siete anos!!

Liz and I took a quick trip to Tucson over the weekend for to celebrate our anniversary. We stayed in a sweet hotel, ate some great food, and did a little Christmas shopping. It was fun to get away!
Check out my photoshop skills! Borders anyone? Check!


Liz actually planned the whole trip and found a pretty great hike in Saguaro National Park, just outside of town. It was really windy and quite cold, I must admit. Check out the cactus growing straight out of a tiny crack in the rock.


Classic profile belly shot of the expecting mommy at 20 weeks (or something like that).


Grandma Cindy not only came to watch our kids for our getaway, she brought Sterling and Jenn's kids with her! (Sorry, too lazy to take out the red-eye).

October shtuff

October has come and gone.
Elizabeth is feeling less and less nauseous, but still gets pretty puke-ie (minus the puke-ing) now and again. Maybe more often than I think because she's not big on complaining. She went to PHX for the Sonogram and if there's anyone left who doesn't know--> it's a GIRL. AWESOME! We are pretty darn excited. I was at work, and Liz called me and put me on speaker-phone before she found out... so we could find out together. It was pretty cool. My first question to the tech; "HOW SURE ARE YOU?" We have pretty much decided to opt for midwife/homebirth at this point. We feel great about our/her midwife because of her knowledge, experience, vibe, honesty, etc, etc. Should be pretty interesting.
I have been... 'settling' in, I guess you could say. Everyday is something new. Mostly good. It's a roller coaster! Procedure by procedure, patient by patient, day by day. I hope/foresee with experience... a more even keel. Less surprise and maybe a want for surprise. But as for right now; surprise has me contemplating a Xanax prescription (half joking).
Here are some pictures.

So I put Elijah in this tree and he is not so brave when it comes to heights. He was a good sport for the pictures though.

The Tacketts came to visit, and we had a good visit, hike, hang out... and trunk or treat.

Elijah and Oliver at some pumpkin patch nearby. These boys are really starting to play together more and more. Oli follows Eli around most of the day.

September

I have to admit; I had a good "Daddy" day today. Elijah finally picked up riding his bike, sans training wheels. He fell a couple of time and got some scrapes. It's good for a boy to have some scrapes! I know, I know... he's not wearing a helmet. When we go around the neighborhood I'll have him wear one.

The carnival came to town and it was a great time. I friggin' love the carnival. Sketchy rides and all. The food was the highlight for Liz and I. It is so easy to drop some serious coin at the carnival though if your not careful.

The Ferris wheel was called the "Big Eli".

We went to New Mexico to visit my Dad and his wife Cathy. We also went to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. It was amazing! Too much waking up early though! The balloons could only fly for about a 4 hour window starting at sunrise.

Noah in SV

He's almost up to my shoulders. A few more years and we'll be eye level, I'll bet. Serene backdrop right?

Noah spotted this cool lizard on this rad old barn that we took some family pictures in front of. Christmas cards are comin' baby! Sorry, no sneak peeks... Liz's orders.

So... Sierra Vista. We like. Awesome weather, job, small town, and not Vegas. This is about 20ish minutes from our house in the Huachuca mountains (Wa-choo-ka).
Tripod = rock.

It has been monsoon-ing ever since we arrived. Much more rain than Mesa. Awesome lightning shows and cracking thunder.
Standing in the partially flooded street.

Oliver hard at work. Such a rough life. O.S.W. turned 2! We didn't do much.

It's time to FEEEEESH!

So I have to brag a little about a pretty sweet trip I just got back from. One of my best amigos invited me on a last minute, chartered tuna fishing trip down in Mexican waters. We drove to and departed from San Diego and then motored down about 150 miles south for the two and a half day excursion. I guess the fleet, out of Point Loma, have been having an extremely slow season, so I was very lucky / skilled (ha ha) to get 2 fish (aka - 'feeeesh').
HUGE thanks to the Kennedy brothers; Russell (aka - Rew-sal) and Derek (aka - heavy D) for the invite.

Also, thanks to Liz for calling me a pansy, when I was trying to talk myself out of going. "Go; you'll have so much fun! Be spontaneous... GOSH!" I think were her exact words. What kind of wife says stuff like that anyways? I've grown into a fairly boring, practical, geezer over the last couple of years I guess.

I got pretty sick after the first night. Oy! I didn't hack though. Some dudes on the boat had some prescription strength Dramamine derivatives and it did the trick for the most part.

This is Rew-sal (and me) w/ our Albacore. Not record breakers by any means, but decent I think.

This is the yellow-fin... it was so much fun to fight. It was cool because I caught this just in the 'nick of time' you could say. This was the last stop were we baited our hooks and gave it one last go, before we headed back to San Diego. "First in the water gets the fish!"

what's new

... nothing is new. The Las Vegas-Mesa-Sierra Vista Wolfingtons are still stuck in a Groundhog Day-ish transition period. Not cool.
Lizabeth, Elijah, AND Oliver are just now getting better after a solid week and half of being bedridden-ly sick. I felt like Will Smith in I Am Legend, were I had some weird immunity to whatever bug they had.

