our first Christmas tree

Last week, Lauren and I put up our first Christmas tree! As you can see from the picture below, it isn't a big tree. This year we are not going to be that long for vacation so that is why we decided to put one up. Our cat has been nosey enough to get into the tree, drink the water, and knock down ornaments about every 10 minutes. We had fun putting up our tree though. We made hot chocolate, put on Christmas music and unwrapped all the ornaments. It was a fun night...

this is the final version of our tree with lights and ornaments up, it's small but makes it feel like Christmas 

this is a picture of Luke putting up some ornaments... 

this is Lauren putting up some ornaments on our tiny tree... 

this is our Christmas tree that we got this year! It is so small and as you can see, our cat loves getting into it! 

Pictures with Santa...

A few weekends ago, our family (now 9!) went to the mall to get our Christmas picture. My mom decided that a picture with Santa would be the best idea. All nine of us sat around the chair and crammed in there. It quite an interesting event! Afterwards, we were all there in the mall celebrating Aubrey's 21st birthday. It was a great time as it is rare these days to have all nine of us together at the same time.

here is the final version of the Christmas picture we took at the mall... 

here is another pic of the 4 women in our family now!! 

this is all the guys here after we had our picture taken with Santa... 

this is a pic of the three girls in our family now...the men are soon going to be out numbered! 

micah's engagement!!!

This past Saturday my brother Micah and his girlfriend Marilyn got engaged! It was such a cool evening. He asked at night at a park in Saratoga, CA where we grew up. Take a look at the pictures below as they are from the engagement and the engagement party. It was very exciting!

this is a picture of micah, marilyn, and micah's roomate jeff right after the engagement 

this is one side of the pathway where eric and I laid candles and roses 

this is micah and eric, one of his friends that flew out from chicago for the engagement 

this is aubrey, mom, and marilyn, lauren was on call that night and wishes that she could have been there! 

these are some of the people who crowded into my parent's living room for the party 

this is Micah and Marilyn at my parents house during the engagement party where they were sharing how it happened. 

this is micah and marilyn right after he asked her... 

these are the flowers that were on the deck when Micah proposed to Marilyn 

click on explosion!!!! below and that will take you to the link...

explosion!!!!!

This past Tuesday I was at home eating lunch when a jetfuel pipeline exploded right outside our apartment about 100 yards away! The link for the story is above. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life. Our house shook and it sounded like we were getting bombed. I ran outside and all I could see was flames that were 100 feet high and black smoke everywhere. The picture on the link does not do the fire justice...it was much bigger than it looks. That picture is after the fire had been burning for about 3 hours. Anyways, we had to evacuate due to mandatory evacuations for the entire rest of the evening. So there we go, two disasters in two weeks! All we are waiting for now is an earthquake! We are glad that our apartment didn't burn down but unfortunately 5 people were killed from the blast.

Flood. This past Tuesday our lovely 1 bedroom apartment decided that it wanted to flood! As you can see from the picture, our cat Casey, decided to rush to the high ground to keep dry! Luckily it was just our bedroom and so we moved stuff into the living room where we had a slumber party for a couple of days. They came and fixed the gutter outside that was clogged and replaced the padding underneath the carpet along with cleaning and drying the carpet. We are back to normal now, but it was quite a fiasco to have happen in the middle of midterms! 

Hectic....

Life has been hectic since the last time that we posted here. Oh, how we wish we were still on vacation! Getting back to the grind of work has been rough. A few weekends ago we did get to go on a weekend getaway up in the wine country of Napa Valley, CA. This trip was a retreat for all residents and their spouses provided by Oakland Children's Hospital. We stayed in a little town of 1,000 people called Guernville, CA. We stayed in a nice cottage which had our own spa in it! To check out where we stayed go to www.ferngrove.com The Saturday that we were up there, we went canoeing down the Russian River. This was a lot of fun, once Lauren and I figured out how to steer the canoe! We only ran into a couple of trees and only got impaled a couple of times... It was a four hour canoe trip that about 30 of us went on. Definitely a fun time.

Graduate school has been busy for me. I have two speech clients this semester as well as 2
4-hour classes. It has been greuling, but I am getting more used to it. Lauren has been super busy as well. She is now working in the ER and is busy stitching up kids and putting splints on them! This weekend was her first day off in three weeks. She spent it going to our Church's annual Women's Day. To see more about it go to http://sfnet.cc She reports that it was a great time of inspiration! I continue to be a volunteer soccer coach on the weekends for children with special needs. It is a lot of fun and tiring! But it is great being out there with the kids. To see more info about the soccer league go to: http://sf.ucd.net/home/content/main/2003/03/2003_03_27_e_soccer.htm

Thats about it for now...

Vacation

So this is our first time doing something like this so be patient as we try to improve the stuff you see here. Mainly we wanted to do this share pictures and stories with family and friends about what is going on in our lives. With Lauren in residency and Luke starting graduate school next week, life is busy! We both have a lot of relatives that we are not able to keep in frequent contact with, but we want to keep in better contact.

The pictures that you will be seeing are from our vacation that we just returned from. we went to Yosemite, CA for 3 days, then to Orange County, CA for a week and then we stayed in San Simeon, CA for 2 days next to the Hearst Castle. Please feel free to comment on our posts and we are excited to share all this with you guys! we will try to add updates weekly (we'll see how this goes!).

this is the indoor pool (next to the movie theatre). The ledge in the middle is a diving board. All of that yellow you see is pure gold! 

this was a cool statue because it is from the year 1500 B.C., I forget what is was called but it is old and so I took a picture of it! 

this is the entrance to the main part of the castle 

this is the outside of one of the guest houses (1 of 3)..for the tour they will only let you see one guest house...unless you want to pay more money 

this is a side view of the pool...you can tell which spot was my favorite! 

this is the outdoor pool at the Hearst Castle...someday we are hoping to have this in our backyard...yeah right! 

this is the measley waterfall that we hiked up to...during the spring the fall stretches across the entire cliff you see there 

this is us on a 4 mile hike that we went on up to Vernal Falls in Yosemite