The Ruts

So much merry we don't know what to do with it

2011-12-27T23:52:00.000-08:00

This is our fifth Christmas as San Diegans, but the first one we've spent here. It turns out Aaron's work doesn't accept notes from his wife that read "Please excuse Dr. Rutman from work for the next week. Christmas is very special to him." (He spent much of Christmas day at the hospital). Anyway, SD is a pretty sweet place to spend Christmas. The weather was so perfect, it was as if San Diego was showing off. My parents did the traveling this year and spent the holiday with us. It was great having them.

On to the Christmas morning photos...

These puppets were my surprise for Seth. I worked on them in the evenings while he slept. I made him Joker and Catwoman too. (I wish I had a picture of them). He immediately gave the Catwoman puppet to Ada because she loves Catwoman and he doesn't want to play with a girl puppet, especially not a bad girl. I've been playing Joker in our puppet shows since Christmas because Seth needs a bad guy to pound on. I put a lot of effort into these, but they won't be handed down to his children or anything--these are battle puppets that are already showing some wounds.

I was trying to avoid the Princess craze with my daughter, with its over-emphasis on beauty, but every puffy dress she sees has her mesmerized. She enjoys dressing up as Darth Vader and Iron Man, but she's definitely been wanting something feminine in the costume box. Seth insisted that I make her a princess dress for Christmas because he knew she'd love it. I couldn't resist fostering Seth's interest in doing something sweet for his sister. He helped me choose a pattern and we took a trip to the store for Seth to choose fabric in Ada's favorite colors. (Ask Aaron where's the last place on this earth he's interested in spending time. It's the fabric store. His sweet mother OD'd him on those as a child, so it's funny to me that Seth loves them so much). Anyway, Ada loves her dress, and her fancy shoes too!

This is the Christmas present Seth was anticipating the most: Wolverine from X-Men. When he sat on Santa's lap and asked for a Wolverine costume, I could tell Santa thought he was talking about a brown furry mammal costume. (THAT would have been awesome).

Ada fell in love with a pink suitcase she saw at Ross a couple weeks before Christmas. She asked Santa for this suitcase. By the time I made it back to the store, it was gone. Aaron could not rest until he found his daughter a suitcase she'd love. On the night of the 23rd, he found this beauty at Costco, complete with lights and yes, Disney Princesses. Ada approves. Grandma and Grandpa Shields added a second lightsaber to Seth's collection. It's a huge hit. He's constantly practicing his moves in front of the TV's reflection.

Ada was very excited about this Abby Cadabby gift, but was unfortunately quite let down when she found that the doll is unable to hold the magic wand since it's practically bigger than the doll. She now loves them separately. I like how serious Seth and Ada look as they study this Star Wars figurine together.

This watergun and Captain America stuff got huge reactions from Seth. He's so fun to open presents with.

Ada doubled her baby collection. She got a Cabbage Patch Doll. They still feature a signature on the butt, just like the ones I spent unmeasurable amounts of time with as a kid.

sweet, christmas

2011-12-26T23:45:00.000-08:00

Cookie time

2011-12-26T22:53:00.001-08:00

abstract cookie art, courtesy Seth and Ada:

Magical Turkey Day

2011-12-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

We had a seriously fun Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving day at Disneyland with Aaron's family. I knew our kids would love it, but I didn't anticipate them being able to wake up at 5:30am to go,go,go all day until almost 11 at night and be total angels throughout it all. They were in utter heaven, and it made it really fun.

Seth's only outburst was when someone in the family sarcastically suggested Seth was too tired to go on any more rides. He had a 10 second meltdown until Aaron suggested "How about we go on as many rides as you want until you pass out, Seth?" He immediately jumped up and down saying "Good idea!" and gave Aaron a hug like he was a hero. That's just what we did. He finally fell asleep on the rocket ship ride with his grandpa at 10:30 (but woke up for one more roller coaster after that, and then he was out).

Ada's only complaints that day were when the rides would go through a dark area (which many of them do). She'd say "I wanna go home" every time it happened. Then she'd get off the ride and profess her love for it. The tea cups were her favorite. Seth loved all the fast roller coasters and is still convinced that the only explanation for Star Tours is that "that room must be magical".

We had a Thanksgiving feast at our apartment the next day. Our kitchen is pretty small and when you cook all the food in one day because you've been partying at Disneyland, it gets a little busy. We pulled it off just fine though.

My kids really know how to keep a feast from getting too classy. Seth sat at the Thanksgiving table shirtless and chewed on a turkey leg like a wild animal. Ada left during dinner to sit on the toilet and came back to the table shouting "my poo poos won't come out!" Thanks Ada. Pass the potatoes.

Unleashing their powers

2011-11-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

This was the first year of Halloween where Seth insisted on choosing his costume. I knew this day would come. Gone are the days of dressing him up as Stay Puft, Poncho Villa, Peter Venkman, or a bearded viking. I knew he'd want something super popular that every kid likes, and sure enough, he chose Batman. I was relieved that he wanted to be the 1960's Adam West style Batman, which is way more fun to make than the black, plated-chest Christian Bale style Batman.

As usual, I started out thinking I'd do something really simple and cheap, but I got so excited about all the details, the next thing I knew I was dusting off my sewing machine and designing my own patterns with tons of trial and error. I kept having to remind myself that the average person doesn't care about where exactly the stars on Wonder Woman's cape are placed, or the precise height of batman's boots, so I drew the line on getting TOO crazy. There is a whole community of obsessive costume makers online (the kind who show up in San Diego each summer at Comic Con) who thankfully make me look sane. As painful as the process sometimes was, figuring it all out served to deepen my satisfaction with this project. It felt more like my own art.

I learned a lot during this process and I think it's now safe to say I know how to sew stuff. This, I feel, puts me into a whole new category of the domestic mom. I've fought it based on my own silly sterotypes. It's hard enough to have any street cred as a liberal or a feminist when you're a mormon stay-at-home mom who likes to wear makeup everyday and spends a lot of time in the kitchen, but now that I sew too? How could the Daily Show crowd ever take me seriously?

Anyway, these sweeties are really fun to dress up because they're SO into it! I think a fair amount of two-year-olds would just rip off the wig and play, but Ada loves it along with the rest of her costume. (That could however be more a result of me and Aaron's genetic failure to provide Ada with a decent head of hair. Sorry Ada.) And then there's Seth. The bodysuit part of his costume is the one part we purchased. It's a leotard and tights that we died gray. As open-minded as Aaron likes to be, I could still sense his discomfort when his son kept professing his deep love for leotards and tights and kept wearing them around the house while I made the other parts of his costume. He loved how his costume turned out. We have to remind him sometimes that he's not actually Batman.

Sethy Pants

2011-10-30T23:48:00.000-07:00

It's Seth's turn for a post. He's 4 1/2 (and don't you dare call him 4--he'll quickly correct you). Here's what he's like lately:

He took swimming lessons this summer and made some nice progress. However, he's continually troubled by the fact that there is no such thing as a mouth plug. He thinks he could do so many other things in the pool, if only he had a plug for his mouth. How does this kid not notice the bigger problem of nostrils?

He reads. I'll try not to gush too much, but it's really fun. Unfortunately, he's having a hard time applying this knowledge beyond his original set of reading books (Bob books). He has it stuck in his head that those are the only kind of books he can read. When I catch him reading other things, he tries to hide it so that I won't expect it of him.

He thinks it's really subtle and cool to say "zero" instead of "no". For example, I'll ask him if he wants spinach on his quesadilla and he'll put his fingers into an O shape (meaning zero) and gets this smirk on his face like he's done something awesome.

His obsession with superheros has been going strong for the past year. I tell my kids stories before they go to sleep and I'm getting pretty tired of the superhero story formula that Seth wants EVERY night. It goes like this (and he thinks he needs to explain it every night). "I want a story about Green Lantern. First he's Hal Jordan, then he's Green Lantern and he fights bad guys. (Then Seth demonstrates punching and kicking sound effects)" Replace the main character with Wally West who turns into the Flash, Logan who turns into Wolverine, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent...yada, yada, yada.

Seth loves to play Yuk a Muk. (As a review: you name two foods that are good, but not good when eaten together). Seth is pretty good at it, except that he overuses peanut butter and avocados because he thinks they're disgusting to begin with. A couple of Seth's recent triumphs: ice cream with mayonnaise; lollipops with mushrooms. Yuk a muk.

I used to buy Cheerios for the kids. Aaron introduced them to Honey Nut Cheerios. There's no going back now. Seth loves it with his whole soul. Every cold cereal morning, he requests in the same exact order "big bowl, giraffe spoon, honey nut, milk." He must think I have a terrible memory.

Any mention of eyeballs or stinky things makes Seth giggle. I noticed someone in the hallway at church getting a little laugh as he overheard me telling Seth "The world doesn't revolve around eyeballs, Seth. You've got to stop thinking about them so much."

When he's really hungry, Seth will start to whine for food and complains "I'm tired of swallowing just spit!" He's got a point.

He loves to ask me math questions. Throughout the day I'm answering "what's 10 + 10 + 31?" "400 +2?" He almost always responds with "whoa. that's a lot."

When riding in the car the other day, he said to me and Aaron "Know what I'd do if we had a chip car? I'd chow on it!" That's all. He said it with so much zeal, it was cute.

Seth has every Birthday party theme and Halloween costume planned out until he's about 12. He gets upset with Ada if she dare suggests he's going to be something for Halloween in the wrong order. "NO Ada! I'm going to be a skeleton when I'm six, not eight!" How dare that 2-year-old mess it up.

