I think I paid more attention when I was on my mission than I have this week). I am doing poorly, and Notre Dame is out, so I don't perceive a lot of excitement for me this week either. Though I do have Western Kentucky over UCLA so at least I have a possible upset left to get excited about.

As you no doubt know by now (from the email I already sent out and a couple of blogs) we matched at St Joe's hospital in South Bend. There are two family medicine programs in South Bend and I went back and forth on which to rank first and in the end I actually ranked the other program first, but I'm very happy to be going to St Joe's. Melissa actually liked St Joe's better than Memorial (fewer on call months during the intern year) so maybe she had something to do with the outcome. One of the things I'm very excited about is the program director at St Joe's. Of all the programs I went to for interviews he was my favorite PD by far.

With the match over we were able to spend a little time getting some things ready for our upcoming house purchase. We bought our plane tickets and reserved our rental car for our whirlwind graduation/house buying week in May. How do you put a graduation in Pikeville, KY into the same week as looking for a house in South Bend, IN you say? You fly into Indianapolis and spend a few days driving 6+ hours. We may even add in a night stay in Cleveland.

Now onto the weekend (here's where we get into the pictures). We started the Easter weekend with a trip down to Snow Canyon where the kids had a great time playing in the sand dunes (I must say I got a lot of sand in my pockets as well). Kristian had a blast.

I have never seen him more at home than he was in the sand. He smiled from the moment his bare feet hit the sand and didn't stop grinning until we picked him up to go eat lunch.

The other big Easter event was the Eggstravaganza. For those who don't know we Corrys have a tradition (founded by Mark and Doug some years ago) where we have an egg spinning contest. The rules and regulations for this event have gotten more complex as the years have gone on (mostly during the past 2 years when myself, and this year Bob, have gotten involved in the Eggstravaganza). This year it was determined that eggs could be hard boiled at home and brought to the Eggstravaganza.

Bob took this rule to a whole new level with his eggs (involving a security detail).

I spent my time working on methods to boil my eggs in a position to regulate the position of the yolk and air bubble thereby gaining maximum efficiency in my spins. I am presently working on a patent application for the upright egg boiler.

The Eggstravaganza is actually a two part event. The first event, called the Royal Rumble, is a spinoff with everyone participating at the same time. In addition to winning a trophy (for egg displaying purposes only) the Royal Rumble also determines the seeding for the double elimination Eggstravaganza tournament. The tournament is double elimination and I did quite well this year. I won the Rumble with my #2 egg (I generally use my #2 egg during the Rumble due to eggcidents from other competitors, Dad was notorious for this during the Rumble of 07).

Having the top seed gave me a bye in the first round and I was pretty happy to be facing Dad as my first opponent. It was a close battle but I made it though unscathed.

My top egg did well through the following rounds and I ended up in the championship match with none other than Dad (it should be noted that Dad finished at the bottom of the competition last year, hence his reputation as an eggsacin during the 07 Eggstravaganza).

While he put up a good fight I came out victorious and my eggs enjoyed their places in the trophy case for this year.

Unfortunately chances are that I will not be able to defend my title in 09 (for two years in a row the Eggstravaganza champion is moving away). We may just have to get Doug and Maegan to take an Easter trip to South Bend so we can have an eastern time zone Eggstravaganza (the Brawl for it all).

The Eggstravaganza should come as no surprise when you consider that during my childhood we spent Easter morning gambling with our Easter candy (Thankyou Charlotte).

We also formally added a kids division to the Eggstravaganza this year, though no trophy was awarded.

The kids did some of the regular Easter activities as well such as egg hunts and coloring eggs (though not a formal rule I don't think you can spin white eggs in the eggstravaganza).

I'll give you one guess as to what color Spencer colored his eggs.

Way to go Jacob!!

So as you are already aware we are headed to South Bend, Indiana for the next three years. I am suprised Jacob has found time to post this information in between delivering babies today (that probally explains why they are so short) . However, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell my husband how proud I am of him. This is a great big day for us and it has come because of a lot of hard work over the last four years on his part. We are all so happy for you Jacob, and we love you very much!!!

I know Jacob has plans to give more details about the program and such when he gets off work so I will end with this so as not to steal his thunder.

South Bend

We're heading to South Bend. I matched at St Joeseph's Regional Medical Center in South Bend Indiana.

The Big Day

I found out Monday that I matched into a family practice program and today at 1 PM eastern I find out where. It is going to be a stressful morning.

