Author: Michael Pellegrini

In the wake of my Aunt Lisa’s passing last weekend, I felt like making a trip to Las Vegas this week was the best thing to do. I wanted to help out in any way I could, and getting some quality time in with my Mom and uncles seemed like a good idea. Although the purpose behind my trip was grim, I knew that each of us would make the best of it, and as expected the trip ended up being very enjoyable.

I flew into town on Tuesday evening and after being picked up by my Mom at the airport, we stopped by Lisa’s place to check on my Uncle Terry, who has been staying there all week. We then quickly stopped by Bob’s place, which is in the same neighborhood, before heading out to dinner. After having an excellent meal at a Mexican restaurant, and a good talk about Lisa, we headed home to get to bed early. We knew Wednesday would be a long day and wanted to be as ready as possible.

Wednesday was the hardest day of the trip. Denny came over to ride with my Mom and I, then we met Bob, Sandy, and Terry at Bob’s place and all of us headed over to the funeral home for a viewing. Since Lisa didn’t know anybody in Las Vegas, it didn’t make sense to have a formal funeral for her, but it was important to us that we all assemble and say our final goodbyes. Obviously this is a tough thing to experience, and although I was sad to say my own goodbyes, seeing my Mom and uncles say theirs was, for me, the toughest part. I have plenty of good memories with Lisa but they pail in comparison to all those collectively shared by her siblings. It’s just really hard to see people you love so much dealing with all this emotional pain, but there is nowhere else I would have rather been, and I know it meant a lot to them that I was there.

After the viewing Mom, Denny, Terry, and I went out for lunch. We shared stories and got caught up, which turned out to be a lot of fun. This was the first time I’d seen Terry in a very long time, and I hadn’t seen Denny in a while as well, so it was nice to catch up. After lunch we headed back to Bob’s place so Terry and I could help him install a window in his home. With the addition of Lisa’s bird Charlie, he now has two birds, and he decided that a window in their area would be good for them. Although neither Bob or I is a trained carpenter, Terry actually is, so getting to work on it as a group turned out to be a great experience. As with all home carpentry projects, it wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the hardware store, but I didn’t mind. Getting to hang out with my uncles was a rare treat that I wanted to take full advantage of.

Later that night Bob, Terry, and I went out to the Luxor casino to play in a poker tournament. I decided I’d allow myself one night out on the strip while I was in town, and it ended up being a good one. Terry doesn’t play poker so he decided to stick to the slot machines, which turned out to be a good idea. Although neither Bob or I ended up in the money in the poker tournament, Terry was able to turn a $20 bill into $250 at the machines. After taking Bob home Terry and I decided to hang out a bit more and get something to eat. We walked around the strip for a while and talked about all sorts of things. Since I haven’t been able to spend much time with Terry throughout my life, I had lots of questions for him.

As the night went on I asked Terry a ton of questions about his life. One look at him tells you that he is a pretty tough dude, but I’ve always known that there was a lot more to him than meets the eye. I was worried that all of my questions would annoy him, and I even told him to feel free to tell me to shut up at any point, but he was more than willing to share many of his life experiences with me, which I appreciated very much. It quickly became apparent to me that Terry is a really smart and talented guy. He’s got a great sense of humor and loves his family very much, so it was an honor for me to get to spend this time with him. It was certainly the most time we’ve ever spent together one-on-one, and I came away from it with a newfound respect for him, as well as a plan to regularly keep in touch.

After the long day on Wednesday, the rest of the trip was a piece of cake. Nothing but good times and some much needed work around the house. I started off on Thursday by cleaning my Mom’s minivan. The outside needed a little love, but the inside needed much more than that. She’s been using her Mazda minivan as a work vehicle for years and it had gotten pretty trashed over time. I must have spent at least an hour vacuuming it out and throwing stuff away. After that my Mom had a couple projects around the house that needed to get done. First I installed casters on the legs of a table she had recently refinished. She wanted to be able to roll it around and it was a super simple project for me to do.

Once that was finished I got down to the real work. Years ago my Mom replaced all the carpet on the main floor of her house with tile, however the laundry area (including the downstairs bathroom) had a different type of tile. The plan was to rip up this old tile and replace with a new tile that matched the rest of the downstairs. This seemed easy enough, but of course it turned out to be harder than expected. The problem was that there’s a layer of glue between the tile and the concrete, and although the tile comes up fairly easily, that layer of glue is extremely difficult to remove. Luckily my Mom has a Dremel power scraper that came in very handy, but it was still a ton of work. I had to disconnect the washer and dryer, which I knew how to do after moving into our new house, and move them out of the way so I could remove all the tile underneath them. After working for two days on it I was able to get about 90% of everything removed. I wanted to finish it off but my Mom forced me to quit at a certain point. I’m just glad to have been of some help to her around the house.

We had everyone over for dinner on Thursday night and Friday night, both of which turned out to be a lot of fun. Thursday night we had appetizers, grilled sausages, and salads, while watching the Ravens absolutely dismantle the Steelers. Then Friday night I made Chicken Picatta with pasta for everyone. We sat outside on my Mom’s back patio and had a great conversation about family, our favorite television shows, and our favorite books. I didn’t realize this but as it turns out, Terry is a big reader. After talking about some of his favorite books I decided that I need to get him a Kindle and fill it up with my entire book collection. That should keep him busy for a while.

Speaking of books, the only mistake I made on this trip was the book I chose to read at the airport and on the flight. Normally the vast majority of the books I read are related to web development, but I also really enjoy reading non-fiction, mainly because you learn so much when reading non-fiction. Autobiographies are easily my favorite genre of books, and due to all the time I’ve spent playing guitar recently, I’ve decided to re-read Eric Clapton’s autobiography, which is easily the best of one I’ve ever read. For this trip, however, I decided to switch things up a bit and read a novel called ‘Choke’ by Chuck Palahniuk. I’ve read a couple of his books in the past, including his most famous novel ‘Fight Club’, and really enjoyed them. Unfortunately this one was a complete dud and I quickly found myself cursing myself for reading fiction. I actually decided that my punishment for reading such a ridiculous story was to finish the book. The whole time I was reading it I was thinking about what a waste of time this was, and how I could be using that time to study something worthwhile. When I read, I want to learn something; I’m not into reading fictional stories and the idea of reading purely for entertainment just doesn’t jive with me. Anyway, I got through that stupid book on the flight home today and am looking forward to getting back to my usual type of reading material. Hopefully I’ll be starting the Clapton book tonight, and I’ve got a new programming book that I’m pretty excited to dig into as well.

