Andersons on Anderson in Anderson

For those of you who have not heard, we have decided to stay here in Cincinnati for a little longer (at least). My fellowship finishes next June but we have decided to take a faculty position at Cincinnati Children's Hospital after I am finished. We love it here and the job is about as good as it gets for a pediatric cardiologist.

After we made the decision to stay we started looking for homes. We have been renting a house for the past two years and really wanted a place of our own. We looked at a number of places but really fell in love with a house just around the corner from us (see above). It is an old house with original hardwood floors and a half acre back yard. The girls won't have to change schools, in fact they won't even have to change bus stops. The silliest part of the new house though, is that it is on Anderson Avenue in Anderson Township. We will therefore be, at least for the next few years, the Andersons on Anderson in Anderson.

Seriously?

Oh to have three older sisters and to be too small to fight back!

$1000

Sorry for the long time between posts. I have no excuses since work and life are always busy and will try to keep up. This past week we unexpectedly got a check in the mail for $1000. Now we have received plenty of big checks in the mail in the past but they usually are from car dealerships, mortgage companies, or banks looking to give us a new line of credit. This time it was a legitimate check worth real money. We are not used to having an extra $1000 lying around let alone having it unexpectedly so it has been interesting to think about the options. We have come down to a few and thought we would find out what you all thought. As we see it our options are as follow...

1. While we have always been careful about debt (forever credit card debt free!!) we could certainly send the money off to one of our many student loans, although sadly this amount would not even make a dent.

2. We could put the money toward our own retirement accounts and forget about it for a long time.

3. We have yet to start savings account for the girls and thought about splitting the money four ways and get going on that project.

4. We could put the money into food storage and stop feeling guilty every time we have a talk/lesson on the subject.

5. We could replace one of the many things that are running out of life in our home...dining set, couch, beds for the girls.....the list is fairly long.

6. We could continue to "discuss" and stare in awe at the check without actually doing anything.

Let us know what you think...poll is to the left.

We the people

We, The People of the Anderson household in order to form a more perfect family, to be fair, and have equal rights, do ordain and establish this constitution for our house...

Emma had the assignment in school to write a constitution for our family; so for the past week we have been discussing the formation of the Constitution of the United States as well as what we would like the Anderson Family Constitution to entail. The final document created a legislative, executive and judicial branch within our little family. Today, after several days of heavy campaigning, we held elections. In a landslide victory Mary was elected President (assigns jobs, organizes meetings and play dates, and selects the Judge) and shortly thereafter chose Emma to be the Judge (throws criminals in time out as needed). As you had to be at least 8 years old to be President, 10 years old to be judge Miia was elected to be one of two Representatives. That left Karen to be our sole Senator and me to fill the role as the second Representative.

Mary and Emma thought they had pulled off the ultimate coup of course. They could not believe that they were now the President and Judge of our family. Alas, Karen and I are no dummies. What they haven't yet figured out is that as the principle lawmakers, we can sign any bill we want into law and have the 2/3 majority needed in our Congress to override any veto that may come back to us from President Mary. Imagine the laws we could make....

Ski conference

This past week I went to my first "Ski Conference".  Although I have been to several medical conferences over the past 8 years this was a new concept to me.  A ski conference is where doctors (or anyone else I imagine) get together to "learn" at a ski resort.  In this case the conference was held at the Snowbird Cliff Lodge.  The meetings were held each day from 7am-1030am, recessed until 4pm and then more meetings from 4pm-630pm.  Of course during the break there was a magnificent mountain just waiting for us to ski.  

One day I skied with my brother Trevor and the second day with my friend Jamie and his wife Kate (see above).  Although we love Ohio whenever I visit Utah I miss the mountains.

The Great Divorce and the Lizard

Artwork by Matt at http://www.virb.com/groups/06519715

I am not one for making New Year's resolutions but this year I made one. I committed to myself to read one (non-pediatric or cardiology) book per month. I love to read and have a tendency to start a lot of books only to lose time or interest and not finish them. So I told myself that I would be very selective and only choose excellent books to start, and then persevere to the finish. My first choice was recommended by a friend and turned out to be one of the most interesting and certainly one of the most thoughtful and insightful books I have ever read.

