Thanksgiving 2009

Some of my favorites from Thanksgiving 2009 with the Mosimans.
Texans vs Colts

The fam at the Spot

Reliant Stadium

The girls

Grandma and Grandpa at the beach

Liam helping me cook a meal

You should know us by now

The lazy ones

Dr. Liam on the plane

The whole family (minus Dathan and Elizabeth. We missed you guys.)

Love birds, or is she pushing him away?

Beautiful day at the beach

Father-son bonding. Can everyone say AWWWWWW?

Christmas beach style

John after grilling Thanksgiving dinner. Whew!

Steaks for Thanksgiving

Dessert bar

Grandma hiding

Liam with Marchel

One Quarter Century

Well, I turned 25 a couple weeks ago. This year has brought with it gray hairs, aches and pains, and fine wrinkles. Regardless, I mustered the courage to have a night on the town with John. He got me a jewelry box and an evening dinner cruise on the bay. It was so fun. Below are the pictures:
My favorite restaurant from the water this time...

All aboard...

Golden Birthday

John turn 26 this weekend on the 26th. According to Annette, that is the Golden Birthday. We had a private birthday party (me and John). We slept in, ate biscuits and gravy, and went to the jazz festival in Kemah. Mostly we just had a lazy day, but it was great!
Here is John at the jazz festival.

Here is John with his birthday present. Thanks to all the donors who helped with the cause. He loves it. In fact, when I gave it to him, he loved it so much he wants to bring the 78 Camaro down to Texas so he has something to work on. On one hand, I am glad he and Efrian aren't taken our running cars apart, but on the other hand I am a little scared. I can't believe I did not think of the ramifications of this gift.

San Antonio

I had a surprise week off in the middle of my ER rotation so John and I spontaneously went to San Antonio. We had never been and we had always wanted to so we finally just went. It was incredible. I don't know if it was the spontaneity of it or the city itself, but we had a great time. Plus, it felt a little like we were playing hooky since we were gone last minute, in the middle of the week for several days. Fun!
Here are a few of the pictures. I accidentally deleted most of the good ones. I guess we will have to go back again to take more pictures!

A glimpse of our hotel: We got a great last minute deal at the St. Anthony downtown. We are not used to this type of hotel. We had to pay outrageously just to park parking/valet and we did order room service a couple times- a guilty pleasure.


Grabbing a Starbucks latte on the Riverwalk: we stayed only 2 blocks from the Riverwalk so we walked down there often. You know between naps, dips in the pool, and meals.


I thought this snapshot looked alot like our retirement: John drinking a coffee, reading a book or paper, looking scholarly...


The Alamo: This was also within walking distance of the hotel and free. We went there a couple of times. It was brought up those Patriotic feelings and made us proud to live in the US, especially in Texas.


On our way to dinner: This was pretty much our only scheduled activity every day. We ate most every meal at the Riverwalk. The food was hit or miss, but the dining in that atmosphere was amazing. I did get some new ideas for new dishes.


As I said before, I deleted most of our pictures. We also had some great shots of the Alamo. We went to the Tower of the Americas which was a rotating Tower allowing panoramic views of San Antonio. We ate at the restaurant at the top. We did not realized the building moved until we sat down to dinner. It was a little nausating at first, but we got used to it. We also rode a river boat, shopped at the mall on the River, and walked alot.
The lesson is: If you are thinking of taking a last minute trip, I would recommend thumbing your finger to the man and just doing it!

Bowling Night

Our group church small group had a bowling night a while back. It was the classic girls vs guys competition which did not end well for the girls
Girls Team

Guys team

John and me

Look at that stance


You will notice our group has changed alot in the last few months. There are several new faces in these pictures and we added 5 new people at the GroupLink this past weekend. We are now sitting at 15 members, but there were about 15 people that we had to turn down. The church has done a great job of recruiting members for groups, but there are just not enough Navigators (group leaders). It was difficult to see people turned away, but I suppose it is a good problem for a church to have. They are definitely bringing lots of new people into the church. We can only pray these people will not give up on the church.

Our lives

A quick update on our lives. We have both been busy lately working alot of 12 hour days, but such is our life right now. (Oh yeah, and I guess it will be like that for the next 9 years until John finishes residency.) If you ever wonder what we are doing, it is some variation of the following.

John:
John is working hard to get a paper send in for review in the next couple of weeks on his protein and some of its behavior. He had some promising progress toward getting the protein into a usable form last week. He is hoping that these preliminary result pans out because it has been nearly a year of the same things over and over with different conditions. On the positive side, he has been having alot of fun with some new equipment especially the fermenter. It is some sort of souped up bacteria maker. See below


Erika:
I just finished my second rotation at Texas Surgical Associates in Houston. I was with one of the best surgeons in Houston so I saw alot of cool surgeries. I saw leg amputations, lots of blood vessel repairs, heart valve replacements, mastectomies, colon removals, pancreas removals, and more. It was a stressful and time consuming rotation, but I did see alot of surgeries. My next rotation start Monday at the UTMB ER which just opened up on August 1. I am really excited about it, but anxious to see what it holds. After this rotation, I am done with my first block. Yippee!

Me vs. Judy

I was so proud of my peppers and tomatoes until Dathan and Elizabeth brought us some produce from Kansas. We all thought the comparison was funny. Here is my version of produce vs. Judy Silknitter's produce. For those who don't know Judy, she is a good family friend and a domestic goddess from Kansas. Needless to say, we ate hers first.


My produce vs. Judy Silknitter's produce (mine are the miniature ones)