Luckily while I was gone Jessica and the girls had some company. Joel and Melanie are out here visiting from Iowa for the week, and as always its great seeing them. They’ve been staying busy exploring the area, including an overnight camping and hiking session at Mount Rainier. Tonight they’re going out to dinner and tomorrow they’re going to the Mariners game. I’m glad they’re making the most out of their trip, but I’m also looking forward to spending some time with them before they leave on Tuesday morning.

This was the longest I’ve ever been away from my girls so I’m very glad to be home with them. Plus we’re only about 6 weeks away from going back to Vegas to celebrate my Mom’s birthday. Although this wasn’t the easiest of weeks, I’m so glad I got to spend an extended amount of time with my loved ones. Looking forward to a relaxing day at home tomorrow, then hitting it hard on Monday with a very busy week at work. Most importantly, we have Jessica’s doctor appointment on Monday evening. We’ll be doing an ultrasound that day and finding out the gender of our new baby! Obviously we’re very excited about that, so I can’t wait to share the news. Until then…

Me, Monkey, and Denny. I love that little dog so much!

Bob, Myself, and Terry after dinner on Thursday night

Me and Uncle Bob

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but my Aunt Lisa passed away this morning at 1:30. Last weekend she was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery on her stomach, and she simply wasn’t able to recover from it. This whole ordeal happened so quickly that it’s pretty hard to even comprehend. She was only 55. Obviously I’m very sad to have lost her, but more than anything my heart goes out to my Mom, Uncle Jim and Aunt Brenda, Uncle Bob and Sandy, and Uncle Terry.

Lisa didn’t have any children but she was a mother to her many pets. In my entire lifetime I’ve never seen someone more connected with animals than Aunt Lisa. When I was a child she worked as a horse trainer at the Longacres racetrack in South Seattle. Over the years she has cared for many dogs, cats and birds, and she loved them all more than you could imagine. She had such a presence with animals that you had to see in person to believe it. Not only did her own animals follow her every command, but so did other people’s pets. For example, my Mom used to have problems with her dogs running out of the house if the door was left open. However when Lisa came over, she had such command over those dogs that she could leave the front door wide open and the dogs wouldn’t budge. I asked her how she did it and she said that “they have to recognize you as the leader of their pack.” If you’ve ever watched the show ‘The Dog Whisperer’ she was exactly like that.

Lisa spent the past 20 years or so living in Yakima, which is in Eastern Washington. For the past 5 years she would make an annual trip to visit my Mom in Las Vegas. She had been wanting to move to Las Vegas for years in order to be close to my Mom, and even more so after Bob and Sandy moved there, but she had to wait until she could retire from her job at Safeway. Just over a month ago she finally made the move that she had been looking forward to for so long. She recently emailed me to wish me a happy birthday and said she was looking forward to seeing me and my family when we come down to visit on Halloween. I was very much looking forward to seeing her and introducing her to Elise. She met Ava once when Ava was very young so it would have been great to see two of them together again as well.

I have fond memories of Lisa babysitting me as a child, but more than anything I will cherish some of the recent phone conversations we’ve had over the past few years. Although we didn’t speak often, it wasn’t uncommon for our conversations to last an hour or more. Lisa was really smart and fun to talk to. In many ways she reminded me a lot of her Mom, who was my Nana. She was just so real and so easy to talk to. You could talk to Lisa about anything and expect to receive honest and valuable feedback. I don’t think she had the easiest life, but she was happy, she loved her animals, and she loved her family. She was my Mom’s only sister so the bond the two of them had was very special. Without question I feel fortunate to have had her in my life and, like many others in our family, I will miss her dearly.

With Lisa now gone my attention and focus needs to shift to providing love and support for her siblings. I’ve been having a lot of lengthy conversations with my Uncle Jim over the past week and I know that he’s doing okay. In order to provide some much needed emotional support for my Mom and Uncle Bob, I’m going to be flying down to Vegas on Tuesday evening and staying until Saturday morning. This will be the longest that I’ve ever been away from my own family, and that will be tough, but it’s the right thing to do. I’m so fortunate to have such an understanding and supportive wife as Jessica. Luckily Joel and Melanie will be coming into town right as I’m leaving, so at least Jessica won’t be alone the whole time with the girls.

It’s times like these that make you realize how much you love your family, and how important it is to not take anyone for granted. As we all know, people can be taken away from us with little to no notice, so it’s important to me that everyone knows how much I love and appreciate them. Although the cause of my upcoming trip is very sad, I’m going to make the best of it by spending some quality time with my Mom and Uncle Bob and trying to bring them some much needed joy. I wish I had a chance to say goodbye to my Aunt Lisa, but there is no question she knew I loved her, and I know how much she loved me. Rest in peace Aunt Lisa; you will forever be in our thoughts and our hearts.

Lisa enjoying the view during her visit to San Diego, 2011

Before I get to all the fun (and when I say fun I mean work) we’ve been up to this weekend, I first want to send our love to my Aunt Lisa. She had to be rushed to the hospital this weekend for emergency surgery on her stomach. I don’t know many details regarding her condition, and it wouldn’t be my place to share them even if I did, but I want her to know that we love her and are thinking of her. Hopefully she’ll be on her way to a speedy recovery very soon.

The main goals for the weekend were to prepare the Durango for sale, get it posted for sale on Craigslist, perform some routine maintenance on the Acura, and get my office organized. Saturday I bought a hydraulic jack and some jack stands, then came home and got to work on the Durango. I inflated and rotated the tires, changed the oil, and changed the oil filter. On Sunday I cleaned out the inside, which was easily the toughest part of all the work being performed. There was so much dog hair in the back! Even though Bruno has been gone for well over a year, his hair remains, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if for the rest of my life at least a few of his hairs remained stuck to one of my possessions. As a hound he had really wiry hairs that stick to everything, and you can’t just vacuum it up. I’ve found packing tape to be most effective, but even that was a chore. I was cracking myself up thinking that I was essentially giving the inside of our car a Brazilian.

