Pages from the Philips

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks.  Even though trauma surgery is done and the schedule in emergency medicine for the last three weeks has been better it has still been a lot of hours away from home.  Melissa and the kids returned safely from their trip to Nebraska along with a new kitten they acquired from the county fair while they were visiting family in Nebraska.  Our new kitten is about 7 weeks old and right now we are deciding on a name for her between Cuddles and Roses…I think Karuna gets the final word on this since she and the kitten are glued together for most of the day.  Yesterday we also added a new beta fish to the family and so we now have three new pets in the home with the puppy, the kitten, and the fish!  Luke has been thrilled to have so many animals around and we get to hear his frequent screams of delight over something else one of our pets is doing throughout the day which definitely brings a smile to our faces.

The other big news to share is that we are expecting our third baby on February 19th of 2009!!  We found out about a month ago about our newest addition but wanted to wait till our first trimester was over before we announced it.  Melissa has had a difficult first trimester so far with feeling sick during the evening hours but we hope that the second trimester will turn out to be a better one for her.  We have been blessed with a good OB-GYN doctor that we found at Southwestern and our first ultrasound looked great!  Once I get a chance to scan in the ultrasound, we’ll post new pictures of the baby soon.  So it appears that this first year in Dallas will be a year with many new additions to our family.  Just like with Karuna and Luke we are not going to find out if the baby is a boy or girl so that we can be surprised again.  This baby will have an Indian boy or girl name so if you have suggestions please send them our way. (Somehow we came up with a crazy system of alternating Indian first name and American middle name with American first name and Indian middle name so we are going to keep the tradition going.)

We have also had fun celebrating during the last couple of weeks some important milestones for us and our families.  On August 9th, we got to celebrate two big events in our lives.  The first was celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary.  We have been so blessed with five wonderful years of marriage and we cannot believe how quickly these first five years have gone and how much we’ve done together since we’ve been married.  I think we have counted two major moves, three different jobs, three pregnancies, two babies, two home purchases and travels around the world in the last five years.

On August 9th we also got to celebrate with Christo’s sister, Christine, as she and Stan Mathew had their engagement ceremony.  It was wonderful to celebrate with them as they prepare for marriage.  We are so excited about Stan joining our family since he is a wonderful man of God who will be a great husband for Christine.  I’ve known Stan now for almost 12 years since he went to high school and college with me.  Stan is now at Dallas Theological Seminary doing his training in cross cultural ministries hoping that he can be a church planter.  They are planning on getting married next summer.

Christine also recently got a new job in Fort Worth and so starting this week she has moved in with us because it is a shorter commute from our house to her work than from my parent’s home.  Melissa and the kids have definitely enjoyed the extra company in the house on the days when I’m at work for a long period of time.

This month of emergency medicine has gone a lot better than trauma although still with some frustrations about learning a new system and working at a county hospital.  Most our patients are the uninsured poor and so it is next to impossible to arrange good follow-up care for patients once they leave the emergency room which has been a big frustration.  However, I’m loving the variety of cases that we see in the emergency room here and feel that it is starting to prepare me for work abroad in India once we finish.

We also wanted to put up some pictures from Stan & Christine’s Engagement Ceremony and pictures from our trip the Dallas Zoo & Taste of Dallas from earlier this month.  As always just click the links above to view the slide show or click on the individual pictures below.