Seth often likes to strip down naked when he uses the bathroom. He usually begins this process the second he starts heading toward the toilet, so his butt is already visible far before he's there. He starts preschool this week. We hope he won't shame our family when he feels the urge at school.

OB, SD day off

2011-10-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

I've been working a lot lately. I went 18 straight days before a day off last Thursday, so Lindsay and I took advantage with a night out in OB for burgers, a walk, and some photos. It was really rejuvanating to take photos again, as it's been months since the last time I took any pictures let alone serious ones.

Nikkor 12-24 @16mm f/22, 3s; Tiffen 0.6 ND, 0.6 ND Gradient

Nikkor 12-24 @13mm f/22, 8s; Tiffen 0.6 ND, 0.6 ND Gradient

Nikkor 12-24 @13mm f/22, 20s; Tiffen 0.6 ND, 0.6 ND Gradient

Nikkor 12-24 @13mm f/22, 20s; Tiffen 0.6 ND

Here I played with some neutral density filters so that I could get longer exposures without overexposing. This allowed me to get smooth waters and clouds that looked brooding, all in the early dusk when the sky itself still had a fair amount of light in it. The gradient filter gives me a little more time to expose the foreground without overexposing the sky. Filters are a much more effective way of getting well exposed sunset and dusk shots, as post-hoc digital gradients can brighten up the foreground, but cannot create the detail that you get from a correct pre-processing exposure.

Ada Buh-gay-da

2011-09-13T23:50:00.000-07:00

Ada is now 2 1/2 years old. Here's a little synopsis of what she's like at this age.

There are certain events and topics she repeats very frequently. These include:

The San Diego Padres mascot, the Friar. She calls him "funny guy"and often tries to get the family to join in on reflecting with her on how funny he is. (Ironically, among mascots, he's one of the least amusing or funny I've seen)
The time our fire detector went off when I was barbecuing some chicken that flamed up. Sometimes several times in a day she'll say "remember chicken caught on fire?" Thanks to her, I'll never forget that uneventful event.
A lady in a dolphin show. Sea World has a dolphin show (it's more like Circque de Soleil with a side of dolphin). There's a lady in a red bird costume who does acrobatics on a rope in the air over the water. Ada always says, "Remember lady turned a bird? She on a black rope!"
Her nicknames. Ada likes to review who calls her what. She says, "Dada call me Sweet. Mama and Pasi call me Tiny. Doug call me Lizzy Lamb (pronounced Wizzy Wam). Lisa call me Ada Buh Gada (prounced Ada Uh-gay-duh)"
Santafly. She frequently asks to go to a place called Santafly. We have no idea what she's talking about, but she wants to wear a superhero mask when she goes there and she wants to bring her best friend, Lucy. When Ada's misbehaving, we'll bring it up for our own amusement and say "If you don't stop doing that, we're not taking you to Santafly." Devastation. We're so cruel.
The phrase "Yes I do."

She's a very focused colorer. She can sit down and color a piece of paper for 15 minutes (so unlike Seth). She uses each color crayon, then sets it down in the "used" pile until she's gone through each color. I honestly like her drawings. Her favorite color is orange. When she sees orange, she says "that's MY color!' Sometimes she'll request that I sit down while she dictates her coloring orders to me. Seth used to ask for octopuses every time, but Ada thinks of the most random and varied stuff. She'll ask me to draw things like egg yolks, helmets, and chairs. She always wants her name on the page, but is never satisfied with just her name alone. She insists I include Seth and her BFFs Sam and Lucy every time.

Sometimes I offer to sing her a song to help her settle down to sleep at night. Not understanding lullaby protocol, she'll interrupt me and put in a request like "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" or "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Ada continues to love baby dolls. She wraps them up in blankets, changes diapers (has pretty impressive form when it comes to lifting the baby's legs up with one hand and using a wipe with the other), and my favorite is when she cradles a doll in her arms while bouncing up and down shushing her "shh shh shh."

Seth's favorite game lately is "Yuk a Muk". You just think of two foods that are good in and of themselves, but nasty when eaten together. When you think of a decently yucky combo, we say "yuk a muk". Whenever Ada attempts to play, the first of the two foods she mentions is always hot dogs. Her turn usually goes like this: "Hot dogs and chips." Pretty good. "Hot dogs and rice." Okay. "Hot dogs and peanut butter." Yuk a muk.

She is very opinionated about how I wear my hair. Often, if I try to pull it up into a bun to get it out of my way when I cook or something, she gets furious. She instantly breaks into tears and says "get low!" Aaron and my brothers call me "Lo" for a nickname (derived from "Lola", derived from "low-life" when I was a child). I wonder if Ada is actually calling me this when she says "get low" because lately she'll say "Don't be Lindsay! Get Lo!" So, I'm Lindsay with my hair up and I'm Lo, my alter ego, with my hair down? It's difficult to sit Ada down and extract this information from her.

She loves cracking jokes and doing silly things for a laugh. She'll say nonsensical things to get us to say "that doesn't make any sense!" She loves that. A couple days ago, I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she said "Honey Bunches of...Garbage" and looked around for a laugh. She got us. We laughed. She then stretched for 5 rounds of laughter on that same joke of course.

A couple things she's recently grown out of, but I still wanted to write down:
She'd attempt to do something like lift a big object, huff and puff over it for a minute, then relent and say "I too tiny." Her tininess was a big part of how she identified herself. She's more into being big now. She used to overuse the "f" sound quite a bit, putting it at the beginning of a lot of words. We'd try to coach her to say "clothes" instead of "foze". She'd concentrate and carefully say "c...foze". We're still working on the word "truck" unfortunately.

Some Vacation Time

2011-09-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

We recently went camping near the beach in San Clemente. We were with Aaron's extended family. He's got a great family and our kids were in heaven playing with their cousins. It was cute just how entertaining a tent with some sleeping bags was to the kids. Pure joy.
We were a little on edge in the evenings as the place was crawling with skunks. Maybe it was just one skunk doing the rounds, but it was unnerving to be startled by this creature, but you can't jump for fear that you'll startle it in return and get your campsite all skunky skunked. Luckily, Pepé Le Pew kept his stinky stinks to himself.

(This funny face photo made an impact on Ada. She didn't know this was possible to do with her face, and now does it on a daily basis.)
We spent the next weekend in Newport Beach with my brother's family. Beach houses are a beautiful thing. We enjoyed playing on the beach, finding crabs, riding cruisers, and joking around.Thanks to both families for all the good times!

Update and pics

2011-07-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

Not sure why blogging has become so difficult to remember to do lately. Is it just me, or are most of the bloggers I know slowing down a bit? Is facebook usurping the blogosphere? I personally prefer the blog-thing over facebook as a form of updating the masses on personal goings-on, as it's a little bit more substantive than facebook and you're only sharing your life with people who actually care to visit the site. So, despite our lack of posts in some time, we plan on keeping the blog going.

First an update, then some pics.

I've been at the new job now for a little over a month. Just getting used to the whole being-a-doctor-and-having-responsibility-for people's-health thing. I just finished a few weeks of night-float, which consisted of 16 hour shifts, from 4pm to 8am. It was kind of a baptism-by-fire deal--thrown into the action from the outset. As rough as the schedule was, it was a pretty good learning experience. I covered the patients of 10 others doctors each night--typically about 70 patients. I stayed pretty busy, even in the middle of the night. After all of the pills and IV pushes I've ordered for Haldol, Ativan, Morphine, Dilaudid, Tylenol PR, plus all of the chest x-rays, CT scans, blood cultures, EKGs, cardiac enzymes, nebulizer treatments, and antibiotics--I'm just beginning to not look over my shoulder when the nurse looks at me and asks, "what do you want to do doctor?"

It really hit home the other day. In medical school I saw several patients who come in very sick, and after struggling in the ICU after some time, pass away. But a few nights ago, a patient I'd been caring for over the course of a week suddenly passed away. We performed CPR for 45 minutes but were unsuccessful in resuscitating him. He was only 50 and his expiration was unexpected. It was up to me to inform the patient's next of kin. Telling that man that his brother was gone was the hardest phone call I've ever made.

Anyway, my rotation on night float is over. I had the weekend off so we went to the beach as usual. I actually brought my camera and got some pictures for the first time in quite a while. I've been slacking in that department lately.

We're gonna miss these beach sunsets in Seattle.

MD!

2011-06-26T23:20:00.001-07:00

Aaron graduated from medical school on June 5th. I'm going to try to write this post without gushing too much, but it might leak out a bit. For those who've never had someone really close to them go through the experience of medical school, you might be amazed at what good doctors go through to become who they are. You can write off this next comment to a naively proud wife if you like, but if you know Aaron at all, he'll be a really good doctor because he would never settle for anything less. Watching him go through the grueling hard work of this experience has been inspiring. Man, that sounded cheesy, but I don't know how else to put it.

Aaron wrote me the sweetest card on his graduation day, giving me nearly all the credit. Yes, I worked really hard too during these four years to take care of him and the kids, but I definitely got the better end of the deal. As exhausting as it was, I got rewarded with countless great, funny, rewarding moments with the kids day to day while Aaron would be at the hospital til all hours getting treated like somebody's dog, (when the rotation was a bad one). Add into that the pressure of always needing to study, even during the weeks you're getting up at 4 AM and coming home at 10 PM.