Today I spent a bunch more time cleaning the outside of the Durango, taking pictures, and getting it posted on Craigslist. In the first couple hours that the post has been live I’ve already been contacted by two people. If you’ve ever sold anything on Craigslist you know that there are a lot of flakes out there and you have to be prepared for people to not follow through, but that’s okay. I know it will sell sooner than later.

Yesterday the four of us made the mistake of going to the outlet mall at the Tulalip Casino. I say mistake because everyone and their brother was there because of the holiday weekend. It was so crowded I couldn’t believe it. I went to the Levi’s store hoping to try on some jeans but there was a line of literally at least 35 people just to get into a dressing room. It wasn’t long before both of the girls were throwing fits, so we decided to cut our losses and head to Costco. We had originally been thinking about doing a day trip to Whidbey Island but Jessica hasn’t been feeling well and the whole idea seemed pretty daunting. Going to Costco was also a mistake because, like the outlet mall, it was so ridiculously crowded that I wanted to scream. I’m just going to say it right now – I hate the samples. More accurately, I hate the human psychology that if there is free food available, people will literally stop in their tracks, leave their cart right in front of me, and run over to get some food. The fact that it’s free is the worst. I was telling Jessica that even if they only charged one penny per sample the amount of people rushing over would decrease drastically. Obviously that’s not what Costco wants, and they know that giving out free samples is good for business, but it drives me absolutely crazy! Neither Jessica or I deal very well with crowds and I came out of there practically looking for a fight with the next person that does something ridiculous/stupid in my general vicinity.

I will admit however, that the samples came in handy for the girls. Like their Mommy and Daddy, the girls weren’t enjoying the chaos in Costco and started throwing tantrums about half-way through our visit. Luckily we were able to mitigate their frustrations with copious amounts of Pirate Booty, Vegetable Crisps, and White Cheddar Popcorn. Normally I try to keep my distance from the samples but this time there was no choice. At the very least I try to be considerate to others by moving our cart out of the way before approaching the sample stand with my tail between my legs begging for a handout.

Since today was Labor Day I decided to make the most of it by trying to get as much work done as possible. I started out on the Acura early this morning by changing the oil and oil filter, and replacing the air filter. I also added air to the tires and filled it up with gas, just in time for a short week at work. After finishing that, as well as doing the remaining work on the Durango, I moved my efforts inside, where Jessica and I got a bunch of cleaning and organizing done in my office. I now have all of my pictures up on the walls, and easy access to my guitars, which I plan to start playing much more regularly. I played a bit for the girls and they seemed to love it. Before long Ava brought her drum into the room and provided some erratic percussion to accompany my out-of-practice pentatonic licks. Jessica continuously stresses to me how important it is for the girls to see me playing music, and I really love doing it as an outlet and form of personal expression, so I’m excited to start playing more often. Being out of school provides me so much more time to do the things that I love, so its important to make the most of that time.

I want to thank my Aunt Brenda for thinking of me and challenging me to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, although I had to politely decline. I was sick all last week, and ended up having an ear infection that required antibiotics to cure, so the last thing I wanted to do was dump a bucket of ice water over my head. Hope I wasn’t being a Debby Downer but I’m glad she had fun with it earlier in the week.

I wish I could say that Jessica is doing much better now but the truth is that this weekend was really rough on her. The girls and I hate seeing her get sick, especially since there’s nothing we can do to help her. At least I understand what’s going on, but the same can’t be said for the girls. Someday this baby will learn about the trouble it caused for it’s Mother, and hopefully this will give her some prime bargaining chips when the time is right. For now I’m just trying to force her to eat, and stay out of her way when she makes a B-line to the bathroom. She’s got another doctor appointment soon so hopefully we can start getting to the bottom of all this. To say that this has been her most difficult pregnancy would be the understatement of the year. Obviously she already knows this but I’ll say it anyway, we love and appreciate you so much. Can’t wait for our new little bundle of joy to arrive and for your (current) troubles to subside. The joy of parenting I guess…

All else is going well and I’m excited for the upcoming short week at work. Tomorrow I get to park in the parking garage for the first time in my car (rather than the motorcycle), and I get to start working on my new assignment. For a second there it looked like I was going to get pulled into another high priority secret Jeff B. project but my director said he couldn’t spare any more resources. Either way I’m excited about my new project because it will provide me with another learning opportunity, as well as another opportunity to prove myself.

Gotta end this post by saying that I’m more than ready for some Seahawks football! Can’t wait for kick-off at home on Thursday night versus Green Bay. In my usual football season tradition, I’ll be making beef stew on Sunday. I love getting it started early in the morning and letting it cook all day while I watch games. The whole house ends up smelling good while I post up in my comfy’s on the couch for a full day of watching games. Go Hawks!

Ava at the outlet mall fountain. She threw a fit when we made her leave, but at least there were a few minutes of pure happiness.

Earlier this summer I decided that since I was finished with school and was about to start having ample free time to work on projects of my own choosing, one thing I would like to do is re-design our family blog. Well, here it is! I started working on it earlier this week and just finished it up this evening. I started getting tired of the old design a while back, mainly because there was too much color and the image gallery at the top of the page was a weird proportion that was hard to find pictures for. Both of those concerns have now been mitigated and I’m quite happy with how things have turned out. In my opinion this new design is much more readable, and the image slider is much more flexible, meaning that we can easily add images of all shapes and sizes.

Speaking of images on the website, I’ve been contacted by a few different people asking why the images look bad when they download them from the site and print them. Please don’t do that. In order to allow the page to load quickly, the images on the site are all shrunk down and optimized for viewing on the web. If you print them the quality will be horrible and they’ll come out looking really grainy. If you’d like to print any of the images from the website just go ahead and email me and I’ll be happy to send you a high resolution copy that is suitable for printing.

Anyway, back to the new site. I like the simplicity of the color scheme, I really like the new fonts, and I like the new layout, particularly the sidebar on the right-hand side (only visible on large screens). I intentionally included a list of recent comments in the sidebar in an effort to encourage people to leave more comments. I fully realize that most people don’t love writing nearly as much as I do, but your comments are all very much appreciated; and remember, this is all ultimately for the kids. Someday they’re each going to read this site from top to bottom and the more variety they can get other than dearest Dad and his random ramblings, the better.

