The best Nana ever

This past month we had the first our first visit from Nana since we moved to Cincinnati. Obviously we hope this is the first of many visits as we absolutely love having her stop by. We hope that Grandpa Rocket sees fit to join her on some of her trips too. This time we got to do a little back-to-school shopping while she was here. We also visited the Cincinnati Zoo (pictured here). Our girls are very lucky to have a Nana that loves them, an spoils them, and their only complaint about our latest move to Ohio is that we did not decide to move to Utah so they could be spoiled on an more regular basis. Maybe next time...

Brothers

Last month we went home to Utah (on our way to Cincinnati :) ) to celebrate my brother Spencer's wedding. It was good to spend time with our families and especially good to spend time with Spencer's new wife, Laura, and her familly at wedding showers and wedding dinners and wedding receptions and wedding weddings. The girls were in heaven of course because a wedding transforms them into instant princesses. They got new dresses and shoes and even spent an entire afternoon at the Beauty School (courtesy of Melissa and her friends) having their hair and nails done.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was going out with my brothers the night before the wedding for a boys' night out. Althougth it was not as wild as some last hurrah nights before weddings may be, we had a good time playing pool and talking and laughing. What a blessing it is to have the brothers that I have. They are all a little bit different and are all examples to me in one way or another. Even though I enjoy living where we have chosen to live, one of the downsides is that I don't get to spend so much time with my brothers. I hope they all know how much I love them.

PS. I love Melissa too but she is not one of my brothers. She did, however, marry a great guy who I count as another brother.

Off we go

After several months, innumerable prayers, and just about daily scrambles to clean the house to make it presentable for showings, we accepted an offer to sale. It is fortunate for us as it happened the day before we pack up the moving truck and head to Cincinnati. We are very grateful for the chance to get this done before we start a new chapter in our lives. We have been imagining for the last few weeks how we would make it work should we have to sell the house from Cincinnati, most significantly how we would afford to pay two house payments for who knew how many months. Thank goodness for blessings and the hard work of Karen and the girls to keep our home in immaculate shape so that it was so impressive to our buyers.

This picture is of our celebratory dinner at Tomato Jake's after selling our home. Like I said tomorrow we pack up everything we own into a moving truck (in fact, to be completely accurate, we pack up everything we own into 16 feet of an ABF trailer). We will then drive ourselves to Cincinnati, catch a plane to Utah from Indianapolis (hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly five bodies to Salt Lake City than from "the Natti"). We will spend the next week in Utah for by brother Spencer's wedding to Laura. Then we will fly back to Indianapolis, drive to Cincinnati, and unload our truck. If you aren't confused enough yet it gets worse. We will be able to move our 16 feet of stuff into our new home on June 24th but will not be able to move ourselves in until July 1st (long story) so we will be staying with our good friends Dave and Michelle Hooper for a week. I guess it is appropriate that we won't get settled until July 1st as that is when my life and our lives will change significantly for the next three years. More to follow...

Memorial Day Weekend at Falls Lake

This weekend we went camping and boating with some of our friends at Falls Lake. The forecast for Friday night included severe thunderstorm warnings and the possibility of nickel-sized hail. When we arrived at the campsite the sky was clear and blue. Several families arrived and we made it half-way through dinner before the forecast proved true (at least part of it.) We spent the next hour or so running back and forth between the campsite and the van to hide from the rain. Eventually the rain went away and we got back to dinner and s'mores.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and headed to the beach. We spent most of the day at the beach and out on the lake. We are lucky to have such great friends to spend time with and to live in such a beautiful state. Soon we will have to say goodbye to both our friends and North Carolina...so sad for us.

Souvenirs

In getting our home ready to put on the market I was going through some of our things that were in storage and found a picture we had taken down some time ago. It is a painted picture of some old shoes hanging on a nail on the side of an old shed. It is not a great picture. It looks like something you might find someone trying to sell at a flea market. I purchased the picture years ago on one of the last days of my mission in Alabama. I was going through this phase where I was trying to collect everything I could to remind me of my mission. I knew I may never make it back to Alabama and I did not want to let go or forget the experiences and relationships I had there. So I bought things. This picture, although not amazing or even very good, will always remind me of my mission.