Anyway, I'm happy we all survived. Aaron took our kids with him onto the stage to receive his degree. Ada, as if she'd been prepped for it, leaned in to kiss dad right after he was hooded. Way to nail the moment Ada!

Thanks again to our families who came to celebrate with us!

Wedding photography

2011-06-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a ton of photos lately, although not exactly for pleasure. I've done a couple weddings and other shoots in the last few weeks, and it feels like I've been perpetually post-processing photos. These kind of photos are really not my specialty, but I have a hard time saying no. I thought I'd post a few shots as I haven't blogged in ages, and this is what I've been up to since finishing medical school, and before starting residency.

My brother married my new sister-in-law Thyci

A friend and I recently tag-teamed shooting another wedding at the historic El Cortez hotel in San Diego.
A beautiful bride...

cake...

music...

and a beautiful building--

The most fun I had was when I got to spend a few minutes setting up MY kind of shot--a long exposure night shot of the El Cortez with some great colored fill light.

I've gained a new appreciation for people who do this for a living--it's pretty exhausting work, and takes a lot of creativity and really quick thinking to do anything unique. The good ones definitely earn the hefty prices they sometimes charge. For me, it doesn't really come natural. I think I'll keep my day job, and stick to my hobby--landscapes of nature and architecture.

A Fun Trip

2011-06-17T23:55:00.000-07:00

We recently drove to Ashland, Oregon to visit my brothers Doug and Jeff and their families. San Diego is a long way from them, and we've missed them dearly.

Being at Doug and Angela's house is like staying in a posh cabin on a forested mountain. So gorgeous. Seth got to drive a tractor and go 4-wheeling in a sweet old Jeep. It was pretty funny to watch this Jeep navigate the rough terrain with car seats rocking back and forth in the backseat with a couple of smiling four-year-olds (Seth and his cousin Johnny).

Between Doug and Jeff's houses, there were plenty of pets to love on--dogs, cats, kittens, a hedgehog, chickens (although Seth was too distracted by the pool to request his usual chicken coop jaunt). There was even a menacing bear lurking near the trash cans at night to keep things exciting.

Doug was very interested in showing his niece and nephew a good time and winning their affections. He didn't mind exhausting himself towing us back and forth on the zip line, taking us on forest tours, motorcycling, and telling the kids awesome bedtime stories.

Doug took the kids to the candy aisle at the drug store and said "get whatever you want". They started grabbing two and three things each -- I immediately corrected them and said "no, just choose one." Doug said, "no, get WHATEVER you want". Wow, the kids had a great time collecting armfuls of candy and putting it in the shopping cart. (Sometimes the kids had no idea what it was they were grabbing, so I admit I plucked some chocolate cherries back out of the cart. Those just aren't fit for consumption). I realized I hadn't ever let them go to the the candy aisle and choose even one thing before. They loved it of course, and they really loved Doug. When we were in the check-out line with over $60 in candy and soda, Doug realized how ridiculous we looked and had to make a joke of it to amuse the cashier and fellow customers who were led to believe the kids were diabetics.

This last photo is probably only funny to me. Doug and I thought Ada in this blanket looked like a Russian baby waiting for her rye. Anyway, we had a great time. We got to meet our newest nephew, had some good laughs, and I was even treated to a really cool rendering of the Shakespearean play "Measure for Measure". If you know anything about Ashland, they do Shakespeare right up there. It was such a treat!

Super Eggs

2011-04-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

vagabond #2

2011-04-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

Remember this post? Well, I don't have anything as funny as this or this, but to say the least, Seth's habit of falling asleep anytime or anywhere, in any position or any outfit, continues. I've been collecting evidence of his narcoleptic escapades the last few months, taking pictures when I remember or have the camera nearby.

He literally fell asleep on my arm while we were building a T-rex skeleton he got for Christmas. Is was a long, fun day, and I'm sure as soon as the blood glucose levels dropped below 200 his body couldn't take it anymore. He was out.

I call this sleep-hiding.

Can't wait for his girlfriends to see this one. Probably shouldn't publish it on the internet but here goes. Notice the backwards underwear (See this post for better explanation of that).

At/under the table. A form of sleep-hiding.

At the table. In a viking costume.

On the couch. In a ?? costume. (Swim trunks, sweater, gloves, mask, red crocs)?

Even Superman gets tired. It should (or should it?) be noted, that the red over-the-tights "underwear" are his sister's. I guess you could say he's dedicated to costume accuracy.

And last but not least, my favorite episode of sleep-hiding.

Yes, that's a messy closet.

The kid cracks me up. We love him.

Concentration

2011-04-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

4

2011-04-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

Our little Seth just turned 4. We celebrated with a superhero party. I'm sure I'm including too many pictures in this post, but they're just so colorful and fun. Each kid got to choose their favorite super color. Super Seth chose to wear as much green as possible and did many super poses throughout the party.

They threw bombs at the bad guy robot headquarters. I know--a lovely message to send children.

They did a superhero obstacle course.

It started out in a phone booth...

then they crawled through a tunnel...

carried a bus...

knocked out a fierce robot...

and stopped a runaway train with their super strength.

They enjoyed shooting spiderman webs (silly string).

They defeated yet another evil robot.

Luckily, the robot guts were made of candy.

Happy birthday to our lovable, fun super boy!

The jury is in!

2011-03-18T23:22:00.000-07:00

Our fate for the next 5 years is decided. We are really excited to finally know where we're going, not to mention how excited we are with the results themselves.

Starting in June, I'll start a one-year internship at Scripps Mercy Hospital here in San Diego (June 2011 - June 2012), doing mostly internal medicine and a bit of pediatrics. We're excited to not have to move far for the intern year, and I absolutely love the hospital.

In 2012 we will move up to Seattle for my radiology residency at the University of Washington Medical Center!

We are really excited. I loved my visit to Seattle and the program really felt like the perfect fit. We can't wait to become Northwesterners. I'm looking forward to a whole new world to photograph, and hopefully will get some shots like these:

We found out the news yesterday at the match day celebration on campus. The whole graduating class was there. Everyone gets an envelope with their match results. Seth opened ours.

Seth is excited to move to Seattle (as he informed many people yesterday), because "it snows sometimes there" and "Sean's going to teach me how to fish." (Sean is our friend who will also be at UW--for orthopedics. Seth is already aware that his dad doesn't know how to do things like fish, and he's already turning to others for help).

kids are funny

2011-03-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Ada chose this outfit, and insisted on wearing it to the beach - a regular fashionista.

Seth insisted on performing karate moves as I took pictures of him.

I Have a Problem

2011-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

There was a party at church for all the little kids--a car party. Each kid was supposed to bring a cardboard box car with straps over their shoulders that they could run around in. Unfortunately for Seth, I got a little too excited about the project and by the time this rig (which was way too big a box to begin with) had a flashing light, ladder, headlights, and a hose, it was way too heavy and cumbersome for him to participate in the car races. Yeah, we showed up with a fancy car, but I felt embarrassed. Seth simply shed his truck and ran around the track with the kids. Well, the truck was a lot of fun for the kids to play in all week (more like a play house than a vehicle).

A week after the party, one of our neighbors suggested that if we all had our cars still, we could meet at the playground and let the kids have a few more races. Seth begged me to make him a small, fast car. All he wanted wanted was a couple "S"s on the sides (for Seth). My favorite request was "Please mom--put fake headlights on it! All the other kids had fake headlights!" Fine. The 15 minutes I put into the second car was all I should have done in the first place, but I'm just like that.

San Diego Winter Pics

2011-02-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

Lately I've had a bit more time to take some pictures. I know I need to take more shots of the kids, but they move too much, so I'm sticking with beaches and piers. Within the last couple weeks, we've spent some evenings watching the sun go down over the ocean. Here are a few examples of the photographic exploits.

Torrey Pines State Beach is about 7 miles north of our place.

Scripps Beach north of Scripps Pier and La Jolla Shores - about 3 miles from our place.

The Scripps Institute of Oceanography Pier is my most photographed landmark. A thirty-second exposure after the stars came out:

And a California Brown Pelican at the La Jolla Cove a couple weeks ago:

A small flock of sanderlings in the surf at Torrey Pines:

Ranking the rest of our life (or the next 5 or 6 years anyway)

2011-02-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about what we're doing/where we're going after I graduate from medical school in a few months. It's a complicated answer, that starts with, "I don't know."

First of all, I'm going to be a radiologist. I realize that many people are not sure what a radiologist is/does, and that the first question that comes to mind is probably "taking x-rays?" No, not taking x-rays, that's a radiographer. A diagnostic radiologist is an MD who is trained to know what imaging studies are required and to interpret medical images such as MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds, in order to diagnose disease. There is not a ton of patient interaction, but there is a lot of doctor interaction, as a radiologist is in general a consultant to other doctors. So why would anyone want to do that? There are lots of reasons, which I won't get into now, other than to say radiology is awesome.

Training:
The way it works with radiology is that you must be a licensed physician before beginning a radiology residency--which means I have to do a one-year intern year in order to get licensed. So, starting in June, I will be a medical intern somewhere, doing mostly internal medicine (like what J.D. and Elliot did on Scrubs).

In June 2012, I will start a 4-5 year radiology residency somewhere else.