Things have been going great around here lately. As you probably saw in Jessica’s most recent post, last week we bought a 2007 Honda Odyssey. Although I never thought I would see the day that I’d be purchasing a minivan, I have to admit that it’s a very nice vehicle. Before we pulled the trigger on the Odyssey I was really pulling for an old Volkswagen Vanagon from the 80’s or 90’s. Not a hippie van from the 70’s, but a camping van with a table and fold-out bed in the back. Those things are super cool and have a lot more style than most of the current minivans, but ultimately we decided to go with something that was safe and reliable. Once again we tried to make the responsible choice by thinking with our brains instead of our hearts. That being said, the Odyssey rocks. Last Saturday morning I took the girls out on an impromptu road trip in it so Jessica could sleep in after a late night at work. I was really impressed with how well it drove, how comfortable and spacious it was, and how good the gas mileage was. Over the course of 90 minutes the girls and I covered tons of farm roads throughout Snohomish county and had a great time pointing out all the horses, goats, and cows.

Today was a pretty big day for me at work because it marked the end of the project that I’ve been on for the past 18 months. Although I will surely still be helping out on it in the future from time to time, I’m going to be moving on starting next week with a new project. They’re basically ‘giving’ me a JavaScript framework that was written a while back by one of our senior software engineers who no longer has time to maintain it. We’re trying to get several teams throughout our organization to adopt the framework and use it to build their applications, but before we can expect anyone to do so we need to upgrade it by adding support for new features. That’s where I come in. I’m excited about it because it’s definitely a higher level project and will give me an opportunity to showcase some new skills. Hopefully this will be the driving force that gets me over the hump and into a Web Dev II role.

Another exciting thing that happened for me today at work is I finally got a parking pass for the garage in the building. I’ve been on the waiting list for just as long as I’ve been on that initial project that I finished today (18 months) and now I can finally stop parking on the street and start parking in a safe, covered garage. It’s really ironic that both of these things have been going on for so long and they both finally happened on the same day. Cosmic.

One final bit of excitement came this afternoon when I picked up my Acura from the body shop. Recently I decided to start selling a bunch of my stuff that I was no longer using. I placed ads on Craigslist for things like: both of my surfboards, my grappling dummy (Bubba), one of my guitars, my punching bag, a microwave, and more. In a week I was able to liquidate enough stuff to pay for some body work on the car. There was damage on both bumpers, plus on the rear quarter panel on the passenger side. The shop did an excellent job, which including re-painting a significant portion of the car, and re-striping the whole right side. It now looks brand new and I couldn’t be happier. It’s one of those things that I probably wouldn’t have done had I not sold all this stuff, but I’m so glad I did because I’m going to be driving this car for a while and every time I looked at it my eyes would always wander directly to the problem areas. The interior was already perfect, and it only has 30,000 miles, plus now the exterior is perfect, so I’m stoked!

Our German studies are continuing to go really well. We were a little concerned with how people would react, mainly because we realize that doing something like this isn’t exactly what most people would consider ‘normal,’ but so far the reaction we’ve been receiving has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s still really early in the game but Jessica and I are both studying daily and you wouldn’t believe how much we’re learning. I truly look forward to my daily studies and love passing on my newfound knowledge to the girls. Having studied languages like Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese in the past, the art of learning a new language is coming fairly easily to me, however German shares almost no similarities with the aforementioned. Luckily for us, a lot of the German words we’re learning are similar to their English counterparts, which makes them easier to remember. I can already tell that the German language is much more beautiful than it generally gets credit for, mostly because there’s an apparent science behind it. The way words and phrases are constructed is really interesting to me, and the fact that all nouns are capitalized makes me look at writing and speech differently. When you’re writing in English you usually don’t stop to think about which words are nouns and which ones are verbs, but in German you have to. This is just one small example out of many that proves to me the value of becoming bi-lingual.

In addition to our German language software, Jessica and I have been studying with a free app on our phones called ‘Duolingo.’ It’s a really popular app that offers free lessons in a variety of languages, and the format of it is really fun because it basically turns everything into a game. You get points for different achievements, and once you accumulate enough points you get to move onto the next level. That’s actually a common characteristic that I’ve found in several language applications, but it’s something you have to a little careful of. In a traditional game setting the goal is always to move onto the next round or level, but when you’re trying to learn a language the ultimate goal is to speak the language, not accumulate points and pass levels. Therefore I often find myself redoing the same levels multiple times because I’m more concerned with retaining the words and phrases than I am with scoring points.

The girls are continuing to get their daily doses of German as well. Jessica and I are focusing on taking standard words and phrases that we always say to them in English, and saying them in German instead. For example, when we put them to bed at night, instead of saying “good night,” I say “guten abent.” When I leave the house for work or errands I say “auf weidersen” instead of “goodbye.” And when I want Ava to say “thank you” I have her say “danke” instead. Little things like this are going to slowly start settling in their minds without them even knowing it. I’ve also started doing a little research on Amazon’s presence in Germany and was pleased to find out that we have a big new office building in Munich, which is the city that I would most like to live in. We have a website called ‘loveFilm.de’ that’s based out of that office and could end up being a target of mine in the future. Being able to transfer within Amazon would be the best-case scenario but we’re still years away from that, so for now the focus is to keep on improving my skill set as a developer, continue to gain seniority at Amazon, and continue to get better at speaking German.

It’s a 3 day weekend for me and luckily Jessica is off on Sunday and Monday. We’re not sure exactly what we’re going to do but we’ve talked about a possible day trip to Whidbey Island. Jessica is craving Pizza so I think we’ll be going out for that on Sunday. Now that I’ve got my car back from the shop my main focus is on selling the Durango. Tomorrow I’m going to do some work on it; things like changing the oil and oil filter, rotating the tires, and getting it all cleaned up and detailed. Hopefully I’ll have it posted on Craigslist by Monday and then we’ll see what happens. Happy Labor Day and enjoy the long weekend!

