daddy is away.....

so look out, because the momma is running the house.....and it is CRAZYYY!!!!! no, seriously, it is crazy!! so far i have realized that
1. i have absolutely no idea how to work the 4 remotes required to operate the television. i have been getting all kinds of odd combinations of picture with no sound, sound with no picture, and blinking lights
2. i don't know what day garbage day is
3. i'm not sure which dog eats out of which bowl
4. i LITERALLY was seconds away from running out of gas
5. i accidentally took the girls to the zoo WITHOUT ANY SHOES! (and yes, i just let them be "thoses kids" that are walking around disgusting public places completely barefoot)
oh, and the list could go on and on and on. props to single parents out there because i just have absolutely no idea how in the world you do it!!!

thank GOODNESS for the angel in human form known as my sister (and her little helper, my niece Hope) who have come to save the day :) Becky and Hopie have been running the household, fixing meals, and making sure Nova doesn't breath-hold, and it has been amazing!

I have had the most perfect schedule ever at work this week, and i actually have a 3 day weekend, so we are headed up to Cheyenne, Wyoming for Frontier Days. Time will only tell if the 5 of us will be sporting the complete Frontier get-ups (WITH BONNETS!!!) that my mom and sister Betsy sent :) stay tuned for that hilarious installment of the blog next week!

just a little busy

sorry we have been absent from the blog-world this week. this is my weekend to work, which means we aren't up to a whole lot this weekend. the girls have been doing some ridiculously cute stuff lately....but i can't quite think straight enough to remember any of their stories right now :) we are getting ready for a busy month....in a couple of days cris leaves for Glacier National Park, my sister and neice come to town, Cris' brother and his wife then come to town, then we head to San Antonio for a week, then Cris goes to Hawaii for 2 weeks, my brother comes to Colorado....whew....!!!! before we know it september will be here and we will be packing up the house.

We did have a bit of a veterinary adventure a couple weeks ago. Sherpa had developed a lesion around her....ahem.....private region.....that looked a bit concerning. we took her to the vet, and the estimate was $700!! yes, that is 700 U.S. Dollars! we did some investigating around, then decided, hey, i know how to biopsy things...maybe i should just try to biopsy the region to be sure it isn't cancer. Cris has a good friend whose wife is a vet, and she graciously agreed to get a pathologist to look at it if we sent it to her. soooooo.....this little plan found us injecting lidocaine into sherpa's....ahem.....private region (geez....i know i'm a gynecologist, but this is still a PG blog!), then taking a big chunk out of the mass. i stitched it up nicely, and all was well. Except for the fact that Cris couldn't sleep for the next several nights until the biopsy returned. which, we are soooo happy to report was benign. so, those are the recent adventures in the Stickley house :)

Youngstown State University

This weekend was a much anticipated get-together with some of my wonderful friends from college. I met these girls in 1997, when we were 17-18 years old. we went through undergrad, and then medical school together, and i have always felt so blessed to have been surrounded by such wonderful people during my college years. My friend Dee lives in Denver, and Shab and Bharani flew in this weekend, and we spent a few days catching up. it was great to see these wonderful friends, and i hope that next time we get together even more of the girls from our college days will be able to make it.
N0w, for the funny part. Take a good look a these girls..... now take a good look at these girls (no, they are NOT us!).....

what could we possibly have in common, you may ask...Somehow we all ended up at the same "Event" on friday night. Unknowingly we had somehow gotten tickets to attend one of the nations biggest "Raves"! I cannot even begin to explain what the 4 of us were thinking when we arrived in the parking lot, and looked over at the girl in the car next to us, who was wearing neon fishnet from head to toe, with fur knee high boots. un-be-lieve-able!!!! well, we ventured into the ampitheatre, and had to keep reminding eachother to pick our bottom jaws up off the ground as we tried to process how we had possibly ended up among thousands of 17-20 year old rave-kids. we tried to look inconsipcuous, but somehow we managed to attract quite a bit of attention as we wandered around. this was definately an event that will not soon be forgotten!

we had a great time exploring Colorado, shopping, talking, laughing, and eating, and i can't wait til our next chance to get together!

Juneau and Nova enjoyed the extra attention, and loved the new presents they got...they tried out their 3D sidewalk chalk tonight when we got home, and it was definately a hit!

2nd Annual Bug Day Celebration!

It's a wonderful day in the Stickley House!! We celebrated the 2nd anniversary of Juneau Iris becoming a member of the Stickley family. We love this little Bug!
The day started off pretty busy, as usual :) Cris and the girls dropped me off at work, and then ran a bunch of errands. After work we headed over to our favorite restaurant to celebrate...Cici's Pizza! We headed back home for dessert, and to watch Juneau's adoption video together.