C.S. Lewis is someone who brings to life our relationship with Christ and our struggle to live as He taught and gave us example to live. Although I have read several of Lewis' books and really enjoyed them I had never read The Great Divorce. This book tells of a man who has a dream of a journey he has from Hell to visit (and perhaps stay) in Heaven. He vividly reports the differences between the two places and along the journey describes several of his travel companions and what things are binding them to Hell and making it difficult for them to choose to leave their present place of dwelling behind and relocate to Heaven. It is a fascinating description of the many things that retard our own spiritual progression even while in our mortal state.

While I don't want to list every encounter he had, nor do I want to ruin the experience of reading The Great Divorce for anyone, which I highly recommend, there is one character that was particularly vivid and thought provoking. One man on his journey to Heaven is carrying a red lizard on his shoulder. The lizard is constantly whispering evil thoughts and lies into his ear. The man meets an Angel who tells him that he must allow the Angel to kill the lizard in order for him to continue on his journey. The man is not permitted to kill the lizard himself and the Angel cannot kill the lizard without the man ordering him to do so. In the exchange that follows, the man, with prompts from the lizard, gives every reason imaginable why the Angel should not kill his companion. Some of these include...

• He doesn’t want to bother the spirit with killing it
• It isn’t presently bothering him because it went to sleep
• He’ll be able to get it under control himself through gradual process
• He doesn’t feel well enough to go through with “the operation”
• He thinks killing the lizard would kill him
• He’ll go and get his doctor’s opinion (back in Hell), and come back later
• Then he asks why the spirit hasn’t killed the lizard yet

Finally, in a painful experience, the man orders the Angel to kill the lizard. Within a few moments the lizard transforms into a beautiful and strong stallion that will accompany and assist the man as he continues on his journey.

I was just so impressed with the imagery of the lizard as the sins that "so easily beset us", by the eternal truth that the only way to overcome our own shortcomings is through the power and assistance of our Savior and the Holy Ghost, and that ultimately our sins can be transformed into strengths in our lives. As I said, I highly recommend this book to any of you who might be interested.

Blessing Day

Today was Edie's big day. It started out with a bath in the sink. The bathroom was busy with three other sisters and Nana and Grandpa who came to visit for the weekend. Karen finished Edie's blessing dress yesterday. We took all of the blessing dresses out so the girls could look at them. They are all a bit different but all very beautiful. The girls were very excited to see the dresses that their mom had made them when they were born. We hung them next to each other and took a few pictures. We dressed Edie before church to take some pictures but changed her back to some "regular" clothes to avoid spit-up disasters on her dress before the blessing. We took her to church, fed her and changed her into her dress. Only two small spit-ups later we blessed her. Blessing your child is one of those spiritual signposts that dot life. What a great spirit this little one is and we are so blessed to have her in our home.

Renaissance Girl

Not long ago Emma represented her class in the Ayer Elementary Geography Bee. While she was hung up on this particular question about the Mississippi Delta she did very well overall. Emma is a very well rounded girl and this year has also won the National Fitness award, received the highest reading test score in the 5th grade and won the best visual arts entry from her school in the District Reflections Contest for her black and white pencil drawing entitled "Making the World Better Day by Day, Bit by Bit"... to be displayed later. We are so proud of her.

Traditions

Christmastime is filled with traditions at our house. We each have carried traditions from our homes growing up and over the past 12 years have come up with some traditions of our own. Some of these include cheese bricks (Grammy) and prime rib (Nana and Rocket) on Christmas Eve followed by pajamas (Grammy) and ornaments (Nana) for the girls after reading the Christmas Box story (Pypers) and reading/singing The Little Gray Donkey (Grammy). On Christmas morning we make crepes before opening presents and have the girls take turns wearing a Santa hat and picking out presents for each other from under the tree.

Over the past couple of years I have taken each girl on a Christmas Date in first few weeks of December and we always take the girls to a movie on Christmas Day. Our favorite tradition has become making homemade gifts for each other. For the third year we have each made gifts for each other instead of buying something store-made. This has required us to start thinking about what to make several weeks/months before Christmas. It has become quite an adventure and the girls have become quite creative.

Traditions are so important to us. They are signposts that mark events in our lives every year as time continues to pass us by. I am so grateful for the traditions that we have continued and the new ones that we have created.

Merry Christmas...just mash play.

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Even more baby pictures

More baby pictures

New Baby!!

