Christmas

The Christmas Season is already drawing to a close. I am sad to see it go so quickly. Between the late Thanksgiving and the hospital move, I feel like I hardly got to enjoy it! Ronnie had a great first Christmas living at home. He decked the house out in lights and helped me make the interior warm and festive as well. We were able to entertain a few times in the past few weeks which also brought cheer to our home. We spent our Christmas up in Ft. Wayne with my Grandma and my mom's siblings this year. It is always so fun to get together with everyone and goof off a little bit. The DELICIOUS Christmas feast never hurts either. ;)

Christmas decor

This year we have so enjoyed decorating the house. Since it's Ronnie's first official Christmas at home, even he has been in on the fun!

Historic Times

This week has been full of packing, moving, unpacking, and strange schedules as Wishard Hospital makes the historic move two blocks west to become Eskenazi Health. As we leave this grungy old building for a shiny new one, we have been reminded at every step of the rich history of Wishard Memorial Hospital. With over 150 years of service to the community, Wishard has played many roles including being a place of healing for soldiers during the Civil War and a place of learning as one of the nations first nursing schools. Today, Wishard-Eskenazi stands out as the regions top burn center and level one trauma center, and I couldn't be more proud.

While I'm sure I wont miss the basement cockroaches and speratic leaks and breaks, I will miss the secret passage ways and stories that go along with this old building. You see, Wishard has history for me too; history that began even before I started working here. Both my parents worked here in the Wishard basement after graduating from college; my mom as a cytology tech and my dad as a med tech. I've heard stories about their days down in the basement and I even work with some of their past coworkers now! But leaving Wishard is only the end of a chapter and I for one am beyond excited for our new home as Eskenazi Health.

The new Eskenazi boasts individual rooms for each patient, a new Clinical Decisions unit, a rooftop garden, the second largest parking garage in Indiana, snazzy art pieces, and all the latest innovations that earned it a green leaf certification. And best of all... the lab is NOT in the basement! We graduated all the way up to the second floor! After several tours and a bit of wandering, I have learned my way to most of the most necessary locations: lab, locker room, breakroom, cafeteria, and of course Starbucks. I'm so excited to be a part of something so amazing, and while it has been a bit stressful, I can honestly say I have enjoyed the ride.

All of our boxes arrived at the lab yesterday and a select few of us spent the evening unpacking and organizing each lab bench. Today, the instruments are being set up and validated. That leaves a scant few of us here at Wishard today to run the few samples that trickle in from the ER and units. Tomorrow is the big day. Over 200 patients will be moved, with the help of the Indiana National Gaurd and Navy Reserves as well as EMS, volunteers, and police, to the new hospital. We will be working from 2 locations starting tonight until everyone is out. Yes, this is a legistical nightmare that we are just begining to comprehend. It comes with a 12 hour shift starting at 3am tomorrowm, too.

Wish us luck and say a few prayers as we end this move and begin this exciting new chapter!

For more info about our move, check out:

• WTHR:  Eskenazi facility rises above old Wishard
• IndyStar:  Eskenazi Hospital prepares to open
• IndyStar: Eskenazi Hospital Tour

Meet Boomer

So I just realized, that I never officially introduced the world to our new (old) dog, Boomer! Yes... you heard right... we have ANOTHER dog. Boomer is Ronnie's childhood dog that we decided to take in. We brought him back with us after our trip to Oklahoma in November. He seems to be adjusting well to the house of energetic little dogs. He jumps right in and runs around with Mia and Sulley. He even tried to play tug of war with them the other day despite his complete toothlessness.

Little Lady Turns One!

We made a quick trip to Oklahoma for our sweet little niece's first birthday. It was so fun to hang out with our little lady and the rest of Ronnie's family. Ronnie was able to visit his sister and brother at their jobs and we got to spend time with all his grandparents (Keep his papa in your prayers as he is having a dificult time recovering from heart surgery). Little miss Brooke had a lot of fun with her birthday cake and really seemed to like the play food we got for. A girl after my own heart. ;) We miss them all so much already and cant wait until the next visit. 

Halloween Puppers

I know this is a little late, but we had a fun Halloween this year.  I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Indy, Halloween was postponed due to severe storms.  All the trick-or-treaters came around on Friday night instead and the puppies were ready for them.  Sulley was the world's cutest baby seal and Mia was a pig.  

