Another great year comes to an end

Monday morning I took my Mom and Uncle Terry to the airport, which basically signified the end of the holiday season for us. As expected, we had a great time during their visit, particularly on Sunday, which is when Mom, Jessica, the girls, and I were joined for the day with Jim, Brenda, Kristy, Terry, his daughter Kayla, and her daughter Jayla. This was the first time I had seen Kayla since she was about 2 years old, and it was our first time meeting her daughter.

Jayla is only about 8 or 9 months older than Ava, so it didn’t take long for them to hit it off. The rest of us enjoyed what I think of as the 3 F’s of the holiday season: Family, Food, and Football. The family part was great because although my Mom and Terry see each other regularly, neither of them get to see Jim, Brenda, Kristy, or my family very often. Then when you add the fact that we were visiting with Kayla and her daughter for the first time, it made it that much more special. From a food perspective, there was lots of good stuff to snack on all day, plus a nice ham dinner with garlic-asparagus, rolls, stuffing, and salad that evening. As far as the football goes, the Seahawks got the win and locked down the #1 seed in the NFC, giving them home field advantage through out the playoffs. All in all it was a great day that meant a lot to each of us.

Today is New Year’s Eve, which means you can’t help but reflect a bit on the year that is coming to a close. We’ve continued our streak of doing big things this year by buying a house, and that streak will live on into 2015 as we welcome our son Enzo into the world. This is kind of a big day for us simply because tonight will be Jessica’s last night working before Enzo is born. In her last two pregnancies, Jessica worked until a little closer to her due date, but in so many ways, this pregnancy has been different. This one been harder on her physically, and as far as I’m concerned she should have stopped working weeks ago, but based on the time of year that simply wasn’t an option. December is the busiest month of the year at El Gaucho, so she had no choice other than to suck it up and make the best of it. The good news is that January is the slowest month of the year, so there will be no reason for her to have to work again after tonight. It’s important to me that she takes a longer maternity leave this time than she did with either of the girls. I have a feeling this is going to be our biggest adjustment yet, so I want to give her plenty of time to ease into things.

Earlier this month I started going through all of our old website posts and backing them up. Although I have our web hosting account set to automatically backup all of our content, my greatest fear is that if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, Jessica wouldn’t know how to maintain the databases and all the other technical stuff, and one day the site would just disappear. Ultimately I want this site to live on for generations, so I’m a little paranoid in making sure that it stays safe. Therefore I’m going back through every old post and copying them over into their own Google Doc in my Google Drive. If you’re not familiar with Google Docs its just a cloud-based suite of office applications that you can access from anywhere. I’m going out of my way to catalog everything very specifically, so that you could easily navigate to a specific month of a specific year and view just the posts from that time period. You can certainly do this on the website as well, but I want to be as thorough as possible.

The funny thing about looking at all these old posts is how much shorter they used to be than they are now. When I first started writing posts they were only a paragraph or two in length. Just enough to share a quick thought about what was going on in our world. Over time the format has changed, however, and now I feel like I’m cheating if I write anything less than 1,000 words. Maybe we’ve got more going on now and more to talk about. Maybe I just get on a roll and like to wax poetic about my loved ones. Probably a little bit of both. Either way I love how the site has grown over the years, and I can’t wait for the day that our kids sit down and start to take a real appreciation of it. I can’t imagine how cool it would be to sit down and read a detailed history of my parent’s lives throughout the years before I was born, and on through my childhood. Most of us will never have that opportunity, but I’m so glad that our children will.

As we close out another year I can’t believe how much the girls have grown and matured. Ava is a full on little kid now, rather than a toddler, and Elise continues to amaze me with not only her growing vocabulary, but her increased understanding of the world around her. They’re both such amazing kids, and I often tell myself I don’t know how I got so lucky; so it will be interesting to see how adding a third child to the mix affects the dynamic. I think its going to be hard on Elise at first, simply because she’s used to being the baby of the house, but she will adjust. She’s still going to be a total Daddy’s girl, and will continue to get just as much love as before. Ava is getting big enough that she might actually be helpful when it comes to caring for Enzo. Obviously we’re not going to task her with anything major, but fetching a diaper or a bottle is probably within her abilities at this point. I think Ava will be intrigued by the baby, but she’s already got so much energy and imagination that I don’t think it will phase her all that much. She continues to grow into her role of ‘big sister’ and I’m sure the arrival of her baby brother will help expedite that transition for her.

