Annie's In Love

Today Annie was singing a sweet little song while she colored a picture for my "birthday" that made me smile...,"I'm in love with my whole family, I'm in love with my whole family, I'm in love with Jesus and Christ. I am in love with everybody." She often expresses herself by making up little songs. Sometimes she'll be having a tantrum and she will tell me in a huff that she is going to her room. She'll go up and the next thing I know she is singing a blues song about how sad she is. It is so sweet.

Wilson Week

Last week we were able to spend some time on the Oregon coast with Mark's family for our second installment of "Wilson Week"! We had an amazing time hanging out with cousins and living it up Wilson style!

We visited the aquarium...

Rocked out in matching t-shirts to live music...

Explored "The Devil's Punchbowl" with cousins...

Did some kite flyin'...

And finally, Olivia and Mark did a little crabbing...can you believe she is holding a LIVE crab!

But, our favorite part of Wilson Week has to be the sharing of the family DVD's and pictures. Every time we do this everyone puts together a slide show or video of their own family since the last time we all got together. Here is ours...

Bike Rider #3

Annie has truly impressed us with her physical agility. She was determined to ride a two-wheeler and she has succeeded, much to our surprise. She has been riding a bike with training wheels for a year now and she has always done physical stuff a little ahead of schedule. Even with training wheels she picked up pedaling on her own and was always very fast and confident. Mark had to fix a flat tire on her bike, which required taking off the training wheels. Rather than put them back on we asked her if she wanted to try and ride a two-wheeler. She was excited so we took her to a park with a grassy hill and let her ride down it. She was great at balancing and the soft grass made for easy stopping. We did this for a few days and when she had gotten the hang of stopping without falling, we set her loose in the cul-de-sac. This is the end result (see video). At age 3, she is our youngest bike rider. I guess keeping up with the big kids is good motivation!

Mt. Shuksan

Mark and I had an amazing opportunity to climb and attempt to summit Mt. Shuksan a couple of weeks ago. Mt. Shuksan is a peak in the North Cascades that stands about 9100 ft. I had never heard of htis mountain (despite living in western Washington my entire life) before I was invited to go with a group of couples to climb it.

We thought we had picked a weekend with a reasonable chance of good weather (2nd half of June). The days leading up to the climb were almost record setting in Seattle for number of consecutive sunny days, but low and behold, the rain could not stay away for two more days, and the clouds rolled in the day before we were to climb!

It was rained off and on the entire time. Mark and I were not really thinking it would be raining, so we didn't bring much of anything in the way of rain gear. The morning we were leaving it was finally sinking in that we might be doing this in the rain. We ran to Wal-mart and grabbed those huge rain ponchos. They really helped keep our stuff dry, but they were constantly getting in the way.

By the time we finally made it up to base camp, we were all completely frozen! I don't think I have ever been that cold in my life! We had to dig out level places on the snow for our tents. Because we were not hiking anymore and we were all soaking wet and could not change for fear of getting our dry clothes wet (it was still pouring), our body temperatures plumeted. At one point I looked over at Mark and I just wanted to cry. We finally got our tent set up and dove inside. Our tent was very tiny even though it was supposedly a "two man tent". Its a good thing that Mark is a small guy because we never would have fit otherwise. Let me tell you, a tent has never been more inviting than this tent was at this time! We changed into dry clothes as quickly as our shaking limbs and frozen fingers would allow and huddled in our sleeping bags for about an hour. After we had finally gotten warmed up our wonderful friends started boiling snow so we could make our dehydrated dinners. That too had never looked more inviting than our dehydrated "teriyaki beef" dinner did right then! We gobbled it up in no time. After this the rain eased up and we were able to get out and take a look around. We couldn't see much because of the clouds, but it was fun to be camped on the snow...as long as the rain stayed away.

To summit we would have had to get up at about 4:00 AM, but we were all pretty sure that the weather would not permit us to summit. Instead, we slept until about 7:30 and then got up and played in the snow (the rain had finally stopped altogether sometime that night). Then we broke camp and headed back down. The trip down was so much better than the trip up because we could actually see and we weren't being drenched. We also got to glisade down some instead of hiking.

Overall, it was a very fun and challenging adventure...my favorite kind! Here are some pictures, although I didn't have as many as I wanted:

Some of the crazy participants on our little trek:
(L to R: Lynne, Shandell, Marshall, me, Leslie, Greg)

Us in our teeny little tent.

Mark and I on our way down the mountain, but still on the glacier.

Near the end of the trail we finally got to see what was behind the clouds.

