Artistic genius

This self-portrait was my favorite shot that Spencer took

Spencer has always had a fascination with photography. Of course, that seems to run in the family. For his birthday last November, Spencer received a digital camera. He filled up the memory again and has been begging me for days to load the photos on the computer so he could get back to shooting photos.


I haven't figured out what about this toilet was so fascinating

The photo collection was an eclectic mix of people and objects. Some, like the first photo were actually quite charming. Others, like the five photo toilet series were just downright bewildering. At any rate, Spence is so excited that he wants to shoot pictures with me some time.


No one was spared the ignominy dealt by Spencer's camera

Last call

June 18 was it—my last overnight call as a resident. Of course, that certainly doesn't put an end to overnight call. It just means that I will be staff instead of a resident.

Pinewood Derby Time

Mason's car (Number 23) sits among the other entries


This post is a little late, since the pinewood derby was months ago, but it still seems appropriate to mention Mason's experience. We had a three-ward competition. We would be racing four cars at a time on the track, and it seemed like Mason was always coming in third. But the track had an electronic timing system and it seemed like Mason's car was doing well from a time standpoint. When the times were summed up, Mason took seventh place out of 25 cars. Not too shabby for our first attempt. The top four finishers and six of the top eight were all from our ward.

The Prophet said to plant a garden (so that's what we did)

Spencer discovered that digging though San Antonio soil was no easy work

As many of you know, I spent most of February and March away from home doing pediatric and major vascular rotations in Corpus Christi and Dallas. As soon as I came home, I decided to take a week off from work. During my time off, I decided to put build a small raised garden, a project that Teressa and I had been considering for a while. Spencer was excited. He even spent his own money to buy a pair of small shovels and a pair of gloves to he could help out. After two days of work, we have two small gardens with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and carrots that are already starting to grow. We still have a long time before we will be harvesting anything, but we are hopeful that we will be eating tasty tomatoes this summer instead of the tasteless grocery store variety.

Closet BYU fan

As part of a stake skit night, many of our ward youth and their leaders dressed up as if they were going to a rock concert at BYU. This includes Cassie Schneider, who has claimed in the past to dislike BYU. I have to admit that she looks awfully comfortable in that BYU football jersey, at least until she realizes that the camera is trained on her, and then she has to go back to pretending to hate BYU. Now we know the really truth, Cassie. Go Cougars.

And our destination is ...

The list for Army anesthesiologists has finally come out and we now know where we will be living for the next several years. Unfortunately, I have bad news for all those people who were planning exotic trips to come see us in Lawton, Oklahoma, or Waynesville, Missouri. Yes, the bad news (for you anyway) is that we will be staying right here in San Antonio. And so, while our friends and relatives may be upset that they don't get to visit the previously mentioned prime vacation area, we are very excited to be able to stay put.

Birthday bling

Just as I promised, here is my photo wearing my bling

On my birthday, Randy Schneider showed up with a gift bag. He told me that I could have the gift bag if I would promise to take a picture wearing what was inside. Since I could tell that there was also a candy apple inside the bag, I figured it would be worth the risk. How bad could it be? Well, you can see the picture for yourself. Personally, I think I look quite stunning in a grill. Maybe I need to get a permanent one. Of course, the apple was extremely tasty. We cut it up and served it as our family home evening treat.