In addition to buying a house this year, this was a big year for me personally due to the fact that I finally graduated from college. I hope my kids learn from my experiences and go to school when they’re young. It’s certainly a lot harder to manage college when you’ve got a family and full-time job to balance at the same time. Part of the reason I never finished when I was younger was that I placed too much emphasis on the connection between my studies and my career. Although in the end I ended up with a degree that is directly related to my career, I don’t think that is a necessity. Therefore I always plan to stress to my kids that they don’t need to know what they want to do for a career by the time they’re entering college. That’s a lot of pressure to place on an 18 year old kid, and its not necessary. I just want them to study something they enjoy or have a passion for, and not worry too much about their career. One thing I’ve found out over the years is that careers can come and go, so they should study something the love without too much regard to its future applicability. Personally I’d love to see at least one of them study something related to the arts: music, theater, fine art, art history, English, etc.

Since finishing school I’ve had a bit more time to do things I love, which basically means I’ve been playing lots of guitar. I love having that type of creative outlet, and luckily for me, the girls have really gravitated to it. Exposing them to music at a young age is important to me, so we’ll see if it sticks. With Enzo arriving soon I can’t imagine there will be much extra free time in our world, but when you love something you can usually find a little time to fit it in.

There’s no question that 2015 will be a great year for us, so I’m eager to get on with it. Welcoming Enzo into our world will mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. I think there will be a certain sense of closure this time around because there is no question that our family is done growing. Although I can’t say having this large of a family was part of our initial plan, I can certainly say that we are thrilled and wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been tough to see Jessica struggling more than expected throughout this pregnancy, but in the end it will all be worth it. I just can’t wait to see her holding that baby boy for the first time. Luckily for both of us, that moment is only a few weeks away. To all of our friends and loved ones, we wish you the happiest of new years, and look forward to spending lots of quality time with you in 2015!

Merry Christmas, 2014

Today was exactly the type of Christmas you could ever want: quality time with family, plenty of presents, lots of good food, and some very happy children. We didn’t get off to the greatest start, mainly because Ava spent at least 20 minutes throwing a fit this morning because she didn’t want to wear her pajama pants, but she eventually got over it and figured out that there were a ton of presents to open, so things quickly got better. The funny thing about opening presents this morning was that the girls would get so excited about a particular present that they wouldn’t even care about opening anything else, so we would have to take an extended break from opening presents to allow them to play with their new toy. Consequently it took half the day just to get everything opened.

We got to Skype with Grandma and Grandpa in Iowa this morning and they seemed thrilled to get to see the girls opening their presents. Ava is old enough to get it now, so this was a pretty special Christmas for her, but what made it even more special was the fact that we finally got to spend a Christmas with my Mom. We were long overdue for that so I’m very grateful to have her here with us. My cousin Kristy and her friend Edgar picked up my Mom at the airport, then came up to our house to spend the afternoon watching basketball and hanging out. In addition to opening more presents, we had a nice dinner and just enjoyed having a nice relaxing day.

The evening has been pretty laid back, but we’re getting ready to participate in our annual Christmas tradition, which is to watch ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without a little dose of Griswold. Before I go I just want to thank all of our family members for so many thoughtful gifts. The girls had a great day, and that’s the most important thing. This is the last Christmas for us as a family of four, and its hard to believe that we’re only a few weeks away from Enzo’s arrival. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll make up for my brevity in this post with plenty of photos documenting our day. Merry Christmas!

Elise showing off her new necklace in front of the tree
Elise showing off her new necklace in front of the tree

Ava sporting her new hat
Ava sporting her new hat

Mommy and Elise checking out the new pink pig
Mommy and Elise checking out the new pink pig

Funny face from my sweet girl
Funny face from my sweet girl

Is that Elise, or an explosion of Pepto?
Is that Elise, or an explosion of Pepto?

Ava taking a break from opening presents
Ava taking a break from opening presents


Elise opening gifts from Nana and Kristy

Ava and Nana opening gifts
Ava and Nana opening gifts

Elise and Kristy checking out the new wall stickers
Elise and Kristy checking out the new wall stickers

Ava loves her new camera from Uncle Joel and Aunt Melanie
Ava loves her new camera from Uncle Joel and Aunt Melanie

Ava wearing Nana's glasses - as usual
Ava wearing Nana’s glasses – as usual

Home From Toronto

Last week I spent Monday through Wednesday in the great Canadian city of Toronto. I was there for a work trip, and it was my first time ever visiting Toronto, so I was fairly excited to check it out. Based on our last two trips to Vancouver, I felt that there was a good chance that I would like Toronto, but honestly even I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. In my opinion it was like a smaller, safer, friendlier, and cleaner version of New York. It certainly had that East Coast feel, which was immediately noticeable to me based on how nice everyone dressed, meaning I couldn’t help but feel slightly out of place in my usual Seattle attire consisting of Levi’s, North Face shirt, and Van’s sneakers. It didn’t matter though; just like in any big city no one really cares what you look like, and I was just happy to be able to walk around and explore a bit.

