Happy Christmas!

We're not there yet, but it's close. We're leaving for Cleveland today to spend Christmas with my (Sarah's) family. The morning of the 26th we fly out to Washington state. Alexi doesn't know it yet but my dad got the boys tickets to a Cavs game (basketball for those who don't know) Christmas night in Cleveland. I assume he won't read this so he'll still be surprised. He'll be thrilled.

Too Long

It's been way too long since I've posted so I'm taking my lunch break to do so. Halloween was especially cute: Sammy was a dalmation (or a cow depending on your point of view). We went to my friend's party and trick-or-treated one house and he got a jar of sweet potatoes. Nice.

Thanksgiving was ENORMOUS this year. My parents are back living in Ohio and my mother invited her entire family - there were 25 people in all. It was nice to see everyone - but of course we left needing a vacation from our vacation.

Here is a picture of us at my parents during Thanksgiving - doing a crossword. :-)

Here is a picture of Sammy at 4 months (November 12th). It was taken by his favorite nanny, Ashley.

Alexi's interviews are going really well but we're both sick of him traveling so much. So far he has interviewed at:

University of Rochester
Syracuse
University of Maryland at Baltimore
University of Colorado at Denver
Boston University
Dartmouth
Harvard
University of Cincinnati
Eastern Virginia (Norfolk)

And he still has to interview at:

Virginia Mason (Seattle)
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland)
The Cleveland Clinic
Tufts University (Boston)
Carolinas (Charlotte)
University of New Mexico (Albuquerque)

I'm doing the single mother thing again - and trying to pump out a ton of data in the lab to do analysis on over Christmas - we will be spending Christmas day in Cleveland and then flying to Washington state to spend the next week and a half with Alexi's family. On January 5th we fly to Seattle from Spokane where we'll check out the city and he has an interview. We then fly back to Cleveland and Sammy and I will drive back to Rochester while Alexi stays to interview there and then he'll fly to Boston for the Tufts interview.

We don't find out about the match until March 20 - it's going to be torture waiting that long. I think I described how the residency match works on here before - if I haven't and anyone is interested let me know. :-) The short of it is that we don't exactly 'choose' a residency so much as the all-powerful residency match computer chooses for us. It's a nail-biting experience to open an envelope telling you where to move for the next 5+ years. March 20.

Sammy started "eating" rice cereal last week. I say "eating" because he doesn't open his mouth when food comes anywhere near his face. I have to make him laugh and then quickly shove the spoon in - which creates a hilarious expression and usually most of it lands back on the bib. Two days ago we made a little progress - I think he swallowed some.