Somewhere:
Between October 28 and January 21, I interviewed for positions at hospitals. I went to 27 different programs in 8 states, 15 for radiology, and 12 for my intern year. I know, that's a lot. Excessive? Actually, not really--I assure you that for radiology, it's pretty average, as it is a very competitive specialty. If I were to display my travels like a rock-and-roll tour on the back of a t-shirt, it would look like this:

Oct 28, 2010 - Albuquerque, NM
Nov 4, 2010 - Colton, CA
Nov 12, 2010 - Seattle, WA
Nov 16, 2010 - Oakland, CA
Nov 17, 2010 - Santa Clara, CA
Nov 18, 2010 - Santa Clara, CA
Nov 19, 2010 - San Diego, CA
Nov 20, 2010 - Torrance, CA
Dec 3, 2010 - Denver, CO
Dec 8, 2010 - Los Angeles, CA
Dec 9, 2010 - Los Angeles, CA
Dec 13, 2010 - St. Louis, MO
Dec 14, 2010 - Irvine, CA
Dec 16, 2010 - Portland, OR
Dec 17, 2010 - San Diego, CA
Dec 21, 2010 - Santa Barbara, CA
Dec 28, 2010 - Oakland, CA
Jan 3, 2011 - Philadelphia, PA
Jan 4, 2011 - Boston, MA
Jan 7, 2011 - San Francisco, CA
Jan 10, 2011 - Sacramento, CA
Jan 11, 2011 - Palo Alto, CA
Jan 12, 2011 - Los Angeles, CA
Jan 13, 2011 - San Francisco, CA
Jan 18, 2011 - San Diego, CA
Jan 20, 2011 - Boston, MA
Jan 21, 2011 - Boston, MA

In all, there were 103 individual interviews at 27 programs in 8 states, 10 round trip flights, 16 nights in hotels, 6 rental cars, about 2,500 miles driven, and about $6000 in the red. It was exhausting and it was great when it was over.

The Match:
Many people hear about all the interviews I went on and say "well, it sounds like you will have lots of options!" Well, not really how it works. Have you heard of The Match? In a nutshell, you apply for residency programs. You are either invited to interview, or not. You interview at programs. You rank the programs from most preferred to least preferred. The programs rank the interviewees from most preferred to least preferred. A computer algorithm then pairs applicants to programs based on these preferences, and voila, you are matched. So you really only have one option once the rank list is made--the one you are matched to. Match day is March 17. So I will know then where we are going, both for internship and for residency.

Ranking:
The difficulty is choosing how to rank the programs. There are lots of factors you have to consider, including but not limited to: location (i.e. cool city, proximity to family, proximity to friends, weather, adventure factor), quality of program (quality of the faculty, facilities, teaching, prestige, future job/fellowship prospects), and gut feeling (how did the place feel, would I fit in, etc).

It makes it really hard. I think I would be thrilled to match at any of my top 10 radiology programs, which include these cities (in alphabetical order):

Boston, MA
Los Angeles, CA
Palo Alto, CA
Philadelphia, PA
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO

So, our rank list is due on Wednesday, Feb 23rd. After then, there are no more choices, just waiting for Match day.

How would you rank these places? How should we do it!!!????

Two

2011-02-18T18:08:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it, but Ada is 2 years old. Our little Valentine was born on Feb. 14, 2009. Seems like yesterday. Although she's a teeny tiny (still less than 3rd percentile in weight), she is growing a lot lately in skills. She talks a ton and loves to dance. Her favorite color is pink.

Here she is with her best friend/2nd cousin Lucy, enjoying her new doll bed:

Lindsay made a chocolate raspberry cake (from scratch of course). Ada blew out the candles by herself, although Seth would like to take a little credit, as he was using all the power in his lungs to blow out the flames from 5 feet away.

The latest on the bigger kid

2011-02-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

So, it's Seth turn for me to write down a few things to remember what he's up to lately.

Superheroes galore. He knows the names of their alter egos, the details of their costumes, and dreams of being one of them. I've caught Seth several times trying to scale our walls like Spiderman. He's even tried it with honey on his hands, hoping the stickiness would help. When he wears a superhero costume, he frequently asks me questions like, "Does Batman take off his cape when he goes potty?" or "Does Spiderman wear his mask when he's eating?" I'm kind of glad he's noticing the impracticality of superhero-dom in everyday life.

Spinach. Seth was already willing to eat spinach before seeing clips of Popeye on youtube, but now he's really on board. The other day I handed him a plate of spinach-less scrambled eggs and he said, "But it's not going to have any flavor! How am I going to be strong?" Another time I was trying to carry on a phone conversation while Seth was eating a spinach quesadilla. It was tough to pay attention to my conversation with Seth flexing his arms and repeatedly yelling "why are my muscles getting bigger?!!" Ada's caught on now and often flexes her arms and says "strong!" when she eats her spinach.

Mannequins. Whenever we go into a store with mannequins, Seth can't resist holding hands with them. He thinks it's hilarious. The other day we were at a store where the mannequin was up on a pedestal. We wouldn't let him climb up there and he was really frustrated that he was missing out on a great opportunity. He started whining, "but who's hand am I going to hold?"

Papa Seth. Seth's quite certain he's going to have ten children with his wife someday. Good luck finding a wife who'll participate in that buddy! When I ask him why he wants ten, he says "because it will be so much fun!" Occasionally he'll ponder the logistics of such a family and say "I'm going to need 10 cars for those kids." or "I'm going to need a really big house."

Oatmeal burgers. We have this Sesame Street book from the 70s, with a recipe from Bert for oatmeal burgers (a weird way of using leftover oatmeal). Seth is in love with the concept/thinks it's hilarious. He likes to break tension when he or Ada is in trouble by yelling "oatmeal burger!" to try and get everyone to laugh. I admit it makes me laugh to see him so amused with himself. I hear him saying it on the playground too, getting all his little buddies to crack up when he says it. He's pretty good at infecting others with his amusements.

Ocean Beach, San Francisco

2011-02-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

We haven't posted in a long time. I finally got around to getting some photos off of my camera that I took up in the Bay Area around New Years, so I thought I'd share. We were in the city and stopped by a very cold and windy Ocean Beach to catch the sunset on Dec 30.

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 0.5s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 2.5s

Whoooooaaaa!! That's what I always wanted!

2010-12-30T11:01:00.001-08:00

Here is another Christmas morning video, this time with Seth's reactions after opening presents. I personally find it hilarious, but I am naturally biased. If you're a big Seth fan, you might enjoy.

(note: no duplicated footage or clips)

Is it my turn?

2010-12-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

We tried to instill in Seth the true meaning of Christmas. However, that all went right out the window the second presents were in the picture. The following video illustrates my point. I assure you, there is no duplicated footage in this video. Each clip is unique. I know, hard to believe.

The kids know how to bring the merry

2010-12-26T18:58:00.000-08:00

This was a particularly fun Christmas since Seth really got into it and will probably even remember it as he grows older.

I thought he was going to pass out in a daze of celebrity awe when he sat on Santa's lap at the mall. He had planned out what he was going to say, but froze up when the moment arrived. He just couldn't stop smiling and staring at him. We were there to translate the mumbles behind the tooth-clenched smile--"a bike, Batman, Superman, Iron Man." Seth panicked a few days later when he realized he had forgotten to include Spiderman. Miraculously, Santa made his way to the Stanford Mall the same night as us a week later and Seth put his worries to rest, plus he loosened up a little the second time, and Ada too. She actually sat on Santa's lap.

All these superheroes Seth wants are not action figures, they're costumes. He got so many costumes for Christmas, I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of grocery shopping, etc. with Iron Man, Dracula, and Superman this year.

My kids are naturally the epitome of traditionally-assigned gender roles. While Seth is running around making sound effects, pretending to beat up bad guys, Ada loves kissing her new baby doll, twirling around in her puffy skirt, and chopping wooden velcro fruit on a cutting board.

Christmas Morning

2010-12-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

The latest on the smaller kid

2010-12-15T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ada has a really sweet little voice. Thanks to Aaron for giving her a chance in that department. (Poor Aaron runs in the other direction when I answer my phone in public because I'm SO loud. I like to claim it's completely genetic because you should hear my dad's booming voice. WOW.) At 22 months, Ada's in that stage where everything she says (when she isn't fussing) is completely adorable. I realize parents tend to worship their own children, but I'm convinced that she could melt the heart of anyone who could hear her say "fluffy" or "wuv you". I could listen to it all day. I love how she calls our wagon the "waggie" and pronounces "blanket": "buh bet". She can't contain her excitement when I carry her around the house looking for buh-bet and we finally find it--she kicks her legs and hugs it with such adoration.

Ada's current obsessions are Elmo, baggies, Bohemian Rhapsody, my mole, and her best friend (and second cousin) Lucy.

I'm not sure how she got into Elmo since we don't have TV, but his image is on the face of every one of her pampers, so I guess those two have been close for a while. I'll show her clips on youtube sometimes, and I must say this one is my favorite.

As far as baggies ("bah-ggies"), she likes all kinds: sandwich bags with snacks in them, my purse, grocery bags, gift bags, etc. I recently took dinner to a friend who had a baby, and handed over the dinner in a brown paper grocery bag. Ada went nuts and made a huge scene as I was trying to walk away, because in her mind, we had foolishly given away a perfectly good bah-ggie. She lost a lot of respect for my judgment that night.

She's crazy about Bohemian Rhapsody, and calls it "ah-go"--a reference to "let me go". She requests it in the car every time there's a break between songs on the stereo. She'll quietly say from the back seat "ah-go". She doesn't demand it, she just inserts the idea into our minds every time she feels there's a chance. Her humble pleas win us over quite frequently. She likes to play air drums to it, chant "no. no. no. no. no. no. no.", and reaches as far down into her vocal capacity as possible to sing the last word "me"--which is rather amusing to watch. (The muppets version of Bohemian Rhapsody has Miss Piggy singing the final line "nothing really matters pour moi" in a low voice, and that's what Ada's trying to imitate).

