Great Little Weekend Getaway

The kids and I made a trip down to Mesa, AZ to visit family. It is the last time I can travel before the baby comes in 8 weeks. It was fun to visit my family and my parents loved seeing the kids. I enjoyed shopping with my mom and then visiting with Dan, Devery, Lucie and baby Weston. Weston is giving us lots of smiles now and its great to see him so alert and happy.

Isabella started Head Start Preschool last week and loves it! She goes Mon- Thurs for 3.5hrs. Isaac loves the time with just mommy and well mostly his trains haha. However by the time we go pick Isabella up he is asking where she is. When they see each other it cracks me up how happy they both get. They love each other so much!

We get to see Stan in a week so here is hoping this week goes by fast. He has been gone for a month. :(

Nomads

So I am sure you have all seen PBS specials on strange cultures in foreign lands where people spend most of their time travelling around as nomads. I usually think of outer Mongolia, Gypsies, Amazon tribes, Bedouins . . . Did you know that nomads exist in modern America too?

I didn't think so either, but here we are - modern day nomads moving from place to place every few months. But we probably won't be coming to a PBS special anytime soon.

I will spare you a long diatribe of how medical education is structured, but suffice it to say that one thing many medical students do is audition rotations. We do part of our clinical training at another hospital around the country that we want to go to for the next step in our training hoping they will like us. Mix this in with the fact that my school doesn't have a hospital associated with it (meaning we have to set up some of our own rotations) and you have the perfect storm for 6 months living the nomadic lifestyle.

So catching up on our lives means a long list of travels!

We started out in May, when everything miraculously fell in place for Samira and I to go to Hawaii (including Samira's Mom coming to watch the kids). I was there for a conference, but we still found a little time to go enjoy the beaches and scenery. Perhaps the Lord knew things were going to get crazy and wanted to give us some time to muster up our strength.

The storm hit pretty quickly. Looking at our schedule for the summer and fall we decided it would be best to stop renting our home in Portland and save money. We packed everything up in 2 weeks (with the Hawaii trip in the middle) and put everything in storage then drove to Arizona for a few months. Yeah, we are crazy enough to leave the beautiful Portland summer for of all places Arizona . . .

After finished some of my licencing exams we headed back to Portland for a month where I did a rotation. Thankfully some friends let us stay in their house and we got to enjoy a little bit of the Portland summer. Then I was off to Utah and Samira and the kids went to Las Vegas to stay with my parents. Since Samira is pregnant, she will be staying there until after the baby comes in December. While Samira is amazingly holding down the fort with two very energetic kids, I am off galavanting around the country. My parents have of course been a tremendous help - the kids love spending time with them. I will be done with rotations by Thanksgiving and the light at the end of the tunnel is being off for the holidays and for the baby to be born!

Grandpa entertaining the grandkids.

So when people at the hospital ask me where I am from it goes something like this . . . My school is in Arizona, but I have been living in Oregon for the last several years, but my family is in Las Vegas right now with my parents, but I didn't grow up there . . . Its at about that point that everyone's eyes glaze over and I give up trying to explain it all. Which, I am sure I have lost several of you in this meandering post, but at least you have some idea of where we are or are not living at the moment . . . maybe . . .