Recently, on the way home from the Amazon Summer picnic, while the girls were fast asleep in the back seat of the Acura, Jessica and I started having a conversation about life, culture, and our futures. This was a deeper subject than our general banter and babble, but it got us going in a direction that neither of us could have seen coming. We talked about how we wanted our children to experience, and have an appreciation for, different cultures and ways of life. We talked about how neither of us had left the country until we were adults and how we didn’t want our kids to be able to say the same. We also talked about how the rest of the world places such an emphasis on learning multiple languages, yet in the U.S. there is nowhere near that same level of commitment to understanding and appreciating cultures other than our own. In my personal opinion, this is a prime example of why most of the rest of the world views the United States as arrogant and ignorant. So, we decided to do something about it.

During that car ride we made a commitment to start learning a new language, and teaching that language to our kids. I’m sure that as you’re reading this you’re expecting me to say that we’re studying Italian, and believe me that’s exactly what my heart wants to do, but in this case I decided to listen to my brain rather than my heart… Something new for a change 😉 Based on a variety of factors that include cultural relevance, potential work-related opportunities, and geographic location (to a degree), we decided to start studying German. After that initial decision was made, I started doing my homework on Germany and quickly felt like our decision was validated. In addition to having a strong tech industry, I learned that Germany has by far the strongest economy in all of Europe. Ever since World War II, Germany has placed an incredible emphasis on not just rebuilding their country, but on becoming an economic powerhouse and global business leader. Our thought was simple, although learning to speak Italian or Spanish would be good, it doesn’t provide any intrinsic value to us in terms of opportunities. The same can’t be said for learning to speak German. In addition, I firmly believe that if you can learn to speak German, you can learn any other language you choose.

Making a decision like this is great, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t act on it. Anyone that knows me knows that once I set my mind on something I don’t waste any time getting it started. To a certain degree this felt very similar to the decision I made 3 years ago to commit myself to web development. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, one thing I learned about myself throughout that experience is that I’m more than capable of teaching myself how to do anything I wish, and the same is true for Jessica. So, we didn’t waste any time and immediately ordered the ‘Instant Immersion German’ software kit from Costco.com. If you’re familiar with Rosetta Stone, this is the exact same thing, except that it costs 90% less. Within a few days the software had arrived in our mailbox and we wasted no time in getting started.

Not only did we want to start studying the language, but we also wanted to start familiarizing ourselves with the culture. So, we went to the book store and picked out a few books related to German history, and one full of German short stories. We decided to go all in, and so far it’s going great. I had no doubt that Jessica and I would enjoy the new challenge, but I wasn’t sure how Ava would do with it. Obviously Elise is too young to know what’s going on, however that’s good because as she is just now learning to speak, she’ll essentially be learning two languages at once. Well, much to our delight, Ava LOVES it. We’ve gotten into a routine where Jessica and I are each spending 20-30 minutes per day working on the language with our newly purchased software, and both of the girls love to sit with us while we study. After a few days Ava started running up to us saying “Can we play German!?” To her its a game, which is exactly what I was hoping for. She loves to sit in our laps, watch what’s happening on the computer screen, and repeat the words. Not surprisingly she’s doing incredibly well. The other night while I was cooking dinner, Ava and Jessica were working on colors and Ava got 6 or 7 in a row! I seriously couldn’t be more proud of her. It’s amazing to me how much each of us have learned in just 6 days, and it excites me to think of all the progress that we will continue to make. All it takes is 20 minutes a day and the results are incredible. I’m finding that phrases that I struggle to remember at night before going to bed are clear as day when I wake up the following morning.

Now obviously we want to make use of all this studying so we’re already considering our next big adventure, which would be relocating to Germany for a few years. What’s just as obvious is that you wouldn’t make this type of move on a whim. We were able to get away with something like that when we moved to San Diego, but something of this magnitude takes so much more preparation and planning. Plus we just bought a house that we love and want to be there for several years. So for now, we’re thinking that sometime in the next 4-5 years we would be ready to move abroad. That gives us plenty of time to learn the language, learn the culture, and verify that this is something we truly want to do. We’re still very much in the ‘honeymoon phase’ of this whole idea, and it’s more than possible that our feelings about doing something like this won’t be the same 4 years from now that they are today, but I can promise you that the idea excites us, and no one can argue that learning a second language can only be helpful to all 5 of us.

One thing we can’t stop talking about is how amazing it would be to be centrally located (in Europe) and be able to take the kids to so many different countries. Places like Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, England, The Netherlands, Croatia, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and more are only a train-ride away. A good friend of mine that I grew up with named Jamie had this exact same experience with his family. After working at Microsoft for a few years he had an opportunity to transfer to one of their offices in England. Knowing what an incredible opportunity this would be for his family, he jumped at the chance and was able to introduce his kids to a wealth of cultural experiences. They have since relocated again to Australia, continuing an adventure that will forever shape each of their lives. I want that same type of experience for my family and am willing to do whatever it takes to make it a reality. Amazon has a strong presence in Germany, meaning that a transfer would be very possible. If not, there are plenty of companies in Germany that I would be honored to work for.

At this point it’s a bit of a pipe dream, but its something that Jessica and I are committed to at some point down the road. For now, we’re going to enjoy learning the language, and look forward to the day that we can sit down and watch something like ‘The Lion King’ in German. I hope this doesn’t come across as too much of a shock, but stagnancy isn’t something that sits well with us, and providing the greatest possible set of life and cultural experiences for our kids is of the highest importance and priority for our family.

While last weekend was full of hustle and bustle, the forecast for this weekend looks like lazy with a chance of napping. Why were we so busy last weekend, you ask? Well, let me tell you. Saturday we attended the annual Amazon Family Picnic, which was being held at the Century Link Field and Events Center. Like last year, we had an absolute blast! Although Amazon only does two employee events like this per year, they really do them right. This event is meant for everyone to bring their families to, and they seem to think of everything. The following list describes most, but not all, of the activities and attractions they provided for us:

• Stadium Tours
• Tons of free food and drinks
• On-field games and activities
• Mini-golf
• Lazer tag
• Bulldozers and other construction equipment for kids to play on
• A toddler zone with sand pit, treats, and some huge inflatable play areas
• The biggest Bouncy Castle you’ve ever seen
• Huge inflatable slides to go down
• A live band
• Jugglers
• A kids stage with all kinds of shows going on
• Professional photography
• Henna Tattoos
• Caricature drawing tents
• Blue Thunder – The Seattle Seahawks Drumline
• More food and drinks
• And much more…

We figured out last summer that this would be a highlight of every summer to look forward to and this year certainly didn’t disappoint. The girls had tons of fun playing on the Seahawks field, while Mom and Dad particularly enjoyed the stadium tour, photos, and the food. This is just one of many reasons why I love working there so much! By the time we returned home everyone was pretty tired, so I decided to get back to work on my garage loft project. Although I made progress on Saturday, I ended up spending nearly 10 hours on Sunday working on it. The good news is that I was able to finish it up Sunday evening.

