Carolina on our minds... for a few more years, at least

Jordan had match day for his pediatric dentistry residency program this past Monday, and found out that he was accepted to Carolina! That means we'll be here for at least another 3 years, and I get to continue my program in epidemiology.

To celebrate, we had a party with our other dental friends/families, and I bought Jordan a present befitting a children's dentist.
If any Jacksons recall how much Jordan was into Danny's Lego set at the beach house, you'll understand his kid-like joy at receiving and building his new toy.

We also woke up Saturday morning to a winter wonderland, and decided to reenact a Switzerland morning by heating our house to the perfect temperature and making rösti for breakfast. Afterwards, Jordan finished constructing his eXtreme Offroader.


We've had a lovely weekend indoors (church was even canceled due to the 5 inches of snow we received) and feel fully rested for another week of dentidemiology.

lakes of love

It's 12:23am, and I still have 9 pages of Ch. 26, Social Epidemiology to read before I go to sleep, but I just wanted to post one of my favorite pictures taken by Klabraham over the Christmas break.I recently read this quote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."* True. But I think it's a bonus that I get to gaze into those eyes
and look outward in the same direction as JO. (Hey, it's almost Valentine's day-ish. Give me a break).

And I love this picture of my little Inuit nephew and niece. They are such great kids and have very distinct personalities. Danny's quote of the trip: "Feef!", which, as we learned, can be interpreted as "I'm cold!" or "I'm scared!" Rachel's quote of the trip: "Fank you! Fank you!" while raising her arms above her head dramatically (after I had drawn her a picture of a heart balloon). What a funny bunch of kids. We love having a faction of Jacksons across the pond, but I believe I speak for everyone when I saw we can't wait to have them a little bit closer to home.

*Quote is by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; Wind, Sand and Stars

Switzerland, part I

We're home from our two-week Christmas vacation in Switzerland and a few surrounding countries! We had so much fun, and are very indebted to the Swiss Jacksons for letting us all stay at their beautiful home way up in the Alps. Pictures to come (we let some other members of the family be the trip photographers as they had acquired a fatty digital SLR. Pro: we didn't have to worry about taking any pictures, etc. Con: we'll have to figure out how to bribe them to get a CD/DVD with all the photos from the trip, and they have to send it from California. It could be a few days).

But we did get some photos/video from our day trip to Bergün, where we took a lovely train to the top of a mountain and then sledded all the way down, about a 10 km trip. These pictures are courtesy of Erin's blog:
If you look on the right side of the map, we were the pink route.

Just to get an idea how fast we were going, here's a video Morgen shot while he was sledding down. The scenery was breathtaking.

More pictures to come, as soon as I can get them from the SFers. You know who you are.
I wonder if posting this picture will help me get them any faster?