The mole. I have this big ugly mole on my upper chest that Ada is unfortunately in love with. It's pretty disgusting. She often keeps one hand just inside the collar of my shirt whenever I'm holding her so she can touch it. The other day, she wanted me to give her baby doll some love. She handed me her doll so I could rock it and kiss it. Just so the doll and I could completely bond, Ada took the doll's hand and put in on my mole. She must think every kid takes comfort in squishy moles.

Ada calls her best friend Lucy-- "E". She talks about her all the time, tries to head out the door on her own to see her, hugs and loves on her even when E repeatedly squirms away. I was telling Seth stories in the car the other day, and he likes to choose the topic (example: "I want a story about two best buddy Vikings named Seth and Sam in their Viking ship that's actually a wagon"). Then for the first time, Ada requested a story of her own. Her topic of choice: E and bah-ggies. She thoroughly enjoyed her first custom made story about her and her BFF putting stuff in baggies.

Now that Ada's hair is getting longer, it's unfortunately losing a lot of its curl. It's platinum blonde, thin and wispy, with enough wave still in it that it doesn't lie down reverently. It's kind of a mess, and for the life of me, I can't manage to make symmetrical pigtails. Sorry Ada. I still think she's pretty cute though, especially in her new skinny jeans. Did you know they make skinny jeans for one year olds? Ada totally pulls the look off, even with a diaper.

Out of Africa, AZ

2010-12-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

We drove to Phoenix last week to visit a whole slew of my family that were congregating for Thanksgiving. (Two of my uncles live there). The day after T-day we went to a wildlife park called Out of Africa, in the middle of nowhere about 1.5 hours north of Phoenix in Camp Verde, AZ. They have some cool interactive stuff and the kids loved it.

I also decided to bring my camera despite the fact that it usually means I worry too much about getting photos to enjoy other festivities. In this case I was glad I did. Some samples of zebra and lion shots:

Nikon 18-200 @35mm, f/7.1, 1/200s

Nikon 18-200 @200mm, f/5.6, 1/1250s

Nikon 18-200 @200mm, f/5.6, 1/1250s

Nikon 18-200 @200mm, f/5.6, 1/1250s

November Sunset

2010-11-20T23:55:00.000-08:00

You might be tired of my San Diego beach sunsets over a pier. Sorry. This one was particularly spectacular and colorful. I never get tired of them and it's moments like these that make me ask myself why I would ever want to leave San Diego.
Click here for more.

Nikon 12-24 @12mm, 1/60s

Nikon 12-24 @12mm, 1/50s

Nikon 12-24 @24mm, 1/60s

Scripps Pier, La Jolla, CA

Ada

2010-11-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

vagabond

2010-11-13T16:10:00.000-08:00

Maybe this is a phenomenon that every parent experiences to some degree. Kids play hard, they get tired.

They fall asleep in weird places, sometimes wearing weird things (or wearing them backwards) at weird times.

My older brother could fall asleep anywhere. Perhaps that's where Seth gets his talent. Sometimes its even tough to find him.

If every kid has a proclivity to sleep in strange places, I think Seth is at least one standard deviation above the mean of strangeness. He can get pretty creative too.

This one is my favorite:

Low Tide, La Jolla Cove

2010-11-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

We went to the Cove last night to escape the heat. The tide was low so the kids got to find little sea creatures and I got to take some pictures.

[Low Tide, La Jolla Cove]

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/8, 1/250s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 1/13s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 3s

Nikon 12-24mm @24mm, f/22, 5s

The Clan

2010-11-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

My cousin Jenn's kids dressed up like Vikings too, so I had to include a post that shows them too. It's more fun to pillage and plunder for Halloween treats with your best buddy.

Jenn's family turned our wagon into a Viking ship for the sweeties. These kids had so much fun, and so did we!

Valhalla, I am coming!

2010-11-02T00:58:00.000-07:00

Hope you had a happy Halloween.

Website

2010-10-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

For anyone who cares, I have recently been putting the finishing touches on my photography website.

I've been working on a project the last year and a half or so, trying to capture the piers and beaches of San Diego. My latest shoot was last week at Crystal Pier. In any case, if you like that sort of thing, check out some of my Pier and Beach shots on the new website.

http://aaronrutmanphotography.com

I like too much

2010-10-01T00:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote some stuff about Ada that I want to remember. Now it's Seth's turn. Seth has such an abundance of interests and comedic material at his age, it's tough to cut it down to a realistic blog post. Here are a few things he's up to:

He loves abbreviating words and names, and does it quite freely with the expectation that we always know what he's talking about. Some examples:
- He reached to take Aaron's hand while crossing a street and said "I just want the pink," meaning, "I just want to hold your pinky".
- While watching a Giants game, Buster Posey is up to bat. Seth says "I like Bust." (As an aside, can anyone think of a cooler name than Buster Posey for a ball player? Okay, maybe Coco Crisp.)
- Although Seth knows the complete names off all the dinosaurs he's familiar with, he likes to nickname them. Pachycephalosaurus = Pachy. Quetzalcoatlus = Quetz (pronounced "kets"). Tyrannosaurus Rex = Tyranni. Gallimimus = Gal.

He's obsessed with matching his appearance with his friends or the shows he'll watch. It's almost obsessive compulsive. (Wherever could he have gotten such tendencies? Between Aaron and myself, this poor kid doesn't stand a chance.) He'll be out playing on the playground and see one of his friends has sneakers on as opposed to crocs, and insists on going home and changing his shoes to match them. He gets so excited about it and anticipates their reaction "What will Gabe say when he sees me in these?" "Probably nothing, Seth." When he watches a show, he'll do the same thing and want to dress up like the characters. I've made a lot of cardboard props to match cartoon characters' swords, crowns, etc. He wants every detail to look accurate. Last week while Aaron was studying for the Boards all day at the library, Seth was dying to ask him something and kept begging to see Dad. When he finally saw Aaron in the evening, the first thing out of Seth's mouth was "Dad, I have something to ask you. What kind of fabric is Peter Pan's knife sheath made out of?" It was such an odd question, we couldn't help but crack up. Aaron then put on a straight face and said "Well Seth, probably a cotton/poly blend."

A couple months ago, Seth was at the nursery at church during the singing time. The leaders asked the children if there were any songs they'd like to sing. Seth requested "Take me out to the ball game". They'd never had that request before, but obliged him. Seth was horrified when they all said, "root, root, root for the home team" instead of, "root, root, root for the Giants," and adamantly corrected them. He made a habit of requesting that song for many subsequent weeks, but would always prepare everyone with a speech first: "I have something to tell you! Don't say home team. Say Giants!"

Seth is really into stories. Aaron and I have dug up all sorts of memories from our childhoods, and made up countless stories about animals, etc. A couple months ago Seth's best buddy, Sam, (his second cousin and neighbor) went on a trip for a couple of weeks. Seth missed him desperately. All he wanted was stories about best buddy animals named Seth and Sam, having fun together. He often wants me to use first, middle, and last names so that there is NO mistaking who we're really talking about. Sam's been back for some time now, but I'm still telling stories everyday to my beaming child about best buddy komodo dragons, bambiraptors, leopards, jellyfish. . .

While on road trips, sometimes Aaron and I will look up random stuff on Wikipedia and read it in the car to entertain ourselves. Aaron was reading about Humphrey the humpback whale (remember him?), when Seth got really tired of the topic and repeatedly interrupted him (loudly). They started arguing about it, and Aaron was probably saying something like "If you interrupt me one more time...!" when Seth started yelling "Dad, Dad, Dad, STOP! Stop! stop...stop...stop. I love you." It was as if to say, "None of this is important. Let's remember the love." Way to be, Seth. And nice tactic.

A line that Seth often employs, which I think really embodies his personality, is "I like too much." Whenever he wants a snack or a treat he always wants "a lot." We're always telling him, "Seth, that's too much!" He always replies with a smile, "I like too much." He has since resorted to asking for it outright: "I don't want only two, I want too much!" My favorite is when he tells Aaron, "Dad, I love you this much," spreading his arms as far apart as possible. Aaron always says, "Seth, that's too much!" And Seth replies every time with a smile "I like too much," and Aaron says, "me too."

Heat Wave

2010-09-28T12:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday it got to 107 degrees in San Diego (despite a forecast high of 94 degrees). It was without a doubt the hottest day since we've been in San Diego. I'm pretty sure nothing even comes close. It might have gotten to 95 a couple years ago in August. I think the cool summer we had this year saved all it's heat for one day in early Fall. It's weird, because it's only 82 degrees today. Luckily we have the beach to cool us off.

da kids

2010-09-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

We went to Muir Woods with the kids and Lindsay's parents when we were in the Bay Area last week. A good time had by all.

Baby Ada

2010-09-20T22:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up in a panic this morning because I haven't been writing down the things our kids do, and I'm afraid we'll lose a lot of these memories forever. I'll cover Ada tonight and hopefully get back on the computer tomorrow to write down some Seth stuff.

Ada's 19 months old now. She was such a late walker (at 17 months) and is pretty unstable still. Maybe balancing that big head atop a skinny, petite body has something to do with it. She's averaging about one nose bleed each week from bashing her face against something. It's kind of sad.