As with any home project, things didn’t go exactly as planned, but in the end it all worked out very well. I ended up having to build 3 separate lofts, mainly because the joists in my ceiling don’t all run the same direction. For 2/3 of my garage the joists run east-west, but then for the final third of the garage the joists run north-south. Although I already knew this going into the project, it ended up causing me to have to re-evaluate my plan at a certain point. Regardless, I was able to get a TON of stuff off the garage floor and up on the loft. The ultimate satisfaction came once I stood back, looked it over, and had no doubt in my mind that everything was steady and secure.

Doing a project like that gave me lots of confidence about my abilities to build things, and I did it 100% on my own, which made the accomplishment feel that much greater. I’m already planning some new projects, including building a work bench, as well as an outdoor shed in our back yard. The shed probably won’t happen until next Spring but there will be plenty of home-related projects to keep me busy in the meantime. First up, I’m getting to work on the gas edger that my manager gave me. Tonight I’m going to start taking the motor apart, cleaning it up, and looking for areas of trouble. As mentioned in previous posts, I’m really interested in engine mechanics and hope to someday graduate to working on cars, but for now small projects like this are the perfect way to get started.

Earlier today I attended Amazon’s bi-annual All Hands Meeting, which is held at the Key Arena in Seattle. It’s a 3 hour meeting that gives various managers and executives from throughout the company a chance to share the news of what their teams and organizations have been up to. At the end Jeff Bezos always comes out and does a 30 minute question and answer session. This is your chance as an employee to ask a direct question to the CEO, and either he will answer it on his own, or he will delegate the question to one of his executives, known as the ‘S-team’, who answers it on the spot. Having been to several of these all-hands meetings, this question and answer session has become my favorite part. This time, however, included an extra special ending that people will be talking about for a bit.

I’m sure many of you are aware of the ‘ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’ that’s been going on lately. If you’re not, its a fundraising challenge going on all over the country, and possibly the world, to raise money and awareness for ALS (more commonly known as Lou Gherig’s disease). The idea is simple, you either pour a bucket of ice water right over your own head, or someone else does it to you, then you challenge someone else to do the same. I’m not familiar with how the financial part works out but I’m sure it’s raising lots of money. Well, Jeff was recently challenged by Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, and he decided to accept the challenge and do the chilly deed as a grand finale to our company-wide meeting. As soon as he started talking about it everyone, including myself, pulled out their phone and started recording. He decided to have fun with it and put on a pretty funny show, which you can see here on my YouTube page. It was a pretty fun way to end the meeting, and everyone seemed to get a kick out of it. I was seated pretty far back so the video quality isn’t great, but you’ll get the point. Hope you enjoy.

Overlooking the Seattle Harbor at the Amazon Summer Picnic, 2014

Having fun playing on the Seahawks field

Chances are if you’re reading this post then you already know the good news that I’m about to share, but just in case you don’t, it’s my great pleasure to announce that Jessica is pregnant with our third (and final) child. At this point she is finishing her first trimester and everything looks good. I’d be lying, however, if I said that it has been easy on her up to this point. It’s probably more fair to say that she has already dealt with more sickness through the first three months of this pregnancy than she did with Ava and Elise combined. No exaggeration.

If I remember correctly, Jessica was hardly ever sick when she was pregnant with Ava, and only slightly more so with Elise. The good news is that she may have finally turned the corner. Today she went all day without any sickness or disruption, and with the first trimester coming to a close chances are the hardest part (other than delivery of course) is behind her. As expected, I feel terrible seeing her sick, as do the girls, but there is nothing any of us can do for her other than be supportive and show concern. She’s been such a champ throughout this whole ordeal though. Never once has she expected any sort of pity or sorrow. Her strength and overall positive attitude throughout the past three months has been a great inspiration for me.

The official due date is February 5th, and based on the medical evaluations she’s had so far the doctor says there is a 95% chance that the pregnancy will run its course without any type of problem. The elephant in the room at this point is whether we’ll be having our third girl, or our first boy. It’s natural for people to wonder, and I truly do understand where they’re coming from, but it annoys me that everyone thinks we’re hoping for a boy. That is not the case at all. As cliche as it may sound, the only thing I’m hoping for is a healthy baby and a healthy wife. To think that we will be even the slightest bit disappointed if we don’t have a boy is absolutely ludicrous. We’ll be finding out the baby’s gender in the next six weeks, and in an effort for maximum preparedness, we don’t want to wait one minute longer than necessary. Thank goodness we bought a four bedroom house 😉

The thing that’s most crazy to me about all this is that Elise and her younger sibling will be even closer in age (19 months) than Ava and Elise are (20 months). This means that we will have had 3 babies in a span of 3 years and 3 months. Apparently 3 really is the magic number. Without getting too far into our personal details, I can assure you that this will be the last baby for us. Although a family of five may have been considered on the small end during our parent’s childhood, it is definitely large for today’s standards. Although we know we have more than our fair share challenges ahead of us, we couldn’t be happier, luckier, or more excited about the family and lives we have created for ourselves.

In other family news, Ava has recently started going to preschool on Mondays. Although she is still only 2 years old, due to her advanced vocabulary and physical size advantage, her teachers have placed her in a class with 3 and 4 year olds. So far she’s doing great. Like her Daddy many years ago, she hates seeing Mommy leave and breaks down for a few minutes, but quickly gets over it and ends up having lots of fun. Her biggest trouble at this point is spilling milk on herself during mealtimes. This past Monday she went through both outfits Jessica brought, and ended up coming home in borrowed clothes provided by the school. I’m sure she’ll get over this very soon, and both Jessica and I couldn’t be more proud of her with how she has adjusted to this new phase of her life.