This picture made me realize that I am currently going through another phase of collecting and hoarding as we prepare to move to Cincinnati. We have really enjoyed our time here in North Carolina and I know we will miss it. So if you come to our house in the future don't be surprised if you see a stained glass window of a lighthouse on the beach, a bunch of Tar Heel paraphernalia, or coffee-table books about North Carolina. We are excited to move on but sad to leave this place we have come to love.

My first gig

Some of you know that a few months ago I started taking cello lessons. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time and finally had the time and money, so I took the plunge. Learning something new like this as an adult is a unique experience that I think everyone should have. Getting my fingers to do what my brain wants them to do, or getting my brain to understand what my fingers should do to make pretty sounds come out of the cello is taxing.

My teacher, Phil, comes to my house two or three times a month and at the end of our 45 minute sessions I am physically and mentally exhausted. But I am progressing. I am learning by way of the Suzuki method: I memorize short songs without having learned to read music. This way I can learn proper techniques of playing without the additional strain of translating notes on the page into notes on the cello. So I can play a bunch of short songs; most are big hits like Go Tell Aunt Rhody, Lightly Row, and Song of the Wind. Additionally, although I haven't confessed this to Phil, I have secretly been teaching myself some of my favorite hymns. I can sound out A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and several Christmas songs.

On to the title of this entry. In one of the cutest moments in the lives of my cutest girls (which is saying a lot as their days are completely filled with cuteness), the girls asked me to perform for them. You see they were having a funeral for one of their dolls. I am not sure the circumstances surrounding her death, I can only say that the next day she suspiciously was again alive but had a different name. The girls held a funeral for her and asked that I come and provide some music for the service. So in Mary and Miia's bedroom, at the funeral of the doll, I had my first gig.

The nine-year-old

Emma had her ninth birthday last month. As impossible as it seems to her parents that they could have a nine-year-old, yet so it is. Some days we both wonder where our oldest daughter came from. She is so smart and so funny and so talented and so kind. But more often we understand exactly where she came from....the moments when she is doing complex math problems in her head (for fun), being punny with her words, and most often when she smiles her big smile and her eyes sparkle. It is then that I see a little miniature Karen inside that nine-year-old body. Yet she is not an exact carbon copy of her mom. She has a bit of her dad's teasing nature in her as well. We are very lucky to have Emma in our home.

A thousand words

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture of our Mary is evidence of the truthfulness of this saying. If I wanted to capture Mary's personality in one snap-shot I could not have done it better than this picture did. Notice Mary's friend in the background who is posed for a perfect portrait in contrast to our little actress who cannot help but try to make everyone smile with her antics.

Mary is such a joy to have around. We never have a dull moment and we can always count on her to liven up any room that she is in. She is so much fun and brings such an active (if not a little wild sometimes) spirit to our family. She is currently busy with Girlscouts, dance, and piano lessons and enjoys having her mom as her teacher. In fact, her favorite time of the day is her "mommy time" where she gets to spend some alone time with Karen doing whatever she chooses to do. She also is busy taking care of her new hamster, Carrie. It is now a rare moment that Mary is not carrying around Carrie or building her a castle to play in.

We hope this update on our "littlest-middlest" princess makes you smile as much as she makes us smile every day.

Girl Scout cookies

This weekend marked a very important event at our house. We picked up the 240 boxes of Girl Scout cookies that Emma and Mary sold. We are now trying to decide whether to deliver the cookies or just eat all 240 boxes. For those of you who did not purchase cookies from our girls or any other girls a box of cookies now costs $3.50. For those of you who like math this means we have $840 worth of cookies in our bedroom right now. This is equivillent to one month's mortgage, about 5 car payments, 8.4 American Girl dolls, 70 piano lessons, 67.2 dance lessons, or 280 trips (with three girls) to the Dollar Store. These are just a few of the things we base our financial decisions on at this point. Based on these calculations, and the fact that we don't want to get violently sick, I guess we will go ahead and deliver the cookies instead of eat them all. Having said that we would like to report our favorite Girl Scout cookies to you all,

• Jeff is a Thin Mint man through-and-through.
• Karen is enamored with the carmel and coconut of Samoas.
• Emma loves her Thin Mints (with Do-si-dos a close second.)
• Mary prefers the peanut butter goodness of Tagalongs.
• Miia sticks with her mom and her Samoas.