She adores Seth. She follows him around much of the day saying his name over and over, trying to copy the things he does. It's pretty funny to see Seth roar like a tyrannosaurus when he wants me to drop lunch meat in his mouth, or bark like a sea lion for a piece of halibut. It's that much funnier to see Ada copy him though. Seeing that tiny girl roar and bark for food cracks me up.
I like that whenever Seth sees something Ada loves (like Elmo or doggies) he points it out to her. It's his way of taking care of her.

Some of Ada's 1-year-old comedic material is still funny to Seth at age 3. She'll periodically sit in her high chair and stick out her tongue, making a vibrating noise, and then say "baby" (pronounced beebee), followed by hysterical laughter. Then Seth will start doing it back to her-- tongue noise . . ."beebee" . . . laughter. Endless toddler fun.

Ada loves babies. She has a doll that she wraps in a blanket, hugs and kisses it, gives it a pacifier, and takes it on stroller rides. She's also obsessed with shoes, especially her white thong sandals. They're getting too small for her, but she can't let them go.

Ada says a lot of words. She loves naming her body parts: eyes, nose, teeth, feet, etc. She over-applies the word doggie to any furry animal. She fell in love with her Aunt Vania's kitten last week and would hold him and pet him. She'd call him kitty 10% of the time, and doggie the other 90%.

Seth's love of swords has rubbed off on little Ada. He's used her enough as a sword fighting companion that now almost any long, slender object is worthy of battle. Ada swings cheese sticks, asparagus, etc. around with her lips pushed out, making sword-clashing sound effects.

Some might describe Ada as clingy. I prefer the term cuddly. She's pretty attached to my hip. I've learned to do a lot of things with a baby on my hip. I'm not the most efficient person because of it, but this time is so fleeting when my kids are this tiny. I don't mind a little company on my hip for a few years.

This photo is almost a year old, but I love it so much. I could look at this every day and smile.

Muir Woods

2010-09-19T02:07:00.000-07:00

Nikkor 12-24mm @12, f/22, 8 sec

Nikkor 12-24mm @135, f/8, 1/3 sec

What I'm up to

2010-09-02T02:28:00.000-07:00

     I have not blogged in ages. I doubt anyone has noticed. However, the neighbors have been asking me a lot lately what I'm up to. I don't think they are used to seeing me around so much in the daylight hours, and are probably wondering A) who's that guy with Lindsay's kids? or B) maybe Lindsay's husband got kicked out of medical school.
     In any case, with the completion of my 3rd year in June, life has changed a little bit. The third year of medical school is generally the year in which you rotate through all of the core specialties: Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, Neurology, OB/GYN, Psychiatry, Primary Care. It was a grand yet entirely painful year. I rotated through 4 hospitals, saw many hundreds (thousand(s)?) of patients, listened to countless hearts/lungs/bellies, "performed" a myriad of rectal and vaginal exams, learned and saw the use of hundreds of medications, delivered 8 babies, worked with the mentally ill in a psych ward, took care of a handful of terminally ill children, learned how to wield a slick reflex hammer, sewed up a bunch of surgical wounds, put in a ton of foley catheters, removed CSF drains out of brains, screwed on pieces of skull, got yelled at by arrogant residents exactly 3 times, worked anywhere from 100 hrs/wk on neurosurgery to 45 hrs/wk on psychiatry (not including studying time), and generally felt dumb and/or inadequate about 50% of the time along the way.
     Now that it's 4th year, I get to decide on the rotations I want to take. Naturally, I choose the ones where I get to be home more:) Granted, I'm writing this at 2 am from an office in the MRI building at the hospital as I download images of liver tumors from the hospital server for my research--but in general I've enjoyed the last few months, getting to spend more time with Seth, Ada, and Lindsay.
     In my "free" time, I've been preparing my application to residency, which I actually submitted today (which is I guess yesterday now). My first job application as a doctor. (I'm going to be a Radiologist, which requires 5 more years of training--an intern year in Internal Medicine, and 4 years of Radiology training). I applied to 19 internal medicine internships, and 40 radiology residencies from here to New York. It should be a hectic Winter of interviews. I will know where we end up in March, so quit asking.
     Anyway, that's what I'm up to.

Also, Lindsay and I actually went out without the kids last week. On a boat in the San Diego Bay with friends. It was awesome.

da kids

2010-08-09T14:27:00.000-07:00

they keep getting bigger.

America's Finest City

2010-08-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

San Diego's self-proclaimed nickname is "America's Finest City." Pretty pretentious nickname, but it' probably true.

Coronado Bridge

America's Finest City

The Dance

2010-07-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

Seth gave up diapers about 3 months ago. I was recently going through our videos and found several attempts I made at capturing Seth's "pee pee dance". On the tail end of his diaper-wearing days, he loved shaking his hips to make his nasty, full diaper swing between his legs. He did it with such joy, I couldn't help but find it amusing.
Although it's nice to have our diaper bill cut in half now, Seth is striving his best to make up for it with his toilet paper and hand soap use. Somehow he decided that the front of his underpants is called "the penis." He likes to wear his underwear backwards so he can see the big cartoons in the front. Whenever I try to suggest he wear them correctly, he gets very upset and says "I don't want to see the penis!" I can only imagine the confusion when I leave him in somebody else's care if they should ever help him get dressed.
When he started going in the potty, I gave him a lot of verbal praise to encourage him. Seth's unfortunate take-home message was that I am passionately interested in examining his byproducts. Months later, I don't know how to break it to him that I really don't want to look at his waste. He's so proud though, and thinks it's such a surprise to me every time. He'll come find me after he's used the bathroom and say "Come look-- I did something." Whenever I dare suggest "Is it pee pee?" or "Did you go poo?" He fiercely says "Don't say that!" I have to go look in the toilet and be amazed at what I find. He doesn't realize it's hard to be surprised when it's the same two things every time.
Like finding shapes in the clouds, he's also into describing his feces as the two of us stand and admire his creations. Off the top of my head, he's made a sea horse, bat ray, arm, candy cane, and when it's really big he just says "maybe we should call dad and tell him."

My little palindrome

2010-07-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

it's Ada.

MS3 --> MS4

2010-06-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

Finished my 3rd year of medical school. One more to go. I have a week off before I'm back to work, and some time to reintroduce myself to these little munchkins:

da kids

2010-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Imperial Beach Pier

2010-06-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

Nikkor 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 0.8s

Nikkor 12-24mm @24mm, f/22, 8s

Nikkor 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 1.6s

Nikkor 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 4s

Swing batta batta swing

2010-06-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a video from back in March that I never posted. It starts out with Seth explaining that he's pretending to be his favorite player Pablo Sandoval, whose nickname is Kung Fu Panda. The rest of the video is a highlight reel of Seth's batting skills, all before his 3rd birthday. The kid can swing a bat.

Best Buddy Birthday Bash

2010-06-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

Seth and Sam had a blast last weekend at Sam's sea creature-themed birthday party. Both boys requested one kid at their birthday parties this year--their "best buddy". My cousin and I have become big fans of the 2-kid party. It's so easy to orchestrate, and games aren't total chaos when there are just two kids. Plus, you can make pretty sweet sea anemone party hats (a Sam request) when there are only two to make. They fished for prizes, donned swimming masks to dive for sea creatures under a flopping blue sheet, and raced through seaweed streamers past vicious killer whales (their Dads) to feed their inflatable dolphins. Topping that off with a candy topped ice cream sundae is 3-year-old heaven I say.

The Sweet

2010-05-30T22:30:00.000-07:00

that's what we call her.

Coronado

2010-05-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

Overdue Easter

2010-04-15T15:58:00.001-07:00

Perhaps these pics are a bit old now, but we had a good Easter. Aaron is on a busy rotation (Neurosurgery) and I find I'm often too busy to think about blogging. Sorry if you expect more from us :)

Some recent pics from the week of Easter:
Seth cake#2 for birthday#3:

Blue skies at the farm:

Coloring eggs:

Easter morn:

Seth's big day

2010-03-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

To ring in number 3, we took Seth and his "best buddy" Sam out on a safari adventure to find toy animals. We hid 24 animals and their score was 12 to 12! However, Sam also found a little army man and a pterodactyl. Impressive tracking skills. Some of the animals had parachutes, which the boys enjoyed dropping off our balcony on a windy day.

The shark piñata was a little anti-climactic. Seth and Sam were very anxious for the candy to come out, and their toddler-strength hits weren't getting the job done quite quickly enough for them.

Seth desperately wanted a kudu cake. I'm not usually opposed to big kitchen projects, but I'm not much for decorating cakes. Plus anything I could have done would have been a destined cake wreck. Aaron miraculously found a kudu figurine online. Job done, and a happy boy.

Here he is loving his new dinosaur book from his buddy Pasi, and his stuffed animal kudu that he now sleeps with at night.

Ocean Beach

2010-03-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

Nikkor 12-24mm @18mm, f/22, 1/25s

Nikkor 12-24mm @22mm, f/22, 20s

Nikkor 12-24mm @12mm, f/22, 10s

da kids

2010-03-20T21:24:00.001-07:00

Ada had her 1st birthday last month:

Not sure what she's so disappointed about here. Who doesn't love crème brûlée?

We have been using our Sea World passes a lot this year. Seth can tell you that this is a pilot whale.

Today he informed me that an egret is a type of heron. I never told him this, but he must have overheard me tell that to Lindsay over a week ago. He is a budding zoologist. He also does a mean fish impression.

Ada is cute.