It's beginning to look a lot like March Madness

I have officially set up my annual group in ESPN's tournament challenge. If any of you faithful readers did not get an invite and would like to join your bracket to the group let me know so I can email you an invitation.

Doug, having multiple brackets is pathetic and I don't want to hear about how you picked George Mason to go to the final 4 again unless it shows on the bracket in this group.

The Master Climber

So our little Kristian is now 15 months old and still has no interest in walking. Everytime we try to get him to walk he just goes right back down to a crawl. The best is when we try to get him to stand by holding under his arms. He just smiles at us and lifts up his legs. Which within 5 seconds means he's back on the floor as he is to heavy to hold as dead weight for any length of time.

However, all is not lost. He might not be interested in walking at all, but he is most definitely the best climber of his age. He can climb up on the kitchen table using a chair. He can climb on top of the kids beds using their dress-up box. He can climb up on just about anything. And yesterday he topped it all by climbing to the top of discovery park (probally 15 sets of little wooden platforms) so that he could go down the big slide. As you can imagine, this tends to keep me on my toes more than if he were walking, it is so much fun :)

Too old?

I went out to Three Peaks for a mountain bike ride this afternoon. At about the midpoint of my ride I happened to tap my front brake while riding down some relatively steep slick rock. This is a rookie mistake that I never would have made 7 years ago. I flipped over my handlebars and gave myself a bit of road rash. Unfortunately I had to finish the last 3 1/2 miles of the loop to get back to the car. The trip back required a large amount of climbing so I had ample time to lament getting older. Then just as I was almost back to the car I passed some other mountain bikers and I remembered the feeling of showing off battle wounds (if you've ever been on a mountainbike you know of the battle between rider and terrain). I don't think they were very impressed, but I felt so cool I almost forgot about the stinging wind against my left arm.


The fact that I'm actually excited to have people ask me what happened makes me feel like a teenager and if you're only as old as you feel this is a good sign.
There were also some wounds on the chin and knee, but the pictures didn't turn out too good.

Raining Babies

I'm 3 days into my current OB rotation. This OB rotation is much different than that done during my 3rd year. First of all I'm with a physician that I know which make things really nice. The other nice thing is that as a 4th year I don't feel obligated to take call (we'll have enough of that next year) so I get to see patients and deliver babies during the daylight hours then go home without any stress.

Monday was busy. During the time I was at the clinic/hospital from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM we delivered 4 babies (2 were c-sections) and saw 41 patients. I actually had it easy because the doctor started a c-section that morning at 2 AM so his day was much longer than mine. Yesterday was filled with clinic patients and today was relatively slow except for the one delivery. Finally, 2 months from graduation, I can say that I have officially delivered a baby. It wasn't too bad.

With three fast days of OB in Cedar behind me now I'm still leaning away from practicing OB for the rest of my life. There are a lot of wonderful things that go along with OB, but I just don't think they are worth the schedule. Nothing ruins a weekend or an evening like a woman going into labor, and I don't think I want to have to be out of town anytime I'm not on call.

I spent most of last night on the couch with Jessi. She isn't feeling well (at the moment I'm the only one in the house that does feel well) and couldn't find a comfortable spot in the house at 2:30 this morning so she and I spent some time on the couch together. She did get a couple of hours sleep in my arms which hasn't happened for a couple of years so that was a little bit nice.



Jessi at a happier time.

Chicken and a Beard

Spencer learned the word inert in school the other day. Since that time he has been explaining to us which of the things in the house are inert and which are alive (apparently inert is the opposite of alive to a 5 year old). At dinner I decided to have some fun with him so we started talking about robots, both the cartoon and toy varieties (only the toy robots are inert). We were eating chicken strips for dinner and I asked him if his chicken was alive or inert. Being the genius that he is he told me that his chicken was inert. I then asked him about the chicken out on the farm. He wasn't fooled for a bit as he told me it was alive. Then came the curveball. Being the wonderful parent that I am I asked him how a chicken can be both alive and inert to which Spencer responded; "So we must have killed one". It was all downhill from there as I learned that a smashed ant is also inert.

Onto the beard: the kids were sad to see the beard go so I had to make it a bit of a game for them.

First we have the pathetic handlebar with small goatee.














shorter mustache with an even smaller goatee.

Now we have the soul patch (with mustache of course).

Melissa calls this one the spaniard.

Finally no shave is complete without a Hitler mustache, unfortunately the lack of hair growth under my nose makes it look like an hourglass on its side (that's why I call this one the Black Widow).