What are your favorites?

No more TV

So we gave up our TV. We didn't just decide not to watch it anymore. It is now packed up and put away in a closet, along with all of the electronic boxes and wires that go along with our TV. We decided to do this as an experiment in time management as well as in an effort to improve the spirit and tone in our home. So far the experiment has worked. Aside from a few times when I have missed watching Scrubs or The Simpsons we really have not noticed it being gone. We don't have a big home, so our front room is a family room/living room/sitting room. This has been the same in every home we have lived in since we got married. Our television has always been the focal point in that multipurpose room. This focuses the attention of the room right on the TV. It is not only the focal point in the room but the portal in our home to the outside world. What we watch comes right into our home and influences our thoughts and actions. Although we consciously have tried to avoid overtly immoral programming we had noticed it was increasingly difficult to find anything to watch. We decided to change the focus of our front room, and maybe our home and lives. We rearranged the front room and put the piano in the TV's old space. The girls were initially beside themselves when we told them we were going to put away the TV. How would they survive? They cried. Since the TV has actually left we have heard very little in the way of complaints. Somehow, as children usually do, they find much more imaginative ways to fill thier time. They seem happier and more well behaved, or perhaps we have more patience and love with the TV gone. Either way, our home has been more peaceful and quiet the last couple of weeks.

"Home" for Christmas

Some of our friends who have moved away from Utah have always said that they are going home when they travel back to visit. We have never had mixed feelings about this and feel pretty comfortable saying that our home is in North Carolina. In fact our home is really just anywhere where our little family lives. Having said this we were lucky enough to come to Utah and see many of our friends and family over a two-week vacation this past month. After our visit we decided that our goal each time we return to Utah is to spend time with our family and friends and eat at all of the places we love and miss (like the Spaghetti Factory, The Pie , Maddox's Ranch House , Nielsen's Frozen Custard and Hires.) In the midst of gorging ourselves for two weeks on the above delicacies and great food that both Karen and my mom cooked we did have time to remember what incredible families and friends we have. I wanted to personally thank all of you for the great people that you are and for the wonderful examples you are for us and our girls. We are truly blessed to have you in our lives. Specifically... Rocket and Nana, thank you for taking care of us and allowing us to take over your home. Chris and Angie, thank you for sharing your beautiful children with us and giving our girls cousins they love so much. Trevor and Jamie, thank you for letting me dig up your front yard. Just kidding. Thanks for being so much fun and teaching us great new games. Spencer, thank you for introducing us to Laura. I was so impressed with her and was especially touched by her song on Christmas Eve. I think our little family will not go another Christmas Eve without including some rendition of A poor wayfaring man of grief. Melissa and Brendan, thank you for taking care of about a million kids for us during our party and thank you for doing a beautiful job on our girls hair. Melissa, you really have found a wonderful talent. George and Valera, thank you for spending time with our girls. One of our only regrets after moving so far away is that they are not around you two as much as we would like them to be. Julie and Art, we hope you all had a great holiday and we are sorry we did not get to see your family. Bruce and Carolee, thank you for playing games with us. We love you guys and you are such great examples to us. And Bruce, thanks for helping Karen with my Christmas present. It is beautiful. Craig and Janet, we missed you and want you to know we were thinking of you and hope to see you soon. Ben and Donna, thank you for being you. We are always excited to visit with you and love your spirits. Sean and Shelly, You guys are the best. Thanks for giving us a great date without the girls. Thanks for hosting a busy party at your home. Thanks for being great examples for us. And Shelly, I am not grateful for your passion for spin class as it landed me in spin class and I thought I was going to die. Brian and Katie, Thanks for the tour of your home. You two make a great couple. Grammy and Grandpa, thank you for always being willing to visit with us and to spend time with our girls. As always, you have such great insight into our lives and we love to listen. To all of our friends, we were so happy to spend time with you. We especially appreciated the time we got to spend with the Scotts. You two may be the thing that in the end will push us to migrate back to the Salt Lake Valley. We are very blessed to know all of you and to have your influence in our lives. Once again we hope you all had a Merry Christmas and we wish you a very happy New Year.

