Duluth Graduation

Ladies and Gentleman, 

I present to you 

[drum roll please]

Dr. Eli Horn!

Seven years in the making,

Dr. Horn is now a Board Certified Family Physician,

recognized by the American Academy of Family Physicians,

and graduate of the Duluth Family Medicine Residency Program.

I am so proud!  And so relieved!  We're in the home stretch, with graduation actually behind us.  Even though Eli has six more weeks of residency (to make up for paternity leave), he is officially a graduate of his program and we are thrilled to be on the way out of here.  His final two rotations will be reasonable, so we can feel the end approaching.

Almost everyone else in Eli's class will be done on Monday.  (Every year, in every residency program across the country, last-year residents finish on June 30 and first-year residents begin on July 1.)  So it was a true celebration last weekend at our graduation here in Duluth.  Everyone is ready to move on and begin the next phase as a normal doctor with relatively normal working hours.  It means more time for family.  More time for hobbies.  More time for sleep.  More time for anything!  It will be sooooooo good!

For us, it will mean more time together as a family.  More playing, more reading, more hiking, more trips to the library, more trips to the park, more everything.  We have a busy year ahead of us as we begin preparing for Africa, but we'll be preparing together.  It will be a radical change for us and we are absolutely ready for this change!

And we know our boys are ready for the change too.  They miss Eli.  Caleb is definitely aware of his absence and sometimes asks for Daddy and starts looking around the house for him.  And although Kai isn't aware when Eli's gone, he couldn't be happier when his Daddy comes home and snuggles him.  We are beyond ready to have Eli around more!

So let the celebrating continue.  August 8 is just around the corner!

Father's Day

It was a gray and rainy morning in Duluth.  Eli didn't make it home before we left for church (because he's been working overnights), so we left him a bagel and cream cheese treat to come home to, then spent the wet and soggy morning at church.  It didn't look like the sun would ever come out, but by mid-afternoon it was suddenly a glorious day!  What a pleasant Father's Day surprise :)

Eli opened some presents and cards and we enjoyed hanging out.  It's been awhile since we've spent time together (because overnight shifts are brutal) so we felt blessed to have a few hours on Father's Day to get caught up.

Eli got a book from each of the boys.  The book from Caleb is called My Dad is a Superhero by Ruby Brown, and I think we read it approximately 38 times yesterday alone.  Caleb loves it!  He loves superheroes in general, and he thinks the Dad in the book is Superman.  Just for the record, I'm perfectly okay with our son making a connection between his Daddy and Superman :)

Because it was so nice outside, we decided to grill burgers and eat dinner on the deck.  It's always a lot of work to do dinner on the deck - keeping a toddler away from the grill and its mesmerizing flames, keeping a toddler from throwing footballs at the grill, keeping a toddler from stepping on a baby whose lying on a blanket in the middle of everything, keeping a toddler from slamming his fingers in the door as he goes in and out repeatedly bringing every single ball in the house outside...  - but it's usually worth it.

A highlight of our dinner on the deck was the prayer over our meal.  Let me first explain that, randomly throughout the day, Caleb will often list all the animals at the zoo.  "Lion!  Tiger!  Colobus monkeys!  Lemurs!  Wolf!"  (And yes, he does know the difference between colobus monkeys and lemurs and gibbons and langurs and spider monkeys and...he's basically a monkey genius.)  He shouts the names of the animals, and he's started the habit of doing this whenever we say it's time to pray.  So we've started the habit of thanking God for all the animals at the zoo whenever we pray.  Last night at dinner was no exception.  I said, "Okay, Caleb, let's pray."  He instantly started the list: "Colobus monkeys in trees!  Lemurs!  Mosquitoes!  Turtles!  Concubines in trees!"

Yes, you read that right.  He said it clear as day.  Eli and I both turned and stared.  "What?" I asked Caleb, who was continuing his list.  Eli wasted no time in asking me, "What kind of zoo are you taking them to???"

After thinking for a moment, I determined that he meant porcupines.  There are two kinds at our zoo, the North American porcupine and the Mexican porcupine, the latter of which actually spends considerable time in the trees in their exhibit.  That must be what he meant.  At least, that's what we're telling ourselves :)

So the dreary day turned into a sunny evening and we celebrated Daddy Horn with books and burgers and porcupines in trees!

Happy Father's Day, Beloved.  We love you with a fierce love.

Girls Weekend

This past weekend I had the joy of traveling home to meet up with some girls from our Small Group in Chicago.  These people were our family during med school, and they have become life-long friends.  We only see them about once a year but we remain close, and they recharge and rejuvenate us like few people can!

Not all the girls could make it for the weekend, but these three lovely ladies traveled from Chicago, Indianapolis, and Dayton to join me in Michigan at my parents' house.  What a blessing and a joy!  We had a fabulous time catching up.  It was refreshing, hilarious, and life-giving.

And we were blessed with good weather!  We spent an afternoon at my parents' lakehouse and took the pontoon across the lake to a pizza place for dinner.  Then we spent the evening devouring brownies and laughing till our sides hurt.  Goodness, it's wonderful to relive old stories and share new stories too!

Kai came with me and it was a delight to introduce him and his sweet cheeks to the girls :)  Everyone exclaimed at what a snuggler he is.  And it's true - this boy loves to snuggle!  One other baby made the journey for the weekend, and Kai and Grace became fast friends.  There might have been some match-making going on :)

It was also nice to spend time with my mom and dad, and enjoy summer weather!  It's been several years since I've been home in the summer and it was refreshingly warm compared to Duluth.

