February

Ok, so I'm not doing such a great job of keeping up with the once a month post I promised when I started this thing. I'll try to do better. There has been a lot going on the past month. However, I'll warn you right now that there aren't a lot of pictures.

Surgery

I started out the month by having my gall bladder removed. I had a gall bladder attack on New Years Eve that landed me in the hospital, but for the month of January, I was fine. I worked hard to keep a low fat diet and that seemed to have solved the problem. However, on the evening of the 30th, I had some of the same symptoms that landed me in the hospital on New Years Eve. This time though, it wasn't that bad. It felt like a minor case of indigestion. Anyway, since it wasn't that bad, I ignored it and just thought it would go away after a while like the first time. This was a very bad idea. As I started the third day of symptoms without any change, I decided I probably needed to see the doctor.

One advantage of being a professional in a small town is that you know people. So I called one of my partners who's married to a surgeon. He called his wife, who called me back 5 minutes later and 5 minutes after that I was headed to the hospital. The big wait was that apparently you can't have surgery within 8 hours of when you last ate. Since I'd had breakfast, we couldn't do the surgery until early afternoon.

It is a very strange feeling to be lying on a hospital bed talking to the anesthesiologist and then to simply wake up and find that the surgery is over. The surgeon says the surgery was really difficult. The gall bladder was very inflamed and I guess some of my internal wiring is somewhat abnormal. Annie said the doctor looked very glad the surgery was over. The doctor told me she cursed a lot :)

The recovery took a lot longer than I thought it would. Since it was arthroscopic surgery, I expected to be up and about the next day. It was actually three or four days before I could really do much and a good week before I really felt like I could function properly. However the good news is that it's been a month and I'm now back to normal. I've even started back at the gym this week.

J. Reuben Clark Law Society Conference - Harvard Law School

Toward the middle of the month Annie and I attended the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Conference at Harvard Law School. It was great to have the chance to meet and interact with a huge number of LDS attorneys. I think for both Annie and I, the opening keynote address by Clayton Christiansen, a Area Authority Seventy and professor at the Harvard Business School was one of the highlights of the trip. He talked about asking the right questions, professionally, personally, and religiously. Other conference highlights included a meeting at the Old North Church where we heard from a Harvard History Professor (and church member) about the history of the Old North Church and also from Dean Kenneth Starr (former special prosecutor and current Dean of the Pepperdine Law School). He is doing the argument on behalf of Prop. 8 in front of the California Supreme Court. I'll admit that his address was a little hard for me to follow because he made lots of references to Constitutional Jurisprudence that I was not familiar with (it's been a long time since my constitutional law class). It was great to have a couple of days with Annie all to myself. Special thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Peterson for watching the kids even while they were getting ready to put their house on the market! Annie and I ended the conference with a session at the Boston Temple and dinner out on Valentines Day. Annie's the best, I'm so glad she decided to marry me!


Annie in front of Pooh's House - Harvard Law School


Wisconsin Dells

From Boston, we headed west for Wisconsin. We are very grateful for the great weather we had for our trip and the great behavior of our kids in the van for the long trip. We celebrated Sam's 8th birthday in a hotel room just inside of Indiana after driving all day from Massachusetts. For his birthday dinner and cake he got Pizza Hut pizza and a store bought cake. We'll make it up to him next year.

Sam with his presents in the hotel.

Our destination was the Wilderness Waterpark Resort in the Wisconsin Dells. You can check out their webpage here http://www.wildernessresort.com/ This was an amazing place. They have three indoor water parks complete with wave pools, lazy river, tube slides, body slides, raft rides and the hurricane and the black hole which are difficult to describe and simply need to be experienced. They also have a dry park with air-powered guns that shoot foam balls. And a play land that would put any McDonalds to shame. We did an absolutely terrible job at taking pictures though! I think we were having so much fun we just didn't stop and record any of it. We did get a few shots of everyone relaxing at the Condo. That will have to do. We'll try to do better next time :(


Sam, Levi & Soren relaxing in front of the TV.


Caroline, Logan and Troy enjoying breakfast


Sam gets to wrestle with someone his own size!


Paper airplane flying from the loft was a popular pastime

We also visited a place in the Dells called "Wizard Quest". To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, but it turned out to be really fun. Essentially its a large warehouse that's been turned into a maze and decorated along various themes (air, earth, forest, and water). Hidden within the maze are a number of clues. You need to find the answers to questions using the clues this gives you points. Then you need to find the trapped "Wizards" within the maze and use the points to free them. There is a limited amount of time (90 minutes) to do this. Only two of our four groups were able to complete the tasks (Annie and I are happy to say that our group finished!)


Wizards Quest in the Dells


Sam in "Air"


Caroline in "Earth"


Corey, Caroline, Sam, Levi & Soren in the Library


Caroline resting in the "Forest"

Anyway it was great fun. The Dells is really an amazing tourist trap. Here are a few other attractions which Annie photographed on our way to the Quest.


Top Secret - Outside looks cool, I've heard the actual attraction isn't so great.


Mount Olympus - Closed for the Winter


All this driving around made Levi see stars!

Anyway we had a great time at the Dells. It was especially fun to see Joe, Chris, Heather, Burke, Logan, Wade and Troy who we don't get to see that often.