Afterwards we all went to a BBQ restaurant and the pig came to see us. Here are all the ladies.

Finally, here is a video that Mike put together for us to remember our adventure...thanks everyone!

Broken Arm

Mark and I celebrated our 11th anniversary with a mountain biking date that ended with me in the emergency room. I have been trying my hand at mountain biking lately (LOVE IT!). I started out by practicing going over and down things in my back yard. We made a little jump and we have some rocky stairs that I have been riding down. It has significantly increased my confidence while mountain biking. Anyway, we decided I was ready to go up to Tiger Mountain and I was so excited that I was able to go down things that last year I would have walked around. I made it all the way down doing almost all of the drops and roots, etc.. We were about 1/2 mile from the bottom when we came upon a spot that was wet (the trail had been really dry to this point). I saw a big root right at a bend in the trail, and decided I needed to be going faster to get over it. As I came to it I turned right on top of the wet slippery root and the bike just slipped out from under me. *Sidenote* I have noticed that whenever I wipe out on a mountain bike it is almost always at a very easy point when I am just riding along like I would be on the street or something. Just before this I fell over on a logging road for no good reason at all. Anyway, my elbow hit the ground hard and I knew something was wrong when I went to push myself up and I could barely move my right arm let alone put any weight on it. At first I couldn't ride, but it was almost as hard to walk the bike since I only had one arm. In the end I carefully rode the rest of the way out, but by the time we got the car Mark was suspicious that I had broken it because of the amount of pain and the fact that I could barely use it. We had plans to go to dinner, and I wanted to just go and then deal with the arm, but Mark said that if my arm was broken, the pain was going to get worse. That convinced me and we headed for the emergency room. In the end we found out there was a small, non-displaced fracture in my elbow. I wore a splint for 3 days and then the orthopedic surgeon said that I could take it off. They don't like to cast elbow fractures unless they have to because your arm can get stuck in that position. Since my fracture was small, they decided not to cast it (thank goodness...I was having visions of having to take Sam over to all of my friend's houses everytime he needed a diaper change!). I'm doing much better now, but I still can't ride my road bike, and, although I haven't actually tried, I'm convinced that I could mountain bike because my arm doesn't have to be all the way straight for that like it does on the road bike. All in all, it was sooooooooo much fun until I fell and I can't wait to do it again.

Mark Graduates...but don't get too excited, we still have one more year...will it ever end?

I don't really think Mark wanted me to write about this, but I think he deserves a pat on the back and I want him to know that I think he is AMAZING!

Mark graduated from his Radiology Residency and passed his board exams! I cannot tell you how proud I am of this guy! He has worked his tail off the last 5 years and has done such an amazing job of balancing his work and his family. I clearly remember Mark making the decision to do radiology so that he would have more time to spend with his family. While he would have loved to have done surgery, he chose radiology because he loved his family. That is why I'm so happy that he now gets to start his fellowship training in interventional radiology. In this sub-specialty of radiology he gets to do procedures on patients guided by imaging equipment. It is such a great compromise between the more relaxed schedule of radiology and the gratification of getting to work directly with patients and being able to go in and "fix" people. Mark originally became a doctor because he really wanted to have an impact on people and really help them. As his wife I think that I lost sight of that part of his work the last 5 years. Whenever he went to work I mostly just felt sad that he was not with us and, yes, even somewhat resentful that work took up more of his time than I wanted to give up. This past weekend Mark has been on house-call, essentially for the first time. Before when he was on-call, it was always hospital-call, so he was just gone at the hospital like he would be for a normal work day. Now he is at home with us on the weekend, but his pager will go off and he will have to call in. I'm sure it all seems routine to him, but for me I am getting a much different perspective on what it is he does. For instance, the first call he got was for him to go in to help someone who was likely going to die. He didn't give me any details but he did mention that his efforts might be futile, and that the patient would likely die anyway. I'm emberassed to admit it, but the ugly thought crossed my mind that maybe they would and then Mark wouldn't have to go in. No sooner did the thought cross my mind than I thought to myself that I must be the most selfish person in the world! I am so used to resenting anyone taking up Mark's time that it was an automatic reaction for me. Since that call I have done some serious soul searching and I feel so grateful that there are medical personnel all over the world that give up so much time to help others. It was humbling for me to realize that it is selfish for me to resent Mark leaving when often people's lives depend on it. If it were me or someone in my family, I would be so grateful that someone was there ready to answer their pager, even if it was in the middle of their time with their family.

Congratulations Mark! You're the best husband and father and I love you!