Christmas and now Pati is four.

When we moved to Akron I remember thinking, "When we are done here, Jan will be 9 and our baby (not born yet) will be 4." Unbelievable. Jan will be 9 in March and Pati turned four two days after Christmas.

I have several good pictures that I am trying to post but suddenly my computer will no longer give me the option for pasting pictures in. Really, the reason I don't update this site very often is that there is always something that goes haywire. I can't tell all the times that I have written a post, attempted to put up pictures and it simply will not work.

Shucks. It just isn't as much fun to tell the story without them.

Christmas was wonderful. David was home. We stayed home all day and friends that are like family, Steve and Heather Holsenback and their new baby, came and spent the day with us. I didn't make a big dinner we just ate easy good things and didn't worry about food and dishes. We played games and with a few new toys and just enjoyed each other. We saved the last night of Advent for Christmas night and that is always a special thing for us to do together.

Pati is four now! She was born two days after Christmas. She wanted to have a spa for her birthday. Facial masks and makeovers, footbaths and toenail paint. So the girls and I fixed up their bedroom and it was a beautiful and fun way to spend some time...getting beautiful. A family that came to Akron for residency the same year we did, and a resident from the hospital that Pati thinks is pretty special came for cake and a pinata. It was a fun party even though her day follows Christmas so closely.

Sally, a special friend of ours from Akron, invited us to go with her to Akron's First Night, a New Year's party that covers much of downtown and involves music and crafts and buses and fireworks. The kids loved it.

Now we are into 2011, the year that we are done with residency. Looking forward to the change and moving, but appreciating this place that we have lived for nearly five years. I think the kids are excited about moving, but sad to think about leaving. Change is difficult. It is hard to visualize what it will be like. Whatever changes, they are looking forward to the change in David's schedule, and I hear them talking about when we move, when Dad can come home more.
We are looking forward to that most of all.

Breather

Finally getting a good night's sleep, and a day off from the hospital so I can write a little bit.

Kristi and I have had a very busy final year in Ohio. The kids have all been very active with tennis lessons, horseback riding lessons, football, soccer, hiking, school, and taking care of me when I stumble home to study or prepare a lecture before I rumble back to the hospital.

From Fall 2010

We have been in Ohio for 4 and a half years now, and are getting excited about leaving. Not because we don't like it here, but because it just hasn't felt like home to us. Interviewing out in Prineville, and just being back in Oregon made us both realize that it is really home for us. We will definitely miss lots of things about Ohio. Here, we are just so close to so many amazing things and places. We have a great church, good medical care, wonderful parks and libraries, lots of good zoos and science centers to visit, and museums all over.

Kristi and I were able to get away this year to interview at two places, and she also came with me to the annual conference of the American College of Surgeons in Washington, DC! That was fun. The conference was a bit of a zoo, and I wasn't really impressed with the quality of many of the lectures that I attended, but there were some neat ones, and our spare time was packed with sigh-seeing. Was really neat to visit so many fun places where so many imposing historical events and people have been. We toured the Capitol, the White House, the National Archives, National Library of Congress, National Museum of Art and the other Smithsonian Museums on the Mall. Kristi went back to the Holocaust Museum as she has read lots of books about it this past year, and saw lots of things without having to hear me whine about having to use the bathroom or my feet hurting, or hear about how hungry I was. Was also nice to not have the kids to go with us this time, but in a way would have been really fun to have them experience it with us, especially the older ones.

I think our favorite part of the trip was getting to see the National Portrait Museum, where they had a very large exhibit of Norman Rockwell paintings (from the private collections of Spielberg and Lucas mostly) and many we had not seen before. We also spent a day at Mt. Vernon, and that was also really fun.

Now we are getting ready for Christmas, Pati's birthday, and thinking that not too long from now we will be selling our house here, packing up some of our things (hopefully we can leave lots of it here) and heading back home to start a new life together.

I read today a really good article in The New Yorker by Atul Gawande, and if you get the chance it is worth reading. Let me know if you are interested and I will send you the link, or just send you the article. It is on end of life care, and how to approach it. Not something in the Christmas spirit, I know, but something I think we all should think about more and have nailed down ahead of time.

Looking forward to a good next 6 months of getting lots of loose ends all tied up as I have a medical license to obtain, cases to finish up, lectures to give, house to fix up and sell, belongings to pack up and move, need to find a place to move to, and of course the biggest exam of my entire life in the board examination which I will take and hopefully pass in August.

From Washington DC 2010

Leaving this time with a quick picture of Kristi and I at Mt Vernon. Will see what I can do to post something after Christmas so you all can feel like you were here.

David

It's A Birthday!

They let David come home for a few hours on his birthday. Long enough to eat some pie, open some presents and get a few hours of sleep. He gets Christmas off this year but seems to be paying for it already, although technically he is supposed to pay for it over New Years when those who don't get Christmas off take their time away from the hospital.
All he wants for his birthday and Christmas is some sleep I think.

Wrong season, I know.

Need to get pictures of the recent snowstorm off the camera and onto the blog, but I just found this picture from the kids triathalon in September and really like it. Just posting it really quick.