Christmas Card 2014

2014 has been an eventful year for our family. Brad finished medical school in May, which meant saying a tearful goodbye to our wonderful family and friends in Rochester, NY. We absolutely loved our time in Rochester and miss it constantly.

Brad matched at his top choice for residency in internal medicine—UCSF. We were thrilled and apprehensive at the prospect of moving across the country to such a large city. We have been pleasantly surprised at what a navigable and child-friendly city it is. Anytime Brad has a spare minute (and those are few and far between), we take the kids on a new San Francisco adventure.

About three weeks after moving to San Francisco, MaryAnne was asked to be the Relief Society president for our ward. This now occupies any free time she might have had, if such a thing exists for a mom of three young children. It’s allowed her to quickly get to know many people in the ward very well.

Susanna (5) is thriving in kindergarten. She switched schools after one week and has been thrilled with the change. She is such a great big sister, and loves to be constantly learning.

James (3) does a co-op preschool two times a week and loves it. He adores his friends and his sisters. He has a very protective nature and is always talking about who he is going to protect (and how).

Kate (1) continues to be a joy to the whole family. She is attached to MaryAnne at the hip (or if she’s not, she’s letting MaryAnne know she’d like to be). Her first words besides “mama” and “dada” were “thank you” – a good omen of things to come, we hope.

We love you and hope that you are doing well!

Love,

The Hunters 

Happy Birthday Kate!

Kate is one today! To say this year flew by is an understatement. And yet, it still feels like I can't imagine life without Kate. She is such a perfect addition to our family.  I've loved her as a baby. I think it's because she's my 3rd, she has been completely not stressful to me. She is such a joy to me literally every day. I love going into get her in the mornings and after her naps because she is a delight. Pretty much everything she does seems so cute to me. I think I'm one of those crazy moms because I can't imagine how everyone doesn't think she is the most delightful thing in the world. Lucky for me, I have family members and friends that are willing to exult over Kate with me.

Cute things at this stage: beckoning James to come every time we get out of the car, doing motions to "My hands upon my head" and "There was a little house", pointing to my nose and her nose, crawling on her hands and feet (not knees) really FAST - particularly if she sees me, smiling at everyone and then nuzzling her head into my shoulder feeling shy, asking with her whole body for food - she's never met a food she hasn't liked, laughing a belly laugh/cackle when I'm tickling her or throwing her in the air, laughing when we play on the swings, climbing on everything, dramatically putting her hands over her face and throwing herself to the ground when she cries.

Tricky things at this stage: NEVER wants me to put her down (the world has ended if I deign to), she is a force of destruction - she gets into absolutely everything (recycling, plastic cooking utensil drawer, DVD drawer, toilets, toilet paper, etc.), never well-rested due to older siblings' school schedules.

Brad is on-call late tonight, so he hasn't been around today, so we celebrated yesterday. As a big bonus, Elizabeth and Sam and Carlie were here to celebrate with us. We just did cake and presents last night. In true San Francisco fashion, it was a rainbow cake. (As per Annie's request . . .) And it survived long enough to take a couple of pictures before she grabbed and pulled the whole thing off the table and broke the cake platter. Ah well . . . It's sort of fitting for Kate. She is the most active of any of our babies.

Before we celebrated any of the festivities, we went down to Fisherman's Wharf and had some great fish and chips and clam chowder. We also saw some super stinky seals. And Alcatraz. James is obsessed with Alcatraz. We LOVED (!!) having the Lundstrom's here!!

Our House!!!

(Car not included, but the plants are!!!)

We have a house! A real, live house! When we matched at UCSF, this was not something I thought was even in the realm of possibility. We both feel that finding it was a miraculous process, so for the sake of recording the miracles in our lives, here's the (very long) story. 

Our original plan was to go to San Francisco for a few days sans enfants while we house hunted. Brad's mom graciously offered to watch all three of our kids. I had enough milk pumped that we were fairly certain it would be fine. However, a couple of days before we left, I got really anxious about leaving Kate (8 months old at the time). She wasn't taking a bottle well at all and I was afraid this trip would ween her and I was not ready for that. So even though Brad thought she'd be fine and nurse again when we got back, he very kindly agreed that we should bring her. This had the potential to make the trip harder in every respect, especially for him because now I wouldn't be able to drive the truck out with him because car seats aren't allowed in moving trucks. Luckily Brad had a friend that is starting residency in Sacramento who drove out with him so he wasn't alone in the truck. 

A few months earlier, my sister-in-law's parents heard we had matched at UCSF and offered to let us stay with them while we looked for housing. They were so helpful - from feeding us meals, to allowing us to fax things to different landlords, they were amazing! They made a very stressful time much more manageable. Their kindness helped both of us feel that the Lord is watching over us in this move. 