Elise is also doing quite well. Although she still hasn’t quite ventured out on her own in terms of walking, she is more than capable of getting around the house. She is also getting quite vocal. Not only is she speaking constantly in her own baby language, but she has picked up on several words that Ava normally says. These days if you ask Ava “What does the cow say?” Elise will often beat her to the punch by announcing a prolonged “Mooooo”. It might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. If only she would do it on command. I can tell that the only thing holding her back from walking at this point is confidence, and I expect it will be any time now that she breaks through that barrier.

Last Wednesday I took the day off to celebrate my birthday with my girls. After having breakfast and taking a walk around the neighborhood the four of us went to the swimming pool. This is quickly becoming Ava’s favorite activity and she talks about it constantly. Not sure what we’re going to do once summer is over but I’m sure we’ll figure something out. Watch football maybe? After swimming we went home to clean up, then met my good friend Sean for lunch in Greenlake. This was his first time meeting the girls and he didn’t disappoint. He showed up with a bag full of stuffed animals, as well as quite a few rare silver coins that the girls could start a collection with. He also bought us lunch, which was far too generous. I certainly wasn’t expecting all this but appreciate it so much.

In an effort to increase my skills as a handyman I’ve recently taken on a fairly large project; I’m building a suspension loft in our garage. It’s going to be 20 feet long, four feet deep, and suspended about 8 feet above ground level. This will provide us lots of storage space and will make up at least somewhat for the fact that we are one of only two houses on our street that don’t have a three-car garage. I’ve been doing lots of research on this type of project, as well as getting advice from several trusted sources. Hopefully I’ll have it done in the next couple weeks.

I’ve also recently grown an interest in learning more about engine mechanics, and just today I picked up a gas powered lawn edger from my manager at Amazon. It doesn’t run anymore so it’s a perfect small project for me to get my hands dirty. I bought a Kindle book tonight on how to repair small engines used in outdoor equipment, and can’t wait to get started once I finish building the loft. The ultimate goal for me is to get to a point where I can work on cars, but I figured starting small like this was probably best.

Things are also going really well at work. I’ve been on the same project for the past year-and-a-half, but this is my final month. Starting in September I’m going to be working on a new project, so I’m pretty excited for a change of pace. It won’t be too long before I find out whether or not I’ll be receiving a promotion to a Web Developer II role. I’m not worried about it at all because either way I’m going to come out of the process with a very clear idea of my path moving forward, including which areas I need to focus on the most. If it doesn’t work out in the fall I’m confident that it will in the spring, which is the next time they do promotions. Either way I love my job and still feel extremely fortunate just to be there.

Sorry for not having any new photos to post this week. I’m sure we’ll have some next time. Lots of exciting news coming soon…

Tonight I finished my latest side-project: the El Gaucho football pool website. About 10 years ago I used to run the pool while I worked there as a busboy. I would hand out printed sheets of paper to everyone so they could make their picks each week. It was as manual of a process as it gets. Five years later I had upgraded it to a website, but it was still a very manual process because I didn’t have a database to store picks, and the players still had to make their picks on paper. I just used the website as a place for people to see all the picks. Well, that’s all about to change. Although I haven’t been involved in the pool for at least 5 years, I’ve decided to come back and run it, with the help of Jessica, and this time I’ve gone all out.

After writing out a data structure that accounted for every relevant piece of NFL schedule data in the 2014 season, I set out to build a dynamic website that would allow the players to create accounts, make their picks on the site, and track their picks, as well as the picks made by other players, right there on the site. I’m using a database to store all the picks and the whole thing has been pretty much automated. I’ve got all kinds of error checking in there to make sure that each registered user is unique, that all their picks are complete, and that they can’t view everyone’s picks for a particular week until they have entered their own picks for that week. This keeps them from having the unfair advantage of knowing the picks made by other players. I’ve also got some date checking going on to verify that the picks for a week have been submitted before the first game has kicked off.

The site, which is located at http://gaucho-football.com/, has been thoroughly tested and verified on various laptops, tablets, and cell phones. I wanted it to be really easy and convenient for someone to be able to visit the site on their phone at the last minute and be able to get their picks in. It may not look perfect depending on the resolution and dimensions of the screen, but it will always be functional. Feel free to create an account and check out the site. I’d like to get as many eyes on it before the season starts as possible so that any foreseeable problems can be dealt with sooner than later.

With this project complete I can now start thinking about the next one, which will probably be a redesign of this blog. The problem with our current layout is that the photo banner has a really wide and short aspect ratio, making it very difficult to find photos that will fit into it. Consequently we still don’t have any photos of Elise in there. Everything I’ve tried just ends up getting cut off in a weird place. I’ve got some ideas for the new site that will work much better, so it probably won’t be too long before I get things going on that.

In other family news, it’s been a pretty quiet week around here. Amy and Tom left last weekend so its back to the 4 of us at the house. Looks like we don’t have any visitors for the next couple months so it should be a pretty laid back remainder of the summer. Jessica had a pretty exciting night on Thursday when she served Mariner’s 2nd baseman Robinson Cano and friends. We now have a very nice bottle of ‘Ace of Spades’ champagne to enjoy on a special occasion.

Ava is starting in pre-school on Monday. It’s kind of hard to believe, but there’s no doubt she is ready. It’s only going to be one day a week but it’s going to be so good for her. She needs to start making friends and interacting with more people. Of course a little part of you is sad because you don’t want to let go of them, but its exactly what she needs right now. This will give Jessica some consistent time to get her own things done so its going to be good for everybody.

Elise seems to be teething these last couple days. She’s been a little out of sorts and there isn’t much you can do for her. I’ve been proud of how Ava is starting to respond when Elise is upset. Not to say she doesn’t still walk up to Elise and bonk her on the head with a toy (a behavior that is definitely not condoned), but she seems genuinely concerned when Elise is crying and has made some really nice attempts to console her. She’s turning into a good big sister for sure.