The work portion of the trip went really well. It was a nice opportunity to meet a bunch of people that I regularly correspond with via email, and we made some nice progress in planning for projects to get started on in January. I also gave the same CSS presentation that I gave in Seattle a couple months ago to the team of developers out there. We bribed them to come by providing free lunch, meaning that not surprisingly, I was presenting to a full room. Generally speaking, free food goes a long way with developers, so they were all too happy to attend.

Monday night, which was our first night in town, we got checked into the Hyatt Regency Hotel on King Street West, which is right in the heart of the financial district. It was easily the nicest hotel I’ve stayed in on a work trip. We were all pretty hungry so we set out on foot after dropping off our bags and ended up finding a place called Wurst, which was an interesting combination of a modern, dark, hip restaurant, with old school German sausages and beers to choose from. You go up to a counter and order from their selection of 20 different types of sausage, then grab a seat at one of the long picnic tables in the main dining area. I went with a spicy Italian pork sausage on a toasted roll with sweet red peppers, fries, and a green peppercorn parmesan dipping sauce. Everyone agreed the sauce I chose was best, but more importantly we all enjoyed hanging out, telling stories, drinking beer, and having a good time. Work trips like these are a nice way to get to know your co-workers on a more personal level.

The next night after work I went out for a beer with a friend from the Toronto office. I was supposed to meet up with my co-workers later on for dinner but lost track of time and didn’t have the ability to send them a text message because I intentionally kept my phone on airplane mode the whole time we were there just to be sure I didn’t incur any international data charges. Consequently I ended up going out on my own that night and had fun walking around Queen Street and Chinatown. I ended up having a nice sushi dinner, which is something that Jessica and I can’t enjoy at home these days due to her pregnancy. After dinner I found a local sports bar and watched the ends of the Raptors and Maple Leafs games.

Wednesday was a really long day because we put in 6 hours at the office, then went to the airport early to catch our flight home. We heard nothing but horror stories about Toronto traffic the whole time we were there, so just to be safe we left 3.5 hours before our flight. As it turned out there was no traffic and we arrived at the airport in about 30 minutes, but that’s fine with me. We were then able to take our time getting through customs and security, as well as enjoy a pretty decent dinner at the Molson’s Grill near our gate. We were fortunate enough to have a direct flight home, but it’s a long flight (5.5 hours) and it was probably the bumpiest flight I’ve ever been on. In addition to all the turbulence, they had to abort the landing in Seattle on the first try due to heavy winds. It was actually a bit scary because we were coming into land like normal, then all of the sudden the pilot hit the gas and pulled up, which thrust everyone back into their seats. A couple people were freaking out, but the pilot quickly got on the microphone and explained what happened. The second landing attempt was fine, and I was more than happy to be home.

I had a town car waiting for me, but rather than have them take me home I had them take me to El Gaucho. Jessica was working and I wanted to see her, plus I felt like a boss telling the driver to take me to El Gaucho as soon as I got off the flight. Strangely enough this was the first time I’ve ever sat at the Gaucho bar when Jessica was bartending, so that was pretty cool, plus it’s always nice to see all my old friends and co-workers. Although I enjoyed the trip, I was very eager to get home to my girls. Now that this trip is behind me I don’t have to worry about traveling anymore before Enzo is born. There’s no way I’m leaving Jessica at this point.

Amy went home the following morning, which I’m sure she was ready for. She always keeps very busy with the girls when she’s here, so I’m sure she was ready for a rest. The rest of our weekend was very relaxing. Both girls have been a bit under the weather all week, so we didn’t do much. The highlight of my weekend was playing music with my nephew Kallan. He’s been practicing on the drums for several years now, so on Saturday afternoon I brought my guitar and amp over to his house and we had a great time jamming. Surprisingly we actually sounded pretty good. During the 2.5 hours that we played we came up with a few tunes, but more importantly it was just a ton of fun hanging out with him. He’s such a good kid, and we’ve always been close so there’s no one I’d rather play with.

Today was a bit interesting at work due to there being a bomb threat at one of the Amazon buildings. As it turns out it was the building directly across from the one I sit in, and because I sit by a window, I actually have a direct view of that building all day. I never did find out exactly what happened but there were plenty of police outside. When I was leaving work I saw some K-9 units as well. I think it was all a false alarm but it’s certainly not something to take lightly; I’m just glad no one was hurt.

Our house is fully decked out for the holidays and Ava is in quite the Christmas spirit. She really gets it now, and can’t stop talking about Santa Claus. Jessica took them to see Santa while I was gone, and even though they seemed excited ahead of time, they were less than thrilled to actually sit with him. The only way to get the photo was for Jessica to sit in with them, and even then they were pretty freaked out. I’m just glad the photo turned out as well as it did.