Once we arrived in Orinda, we got on Craiglist and started setting up appointments to see every apartment listed in our price range in the areas we wanted to live in. We saw many, many dives. A few of them only had "utility kitchens", which meant no oven, no stove, and sometimes no sink. When Brad asked about an oven, the realtor pointed to the counter and said, "But there is a microwave OVEN". Yes, we are familiar with the wonder that is the microwave, but it can't cook my bread. Those apartments quickly got the boot, but basically every other apartment we got an application and talked over how we could possibly make those tiny spaces work for our family. The apartments were shoddy, and we had some crazy moments (Kate blew out all over one sidewalk and I had no wipes all while we were waiting for AAA because we'd locked our one set of keys in the car), but mostly we were still optimistic at the end of the day. 

Toward the end of the second day we were less optimistic. However, I suggested an apartment complex in the south of the city that looked nice and we headed down there. At the same time I called my parents to update them on situation. My mom said (another) pray for us after we got off the phone, and it produced a miracle. The apartment we saw there was great! It was a little more like suburbia, which was different than we'd expected and they offered us a 2 bed/2 bath for the price of a smaller unit. There were many perks about this place (pool, etc.). One of the best things about it was that they'd let us put $50 down and keep it for 2 weeks. This completely took the pressure off - now we felt we could look for a few more days, but if we didn't find anything we liked better that was closer to Brad's work, we'd still have a place to live. That same night we also found another great apartment right next to the VA that was by far the cheapest one we'd seen. We felt like we had options again. 

There were still several considerations floating around in our heads. One was about a house in Pacifica. It's a city about 20-30 minutes south of San Francisco. It would have meant a significantly longer commute for Brad, but a suburban lifestyle and house for me and the kids. Brad found a house there on Craigslist that looked amazing. But before we could see it, we found a great apartment in the city - it was new, had 2 bathrooms (a HUGE win in SF), good eating area and common space, and the owner immediately offered it to us. That is somewhat unusual. He got out the papers and was ready for us to sign right then. Fortunately there were a few things we needed to do before we could sign, so we promised to meet up again the next day. When we talked about it after, we both felt wrong about it. That feeling continued as we prayed about it. We couldn't understand why we felt that way because on paper it all seemed so good, but we called him later and backed out.

We thought it was maybe because the house in Pacifica was the right choice for us. However, when we got to that open house it was VERY clear that the owner would not choose us. We were not nearly blue collar enough for him. He kept telling us that a doctor wouldn't like this neighborhood. We felt pretty bummed out by that. We were driving back to the city for 2 more open houses. I really didn't want to go. Then the first one of the open houses we went to was our new house!

I walked in (without Brad because he was parking) and I kind of started freaking out. You walk in up a beautiful wood staircase into a whole house. There was a huge living room with French doors into a beautiful dining room. There is another smaller eating room right off the kitchen - a kitchen that has lots of cupboards, a dishwasher, and BOTH an oven and a microwave oven. There are two huge bedrooms and and a sunroom or possible third bedroom and 2 bathrooms! After seeing all of this, I started frantically texting Brad saying that I was IN LOVE with this home. Brad came up and also fell completely in love. He went into the sunroom and found a sweet little Vietnamese lady watching TV. Brad, who loves all Asians, went into full Asian charm (I love how his Chinese personality comes out with Asians - it's such a great side of him) and started talking to the lady. It turned out she was the owner. She really hit it off with Brad. And then she met Kate. Kate was our silver bullet. Lisa (the owner) was obsessed with Kate. I should state here that Kate is a terribly charming baby. She has literally no stranger anxiety and reaches for people who smile at her. She pulled out all the stops with Lisa. Lisa held her for about 20 minutes and told us that we were the people she wanted to rent to. She wanted to keep seeing Kate and she wanted Brad to be her doctor. (She'll come back to her basement apartment every two weeks for a day or two to keep going to her temple.)

Unfortunately it was not all said and done yet. Her daughter and son-in-law also had to approve. The realtor told us she'd let us know on Sunday.

On Saturday we went to our new ward's picnic and fell in love with the ward. The bishop checked with the stake president and he said we could attend that ward even if we lived in the apartment in the south of the city (technically not in the ward boundaries). Brad felt fine about that, but I felt nervous about not completely following the rules. :) But we both really wanted to be in that ward. So many people had reached ougt to us already. We went to church there on Sunday and the opening hymn was my dad's song. It just felt like it was meant for us. 

