Michael Pellegrini – Page 5

Back to School, Nevada Style!

On Friday Ava, Elise, and Enzo finished their first week at their new school in Henderson. It was a big deal for us because not only was this a brand new school for them, but it was their first time being back in a traditional classroom setting in 18 months, or in Enzo’s case, ever. He was in pre-school when the pandemic began and did his entire Kindergarten year at home. Now we have Enzo in first grade, Elise in third, and Ava in fourth. We had a chance to visit the school and meet the teachers a few days before school began and everything seemed great.

As can be expected, it wasn’t easy getting back into the school routine, and there were definitely some emotions involved throughout the week, but Jessica and I couldn’t be more proud of how they handled everything. They’re already making friends and their teachers really like them. We haven’t met many of our neighbors yet but we’ve seen several other families from the neighborhood walking to and from school each day, so this will most likely be how we start getting to know some new people.

One of the many things that attracted us to the house we ended up buying was the fact that it was within the best school district in Nevada, and we’re already feeling the benefits of that. The school has been so welcoming and responsive to our needs. While we may not all be the most traditional learners, there’s no doubt we’re in the right place and setting the kids up for success at school.

The other nice thing is how close we are to their school. Jessica walks the kids to school each morning and I often help with pickup in the afternoon, but we don’t always walk home simply because it’s still so hot right now when school gets out. As the crow flies, school is probably only a quarter mile from our house, but based on the way we have to walk it’s closer to a half mile. It’s still not bad at all, but when you’re dealing with triple digit heat and they’re already tired from a full day, walking home in their uniform can be a bit too hard on them, so we just deal with the traffic and bring the van to pick them up.

Overall we’re happy with the start we’ve gotten off to and are excited to see what this year will bring. We celebrated our first week by having a family swim party on Friday evening, then we picked up ice cream and watched the first Harry Potter movie at home. Yesterday we took the kids over to Nana’s house for a sleepover. She ended up taking them to a ranch today where they were able to ride horses, feed animals, and explore everything. It was hot and they were all beet red when they got home, but everyone had fun. Having my mom so close continues to be amazing and I’m not really sure who it benefits the most, but everyone is very happy.

Although Jessica no longer has to worry about being Mom and teacher combined, she is taking on a very serious role with the kids’ schooling again this year. She’s already so dedicated to working with them everyday on homework and other forms of tutoring. Her patience and dedication is awe inspiring and someday the kids will really begin to understand exactly how lucky they are to have a Mom like her who is so deeply involved and invested in their education. She is also weighing her options regarding ways to spend some of her free time during the weekdays, but for the moment there’s still enough for us to focus on here at the house, so there hasn’t been much downtime at all.

We’ve been staying very busy working on projects at the house, and it goes into overdrive whenever the kids go to Nana’s house. Jessica did a great job painting our kitchen nook and our new entertainment center area. That was a big project because we had to have the old built-in entertainment center removed, and we had to have a fireplace removed. This left a big opening in the wall, and even an entire whole through our house where the little gas chimney used to be. I ended up learning how to do the stucco repair to patch up the outside hole, but we had to hire a drywall specialist to come out and fix the wall inside the house. Once that was done we were unblocked on doing all the interior painting, which Jessica took care of this weekend. Both areas look great, and now the only other project we want to do in the family room is replace the carpet.

The other major project that I continue to work on in literally all of my spare time is our staircase railing. It’s all blond oak with a thick coat of clear varnish and wood posts, but what we want it to be is a dark stained railing with iron bars and a glossy white base under the bars. In order to get there you first need to remove the clear varnish from every square inch of the railing and the base. To do that you need to use a drill with different types of wire brushes attached. It’s very slow, tedious work and it’s hard on your body because you’re sitting or standing in all these weird positions trying to get every last bit of varnish scraped off.

One of the difficult things about this project is that scraping the varnish off isn’t enough to get things ready for staining and painting. The wire brushes work well, but they leave noticeable scrape lines in the wood, so you have to go back over everything with different types of sandpaper to smooth it out. You need at least 2 different grits of sandpaper (and in some cases 3) to get it ready, so this means you’re covering every square inch 3 or 4 times with different tools. It’s easily the most hands-on work I’ve ever put into a project and there’s still a lot left to do. I literally work on this every night after work, and most of the day on the weekends, but it’s still likely to be another week or two before we’re even ready to begin staining and replacing the bars. We’re leaning towards hiring a painter to handle painting the base, but again it’s going to be a while before we’re ready for that step. I look forward to sharing photos once it’s done, and I know it’s going to look amazing, but right now it’s prohibiting me from doing much of anything else (including jiu-jitsu) because it’s taking up so much time.