Hear me roar:

Snowy Egret

2010-03-13T20:01:00.000-08:00

This post needs no picture

2010-03-12T15:25:00.000-08:00

Oh, the toilet. Seth's had some liquid success before, but today was his first real "solid" attempt. Luckily, Aaron was home early today to share Seth's joy as he reached a major milestone--and gave his parents a good laugh.
Seth's description: "It was the biggest one! It was like a hot dog. It was like my arm."

Scripps Pier La Jolla (encore)

2010-02-22T19:08:00.000-08:00

Perhaps my subject matter is a bit repetitive: sunsets, piers, oceans, waves, sand. It's just the prettiest closest thing. I could probably fill a book with pictures of just the Scripps pier alone. I guess I'm still trying to get the perfect shot. I also love how every sunset is so different. The light is so different day to day, the sky is different, the tides are different. So I'm not tired of it yet.

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/6.3, 1/160s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/7.1, 1/200s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/20, 10s

Scripps La Jolla (pier from the north)

2010-02-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

I never meant for this to be a photo blog; it's supposed to be a family blog. So, to make sure this is a post about the family, I'll just point out that I have a very patient wife. She humors me and my little obsession--wrestling with 2 kids by herself on the beach while I pay attention to a bunch of silly clouds, or waiting with the kids in the car for an hour because it's too cold and dark under the golden gate bridge to do anything else while i wait for the sun to go down. This is what she does. She's pretty cool.

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/6.3, 1/160s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/20, 1/3s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/7.1, 1/200s

Nikon 12-24mm @12mm, f/20, 1.3s

More blue eyes

2010-02-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

Ada is one year old today. Happy birthday Valentine.

Two peas

2010-02-13T19:40:00.002-08:00

in a pod.

the day in, day out...

2010-01-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

Ada:
Ada is tiny. She's below the 3rd percentile for her age. At 11 months old, she's about the size of a 5 month old. It's kind of funny to see such a tiny kid standing up and climbing everything in sight. Not much interest in walking yet--too busy climbing.

She kind of growls like a gremlin. Sometimes it gets pretty loud, like in public recently. It turned a lot of heads because it's such an funny baby sound. Although her ears do stick out a bit, I'm thankful that she doesn't look much like a gremlin. (If a creature like that had popped out of my womb, I don't think all the oxytocin in the world could bond me to that thing).

Seth:
He's very holiday-focused. He still regularly wishes people a Merry Christmas and immediately breaks into a wide-eyed, semi-yelled version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing. On Sunday he sang this song (LOUDLY) during every single hymn at church, like he was trying to compete with the congregation.

He's already decided what he wants to be for Halloween this year: a kudu (the animal in the picture). So, I've got about 9 months to either convince him to be something else (hopefully something that more than 1% of the U.S. population can recognize), or find some way of making a kudu costume that doesn't make Seth (or his costume-maker) look utterly ridiculous.

Aaron:
He's spent the last month doing inpatient pediatrics at the local children's hospital. It being the height of flu and bronchiolitis season, I'm tempted to hose him down at the door before he enters our home. I'm not sure what else to say about Aaron right now. Medical school tends to take over everything. He bought me flowers the other day--that's something.

Me:
I wish I was an interesting person, but all my time and efforts lately have gone into helping Ada be a better rested (and happier) baby, while also caring for and entertaining Seth. It's trickier than most people would think. My neighbor and I were laughing yesterday that we both felt like we spent the entire day trying to get our babies to nap. It sounds boring, but making your kids happy is pretty great. That is, when it works.

mes bébés

2010-01-27T19:57:00.001-08:00

I need something in there.

2010-01-19T21:52:00.001-08:00

Seth likes to point at the fridge or cupboard and say "I need something in there," but he usually refuses to say what. He just likes to peruse and make a choice.

He's been a fan of the fridge for a long time:

And now Ada loves it too:

Sunsets never get old

2010-01-19T20:43:00.000-08:00

I haven't taken too many pictures this year. Very busy. Here is a simple one from outside the apartment last week. The sky was beautiful but I had no time to get to the beach before it was over.

Forget new years resolutions and have some cake

2010-01-05T22:33:00.000-08:00

Aaron took some pictures of cakes I've made, so I'll share a few. I love it when birthdays come around and I have an excuse to make one of these. They're a labor of love for those I love.
I'm a bit of a one-trick-pony when it comes to cakes because I find it difficult to stray away from my love for chocolate ganache frosting. I'm not sure if I can even call it frosting, it's just dark chocolate melted with cream. Here are a few photos of when I constructed a peanut butter chocolate ganache cake for my friend Jason. It had 3 layers of chocolate cake and a crispy peanut butter cookie layer. To glue it all together I used homemade peanut butter cup filling combined with whipped cream (so it would be spreadable), then ganache on the outside. I obviously don't shy away from making it RICH. This is Aaron's favorite cake I've made so far.
I think my favorite may be the hazelnut cake I did for my cousin Jenn. Aaron took about 2 bites and was done, it was so rich: chocolate cake painted with hazelnut syrup, vanilla custard, hazelnut cookie layer, nutella, and of course ganache. I've probably done around 8 variations on the ganache cake this year using white or chocolate cake, almonds, pistachios, macadamias, dulce de leche, raspberry coulis, coconut custard, dacquois, fresh raspberries, and caramelized bananas.
I'm not going to post a bunch of recipes (but anyone's welcome to ask for ones they're interested in), but here's the link to the chocolate ganache cake recipe I love and use for the basis of most of these. And by the way, Aaron recently discovered how delicious this type of cake is when you heat up your slice before eating it, and the chocolate gets all melty. I highly recommend it.

Palace of Fine Arts

2010-01-02T00:09:00.000-08:00

Nikkor 12-24 @22mm, f/22, 30sec

Nikkor 12-24 @24mm, f/22, 10sec

Fort Point

2009-12-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

Nikkor 12-24 @12mm f/4, 2.5 sec

Nikkor 12-24 @17mm f/22, 1 sec

Nikkor 12-24 @14mm f/4, 2.5 sec

Oh muh goodness, it's Christmas.

2009-12-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

The only thing more fun than Christmas as a kid is Christmas with your kids. Seth had some priceless one-liners this year. Maybe he's just funny to his parents, but the kid cracks me up. Everytime he opened a gift he exclaimed "Oh muh goodness!" Here is a video montage of our Christmas.

Classic Ada at the park on Christmas Eve:

Ho ho ho

2009-12-24T10:30:00.001-08:00

Seth: "I wanna ga-bage man, an a ga-bage twuck, and an etsdavayda...ya." (said at light speed in about 1.5 seconds)
Santa: "?"
Lindsay: "A garbage man with his truck, and an excavator."
Santa: "anything else?"
Seth: "and a boowdoza"

Winter tree (night)

2009-12-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

Nikkor 12-24 @12mm, f/14, 30 seconds

Wind N Sea

2009-12-12T20:41:00.001-08:00

Nikkor 12-24 @12mm, f/22, 1 second

My wife says this is a Rutman look on her face...

2009-12-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

A Goodbye

2009-12-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

A couple weekends ago we attended the funeral for my last surviving grandparent, "Grammy" as she liked to be called. Alhough she just recently passed, Alzheimer's disease took the woman I knew away several years ago. Her funeral was like a subdued family reunion where we were glad we could get together and talk about our memories. A few of mine:

She had a terrific belly laugh and loved the Reader's Digest jokes.
She seemed to think most ailments were related to GI regularity. I don't think my brothers nor I could ever show any signs of suffering in her presence whithout being asked if we had had our daily BM. I clearly remember hiding a stiff neck from her because I feared she would try to treat it with an enema.
She was very outgoing and talked to EVERYONE in public (or at least it seemed like it to a shy, embarrassed kid).
I loved the red, white, and blue pioneer bonnet she'd wear to 4th of July parades. I thought it was SO cool, but looking back on that, what was she thinking? When you're as pretty as she was, you can get away with a lot.

Goodbye Grammy, and thanks for the good times.

Black Friday in La Jolla

2009-11-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

It's beginning to look like autumn/winter around here...

random dude surfing today:

Hey ya.

2009-11-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

In case you need help getting in the holiday spirit:

Ada update

2009-11-15T16:54:00.001-08:00

This is what she looks like now.

This chick is toast!

2009-11-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

If you have no interest in watching some of the best ghostbusters quotes for over 5 minutes, fast forward to 4:15 in this video

to understand what seth is saying in this video:

And in response to Lindsay's previous post, I totally would have dressed up for Halloween if only she would have agreed to wear this costume.

Maybe now you'll never slime a guy with a positron collider eh?

2009-11-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

I think Halloween is really fun. The day I married Aaron (who would never be caught dead in a costume or anything that would encourage people to look at him), my costume-wearing days fizzled out. I just feel silly going all out on a costume and going to a party with a guy in a t-shirt and jeans. Dressing the kids up is even more fun though. Plus, at their age, they have no costume requests, so we can dress them up how WE want.
Being the Bill Murray fans that we are, Ghostbusters is in our top 10 comedies of all time. As I've been prepping Seth for Halloween, we've been watching it. He loves the scene where "the green ghost ate all the hot dogs!" Our love for all the great lines has been renewed. (Example: Rick Moranis to Sigourney Weaver-- “I taped ‘20 Minute Workout’ on my machine and played it back at high speed so it only took 10 minutes. I got a great workout.”) Anyway, it's been a fun couple of weeks as Aaron and I created a proton pack out of Dollar Store junk, and Seth's been running around the house asking--"where's the keymaster?"

