More Christmas!

More Christmas break pictures---I hosted most of my Lewis family here in Las Vegas and we had a really good time together. When we weren't thowing up.

Here is a picture of many of us on Christmas Day. This also includes many of my brother in laws relatives, who live in the area and came to my home for the festivities. Who says you can't serve dinner to 23 people when you only own 9 chairs?

With everyone taking turns being sick (and cleaning up after sick kids!) we didn't get our act together enough to take a complete group picture; this is as close as we get--My brothers James and Mark, and my sisters Mary-Celeste and Sarah, and me.

On New Year's Eve, we had friends over again and spent the evening in Band Hero merriment. Matt spent the night in scrubs and went to bed at 8:30, but was still a good sport about the whole occasion. We are saving our real partying for when residency is OVER! :)

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's been....a while since I've been on the blog, and I wanted to post a few pictures of the wonderful Christmas we had here in Las Vegas:

Here are Jack and Charlotte in front of our fireplace! I finally have a good place to put my cute stockings up (and you can't see it in the picture, but I FINALLY got around to making one for Anna, too!)

Here is one of the few pictures we took on Christmas morning. I think this just about captures the exaultant, frenzied glory. And the fact that Charlotte wore her princess clothes all day long.

Charlotte got a doctor coat (guess her bought her that one?) and a matching coat for her new barbie doll.

Anna and Charlotte. There aren't any more pictures of Anna because I couldn't get her to sit still long enough!

More pictures

I guess these ones didn't go through with the last batch:

Here are the kids in front of the Salt Lake Temple. My mom works for the church, so whenever we're in town we go and meet her for lunch and enjoy Temple Square.

Here's Jack at the Dinosaur park in Odgen. It's such a fun place--nearly full size models of dinosaurs, etc. lurking everywhere!

More dinosaurs. This one was particularly creepy.

Here are Charlotte and Rachel, her cousin that lives in Logan. They had such fun playing together!

Summer Update

So, I haven't blogged in weeks, and I haven't put pictures up in even longer. I just pulled 111 pictures off the camera. Oddly enough, we didn't take pictures of most of the fun things we've been doing--no pictures of the Swenson family trip to Moon Lake, no pictures of our excursion down the Green River on a rubber raft, nothing from the Logan Zoo or Charlotte's first water tubing adventure. Instead, this is what we have. Enjoy!

Jack did this all to himself, then came and asked me to take a picture. Who am I to refuse?

Here is a picture of Matt looking like a doctor and like a dad. I still giggle a little when he tells people he's a physician because this is the silly guy I know and it's a little weird to think of people putting their well being in his hands...

Here is Anna capitalizing on mom's ice cream cone and being totally happy about it!

Why, oh why, don't I have any clean pictures of my children? I promise that occasionally, I do groom them!

Stupid people

Right, so the day after I left town for a vacation in UT, someone jumped our fence, broke the lock on our backdoor, and stole a bunch of stuff from our house. When Matt got home from work he found the door broken and **eek!** the front door unlocked, which the police suspect meant they had been planning on coming back for more. I'm glad Matt was there to discover it.

So we're missing some stuff. Big deal. What really makes me mad--like infantile temper tantrum rage--is that people who think that it's a good idea to break and enter actually exist. I have been pretty happy in my life thus far believing that most people are decent. Sure, the fancy rich people with expensive jewelry or sports cars make themselves targets, but we are hardly that. The stuff they made off with doesn't even add up to our $2,000 home insurance deductible. I find it tremendously disturbing that people out there think it's worth their while to break the law, violate my home, and expose themselves to potential punishment all for a handful of wii games and someone else's computer. Really?

So we feel forced to install a security system, because we want to feel safe in our beds at night. And I just know that every time that I alarm it, or forget to turn it off and send it shrieking, it's going to make me mad all over again at the stupid people who convinced me that I need it.

So in the off chance that the perpetrators are reading this (meaning that they are even literate)...fie on you!

Here are some pictures of our kids and family that our friend Kirsi--a tremendously gifted photographer--took right before we moved from Maryland.

a houseful

Sarah and Mike with their kids, Mary-Celeste, and Matt's siblings Zak and Rose just came to visit this past weekend. We all had so much fun, and the house felt used and full and alive, which was so wonderful. Now that everyone is gone, the house is probably a bit cleaner, but it feels bigger and less friendly. Anyone else want to come and visit? :)

I've been a little suprised at how difficult the move has been for me. I know, though, that with all the moves to come in the military, I need to work on making new places feel like home as soon as possible. I know that I will miss this place tremendously in 5 years, and I'm eager to start building so that in the end, I won't regret wasted time.

So, when I meet new people and greet them with judgment and suspicion, I think of the weird and wonderful people that eventually became my best friends in other places--despite my initial suspicions that they wished me evil. Without exception, every new person I meet becomes more and more dear to me as I get to know and serve them.

I also walk through the house in disbelief and feel like everything is out of place and foreign. I miss my old window seat and the big kitchen window and the azaleas and dogwoods. But then I see the my old goofy pictures hanging on freshly painted walls, and my old battered desk in a new cozy corner, and I start to feel the beginnings of love for the new space. And when I go on vacation, I'll come back and enjoy the familiarity that snuck up on me while I was away.

The unfamiliar streets will begin to seem second nature; the new and intimidating gym will gradually fill with friends and inviting routines; the playgroup full of other people's kids will gradually begin to fill with faces like those of Grace, and Barrick, and Miriam, and all the other kids that I learned to love nearly as much as my own.

It hasn't happened yet. But I have to believe that it will.