Once this project is done we’re definitely taking a break from home projects. At that point I’m planning on making another video giving a tour of the house because we will have completed everything we initially planned on doing when buying the house, and all of our new furniture will be in here. We’re so happy with everything we bought so I look forward to showing how it all came together, but it could easily be at least another month before we’re ready for that.

One other notable thing going on in my world involves another change at work. Back in March I moved from the Azure.com team, which I’d been on for 6 years, to the Treasury Engineering team. Before making that change, however, I had been interviewing with Microsoft Teams in hopes of landing a role on their Instrumentation team. Unfortunately that role didn’t work out, but the manager liked me and said she would stay in touch if something else came up in the future.

Shortly afterwards the Treasury team reached out to me and I ended up joining them a little while later. I was surprised when the manager from Teams reached out to me last month about a new open role on their Experimentation team. If you’re not familiar with Microsoft Teams, it’s the fastest growing platform at Microsoft. We use it for every meeting we hold, but in addition to being an excellent audio/video platform for meetings, it’s also what we use for person-to-person instant messaging, and team-wide communications. It was already growing fast but once the pandemic hit last year it’s growth skyrocketed.

The role on the Experimentation team was one that they hand-picked me for. Once an opening became available they reached out to me to see if I’d be interested. Part of the reason they did this was based on all my previous experience doing experimentation on azure.com. The main idea behind doing experimentation on websites and applications is that when you’re getting ready to roll out a big change, you wouldn’t just make the change for everyone to start using and hope for the best. You would run an experiment where only a certain percentage of your users are exposed to this new variation and you collect analytics on their usage to see if the variation performs better than the old version did. Once you can prove via the analytics that the new variation is an improvement, you start progressively rolling it out to more and more of your users. We’re all constantly included in these types of experiments on all the major sites we use without knowing it, and tons of data is collected on how we interact with the sites. Anytime you go to a site like Amazon or Facebook and see that a button has moved, or a new feature is available, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re part of an experiment on the site.

Based on all of my experience running these types of experiments on azure.com, the Teams Experimentation team was very interested in bringing me onboard. After I had a chance to talk with them I felt like this would be a better fit for me than my current role working in the treasury. I didn’t like the idea of leaving my new team after only 5 months, but I spent 6 years on the team before that, so I know I’m quite capable of showing loyalty and sticking it out long-term on a single team.

On Thursday I received the official offer to join Teams, and considering that this was my original goal, I decided to accept it. I had a nice talk with my manager in the treasury and he totally understood, so hopefully in the next couple weeks I’ll be making that transition. It’s a huge opportunity that I simply couldn’t pass up, so I can’t wait to get things going. Considering all the other major changes going on in our lives, the timing for this made a lot of sense to me.

I guess that’s about it for now. There’s certainly no shortage of exciting new things going on for us, and honestly I still can’t believe how everything has worked out. When I look back to our original conversations in March about moving to Nevada, it all made sense theoretically, but to actually make it happen and follow through with everything is a completely different story. I’m still amazed at how well everything has worked out, and although I really miss our family and friends in Washington, I have to be honest that I’m in love with how our lives have turned out in Nevada. I never expected to live in a house like this, and although I appreciate all the nice words we’ve received about working hard and doing everything right, it still never felt like the culmination of all that would lead to this. Maybe that’s because this wouldn’t even be a possibility in Washington. We keep having to pinch ourselves, but each day it feels a little more like home.

Each time we complete a project, get something organized, or get a piece of furniture delivered it becomes that much more of a home. Not just any home either but our home, and it’s going to be that way for a long time. We seriously busted our asses moving down here and we’re never doing it again. We could have coughed up about ten grand and hired movers, but we decided to save the money and invest it in the new house rather than give it to a moving company. Jessica has already said she plans on dying here and has instructed me to spread her ashes in our beautiful backyard. All kidding aside, we’re never going to outgrow this house and we love everything about it so much that I expect us to be here for a very long time to come. Our guest room is already fully furnished so I hope it starts getting occupied with visitors very soon! Here’s a few recent pics

Ava enjoying the splash pad at the baseball game

Elise doing some LV Aviators hat modeling

Enzo checking out one of the local BMX tracks

Getting our storage unit emptied was a momentous occasion

They made me a birthday cake. Enzo’s expression kills me.

Last weekend we had our friends over for our first pool party. Thanks Devin for taking the pic!