We also threw in the yearly tradition of making caramel apples. I decided to let the caramel cook to a little higher temperature, hoping it wouldn't just pool at the bottom of the apples this year. The result was jaw-breaker caramel that coated the entire apple, but peeled right off. At least it was delicious. Some year I'll get it right.

Pumpkin patch

2009-10-24T17:57:00.001-07:00

Although for me it's generally true that every moment is a photo op, I think it's generally understood that if you don't have pictures of your kids at the pumpkin patch you're a failure as a parent.

We went to the Del Mar pumpkin patch yesterday. Seth very much enjoyed the overpriced rides--the joy on his face was priceless.

Ada enjoyed herself as well.

Ironically, we decided that the pumpkins were too pricey at $10 for a regular sized gourd. So we had fun on the rides,

and then got pumpkins for a couple bucks at the grocery store.

Scripps Pier, La Jolla

2009-10-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

Nikkor 12-24 @12mm, f/10, 1/400

Nikkor 12-24 @12mm, f/8, 1/250

Nikkor 12-24 @12mm, f/9, 1/320

Vacation

2009-10-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

After my three month internal medicine rotation, I had a week off before starting my OB/GYN rotation, which I am currently two weeks into. That sentence in and of itself could produce countless blog posts, none of which would be interesting to most of the readers of this blog. Suffice to say that childbirth from the bottom end of the table involves every type of bodily fluid simultaneously, and somehow it's a beautiful thing. Anyway, I had a week off, which was pretty awesome after 70 hours/wk of work plus studying when I was home for a couple months. At the beginning of the week Lindsay's parents came down from the bay to see the kiddies, and Lindsay's brother Jeff and his family came down from Medford, OR to enjoy the zoo and seaworld and SoCal in general. Seth loved going to the beach with his grandparents, to the zoo with his cousins, and loved casually showing off to his grandfather his extensive knowledge of African ungulates, identifying everything from the gazelle, to the waterbuck, the topi, the wildebeest, the eland, the springbok, the oryx, and his personal fovorite, the kudu. (Seriously, ask him his favorite animal, he will say kudu). He also got to feed a giraffe at the zoo:

The other highlight of our week was our trip to Portland, OR with friends to go to the wedding of our close friends Jason and Olivia. We had a great time and I took a lot of pictures. Seriously, a lot of pictures. My buddy Pascual and I tag-teamed the photos for the wedding. It was a lot of work but we really had a lot of fun.

Ada at the wedding:

Other highlights from the trip include staying in a cool hotel or two, going out to breakfasts and lunches, spending time with other friends from San Diego who went to the wedding, hiking near Multnomah falls (with the aid of friends towing our kids so I could bring my camera gear), and exploring Portland (which, turns out, is a pretty cool city--a residency possibility in a couple years...?)

Multnomah Falls, OR

2009-10-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

Nikkor 18-200mm @18mm, f/22, 1 sec

Nikkor 18-200mm @18mm, f/22, 1 sec

Nikkor 18-200mm @52mm, f/32, 1.3 sec

take me out to the ball game....

2009-09-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

love this song, (as performed by Seth).

Notice that Seth skips the 3rd strike. He has a strange disdain for the number 3. He can count really well, but every time without fail says one, two, four, five, six, seven, etc, etc. He refuses to say 3. It's like he knows it's supposed to be there, he just leaves it out; not sure if it's out of stubbornness, spite, or if the number just rubs him the wrong way.

Blue eyes #2

2009-09-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

I like Aaron's Birthday

2009-09-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

Aaron just recently had a birthday. We celebrated by spending a wonderful afternoon/evening at Coronado beach and eating yummy sushi (thanks for the money mom and dad). We had so much fun that day. His parents asked him what he wanted for his birthday, and this totally melts me. He just wanted to make his wife happy. The story is this: He got me a fancy instant read thermometer for my birthday that I had been lusting after for a while (I'm such a foodie nerd). Seth destroyed it by throwing it into a sink of dishwater before I even got to use it. I was so disappointed, and we couldn't afford to get another one. So for Aaron's birthday, when his parents asked him what he wanted, he said he wanted that thermometer for me. It arrived a few days ago and works like a dream. I love it and I love the story behind it now when I use it. Happy birthday once again Aaron, and thanks for being such a sweetie.

Rats vs. Ruts

2009-09-09T14:34:00.000-07:00

Its probably just mice, but I couldn't resist the alliteration. It's my turn to blog and the only thing on my mind the last couple of days (and keeping me up at night--as if i'm not already sleep deprived), are rodents. One of them keeps peeking out from behind my fridge as I write this! I hate how incredibly jumpy they make me. I stepped on one of Seth's little stuffed animals this morning and about had a heart attack. Everything is setting me off now. What makes them SO disturbing?
As for Seth, he just saw the mouse in our kitchen, and keeps saying "I like the mouse! He scared you! I'm not scared. Where is he?" He gets the biggest kick out of watching me squirm and shriek. (It IS pretty ridiculous).I'm with Mitch Hedberg, why can't I get a koala infestation?

2009-09-01T15:47:00.001-07:00

Ada is getting bigger too

2009-08-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Ada is now intermittently eating solids:

And from time to time she gets lessons in good hygiene from her brother, who also learned this lesson early. I'm not sure what's more awesome--Seth deciding to shove an electric toothbrush into a toothless baby's mouth, or the fact that Ada's loving every second of it.

Getting bigger

2009-08-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Seth loves to watch the big kids play hockey and ice skate at the UTC mall ice rink a few minutes from our house. He wants so badly to get bigger so he can go on the ice too. Whenever we tell him he's small, he says "but I'm getting bigger!" Which is true, he is...although at a very sluggish pace. At 2 and 1/2 he still fits into clothes for 12-18 month kids. We've tried to convince him that the ultimate in bigness is defecation on the toilet and not in your pants--you know, give him something to shoot for.
Some videos of seth in the last week:

Reading one of his favorite books:

Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty (dancing to GNR):

Video

2009-08-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

The last few months have been pretty busy, and I've not been updating the blog like I used to. We've been accumulating a bunch of videos that have just been hangin' out inside the belly of the video camera. It's time some of them see the light of day. Grandparents, enjoy.

This is a few weeks ago. Fatigue trumps hunger.

This video is 3 months old. At this rate, I think Seth will be skipping t-ball and going straight to the majors in a few years.

This video is also about three months old. I just wanted to show off how nice San Diego can be when you are not in the hospital the whole time the sun is out.

Recycled

2009-08-22T14:58:00.001-07:00

A few months into my third year of med school, I finally found a couple spare moments to clean my corner of the room. In order to completely exorcise the demons of year one and two, I tossed three trees worth of notes and handmade notecards (recycled them actually). I suppose it would have been more satisfying to burn them, but the atmosphere doesn't need any more carbon, and I don't have a fireplace. Anyway, they're gone, whether I need them again or not. Good riddance first half of med school--you will not be missed.

I like my birthday

2009-08-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

So, I just turned 33 and had a very enjoyable birthday. Aaron's a big online shopper, so gifts came to our front door while he was at the hospital. I was going to wait for Aaron before opening them, but there was no mistaking this baker's peel (it's kind of like a giant wooden spatula) when it showed up wrapped in black plastic. I had been wanting one because it's a nice tool to have when you're into baking pizza or rustic breads on a preheated, super hot stone (if you don't cook your pizza like this, I highly recommend it). He ordered a large one, thinking it would bring him big pizzas some day, but he didn't realize it would be THIS big. We had a decent laugh (I mean this thing's got a 3 foot handle) and Aaron said there was no way he'd let me return it because it's SO awesome. Well, I guess we'll add it to our collection--we have the hugest pepper grinder and wall clock too. I hope this doesn't start a trend of oversized gifts from friends or family who find our collection amusing. Our apartment is only so big.
My cousin and her husband, Jenn and Kris, treated us to awesome Thai food that night, as well as a delicious chocolaty dessert with raspberries. Thanks so much! Plus, our 2 year old boys had a dance party that night, much to our amusement. Those sweeties know how to cut a rug.
The next night, our incredibly thoughtful friends, Pasi and Lisa, came over to watch our kids for us so that I could enjoy some kid-free time with Aaron for my birthday. As if that wasn't awesome enough, they brought me a generous gift too. Aaron and I loved our picnic of fine cheeses (french port salut, scottish sharp white cheddar, 5 year old dutch gouda) at the beach, just the two of us.

blue eyes

2009-08-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

da kids

2009-08-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

Rutbullsons Unite

2009-07-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

Our friends Sarah and Marcus, whom we met in Berkeley and have known for years, both flew to San Diego a couple weekends ago to see us. (Thanks so much for coming!) We combined our three last names and called it the Rutbullson Reunion, complete with reunion t-shirts.

Here we are playing our favorite game--Time's Up. I really should have taken a video of Marcus giving his clues, because there's no way of describing his antics with justice.

Our beach outing was memorable, but not the funnest. The dead guy next to us in the sand was a real bummer. Seriously though, it was sad. Somebody noticed that this guy laying in the sand was blue, so the lifeguards did CPR on him for a long time (thanks Aaron, for instructing those 20 year old kids who were scared to death how to correctly administer CPR). He was already beyond saving anyway. We waited for the paramedics to move the body before posing for this family photo.
We hope we can reunite again soon. Next year--Siberia! (Marcus is moving to Siberia for a year). Maybe we'll make Rutbullson Reunion ushankas (those awesome fur hats) .