Weekend Work

I passed another milestone in my "new" job a couple of weeks ago. I worked my first weekend. This marked the end of my official training and the start of handeling benches on my own. Weekends have a lower volume of work but with fewer staff, I had a large hematology area to cover. The weekend went really well and I managed to hold my own despite it being only 3 days after going live with our new hematology analyzers. Funny thing though; working that weekend made me the resident expert on the new instruments which pretty much still stands. I dont mean that in a cocky way by any means. The analyzer is new to everyone and having four or so consecutive days running it, trouble shooting it, and releasing results with low volume of "experts" to ask over the weekend made me feel pretty competent. I really enjoyed the fast pace and managed to keep up and hold my own. The downside of working the weekend was, well, not having a weekend, but having the days off during the week was a huge perk. I even got to take Mom out for her birthday! I dont know, maybe I can get use to this weekend thing... At least for the couple time a month it comes around.

Tortellini Pasta Salad

I couldn't wait to post this after making it tonight.  We are having a birthday pitch-in at work tomorrow and I needed an appetizer that was easy and could be refrigerated.  I decided it was the perfect opportunity to try something from Pinterest [of course].  I've been wanting to try this new rendition of pasta salad for a while now.  It has tortellini, cherry tomatoes, pepperoni, basil, and fresh mozzarella.  It turned out SO GOOD.  I'm SUPER excited to take it in tomorrow.

The original recipe can be found here by "Dream Home Cooking Girl."  I made a couple changes.  First, I was making it for a large group so instead of using all tortellini, I used a box of colored spiral noodles as well.  I figured it would make it a little less rich and add some more color.  Second, my little basil plant that has done so well all summer while I didn't need it, is now pretty sorry looking so I used dried basil to taste.  Really, I didn't do a lot of measuring; just kinda eyeballed it.  All-in-all, it was very easy and VERY yummy.  

• Cook tortellini and spiral noodles in separate pots following package directions 
• (I used a normal box of noodles and two 8 oz packages of tortellini.)
• Once done, drain and rinse with cold water
• Add in:
• about a cup of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 3/4 cup of pepperoni cut in to small pieces
• 1 cup fresh mozzarella cheese, diced
• about 3/4 cup Ceasar dressing
• basil, salt, and pepper to taste (Original recipe calls for 3/4 cup copped fresh basil)
• Gently stir and refrigerate

Pay Day!

I've been at my new job for three whole weeks now.  Since I started in the middle of a pay period, today was my first big girl pay day!  That is a milestone in any college grad's life and mine is no different.  I would love to say that I went and celebrated in some way, but truth be told, I am just enjoying a lazy weekend at home catching up on some much needed sleep.  I've had a time getting use to these early mornings.  I get up at 5am now and, as a night owl and ANTI morning bird, it has taken its toll.  

I have enjoyed my first couple weeks on the bench though and have been "checked off" to work in blood gas, troponin iStat, Urinalysis, and kit testing.  It's been a lot of fun and I am looking forward to starting a new bench sometime next week.  

I'm sure this will make for a story later....

Well, I've survived my first week of work.  And when I say survived, I mean it.  I started the week with two days of orientation.  At the end of the second day, the Wishard computer system crashed and was down for more than 36 hours.  The WHOLE computer system.  No way to register patients, order tests, view histories or results, nothing.  While  "down time" creates a problem for almost every area of the hospital, it creates a very chaotic and incomprehensible problem for the lab.  Everyone handled the mess gracefully but the backlog of work, manual processing, and endless phone calls meant no one had time to deal with new employees.  They were all very apologetic but I spent most of the week sorting papers and doing what I could to help and stay out of the way.  The majority of my processing training has been rescheduled for Monday and Tuesday, then I can finally begin training to be a generalist tech in the core lab's chemistry and hematology departments!  Yippee!

It's a boy!

Yes, it's true!  We've adopted another little bundle of fur and this time he is extra fuzzy.  We have named our new 8 week old Kind Charles Cavalier Spaniel Sulley.  We have been thinking for a while that Mia needed a little play mate and we fell in love with this little guy when we went to take our niece to see the puppies at the pet shop.  We were so excited to bring him home and happy that our family could enjoy him too!  The adjustment has been a little more difficult for Mia than we had hoped.  Her little feelings seemed to be a bit hurt and she ignored me and the puppy altogether for a couple days.  She seems to be coming around now though.  They run around the house and tackle each other for hours on end.  We are still working on sharing chew sticks though.  Sulley keeps trying to take Mia's beloved chew sticks.  Mia gets her little feelings hurt and sulks.  haha.  It's a doggie world in our house these days, but it is fun nonetheless.  