Then right after church the realtor called and told us we did not get the apartment. We hadn't met the daughter and son-in-law, and they were nervous about having three young children in their mom's home. I accepted it, and felt sad, but moved on. Brad did not. He called her back and asked if we could offer to pay rent upfront or something. Holly (the realtor) called us back a little bit later and told us that Lisa was insistent that it be us. She wanted to meet our children to see that we'd take care of her home. We couldn't do that, but we showed her pictures (they hold still so much better in a picture - haha) and she was okay with that. More than anywhere else, her home felt like she was looking for someone to be a steward over her home instead of just looking for renters. She's lived there for 20 years and she has really created a good feeling there. It came out when we were meeting with her that Holly had instructions from the son-in-law to show the house again after rejecting us, and Lisa came back from her temple and during this and told Holly to stop the showing because she had picked who she wanted to live there. It all felt so miraculous!!! Honestly, I'm not totally sure why we are the recipients of such a huge blessing, but I am VERY grateful for this home. I really feel like this is where we need to be. It's so close to Brad's work and the park and has a backyard and parking and storage space. It's just amazing!

The ONLY downside is that it's not available until July 1, so Brad had to start work in San Francisco by himself. The kids and I miss him so much!!!

Lake George

On Friday we decided to take the world's fastest vacation to Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains. We'd been wanting to get away somewhere with our family to celebrate Brad's graduation and capitalize on our last bit of concentrated time with him for the next three years (maybe six years, maybe forever . . . depending on what specialty he choose). We toyed around with a lot of destinations, but we really could only be gone about two days, so in the end we chose somewhere relatively close that we've been wanting to visit since moving to Rochester . . . Lake George.

It did not disappoint! Lake George is stunning! I honestly did not expect it to be so beautiful. One of the major reasons I wanted to go was because my 4th great grandfather was from there and joined the church there. He owned an island on the lake and sold it when he moved to Kirtland. The island and his other business were worth a lot of money, but he gave all of his fortune to the Church and gave all of his (numerous) posterity a greater inheritance of membership in the Lord's kingdom. Unfortunately his house had just recently been torn down, but we still saw the island he owned, which now has a super posh hotel on it, the church he used to preach at (he was a lay minister), a graveyard where some of his family is buried, and the lake he was baptized in. It was fantastic for our family to get to experience that. Our kids were excited about it too because a few years ago someone made a movie about this ancestor and we have it. It's one of the only things our kids are allowed to watch on Sunday, so they know the story backwards and forwards, and were duly excited by visiting where he was from.

We stayed at a fantastic hotel/lodge. We had multiple rooms, so we could all actually sleep!!! We also had a kitchen and a grill that patrons could use. As a result of the grill, we ate like kings on this trip. My mother's day dinner was grilled salmon, asparagus, and pineapple. I don't quite understand why grilling makes everything taste so good, but it does. It had its own private beach, and because it is the beginning of the season, we had it entirely to ourselves - heavenly. There was also a playground and a heated pool. It could not have been more perfect.

Sunday, after we'd made our pilgrimage to the John Tanner sites, we headed down to the lake to let the kids dip their toes in. Ha! Naivete at its finest. I'm sure the kids were just trying to keep the Sabbath by reenacting John Tanner's baptism by immersion in Lake George. :)

On Monday we drove to the other side of the lake and did a beautiful hike to a spectacular lookout. We were so proud of the kids for hiking all the way by themselves. Brad created a genius game for them that facilitated all the good hiking - each tree with a trail marker was a monster that James needed to get with his "sword". Annie was the lookout and James was the knight. Our fatal flaw was thinking after a good rest we could convince the kids to make it to the waterfall. After about 45 more minutes of hiking (and no waterfall within sight or earshot) we turned around. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped and rewarded our great hikers with some ice cream. Then we spent the afternoon at the lake - swimming, wading, and canoeing. It was completely idyllic. After another fantastic dinner on the grill, Brad took the kids swimming while I put Kate (the most perfect, easygoing baby EVER) down. We let the other kids stay up and have a cookie and some popcorn while they watched Mary Poppins on our 7 inch DVD player, completely ignoring the 60 inch flat screen right behind it.

It was the perfect little getaway for our family. I LOVED spending so much concentrated time together. I love having Brad around and I'm getting so nervous for what lies ahead . . .

Happy Birthday Annie!

Annie turned 5 this week! It blows my mind that I have a 5-year old. We had lots of plans for the day, but most of them went awry because winter decided to drop one HUGE (and final - I hope) snowstorm on us. It literally blizzarded (not a word, but that's what it did) from 9 am to 7 pm. EVERYTHING got closed. We'd planned on going to the museum in the morning but it wasn't safe to drive. We were going to have friends over, but that didn't work out because of the snow. She was supposed to take cupcakes to her class, but school was cancelled. Several of her non-Whipple Park friends let us know they wouldn't be able to be there for the party, but I think Annie had heard "cancelled for snow" one too many times, so we didn't change the party.