They each brought an apple for their teacher 🙂

Happy 8th Birthday Elise!

Today our sweet Elise turned 8 years old, and she was lucky enough to have two birthday celebrations this year. On Sunday we went to our friends Tiko and Tina’s house to have a dual birthday party for their daughter Beatrix (aka Bea or BB), who was turning 3, as well as for Elise.

Our whole family, including Nana, plus our friends Devin and Bridgette, as well as a few others, were there for the party. They had a bouncy house in the backyard, and Jessica couldn’t help herself with the treats – she got a doubled layered bundt cake plus a box of vegan doughnuts from Pinkbox that spelled out “Happy Birthday”. It was a nice time hanging out with friends, and even Mom and I took a few turns jumping in the bouncy house with the kids. It was extremely hot that day though, so a couple minutes at a time was about all we could handle.

Today was Elise’s actual birthday and we celebrated by taking her to Omega Mart at Area 15. It’s pretty tough to describe this place but I’ll do my best. You enter through a fake grocery store called Omega Mart, which is full of funny fake products. You have a card that you can swipe at various locations to get clues about stuff, and as you explore you will eventually find yourself going into the back of the store, which turns into this sci-fi neon filled warehouse full of rooms to explore, slides to go down, and musical gizmos to play. “Star Wars on drugs” is about the best way I can describe it.

Most people in there are trying to find all the clues and figure out the purpose behind the whole thing, but for us it was enough of a challenge just to keep all 6 of us (Nana was with us) in the same place at the same time. It was a crazy and memorable experience, but Elise had fun, which is all that mattered. There are lots of other things to do at Area 15 so I’m sure we’ll be back someday.

After that we went to lunch, then back to Nana’s house for cake. This was a special cake because Elise and Jessica made it together the day before. It was a confetti cake with Fruity Pebbles sprinkled on top as a garnish and it turned out great.

Once we were finished with cake we decided to let Nana take a break, so we took the kids to our new house to hang out and go swimming, then have a sleepover. We closed on the house on Monday and got the keys that day, which is incredible considering it was a 15 day close after our offer was accepted. It’s even more crazy to think that we left Washington on June 16, arrived in Las Vegas on June 18, and got the keys to our house on July 12! Talk about a quick turnaround.

Jessica and I have been making trips in our cars between the storage unit and the house all week, and we’re making good progress. There’s boxes everywhere, but we’re getting things unpacked and put away as quickly as possible. Saturday we’re renting a moving truck to get all the bigger things that won’t fit in our cars. At that point all of our stuff will be in the new house, but we’ll still have these construction projects to take care of before everything can be put away.

The biggest project is the new flooring upstairs, and the demo stage is beginning tomorrow. We’re tearing out all the carpet on the stairs and everywhere upstairs, and replacing it with a really nice waterproof laminate floor. We decided to pay it forward by going with a premium floor that we really loved because we’re going to be here forever and we felt like this house deserved it.

On Monday my Uncle Terry is beginning a project to replace each of the wood posts on our staircase railing with iron posts. He’s also going to stain the railing so it’s dark brown, and paint the base of it white, where the rails connect at the bottom. I’ll share pictures in a future post once everything is done.

The other project we’re hoping to get done next week is in our family room. We want to remove the built in entertainment center, as well as the fireplace next to it, and knock out part of a wall insert. This will open things up even more in that room and leave space for the new TV and entertainment center that are on the way. There’s already a fireplace in the living room, so we’re replacing the one in the family room with one of those cool new electric fireplaces, which will be in the base of the new entertainment center. Once again, I’ll post photos once everything is done.

We may take on more projects in the near future but that’s it for now. Other than that we’re just focused on getting settled in the new house and getting the kids ready for school, which begins on August 9th. They got shorted on their Summer a bit this year, but it’s been very special staying with Nana, and they’re going back to her house tomorrow for a few more days. In addition, Grandma and Grandpa Rudd are coming for a visit next week, so they’ll get plenty of time with them, including a night or two at the hotel.

I think my first realization after moving into our house this week is that maintaining an outdoor pool is a lot of work! Even though we currently have a pool guy coming once a week, you still have the daily maintenance of brushing it and skimming it with a net. Eventually I plan on letting the pool guy go and doing all the maintenance myself, but I need to learn more about the chemistry aspect first. I realized yesterday while cleaning the pool that I’m going to spend more time cleaning it than actually swimming in it, but it’s worth it each time we jump in! Seeing the kids swimming out there this afternoon brought the biggest smiles to our faces.