The boys playing at BurgerKing.

Elijah and Cohen on the carousel at SS springs mall.
Liz pretending to eat her semi-famous Krabby patty desert treats.

Rocky Point 2010

Liz's parents got the family some awesome condo's down in Rocky Point a few weeks ago and we had a friggin' blast. The kids (in there ever growing numbers) were a bit needy at times, but it was so nice to relax on the beach. We love Rocky Point.
Our sister-in-law/photographer Harmony took this 'funny face' group shot with her nice DSLR (and the one with Oliver, by himself).
Shmee-lie Bee-lie and smally-Olly. If you know Oliver, you can actually hear him saying "EEEEEE" (for "cheeeeese") as we take this picture. Food in his mouth and all. Unfortunately for Elijah, I passed down my Chinese smiling eyes. I would say Elijah had the most fun out of anyone. The kid was in the water 80% of the time, no joke.

We eat at this fish place in town, the few times we've gone to Rocky Point. I don't remember what it is called, and that is unimportant anyway. We order this fish and just peel the meat right off and make fish tacos. It's real good. This is the place the kids presented the most struggle. Oy vey. I can still remember the headache.

Mi amore.

Graduation / graduation trip

Crazy. Unbelievable.
I would say, in the same breath as "time has flown by",... it has been a friggin' long 4 yrs of dental school! Sheeeeesh! All the hurdles. All the anxiety over those big tests. All the time spent with good friends. And now it all changes. Everything switches. Friends fan out across the country, and Las Vegas becomes 'a place we used to live'. Grades morph into paychecks... and I so VERY rarely say this but... HOLLA!! It's a good thing too because the baby chimpanzee that was on my back when I started school has grown into a plane swatting, chest pounding, damsel stealing King Kong of a monkey (i.e. debt). Elizabeth and I are excited for the future.
Martha E. and I decided to take a trip to Manhattan for a few days and my Mom so kindly agreed to watch the boys during our get away. Thanks again to all the family who made the drive/flight up to Vegas for the graduation. I AM special! Aw, shucks.

Apparently "Lavender" is the 'dental' color for our graduation. Weird.
These dudes have been my family for 4 years. *sniff sniff

Thanks to my Aunt Marcie, and a website called Tripadvisor, our itinerary was strategically executed. We got everything done we wanted to, and then some, w/o feeling rushed.

This picture is on the Brooklyn bridge. We took the subway to the east side, and walked back to Manhattan across the bridge at sunset with the cityscape as our backdrop. Magic!
"Top of the Rock" - Rockefeller Center overlooking downtown.

I have a truck load more pictures, but they are tied up on a memory card that won't allow me to extract the data. Bummer. Once I figure that out I will post a couple more pictures of NYC.

Mesquite Nevada

Some very nice friends of ours invited a group of us to their family's ranch house in Mesquite, which is about an hour away from Vegas. It was a beautiful property with a significant head of cattle, snow capped mountain ranges in every direction pretty much, and on this day; powerful storm clouds. We rode some quads, ate some mean BBQ, shot some shotguns, and relaxed. It was a lot of fun. For those of you who are familiar... it kind of looks like Thatcher/Safford - don't ya think?

So I look a little Asian when I smile big. Don't judge me.

Elizabeth was my main patient for boards a few weeks ago. I did two fillings on her. She was a great patient. Yes, she is trying to make a funny face. A big thanks to our friends for watching our rug rats for the day. 5 more weeks is all that's left. Craaaaaazy.


Liz found a cheap, yet legit, play-doh set and Elijah has been geeked out on it ever since.

recharging batteries

Two hours of sleep the night before and one - LONG -- day.

More than once, I told myself; "I'm going home and am going to just collapse". So I drove home and instead of the collapse... I found my batteries beginning to recharge.
- my smiling wife
- hot food
- two rambunctious boys wearing matching PJ's, bouncing off the walls (figuratively & literally).
- a nice hot shower
- a comfy couch

No collapse.

update...

After spending a fun week in Mesa, pre-Christmas... we drove back to Vegas Christmas night and spent the last week of school break w/ Noah at home. The boys slept most of the drive, even though Noah was awfully cramped between the two car seats in the backseat of the Maxima. We have definitely outgrown the 4-door sedan. Noah ordered a cool RC car w/ his Christmas loot, so we played w/ that some, and played some racquetball down at our YMCA. It was fun to have family dinners w/o an empty seat at the table. Elijah loves having his big brother home.

Shmoliver showing off his bun buns, pretending like he didn't know we were snapping a pic.

This is the "candy bar game". Liz did this growing up. You roll two dice and try to get doubles, and when you do... you have to race to put on the random accessories, because after you put them on, you start stuffing your face w/ candy. Meanwhile, the other players keep rolling the dice. It's a hoot.

Liz isn't used to staying up so late.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!