Lisa n Tom (n James n Joseph)

Lisa writes: My great-aunt Bernice passed away yesterday. She was my mother's father's sister. Today my mom emailed all of us scans of some of the old pictures she found. Below are (back) Merlin and my great grandpa Albert Catmull (front) My grandpa Rex, Bernice, and Dorsel. Below are the same kids, much later. (Back) Uncle Dorsel and wife Nadine, Bernice, Rex (Front) Great-grandma Grace and great-grandpa Rex

Tom writes: We took advantage of an open weekend to visit Charlottesville, VA. Two of the town's attractions are Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, and the University of Virginia, which also was Jefferson's creation. During our tour Monticello, we heard a fair amount about who Jefferson was as a person. Particulary impressive was how he treated his children and grandchildren. In an age when children normally found themselves unwelcome, Jefferson insisted that they be part of all family meals and gatherings. It was said that he had a way of learning the secret desires of the children and delighted in making them come true. He later remembered his married years as ones of "unchequered happiness" and deeply mourned his wife's death. In all, he struck me as someone I could relate to and who I would have enjoyed knowing. So that was the culturally edifying part of the trip. On a more personal level, I found the brief excursion and excellent break from a rat...

Lisa writes: A few more pictures from our Charlottesville trip. Here is the tree in front of Thomas Jefferson's house that Tom said was "scary." It kind of is. Jefferson's Ten Rules Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. Never spend money before you have earned it. Never buy what you don't want because it is cheap. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold. seldom repent of having eaten too little. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. How much pain the evils cost us that never happened. Take things always by the smooth handle.When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred. And here are some pictures of the B&B where we stayed - The Dinsmore House. It's over 200 years old and has 15 foot ceilings. And a bathtub with feet! Though an old man, I am but a young gardener. Here is the Rotunda on the University of Virginia campus. Jefferson designed the campus him...

Lisa writes: Twelve years and about a gajillion heartbeats later, Trudi celebrated the 20th anniversary of the INOVA Fairfax Hospital's heart transplant program. She was one of the keynote speakers of the evening. You weren't there, so I'll tell you what you would have learned if you'd been sitting there: Just marking the "organ donor" checkbox on your driver's license isn't enough. You also have to tell your family that you want to be a donor. And it works a lot better if you have that conversation, like, before you're eligible to donate, if you get my meaning. Transplant works. Just ask Tom's mom.

Lisa writes: Lori and Dave have about another four months to wait before they can go pick him up. Judging from this picture, he will be very excited to see them.

Lisa writes: Big, fat, fluffy flakes on Sunday. Automobile Ice Capades on the Beltway. We thought we could make it to evening Mass. After a religious experience just trying to make it up the hill to the corner, we looped back around and came home. We bundled up and took a walk, where Tom rescued two poor, wayfaring travelers whose cars were stuck in the snow.

Lisa writes: We spent all afternoon looking at houses to buy. House-hunting is a lot like dating in your 30s. You look around and there are lots and lots of women just like you married to nice guys, and you think, "Hey, they all did it. How hard can this be?" And then you go to 27 million singles activities and think, "Pretty dang hard." Just like dating, it seems like all the good candidates are already taken. But, as Tom here demonstrates so perfectly, all you need is one.

This is how to get rid of a Christmas tree!

Lisa writes: Tom has no cavities! (Dentist appointment today was perfect. Naturally. It would be so wrong of the Universe to give cavities to somebody who flosses twice a day.)

Tom writes: One of our goals with this blog is to document different activities so that friends and family can enjoy them now. Another goal is to store them so that we can look back on them in years to come. This post is more aimed at the second goal, since it happened over the summer. After discussing different pros and cons of where to live after we got married, we finally decided that Lisa would move from Denver to Northern Virginia. She had family in Colorado and I had family here. So it came down to jobs. She was not entirely enamored of her work in Denver, but I was looking forward to new opportunities in my job. Lisa would also argue that the real reason is that the only way that she will get me out of Virginia on any permanent basis is in a pine box ;-) In the middle of May, I flew out to Denver and helped her finish packing. Then the two of us spent the next few days driving east, stopping along the way to visit friends (and sleep on their couches!). This video is about 10 mi...

Lisa writes: A long time ago, in a typically silver-tongued, Lisa-like way, I tried to pay Tom the following compliment: "We've spent the entire day together, and I'm still not sick of you!" What I meant to say was that I enjoyed being with him very much and looked forward to spending more time together. Luckily, he came back for more, and I am happy to report that after four months, I'm still not sick of him. My mom hit it right on the head a little while ago: Tom has a very "healing presence." He makes me happy always. Tom writes: Everyone tells us that the honeymoon will end at some point. However, it seems that we haven't hit that point. Either that, or we have transitioned from "really, really happy" to just "really happy" and will stay like this forever and ever. Hey - it works in fairy tales! Tom continues: More seriously, though, it has become clearer to me what they mean when they say that love is a decision you ma...

Just in! This pic of Lori and Ava in their ducky pajama splendor! Lisa writes: It was Christmas time again, which all my siblings know means ... it's Pajama Time! This year's theme was duckies. I think Debbie wins the prize for cutest pajama-wearer, although Tim (who turns out to be a much funnier guy than I had realized) is a close second. (For the record, those were supposed to be Christi's. Tim walked into the kitchen wearing them and had Christi weeping with laughter.) The girls look like little ducky gangsters. Like "QuackMaster Tim and the Three Duck Mafia."