Our resident artist

I have been married to Karen now for over 10 years (or a decade as Emma likes to tell people) and rarely does a week go by when I don't learn something new about her. When I called home this week the girls told me that Karen was painting a Nativity scene "stained-glass" window on our house. Of course I thought they were making this up. Sure enough, when I arrived home that night our front window was transformed into a beautiful scene: Joseph leading Mary (and baby Jesus) on the back of the little gray donkey. I was truly amazed. It immediately added a sweet spirit to our home to have the scene brighten our front room. We had a holiday party at our house last night and every person who attended commented on the beauty of the picture. That's my eternal companion!!! We are so grateful this time of year for the birth and life of our Savior. What a blessing it is to have a season to celebrate the gift of His life and to remember His sacrifice. It is so great to have these couple of weeks to examine our lives and re-focus and re-double our efforts to serve Him and to serve those around us.

Our new floor

We persuaded George and Valera to make the trek to North Carolina over the last couple of weeks to visit and to help us lay down ceramic tile in our kitchen and dining room. George and Karen worked sunup to sundown several days to get our floor torn-up, cleaned, glued, tiled, grouted, cleaned again, and sealed. I am grateful for their talents in fixin' things. Our house looks great. The girls loved having their grandparents here. Valera taught Emma to play solitaire on the computer and finished a quilt for Mary. Miia couldn't stop talking about having her "papa" and "grams" here. Everyone (except Jeff) even went out to the Outer Banks for a few days and played on the beach and visited the lighthouses. We had so much fun having the Pypers here and were sad to see them go. Our home is just a little bit nicer because of the hard work and love from our family. Thanks.

Homeschooling

For the past two months we have been carrying out the experiment of homeschooling the girls. Okay, if I am honest, Karen has been carrying out this experiment, and I have been acting the cheerleader. You know, it is amazing the difference we have seen in our girls since starting this school year. Not only have they academically been advancing but more impressively their behavior and the spirit in our home is dramatically different. We have attributed the changes to their better rest (don't have to wake up so early to get to home school), their lack of stress (don't have to come home from school at 3:30 PM and do their homework AND clean their rooms AND have piano practice AND get ready for dance or soccer). Once or twice a week they have class or an activity with other home school kids in the neighborhood. So far their "socialization" has not been stunted by them not being in a classroom with 30 other children every day. All in all we are very happy with how things are going. I think there are days where Karen gets tired and wonders what she has gotten herself into but for the most part we are happy.

A decade with Karen

I have wondered many times in the last ten years how it was possible that I not only found Karen but managed to get her to marry me. This week is our tenth anniversary and I now can no longer remember life without my sweet wife. The best part of it all is that the better I get to know her (and I feel like I learn a little new about her every week) the more I fall in love with her. When we got married I knew I loved her. I did not understand then that I could love her so much more, but I do. Having little girls that all remind me so much of her helps compound that love even more. I hope to make her as happy as she has made me for a long, long time (maybe forever).

My date

Emma and I had a date. Well actually everytime I mentioned that I was on a date with Emma she scrunched up her nose like a little bunny and said, "I am not my daddy's date!" We went to the wedding and reception for some of my friends, now Kevin and Mary (Pressly) Garrison. It was hands down the most amazing wedding I have every been to. The wedding itself was in an old and beautiful church and the ceremony was amazing. The entire wedding party was perfect. Following the wedding we went to the reception at the country club down the road and were treated to a elegant party. I think Emma had a great time, although she twisted on her toes and turned red everytime I told someone I was with the most beautiful girl at the ball. It really did scare me though, to imagine the three princesses in my house and the weddings in my future.