Somber face.....

Cheesy face...
Dessert was of course, Dirt Pudding with gummy worms...a big hit!

Ready for bed!

2 wonderful years together with our beautiful little Junebug. We love you, sweet girl!

a day in the life....

i like my job, i really do....BUT there are certainly down sides of being an ob/gyn... we had big plans for the weekend....big plans. i had a 3 day weekend as a reward for the pain of being Dr. Death all week, and so Friday we were going to go on a big hike, Saturday we were going to rock climb at Garden of the Gods, and Sunday we were going to Denver for the Body Worlds exhibit. Well, we are 0 for 3 with our weekend plans. Friday i was supposed to be off, but i told a patient i would do her "quick" little surgery on Friday b/c that was the only day she could do it. Well, the quick little surgery turned into a bit bigger surgery (i'll spare you the gorey details), and so we were already off to a slow start. We had tons of running around to do, including the girls last set of shots for a while. Speaking of shots, you should've heard poor little nova when she figured out what we were doing..."No thank you, please, no thank you. i don't need one, please. no thank you!". so, friday ended up being a bit of waste. Then saturday i talked cris into doing a little garage sale-ing, and during that fabulous time juneau fell asleep at 10:00 and slept 3 hours, and before we knew it saturday was over. so, that leaves Sunday. I get a phone call this morning that my lovely and wonderful little patient, who i was supposed to deliver tomorrow, was in labor. So, we laid the girls down for nap, and i went into the hospital. i got her all tucked in to the hospital, then ran out to our FAVORITE colorado pseudo-fast food restaurant for dinner. We got our food, and Juneau then announced she had to go potty (for about the one billionth time). Cris took her to the bathroom, while i devoured my smashburger. he got back to the table, took one bite, and i was paged back to the hospital b/c my patient was about to deliver! we threw the burgers in boxes, threw the girls in carseats, then sped off to the hospital, when i got another page, that she delivered like 3 minutes after they paged me, and i missed the whole thing....oh the Drama!!!! fortunately everything went beautifully, and she has a lovely new baby, but i just could not believe i missed it!
sooooooooo.....long story short, as the late 1970's song goes "mamma don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys"....or in this case OB/GYN's, cuz they just might end up with a cold smashburger on a sunday afternoon.
Behold, the SmashBurger.... well, on to other things. do you want to see something gross?.......

that, my friends, is a bulk package of those disgusting little marshmellows that come in lucky charms. did you even know you could buy them like that? well, at a magical little place called Planktown Country Market, you can buy practically ANYTHING in bulk. It is a little amish store by my parents house in ohio, and when cris and the girls (who eat tons of lucky charms) discovered these magical little gifts (thanks a lot, gramma Saccenti!) they were in heaven. I am beyond embarrassed to admit that my girls eat Sugar Cereal, and on top of that we add extra sugar in the form of compressed/processed tiny marshmellows....but if you could see how happy this makes them you would understand!!! :)
"delicious" says little nova....

also, please ignore the fact that there are so many fingerprints on the windows you can barely see out of them....it is useless to clean those windows because they are dirty again in about 15 seconds.

Juneau spent some time on her water-water table. She prefers to actually sit on the table. Their new FAVORITE toy is this little snowball maker. The call it their "clapping hands", which i guess does make sense.

and so, we are back to another work week. i am REALLY looking forward to seeing some of my friends from med school this weekend. We are having a little tiny mini reunion in Denver, and it is going to be amazing.

Happy Fourth of July!

Our 3 day weekend started off with a bang :)
after our trip to the zoo, we hadn't really planned to venture back out to see the fireworks, BUT when the girls woke up from their nap we decided we would just head out to the Fourth of July Celebration on post. It ended up being quite the little event...UNTIL....... yes, that is an eyeball. it is not actually the eyeball of the injured party, but it looks prettty much exactly like it. Cris became a casualty of the bouncey house, and he wasn't even inside it! He was standing with his face right next to the little net windows, encouraging Nova as she practiced some of her really cool moves (her best move is jumping up, and then landing on her bottom...she's really proud of that one). anyway, he was standing right next to the net window, pretending to be a scary bear (which Nova LOOVES), and a rather rambunctious kid fell into the net, and his finger fell directly into Cris' left eye, resulting in a pretty intense Corneal Abrasion. sooooo, cris has been pretty much out of comission for the last 48 hours. Yesterday there wasn't a whole lot he could do except lie on the couch with his eyes closed. today has been a bit of an improvement, but he is still mostly blind. We did have a fantastic visit to the ER yesterday morning...and i'm not even being sarcastic! we were registered in about 3 minutes, screened in about 15 minutes, seen about 10 minutes later, and out the door in under an hour. it was really quite remarkable. anyway, he seems to be on the mend. we are not really sure how things are going to go tomorrow since he will be taking care of two 2 year olds mostly blind....should be interesting :)
anyway, this is a really cool lady on stilts at the festival. Juneau thought she was awesome. Nova....not so much. you can tell because her fingernails are digging into my neck.