Overall things are slowly starting to sink in that we live in Henderson and this is our new house, but it’s still crazy. I think Enzo put it best when he said “How were we able to trade our old house for this new house? Our old house wasn’t special, but this house is special.” It was difficult to explain, and I still don’t think he gets it, but I’m just so grateful that things have worked out the way they have.

That’s pretty much it for now. I definitely plan on sharing more photos once the projects are complete and things are all put away. I’ll probably even do another video walk through at some point, but I want to wait for our new couch to arrive, which will be at least two more months. One thing I wanted to call out, and I’m upset with myself for forgetting to do so in my last post, was that it was my Mom who found this house for us. She found it while searching online, on the same day it was posted, and we were there checking it out the very next day. While it’s possible that we would have found it, or our real estate agent would have, the reality is that Nana found it, and that makes it even more special! We can’t wait to start having her over for regular sleepovers.

Before I go I just want to say Happy Birthday to Elise one last time. We love you so much and hope you’re happy with this new life we’ve just landed in. Thank you for being such a sweet and caring daughter and sister. We’re all so lucky to have you in our lives.

Elise displaying the cake she baked with Mom

This stuffie named Rainbow was one of her favorite gifts this year

Having fun with Bea and her big sister Helen at their house

Right after getting the keys to our house

We got the house!

Perhaps I should have written my most recent post about moving to Nevada a bit later in the day, because when I wrote that post on Sunday morning, we were waiting to see if our new offer on a house in Henderson had been accepted. Well, as things turned out that afternoon, our offer was accepted and we are beyond excited to be the proud new owners of a beautiful home in Henderson!

Essentially the way things went down was this: we viewed the house with our real estate agents on Friday afternoon, and we liked it, but there were several more houses that we were scheduled to see over the next 24 hours, so we decided to wait to see all of them before placing any offers. We left the house on Sunday Grace Drive (the one we ended up buying) and headed over to another house, but we knew before even walking into this new house that we weren’t interested. It simply didn’t compare.

While making the drive over there, Jessica and I couldn’t stop talking about the house we had just left on Sunday Grace Drive. It was definitely a bit dated inside, but the potential was amazing. It had 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, a 4 car garage, 4,000 square feet of interior space, and an amazing back yard. It’s also in a gated community in the best school district in Nevada. These are the types of intangibles that can’t realistically be fixed or changed regardless of what you do to the house.

Our main concern was that the house was at the top of our budget and the idea of buying something at the top of our budget that needed some work was difficult to swallow. However, we kept coming back to all the intangibles I just listed. Overall the house has so much character that we didn’t feel like we could pass up this opportunity.

So we sat outside at this other house with our agents discussing our options. During this discussion we realized that all 3 of the houses we were supposed to see the following morning were on a golf course, and we didn’t really like that idea. I like golf, but we don’t really want to live in a golf community, and our favorite house of the 3 was right next to a tee box, so you’d be hearing people teeing off all day long.

By the time we finished that conversation we had settled on an offer to submit for the Sunday Grace house, then Jessica and I ended up going back to the open house to view it a second time. Our offer was submitted the following day and our agent Rowena found out that there were at least two other offers competing with us. This was concerning, but I had a good feeling about it.

On Sunday afternoon, while texting with Rowena, I asked if we could go back to the house one last time before the open house was done for the weekend. She said yes, and that she would meet us there. Immediately Jessica, Nana, myself, and the kids, all hopped in the van and headed out there. We were literally eating our lunch in the van because we had no time to waste.

By the time we arrived Rowena was already there talking to the sellers, and she indicated to us that things were looking good. It was immediately obvious that our whole family loved the house, and within minutes the kids had picked out their bedrooms. My mom was pretty much floored by it, and I felt like each time we visited the house I liked it even more than before. It didn’t take long, but a little more negotiation ensued and we came to an agreement that secured it for us. The sellers were there, so once we agreed on a deal I went over to personally thank them and tell them how excited we were. I’ve been in regular contact with them since then and they are such great people. I honestly feel like we may have made new friends out of this deal, and they only live 3 miles away.

Finding out the house was ours was an emotional moment, and even though I almost never cry, having us all there in the kitchen celebrating definitely brought that side out of me. It was surreal knowing that this is where we’re going to spend the next long stretch of our lives. It’s such a beautiful place and I just couldn’t believe how things had turned out for us. Now that I’ve had a few days to process it, my main feeling is one of humility and gratitude. It’s not about showing off or soaking up a bunch of compliments, it just feels great for Jessica and I to have reached this level in our lives and be able to provide something like this for our family.