Pinterest snacks for little ones

Just wanted to take a quick minute to tell you about a couple of the pinterest snack my sister-in-law and I made for her beautiful daughter last week.  The baby was teething while she was here, so we tried out these teething biscuits by ImprintAlish.  They were quick, easy, healthy, and tasty.  The texture was perfect for teething biscuits as they were chewy and didnt crumble.  The baby loved them and even the boys snuck a couple.

We also tried out these homemade goldfish crackers by Tasty Kitchen Blog.  They were also really good.  They tasted a lot like cheez-its.  They took a bit more time for a lower yield but all in all a fun and delicious snack.

Ok.  now the last one I want to share is a real keeper.  We had bbq pulled pork for dinner one night and made these quick and easy buns from Taste of Home.  They were SO GOOD.  The boys managed to sneak the rest of them as a snack later with and without the meat.  Ronnie made me promise I would make them again soon for dinner rolls or buns.  Love them.  (I will mention that a friend recommended to me that we let the dough rise for 30 minutes instead of the recommended 10.)  

***pictures are all from their respective sites.  please follow links to recipes and credits.   

together at last

Just a short day after we got home from Alaska, Ronnie's two younger sisters and his sister's husband and baby came for a week long visit.  It was the first time they made the treck out to Indiana to see our home and the first time for me to meet out sweet baby niece.  She is 9 months old now and it is hard to believe I had yet to see her!  We all had such a good time.  We ventured around town some, played with the baby, shopped, and did several pinterest recipes (of course!).  The guys spent a lot of time fishing while us "ladies" chit-chatted about life.  I cant even tel you how good it was to spend time with my sister-in-laws.  We had yet to have a chance to just be friends.  Needless to say, we are already trying to plan another get together really soon!

Mia wasnt quite sure what to think of the baby, but they were never apart!

she loves lemons!

we took a quad bike around the canal on a double date!

Alaskan Cruise

Ronnie and I just got back from an amazing family vacation to Alaska, Canada, and Washington State.  We spent seven days on the ship "Rhapsody of the Seas" with the whole family... Mom, Dad, sisters, Grandma, Uncle Rick, Aunt Lynn and Vince. 

Our first stop on the cruise was in Jeuno, Alaska where we went whale watching, saw Mendenhall Glacier, and shopped in the quaint town.

In Skagway, Alaska, we took a tour all the way up to the Yucon and British Columbia; first by bus then back by train.  We stopped in the small town of Carcross where we ate a nice lunch and played with some adorable sled dog puppies.

Our Captain took us to Glacier Bay where we were able to see a glacier up close from the deck of the ship; icebergs and all!

Our last stop was Victoria, Canada.  There, we were able to walk through the Butchart Gardens.  The flowers were breathtaking. 

All too soon, our cruise was over and we were back in Seattle, ready for the next adventure.  My mom's cousin Bill helped us get all ten of us and all of our luggage to Port Townsend to visit his parents for a couple of days.  It was great to see their home and also visit Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. 

 

Leave of Absence- Done with School

HELLO OUT THERE!  I'm back in blogger world and am excited to post about some of the amazing things I have experienced over the last few months.  I know It has been a long while since I have posted anything.  School left me with very little free time this year as it was my senior year in the IU School of Medicine, Clinical Laboratory Science program.  So I guess we will just start off there.  To all my frequent followers, I apologize for the number of posts coming up in the next few days/weeks as I try to catch up.  I've tried to post most of them ahead of this post

I finally graduated!  We had our IUPUI graduation in May, but it didn't feel "real".  After all, we still had like 6 weeks of school left.  On top of it, our program is made up of 12 IUPUI students and 12 IU Health Methodist students, so it was hard celebrating without half of our friends.  Nonetheless, here are a few pics:

My Instructors

I was surprised at the graduation with an Honor's Cord!  

Our "real" graduation was at the end of June when we had our program dinner.

sorry, I will find a better pic later

Here it is!  All done.  I passed my certification last week so I am now Kristyn McCulley, BS MLS(ASCP).  That is "Bachelor of Science, Medical Laboratory Scientist (American Society of Clinical Pathologists).

Nerd Party!

I was put in charge of our CLS end of the year class party.  We had a nice budget to play with and, thankfully, a class willing to play along.  I [of course] used pinterest as my inspiration:  See my board here.  I passed out ideas to willing members of the class and here is what we came up with!  It was so much fun and a great last hoorah before we all went our separate ways.  

Jello Agar Plates

Ginger Bread Techs

Red Velvet Red Blood Cells

White Blood Cell Sugar Cookies
"Love U Bunny Rodak"

Virus Treats and Red Hots

All the Urine problems

The Stool Cup Chocolate Pudding Bar

Love these Peeps.  : )