Tomorrow is Sunday, the weather looks great, and we have nothing to do. We’re thinking about going back to the swimming pool, so hopefully that works out. Probably end up grilling something for dinner and enjoying these late summer sunsets. Happy weekend everyone.

Today was a really special day for all of us. My Dad’s sister Norma has always been a big part of my life; she has shown me more love than I can possibly express, she was at the hospital when I was born, and today she finally got to meet Ava and Elise. It was the first time Jessica and I have seen Norma in several years, and it was our first time meeting her husband Wayne. This visit was long overdue, but now that we live only 20 minutes apart we’re going to start coming over regularly.

Norma was her classic, energetic self. You can’t walk down the halls of Brighton Court with Aunt Norma without stopping to talk to everyone you see. She literally knows everybody; she’s on the greeting committee, she’s on the food committee, she calls bingo, she’s just so genuinely friendly with everyone that it’s hard to comprehend. If I only had one word to describe Aunt Norma it would probably have to be ‘genuine’. Although her constant sense of positivity may be hard for some to understand, it cannot be doubted or questioned. To me she has always exemplified the sense of family and love.

There was an outdoor carnival going on at Brighton Court so we spent much of our time watching a juggler, getting our palms read, throwing darts at balloons, and smashing whip cream pies into the faces of Brighton Court’s finest. Ava couldn’t get enough of the juggler and followed her around relentlessly. After the carnival we all went inside and had lunch in the dining room. As expected the girls drew more than their fair share of attention from all the residents. One woman even apologized to Jessica for staring but said that they don’t see young children in there very often and couldn’t believe how cute the girls were.

On our way home Jessica and I agreed that we need to start doing this regularly. It means so much to Aunt Norma and I love the idea of the girls getting to know her. I’m also really glad we got to meet her husband Wayne. He was a very nice guy with 8 children of his own. He’s got over 40 grandchildren and over 40 great-grandchildren, plus he’s a musician who enjoys playing the guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. Norma says between his instrument skills and his yodeling skills he’s quite a hit at their talent shows.

In other family news, Tom flew home to Colorado today. The RV he and Amy bought is parked out in our cul-de-sac and it’s incredible. I’ve never been in anything like this before and I can’t wait to take it on a road trip. Amy is leaving tomorrow morning, which is earlier than expected, because they need to get the RV registered in Colorado before their grace period expires. She’s going to drive the RV towards Colorado while Tom drives from Colorado towards Amy. They’ll meet somewhere around the half-way point and go the rest of the way home together. Soon they’ll be driving it to their cabin in Ontario, Canada and back; not a bad way to break that baby in.

As usual Amy and Tom were so helpful to us during their stay. Between the help we’ve gotten from them, and from Rick a couple weeks ago, our house has really turned into our home. The common theme everywhere has been increasing storage and making more efficient use of spaces. I’ve learned so much since moving here about doing work around the house. I’ve still got a lot to learn but so far its been a lot of fun.

We recently found out that Joel and Melanie will be coming out for a visit in September, and we’re also booked for a trip to Vegas on Halloween to spend my Mom’s birthday with her, so there’s definitely a lot to look forward to. Here are a few photos from our visit with Norma and Wayne today, as well as Elise’s 12-month photo.

Norma having fun with the pies

Our sweet Elise at 12 months

This weekend we celebrated our sweet little Elise’s first birthday with family and friends. Although today (Monday) is her actual birthday, the party was held at our new house on Saturday afternoon. It was a great day filled with presents, food, pictures, and most importantly, lots of quality time with family. Amy and Tom flew into town for the occasion, as did my Mom. Others in attendance include Uncle Jim and Aunt Brenda, Uncle Butch and Aunt Carol, my sister Dana, and my Godfather Pete. It wasn’t a large party but it was a great time. Thank you so much to each of you for coming and making it such a great day. Also, thank you for all the gifts you brought not just to Elise, but to Ava as well.

After the party ended on Saturday we had a nice lazy Summer afternoon around the house. Some of us took naps, while others played out in the front yard. I’ve been really into riding Jessica’s longboard skateboard lately so I took it out with Ava and gave her a little lesson on riding it. The rest of the weekend was pretty much the same; just relaxing, eating some good meals, and doing stuff around the house. Tom gave me a lesson on doing a brake job on my bike and my Mom got lots of quality time playing with the girls.

Today my Mom flew home to Vegas, but first she came with Jessica, Ava, and I to take a tour of a pre-school we’ve been considering for Ava. It was obvious right away that Ava likes it there and I was very happy with the place, so we finished the visit by signing Ava up to start going there every Monday. We’re starting with just one day per week and we’ll see how it goes. We may increase her schedule later on but one day a week is good for now. After dropping Mom off at the airport we went home, had a quick lunch, then went swimming at the McCollum Park pool, which is less than 10 minutes from our house. Amy and Tom hung out in the shade while Jess and I took the girls into the water. It was pretty crowded and neither of them have ever been in a swimming pool before, but they both did really well. After 90 minutes in the pool everyone was ready to go home and relax.

Tomorrow I’ll be back at work but Amy and Tom are going to stick around for a bit to give Jessica some help with the house. At the end of the week they’ll be picking up their brand new motorhome that they just bought, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to check it out in person. I’ve seen the pictures and from what I can tell this thing is quite impressive. Definitely looking forward to taking it for a spin at some point. Hopefully that will happen sooner than later.

We’re finalizing our plans to visit my Mom in Vegas this fall. Looks like we’ll be arriving there on Halloween for her birthday. It’s been a while since we’ve been to Vegas so that will be a lot of fun. My Aunt Lisa will be living there by then so it will be fun to catch up with her, Bob, Sandy, and Denny. I spoke to my Aunt Norma yesterday and arranged a visit for us this coming Saturday. I haven’t seen her in years and she’s never met either of our girls, so that should be really special. Not much else going on around here this month, which is fine with me considering how busy June was for us. Below you’ll find a bunch of our favorite pics from the party on Saturday. Once again, thank you all so much for making it such a fun day, and most of all, Happy Birthday to our precious Elise. We love you more than you’ll ever know!

Elise and Uncle Jim

Ava and Grandma

The Birthday Girl

Cuddling with my little girl

The fam

Ava with Auntie Dana

Elise and her Nana

Getting messy

Love this one

My sweet little birthday girl