 

So I came home refreshed and encouraged and at peace.  I am so grateful for these friends.  They are dear, wonderful, life-giving friends who are like family to us, and we're looking forward to spending a week with them in Montana at the end of August.  These people helped us survive medical school, and they walked with us these past three years too, even though it was from a distance.  Our upcoming Small Group Reunion will be a true celebration as we mark the end of residency!

Minneapolis Graduation

Yesterday marked the beginning of the official celebration season as we look toward the end of residency.  The University of Minnesota (which our residency is affiliated with) held its official graduation in Minneapolis.  The Duluth cohort took a charter bus down for the event where we joined everyone from the other U of M residency/fellowship programs.

The bus ride was great, with cribbage, snacks, and even "Time of Your Life" by Green Day, (requested by Eli, of course).  We can count on one hand the number of times that everyone in our class has hung out together; there are always a few people on-call at the hospital at any given point in time.  So it was a fun treat to see everyone together (spouses/fiances included).  We've been blessed with a great group of residents in Eli's class the past three years.  We are all beyond ready to get out of here, but we truly feel blessed to have traversed this tough road with such quality people.

To our surprise, Eli was honored with a Resident Teacher Award!  He didn't know until they called his name.  It's for demonstrating an "interest in and commitment to family medicine education."  Very cool.

Our residency was the very last to receive the certificates, but we're a strong bunch and many people will be practicing full-spectrum family medicine in rural Minnesota.  We are passionate about rural medicine and the great need for doctors in small communities, so we are proud that so many of our classmates are fulfilling that calling!

It was a lovely occasion made even more enjoyable by the fantastic desserts :)  Two of our fellow residents are currently pregnant, so I, being a breastfeeding Mama who also loves to eat, hopped on the hungry train with them and ate my fair share of food.  Good catering makes a good event even better :)  

We brought Kai with us and he was a total peach.  This kid is an all-star traveler and he handles being out of routine quite well.  He snuggled with Grandpa Horn most of the evening and didn't make a peep during the ceremony (at least not that anyone heard).  

Later this month we'll have another graduation ceremony here in Duluth for just our program.  Most of our fellow residents will be done at the end of this month while we have a couple months to go (because Eli took time off when both our boys were born, and thus is off-cycle), but the end is in sight - very near sight - and we are beginning a season of anticipation and rejoicing as we're about to close the final chapter on a very long and very difficult journey.  So let the celebrating begin!

Puddles

It only took five or six weeks, but I finally convinced Caleb to wear his new rain boots.  I never thought it'd take so much coaxing - they're Superman boots, for goodness sake! - but he was resistant time and time again because they were not part of the normal routine.

Every day when we leave the house, we put on coat, hat, and shoes.  Simple routine.  But each article of clothing required some transition time as winter turned into spring.  It took about a week before he'd stop wearing his winter coat in exchange for a hoodie jacket.  It took a few days before he was willing to forgo his winter hat for a baseball hat.  And then the shoes.  First we had to transition from winter boots to regular shoes, and then I tried the rain boots and apparently it was too much too soon.  Caleb thrives on routine.  Trying the rain boots was sacrilege.

But this past weekend, for some reason, he simply decided it was okay to wear the new rain boots.  His change of heart came just in time because that very day was the first of three days of rain.  And since he wore the rain boots, he also discovered the joy of jumping in puddles.

He ran, he jumped, he splashed, then ran and jumped and splashed some more.  He was soaked.  And I laughed and laughed!  I called for Eli to bring out the camera because a little water-logged boy enjoying his new Superman rain boots was something I wanted to treasure forever.

Even though I was glad to see the sun return, I'm kinda looking forward to more rainy days this summer :)

Baby Birds

After discovering that a particular robin has been hanging around lately, I wondered if a nest might be nearby.  Soon enough I found it: under our deck at the very top of the stairs.  And sure enough, there are baby birds!  We can peek through a crack and see four little robins snuggled together in a cozy nest.

I told Caleb about the birds and showed him how to find them.  He was amazed and exclaimed, "Baby birds!  I see 'em!  I see 'em!"  Now he routinely looks for the them and for their Mama too.

We can see the nest quite well from below the deck where our basement door is.  The Mama Robin always flies away when I walk by, but she stays put when Caleb is there to see her.  He likes to see if she's there and repeatedly says "scared, scared" (because I once explained that she gets scared when I'm there and now he apparently thinks that she's always scared).

While I was checking out the nest from below, I noticed two eggshells on the ground.  Robin's egg blue, just like the crayon :)  I showed Caleb to explain how birds hatch, and he took the shell from me which instantly crumbled in his little hand.  Oh well!

Here's the Mama.  She's always close by, on the fence or the clothesline post or the shed, etc.  She often has a worm or bug in her beak and I wish I could see her feed the babies but she never comes to the nest when I'm poking around.

This is how I knew there were four babies!  It's hard to tell sometimes because they all wrap into each other and blend into one big baby robin mess.  But I sat there with the camera for awhile, just waiting and waiting for a chance to take a picture of them with their mouths open in that idyllic baby bird way.  And then it happened!  I can't believe I was so lucky to get this shot!  (Incidentally, I was sitting there waiting and sometimes said, "Come on, birds!  Please look up!  Come on!"  And now Caleb will sometimes say that too: "Come on, birds!  Come on!")

We are thrilled to have this happening right outside our door.  It's wonderful to show Caleb this part of nature!