This is making it sound like a bad day - it wasn't. It just wasn't the day we planned. We had a fun breakfast with a very tired, post-night shift daddy. We opened presents. The kids took a bath and did those fun sponge things. They rode their scooters all over the house. Then Annie got to help make things for the party. We had lots of fun with her friends that could come. It was a fairly eclectic party, but the activities were chosen by Annie. We decorated bunny masks, had a cake walk, played "pin the crown on the princess", and button button. We had cake and presents. Overall quite a success.

Annie is wonderful! Several times over the last few weeks I've had moments where I'm floored by how much I love this little girl. She is a great big sister - a role she takes very seriously. She and James play, laugh, and fight all day long. When it comes to Kate, she is nothing but sweet. She begs to hold her and is really good at making her smile and playing with her. I really do trust Annie to help me with Kate when she's grouchy or tired. Several times, I've felt that Annie and Kate will be very close. Annie is a very loyal family member. She loves to know about anything going on in her cousins', uncles', aunts', or grandparents' lives. She cares about all of them very deeply. Nothing is better to her than skyping with family. She and James would do it all day long. The other day we'd called Bobbie's family to skype and in the middle of it James had an accident upstairs, so while I was cleaning that up, Kate (her cousin) and Annie had a playdate over skype - complete with stuffed animals. It was the perfect entertainment. She seems to be really connected to her ancestors as well. She really loves all of her great-grandparents and loves to learn stories about her other ancestors. Annie's mind has always amazed me. She is constantly figuring things out - and she'll tell me so. If I ask her how she knows something a frequent response I get is, "I was just thinking about it in my head." She's done that with division on multiple occasions. And she is still a sponge. Anything she hears is sure to be regurgitated sooner or later. We've been doing "learning time" every morning and her reading is getting better and better. Annie has a deep desire to do what's right. She loves the gospel and will do just about anything she can to choose the right.

Kate's Blessing Pictures

A little more than a month ago I realized I never had any formal pictures of Kate in her blessing dress, so I quickly asked Lisa if we could do some before Kate grew out of her dress. Here's the result. Love them!

Happy birthday James!

James' birthday was this past week and it was fantastic! We celebrated (with food) all day long. I can't get enough of this boy. Brad is always claiming I have a soft spot for our little ginger and I think it just may be true.

Here are a few things I love about James. He loves to play any sort of game. I can get him to do just about anything if I try to turn it into a game. This can be slightly problematic when he runs away from me at a store or a parking lot because if I run after him, he laughs and keeps running. Me chasing him is his dream come true. He also loves to play card games and board games with our family. It's pretty cute to see him taking after his daddy that way. He still loves balls and anything to do with swords, guns, arrows, etc. The kids have been watching a lot of Robin Hood lately and he totally gravitates to that character. When he's focused, his aim can be pretty good. He's fairly coordinated, so I hope he'll get lots of chances to put that love of balls to good use. He is a smart little thing. Unbeknownst to me, he learned all his lower case letters (Super Why??). I got out a game to try to teach him and he knew almost all of them already. It was a great surprise. He has a great vocabulary so long as you know how to understand him. :) My favorite thing about James is how intensely he loves. It just comes bursting out of him! Frequently, he'll look at me beaming and say, "I LOVE you, Mom!" He can't talk about doing anything or sing any song without including every member of our family by name in the plans. His world revolves around Annie. He fights with her of course, but EVERYTHING is better if she is doing it as well. Yesterday when Annie was at preschool James did something well and I praised him for it and he was so pleased and then burst out, "And Annie!" It didn't even make total sense, but he knew that if there was something great, he wanted Annie to be a part of it. I love this little jumping bean (he never sits still)!!!!

In other news, Brad recently was inducted into AOA, the medical honor society. It's only given to the top 16 students in the class, so I was a pretty proud little wifey. Brad has worked really hard and done really well, and I'm very grateful for that! His mom was able to come out for the ceremony, which was great. We all loved having her here - she's an amazing woman! We also submitted our rank list at the end of February. It was tricky to take into account all of our preferences and desires, but I think in the end we came up with a pretty good list and I feel like we'll like the place we match. We find out on March 21 where that will be!!!

Kate continues to be the perfect baby. She is very nearly always happy. We couldn't be more thrilled with her. And Annie is in a great place right now too, but I'm hoping I'll blog again near her birthday to talk more about how wonderful she is.