and there was corn. lots and lots of corn. and turkey legs. and those really cool spiral potatoes. and fresh squeezed lemonade. and ice cream. and funnel cakes (although, somehow we left without actually getting a funnel cake....)

p.s....thanks for the really adorable 4th of july dress, aunt cheryl! I had a little tiny 6-12 month version of the EXACT same dress, which i squeezed nova into so they could be matching. and they looked so very, very cute.

well, we hadn't planned to stay until 9:30 for the fireworks....but by the time we finished the corn, turkey leg, lemonade, and spiral potatoes, and then bounced in the bounce house (along with previously mentioned injury), it was already pushing 9:30, so we spread out the blanket, forked out the $5 for the glow necklaces, and settled in for the show. The girls were super cute. Whenever a firecracker went off Juneau announced "Boom!" every.single.time. it was actually really cute, and they loved the show, so it didn't matter so much that we dragged 2 overtired baby girls, and one partially blinded husband through the door at almost 11 p.m.

soooo, it's back to work tomorrow. I am the infamous "Dr. Death" this week. The first day back after a 3 day weekend is always ridiculous. I always prepare myself for the worst, and it is always about 10x that bad. i spend pretty much the entire day apologizing to the patients for their 3 hour wait. so, wish me luck tomorrow....hopefully i won't have a meltdown! :)

zoo fun

we are enjoying Day 1 of our 3 day weekend. it was supposed to be a 4 day weekend until The Joint Commission (for the non-medical field readers these are the big-bad-guys of hospital accredidation) announced a surprise visit at the hospital. The hospital commander then cancelled our day off that was scheduled for Friday. oh well, a 3 day weekend is still great. AND, i was able to hide out in my office and avoid having to answer any questions about the Fire Escape Plan, or where the Emergency Eye Wash is located.

today i had to make some quick rounds at the hospital, and then we headed up to the zoo. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we had so much fun. When my mom was here she did the Gramma thing, and bought the super-deluxe-1billion ride punch card for the carousel, so the girls had a great time riding it today. juneau was more excited about the carousel than she was about the animals! thanks for the spoiling, gram!

the zoo carousel runs at super-speed..the girls love it! after the carousel ride one of junebug's favorite animals was waiting for us....i'm sure it is against all kinds of rules to feed the peacocks popcorn, but the girls LOVED it!
even Nova wanted a turn!
On to the play area, where they went down the green slide about 100 times

Bug looks sooooo grown up in this picture! she will be Three in less than 3 months!!

Nova had a bit of a fit, which resulted in a pretty impressive breath-holding spell, which resulted in her passing out near the Okapi exhibit, which resulted in her being a total grouch for most of the day....Juneau, however, had a blast running in the sprinklers

our little dinosaurs!

the girls are THRILLED that it is Wagon Season again. their legs are bit longer this year, which has meant some fighting for foot space in the bottom of the wagon. Nova found a good way to avoid the foot fight...

yesterday we spent the afternoon at the park. the weather has been gorgeous and we are loving it

the girls played in the fountain, and then enjoyed some snacks on the lawn

after the fountain fun we stopped in for dinner at a cute little cafe-syle french restaurant called La Creperie. you guessed it, they specialize in Crepes! the girls weren't too crazy about their ham and cheese crepe, but nova was in heaven when they brought out the banana-chocolate crepe. Her mini-daddy tastebuds were quite happy with this selection. The girls will love to take Aunt Becky and Cousin Hope to La Creperie next month when they visit!

splashing in the fountain at the park i doubt that we are going to venture out to the fireworks this weekend since they don't start until 9:15, which is wayyyyyy past the girls bedtime.

The BEST news of the weekend is that my dad was released from the hospital yesterday! my parents spent the night in cleveland because it was already getting late by the time he was discharged, and they wanted to be close to the hospital in case they needed it, but this morning they headed back to Willard, and are all settled in at the house. I am soooooo thankful that the surgery went so smoothly, and that the recovery is off to a brilliant start. He still has a long road ahead of him, but he has done so well already that i think it is going to be just fine.