We’re looking forward to a visit from my Mom and Uncle Terry for Christmas this year, as well as having family over for a nice holiday dinner the Sunday after Christmas. Plenty of Christmas photos coming soon, but for now I’ll leave you with our annual visit to see Santa. Happy Holidays!

Jessica, Ava, and Elise with Santa, 2014
Jessica, Ava, and Elise with Santa, 2014

Happy Birthday Grandma

Today is Grandma Amy’s birthday and we’re fortunate enough to be able to celebrate with her in person. She was kind enough to stick around with us an extra week due to my work trip to Toronto tomorrow morning. As with all of her visits, we tend to get a lot done around the house, and this trip has been no exception. I can’t believe how much better the bedrooms are looking, as well as the whole house overall.

I kept busy this morning doing some touch-up painting in various rooms around the house, as well as getting the curtains in Enzo’s room secured. If you’ve ever been to our house you know that practically every wall is a different color, which is something that Jessica hates, but so far we’ve just dealt with it. When we moved in there were tons of different cans of paint in the garage, but they’re not all labeled so figuring out which wall they each go with has been a bit of a challenge. Since the guest bedroom needed some touching up, and I was in full-on ‘painting mode’ this morning, I decided to add that to my list of duties. I thought I had the right shade of green picked out from the garage, but as it turned out I didn’t. After touching up various spots and letting it dry I came to the unfortunate realization that I now need to re-paint the entire room. Lovely. Luckily the guest bedroom was the only room where I accidentally applied the wrong paint. The rest of the rooms look really nice, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

Since I kept busy with house projects this morning I was more than fine with relaxing this afternoon and watching football. Amy, Jessica, and Ava spent the day out and about shopping, making/painting pottery, and going out to lunch, while Elise and I relaxed and watched the Seahawks beat the Eagles. The girls will be home soon, but only momentarily so they can drop Ava off with me, then they’re heading back out to meet Laurel at the movie theater and see ‘Gone Girl.’ I’m just glad to be having one of those Sundays where I never leave the house, especially when you consider how long each of the next three days will be for me.

I’ve got a car picking me up at 6:00am tomorrow morning, which may be a little early considering my flight isn’t until 9:00, but you just never know with Seattle traffic and I’m one of those people who is overly phobic of missing a flight. I’d rather arrive early at the airport and read my book than have to rush and deal with a bunch of stress. We’ve got a layover in Chicago, so when you combine that with the time change, you end up spending one entire day just traveling. Tuesday and Wednesday will both be really long days, then we fly home on a direct flight out of Toronto on Wednesday evening at 7:00. Due to the time change, we’ll be landing in Seattle a little after 10:00pm local time, but it’s going to feel more like 1:00am to me, which I assure you is well past my bedtime these days. It’s all good though; I’ve never been to Toronto before and am looking forward to exploring the downtown area a bit, as well as getting to work in person with so many of the people that I’ve built up a long-distance working relationship with over the last couple years.

Our house is all decked out for the holidays now. Earlier this week we picked up a Christmas tree, then yesterday I put up Christmas lights on our house. What seems like a simple task of putting up a few lights always turns into much more of a production. First I ran out of staples for my staple gun, so I go to Lowe’s and buy more. I get home and get back to work, only to realize that the 1/4″ staples I bought are too short to hold the wires to the house, meaning I have to go back to Lowe’s a second time to buy longer staples. In the end I’m happy with how it turned out; I used every light we had, and I didn’t have to risk my life up on the roof. I don’t have much Clark Griswold in me, but luckily we don’t live in one of those neighborhoods where everyone gets really competitive with their decorations. I’m not really into all that, but regardless I think our house looks nice and festive.

Jessica and the girls did a great job decorating the Christmas tree, and she had a great idea (well technically it was Pinterest’s idea but so what) to make a felt Christmas tree, complete with its own set of felt ornaments, and put it on the wall for the girls to play with. The idea is that this would discourage them from messing with the real Christmas tree, and so far its working out pretty well. I’m happy to say that Ava has only broke one of our ornaments this week.

I’m especially looking forward to this Christmas because my Mom will be coming into town to stay with us. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this will be the first time Jessica and I have ever spent a Christmas with my Mom. I feel bad about that, but more importantly I’m just glad we’re going to be together this year. She will be flying in on Christmas day, and my cousin Kristy will be picking her up at SeaTac, then coming up here for a nice afternoon and dinner. My Uncle Terry is also flying into town with her, but will be spending most of his trip with his daughter and granddaughter. I’m planning a nice big family dinner the Sunday after Christmas so hopefully we can get a bunch of people to come over.

Happy Holidays to everyone and looking forward to seeing many of our loved ones soon!