Today was the day, finally! Karen went into labor about 2:00 AM. We made it to the hospital by 3:30 AM and had a baby by 11:51 AM. That is the short story. The 10 hours that made up the labor process were much more complicated. Karen had been having false labor for a couple of weeks and was fairly frustrated, so going into "real" labor was exciting. It quickly went from exciting to painful. Karen had decided early in the pregnancy to have natural child birth and had done her research. While I cannot describe the experience of watching her go through this I can say it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I have see a lot of babies born at work but had never watched a natural child birth from start to finish, let alone one where the girl I loved was the one in labor. I have never been more amazed or more in love with the girl I married than today. She was incredible.

We found out after the delivery what made it so difficult. The baby weighed 9lbs 12oz!! She was more than 2 lbs bigger than any of our girls thus far! Crazy! She is a chunkey monkey and is beautiful.

We decided to name her Edie Verity Anderson and after spending a few hours with her we feel very good about the choice...she really is an Edie.

Both mom and baby are very well and very happy!!

Witches and princesses

Miia had her 6th birthday party last week. Our house was filled with 16 extra 6-year-old girls dressed in all sorts of costumes. We painted pumpkins, played duck-duck-goose and doughnuts on a string and had icecream and cake. Way fun and way tiring. I don't know how the kindergarten teachers do it every day.

Sliding Rock

First day of school

Last week we sent the girls off to school again. Miia, after waiting all summer, excitedly got on the school bus for the first time. She is so funny, reminding us every day that she "gets to go to school again tomorrow." Karen is enjoying having 4 hours to herself each day for the first time in 10 years, at least for a few more weeks until #4 arrives.

The big vote

We (and by we I mean me of course) decided to let you all in on the naming of our new baby. We are in the serious countdown to full-term and delivery. We have several names we are tossing around and thought it would be fun to see what you thought. To the right you will see a list of a few of the top names. Feel free to share your opinion via a vote. In full disclosure the most popular vote may not become the actual winner as we as parents have enough votes between us to override you all.

Also, if there is a name you would like to suggest that is not on the list please feel free to leave a separate comment.

Karen Joy and her belly

Vacation

We got back yesterday from a little trip to North Carolina. We were able to spend time with many of our good friends and spend loads of time outdoors, at the lake, at the beach, in the mountains. We also spent many hours in the cramped car our energy kept at bay only by the constant reading of the newest Harry Potter book (we essentially read the entire thing out loud in the car as we travelled.) The movie above is of the girls sliding down the natural waterslide at Looking Glass Falls near Asheville, NC.

Although we had tons of fun visiting North Carolina's beautiful outdoors the main reason we made the drive was to go to the temple with our friends Eric and Peri Borries.

It was wonderful to be in the temple with them and to feel the peace that resides there. The Borries were kind enough to let us stay in their home (again) and from there we went boating on Falls Lake, lounging at Carolina Beach, hiking at Umstead State Park and visiting our many friends in the area.

We left Raleigh and drove to Asheville for the last half of the week. We enjoyed being in the mountains and driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Yesterday, we finally drove home. We finished Harry Potter and the last drop of gas in the car as we drove into our driveway in Cincinnati. I know we used the last drop of gas because when I got up to go to work this morning the gas tank was completely empty-luckily I had the gas can for the lawn mower or I would have had to push the car to the hospital.

Self pride and accomplishment

We have finished another school year; Emma flew threw 4th grade and Mary through 2nd. Miia graduated from Preschool and is anxiously awaiting riding the bus to Kindergarten with her sisters next fall.

On the last day of school the girls brought their report cards home. Both did very well so we decided to take them out to dinner to celebrate. Emma has been working all year to change her Science grade from a B to an A so that she could not only be on the Honor Roll but so she could have all As and get an "Excellence" gold sticker on her Honor Roll certificate. She finally accomplished this during the last term and we are very proud of her for her hard work.

Emma was telling us about a conversation she was having with a few of her friends during the day, before the report cards were handed out. One of her friends was telling her that if she got straight As her parents were getting her a Nintendo DS Lite. Another friend informed her that if he got strait As he could choose any gift he wanted up to $500. Shocked at the gifts her classmates were earning I asked her what she had told them she would be getting if she got straight As. Without hesitation she said, "Self-pride and accomplishment." Amazed, I asked her if she really said that. She said, "Yeah, well it's true".

I am not sure at moments like this where our girls come from but I am proud of them for what they do and what type of people they are developing into.