Christmas marathon!

On my last on call night (23rd to 24th) was a busy one. I got to sleep about 1hour.... We had surgeries till almost 12 at night, afterwards we had to got go to the ER to take care of 5 care accident victims at one time.... Unfortunately I was on call with my least favorite residents and I wished that I had been down there with someone who had actually cared about teaching and not just sent me around to get lab results and find forms.... He did have me write orders, which was kind of a struggle, since I have never done that before and he did not really feel like explaining it to me.... Not a great experience, but after the third patient I kind of knew what I had to do, but all the calculations you got to do to figure out how much i.v. fluids and pain meds a child is allowed to get it definetely not easy at 2am!!!!! Fortunately I now do have a calculator, thanks to Santa-Deb! After we took care of the patients in the ER we still had to check on the kids that had had surgery that day. It has to be done, but between 2 and 3 am?!?!?!?! Why not let them sleep and wait till prerounds, which start between 4.30 and 5.....
On Wednesday I tried to sleep during the day. Even though I barely got to sleep the night before, I had such a hard time sleeping. I need to get used to that!!!!! At night we then had the Vessels Christmas! I finally got to see the whole family and I really enjoyed the night with everybody. The gifts were incredibly creative.... At it was once again to much fun! I am so glad that I got to spend another Vessels-Christmas, even though it is definetely louder than back home in Germany.... And I believe there was not one moment when everybody actually paid attention to the same thing at once.....I was Pawpaws person and he made me a little really pretty wooden basket! I use it for my keys now, just perfect for that! I am glad I did not have to vote for my favorite present, because there were quiet a few very good presents, some really funny, others very thoughtful, and all of them very appropriate (even though I did not get all the clues right away...) - the baseballcap, the lamp cake, Mr. Britannica movie, the Scrap book for pawpaw, the picture Den made, the Harry Potter book ends (with no train from Honkong yet ;)).....
We didn't go to bed until 2.30 on Christmas Eve and therefore slept in on Christmas day! (A day when stores are closed in the US!!!) Tim and Deb opened their presents and afterwards I went to Meemaws and Pawpaws to spend Christmas with my American parents! We opened presents and I was just overwhelmed, but the number of presents that I got... Very good presents, just perfect for a world traveler.... (THANKS AGAIN!!!!) After opening presents we started preparing the food for the Christmas dinner. I baked my favorite cheesecake for the birthday dinner. It was not easy to get all the ingredients, but we found a store that acutally had Quark, but I had to come up with something to exchange the selmolina flour for... I didn't know you could only get it in special stores.....But it turned out to be a good cake anyway! Later in the afternoon the whole family showed up and we had a wounderful Christmas dinner with Ham, Portato Salad, Corn pudding, green beens, sweet potato mashed portatoes with pecans and marshmallows on top.... Very delicious! Unfortunately I had to leave early, because I had to get up to go to work the next day... That sucked!!!!
The 26th is not a holiday in the US. So I had to work, but it was a good day, a few minor procedures and one big interesting one. A kid that had had a nephrectomy about two weeks ago, did come back with abdominal pain and bile vomiting. (of course he got a CT scan.... ). We had to open him up again and explore it abdomen to find the obstruction he supposedly had. It was amazing how much adhesions we found inside.... It took us three hours to deseparate his whole small bowel! Incredible! I finally left the hospital after 13 hours and went straight to Meemaw's and Pawpaw's again for the traditional Birthday dinner! (yes more family time and more food!!!) Fortunately I did not have to leave early that night. The theme was Maryland this year. The crab cakes were amazing, as well as the crab dip! After dinner we exchanged Birthday cards - some were extremly hillarous! And once again I was amazed by how many thought of getting me a card..... I would have never expected that!!!! When we got home that night I spend some of my Christmasmoney. I finally remembered to go online and check out the "Whicked" Schedule and look for available tickets. Abby and Meg had gotten tickets for Christmas to go see the musical, so I finally found someone who was interest in going as well. Fortunataly I still got to get a ticket for that night!!! I am really excited that it wasn't sold out yet and I am really looking forward to seeing it. It's an awardwinning broadway musical and it tells the story of how the witches of the Wizard of oz became the way they are. I kept hearing the commercial on the radio and I really liked the music, but I didn't want to go all bymyself.....
On Saturday I tried to sleep in, but that didn't work too well, so I did some of the things I need to get done on my day off, like washin clothes, cleaning up my room (cause it does not always look like a bomb exploded in there!!!!!!).... Once all that was done and the fruitsalad for the next dinner was made, I went to get real rolls for breakfast!!! It was once again a challange. I had not quite figured out how to make the GPS stop sending me to a place I had alreay arrived at.... I now did figure it out, but at first it kept sending me back to whole foods, which was where I wanted to leave.....GPS is not always as easy as you may think it is, operator mistakes are quite easy to make.... ;) but I finally made it Meemaw's and Pawpaw's house and we had real rolls for Breakfast - you actually had to use a breadknife to cut them, you couldn't just tear them appart or use a regular knife to cut is nicely..... GREAT! Afterwards I showed some of our swiss pictures, only some, because all of them would take days I guess....It was nice to go back and remember some of the great trips we have had in Switzerland.... Later in the afternoon we went back to Tim and Deb's Place to have some more Christmas, this time with Tim and Deb's kids and family. It was a fun crowd. I enjoyed it so much. Everybody is just so easy to get along with! The boys were so much fun to watch playing Rockstar (Wii Concept, but you got drums, a guitar and someone singing and you have to get through a whole song without too many mistakes!!!) Dave went Rockstar crazy.... It was hillarious! I tried to play the drums as well, but after two songs I had to give up, because my leg started to hurt from hitting the pedal (I would have never expected that to happen....) The gift exchange was a lot of fun. I really liked to little wish list, cause everybody got something they really enjoyed getting and will definetely use. After our little gift exchange it was time for the family gift exchange.... and once again I couldn't believe that I got so many really useful and fun things (Deb basically went out and got everything off the list that I had made for my person....incredible and awesome)!!! After everybody had opened their gifts, I got to enjoy my first "Deb Dinner" It was really good. We had beef (tender and tasty), green cabage (just as good as the red one at home), potatoecasserole (mmh, mh, mmmh, mh, mmh), green beens..... I had also made some Gluehwein (for the first time from scratch), which turned out to be pretty good! After dinner we finally started the rematch of Pictionary. Guys vs. Girls. It is so much fun, and it is great crowd to play it with!!! I hated having to leave early to get ready to go to bed, cause once again I had to get up early.... The girls one again (who would have guessed ;)!!!!!!) Pricilla seems to be a board game maniac... Maybe I will have some time for social stuff during the next weeks, because I would love to have another game night!!! It is so much fun and I really enjoyed the night with all of you!!!!
Now I am back in the hospital, finally manged to write another post and will hopefully get out early... After all it's Sunday and I did not get much sleep last night (what else could I expect in a house full of fun people....) This morning I fortunatly had set my self phone alarm as well, because the electricity went out last night because of the storm and my radio alarm clock did not work this morning, just like the coffee machine, but Tim had set his alarm to make sure I didn't oversleep (so sweet!!!) and made sure that the coffee machine worked....
After a week like this I just wish America and KY and MD in particular wouldn't be so far away from Europe....
I had to much fun (not much sleep), but soooooooooooooo much fun!!! Thank you all for making this another special Vessels Christmas!!!!