Mario’s parents divorced when he was very young, and he has an extensive step family from his mom’s remarriage. They are some pretty amazing people, and they have blessed Mario’s life (and mine by extension as well as directly) in ways that simply cannot be measured. He has said that if it wasn’t for the influence of Rich and Mike Vial he may not have decided to go to college after high school. Nic and Hailey Vial gave me a job our first married year. Rich and Mike are both attorneys and had a significant influence on Mario’s education and career decisions. These people are part of why we are where we are today, and we wanted to say a very small thank you. So we offered to cook them a Chinese dinner. It turned out to be a meal for about 30 people, and if you have ever cooked Chinese food you know that is A LOT of chopping and frying. Mario and I prepped the night before for about three hours, then got up that morning and cooked all day (except for about 2 hours of church), and we still weren’t close to ready when dinner time rolled around at 5pm. Luckily everyone pitched in to help us finish up (including multiple people passing our kids around so we could both help get dinner on the table) and it was awesome. I was too busy cooking to get out my camera, but you can see a bit of our evening at Mario’s step-brother’s blog here. Josh was in heaven yet again with tons of cousins and assorted furry creatures to chase around.
We took a day just to visit with a few wonderful people. We had lunch with Mike and Christine & Co and then went to visit Corvallis, the home of our alma mater Oregon State University. We visited with one of my best friends from our OSU days, Brittney Fry, and her lovely family. We also got to catch up with Mario’s adviser from his engineering program, Dr. Deb Pence. Deb had a profound influence on helping Mario make the decision to use his engineering degrees for something besides sitting in a cubicle for the rest of his life and has been a true friend as well as a mentor.
After our afternoon in Corvallis we went to Lebanon to have dinner with an old friend of mine from high school, Kevin Mitchell, and his wonderful family.
It was a pretty awesome day filled with really awesome people. Unfortunately we were so busy visiting with all these wonderful people that we didn’t take a single picture. We love you all even though we don’t have any shots of you to post!
The next day we headed to the hospital to meet the newest member of the Foutz family - baby Zachary was a darling and let us take some pictures of him. We brought his Tonka truck intending to take some pictures of him sleeping in the truck bed, but he was too big and I was worried he was going to roll out of it, so we placed it strategically in the background.
I forgot to mention that we also got to visit for a few milliseconds with my awesome and newly-married cousin Tiffany while we were passing through Portland for Foutz Week. Thanks for stopping by, Tippety!
On our way from Portland back to Grants Pass we got to visit some of our best friends from law school, Josh and Whitney, who happened to end up in a PhD program at University of Oregon. It was so awesome to catch up and made us miss our law school days like crazy. I don’t think we’ll ever make more friends like the ones we found in Boston. Love you guys!
We spent the night in Grants Pass, said goodbye to all the grandparents, and started our journey toward Texas.
1 comment:
awe, so fun seeing you guys! we love you! thanks for taking time to come see us ;)
Post a Comment