ROOTS

Over the past couple of weeks we wore ourselves out on vacation in Utah. We had a great family reunion with the Art and Jan Anderson side of our family. It was so great to see everyone and spend time catching up and chatting. Karen and I both think it is amazing to be related to such incredible people. From my grandparents right down to the smallest of my cousins we just have such wonderful people in our family, such great examples to us. A great legacy to live up to. Aside from the formal Anderson reunion we got to spend some time with other family as well. Karen in fact spent several days at the first official Pyper sister retreat. Specific details of the retreat have been kept under secret wraps but I understand there was a lot of game playing, shopping, swimming, and of course talking. Karen had so much fun that I am sure this will not be the last sister retreat. We got to spend some more time with the Biggs and Pyper family too. Although we love living in North Carolina we very much miss being so close to our family......maybe enough some day to bring us back.....maybe (don't get your hopes up yet Shelly and Nana :) ) Along with the reunions we did a bunch of other things that reminded us why we love Utah. Karen and I got up one morning very early and hiked to the top of Mt. Olympus. We made it to the top befor the sun was making it too hot and had such a beatiful view of the entire valley (I of course had a double dose of beauty because I could watch my cute wife while I looked at the valley below!) We had planned on running the Deseret News Marathon but because of various injuries and illnesses during our training we got demoted to running the 10K. We had a great time running that race though. We will not give up on our quest to run a marathon together. After spending two weeks in Utah we were glad to come back home to North Carolina but we will have at least a few days of withdrawl from the mountains and our family. Our girls especially will miss all of the love showered on them by their Nana and Grandpa and cousins.

Championship swim meet

This weekend was the Durham Swim League championship meet. Both Mary and Emma swam fabulously and their team, the Parkwood Piranhas, won the meet and are now champions of the league three years running. We have been amazed at how great this swim team has been for our girls. Both of them have really become good swimmers and plan on continuing in the sport for a long time.

Soggy fireworks

We had a great day on the Fourth of July. We were lucky enough to have a picnic that evening with the Greg and Kathy Christiansen (and Reagan, Bethany, and Henry), Spencer and Brooke Cutler (and Kirsten), and Jonas and Rachel Anderson (progeny yet to be determined). We ate near the Regency Park and Amphitheater in Cary and tried hard to listen to a concert by the North Carolina Symphony while the kids all played in the streets around us. There was good food (Karen's fried chicken and cornbread), a riveting game of Perquackay, as well as a dangerous game of frisbee between Jonas and me..... .....then in a turn of events typical of circumstances familiar to us North Carolinians we found ourselves watching fireworks, through some tall trees and in the pouring rain. We laughed as the fireworks beat out the rain and exploded above the lake. What a great time. I was reading from the scriptures this morning the last words of Lehi before he died, "the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me...and also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom He shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity." 2 Nephi 1:6-7 This year, more than in any year we can remember, we feel blessed to be living in a land with so many freedoms and opportunities. We are aware of the sacrifices, both in the past and present, of brave men and women who fought for and are defending our liberty and freedom. Thank you so much.

Match Day

We found out last week, after what seemed like forever, that we really will be going to Cincinnati for my pediatric cardiology fellowship. For a long time, and for many different reasons, we have felt that Cincinnati was the best place for us and would be the place we would end up. Even though we have felt fairly confident that we would end up there, it is very nice to have it finalized. Along with the excitement of the news has come the reality of the impending hard work of fellowship. I think we both feel that I need to be at a place that will give me a solid foundation in cardiology and Cincinnati will indeed provide that. The people there are great and I am thrilled to be spending the last part of my medical training in such a great place. Aside from the great training, we are so happy to be moving closer to some of our good friends, Dave and Michelle Hooper. In fact, the girls I think are excited to be moving closer to the Hooper kids, even if their match wishes (to return home to Utah to be spoiled on a daily basis by their Nana and Grandpa Rocket) were not fufilled.