Looking at the calendar, tomorrow is July 1, 2021, meaning it’s the tenth birthday of this blog. We haven’t missed a month of doing blog posts this entire time, and I can’t help but think back to where we were when all of this got started. We were literally living in a back alley beach shack in San Diego, but at that time it was everything we could have wanted. In fact, I posted a video tour of that house on YouTube, which you can see below. Now here we are exactly a decade later and I’m filming a new home tour, just as proud of the moment and excited about our future.

Since having our offer accepted everything has been coming together really quickly. We were originally scheduled to close on July 30, which would have been the best 41st birthday present imaginable for me, but now it’s looking like we will be closing ahead of schedule. We just found out today that an appraisal isn’t even necessary to secure the loan, which is great. Jessica and I are staying busy shopping for new furniture and making plans for each room. We’re also meeting with my Uncle Terry and someone he works with at the house on Monday to discuss a couple projects we want to do before moving in.

As far as location goes, we’re in Henderson about 5 minutes southwest of Green Valley Ranch Resort & Casino in an area called Southfork. Our little community is called Chenango. I’ll be providing more updates as soon as possible, but for now you can get a good idea of everything by checking out the video tour below. Start planning your visits now because we have room for you!

Touring our new home in Henderson, Nevada

Touring our San Diego home 10 years ago

Viva Las Vegas!

Around noon on Friday, June 18, our little caravan rolled into Las Vegas after 3 days of driving. Our journey took us through Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and even part of Arizona before reaching our final destination. It was a slow journey, but we took our time and made the best of it. Ultimately we had very little trouble getting down here, but even as I write this more than a week later, it still doesn’t quite feel real. It’s as if we’re on an extended vacation and will need to go home soon, but as the kids keep saying, “we don’t have a home”. At least not at the moment.

Moving week began by picking up a 26 foot diesel truck at Penske in Everett on Monday, June 14. Jessica and I worked for nearly 8 hours that afternoon and evening to get it packed. It was hard work but we took our time and did our best to load it up the best we could. On Tuesday afternoon I drove the truck back up to the Penske office with my neighbor Erik following me in my car. When I arrived we got the car carrier attached to the truck and loaded my car onto it. At that point we were ready to go. Although our original plan was to use Pods as a moving service, it turned out to be far too expensive based on how much stuff we had, so driving a truck and towing my car, then having Jessica and the kids following me in the van made the most sense.

I was awake before 4:00am on Wednesday morning. I simply could not sleep knowing that this was finally the day where we would say goodbye to our house and hit the road. Jessica woke up shortly thereafter, we threw a few final things in the truck, got the kids up, said a family goodbye to the house, and by 5:30 we were pulling out of the neighborhood. I had been expecting to drive the truck alone, with just Peach and Spencer to keep me company, but after a little research I learned that it was legal to have a car seat in a single cab truck, as long as it was connected the right way. Consequently, I almost always had one of the kids riding with me in the moving truck, and it was awesome. Each of them later said that one of their favorite things about the road trip was riding with me in the truck.

I didn’t have too much trouble driving the truck, but it was really slow and bumpy. The steering was so loose that you’re constantly making adjustments to the wheel just to keep it going straight, and you’re bouncing around so much that my FitBit thought I was walking all day long. My step counts for those days were quite impressive!

On a level road with no incline going flat out in the truck, I could get up to 70mph, but it felt a lot faster than that because it’s like steering a locomotive down the road. It’s a big rig with a lot of momentum behind it. Each of the kids commented that it feels a lot faster in the truck than it does following behind the truck in Mom’s van. However, things would get pitifully slow as soon as the road started to incline. There were times going up mountains where I’d have it floored and we’d be going 28mph. There’s nothing you can do besides stay in the right lane with your hazard lights on, but it was tough for Jessica to stay behind me going so slowly.

We made it all the way to Boise on day one, which is supposed to be about 7.5 hours but it took us closer to 11. After getting checked into our hotel we went out for Mexican food, then back to the room so I could pass out. My neighbor told me I’d be sore from driving the truck and I kinda laughed it off. I figured there was no way that would be true based on all the Jiu-Jitsu I do, but he was right. I woke up Thursday morning in Boise feeling quite sore in my back and shoulders.

Thursday was supposed to be our easiest day of the trip, but it didn’t quite work out that way. The plan was to drive from Boise to Provo, Utah, which is a little college town 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City, most famously known as the home of BYU. Everything got off to a good start, but around midday on the freeway just outside of Tremonton (which is in northern Utah), I blew a tire on the car carrier.

I honestly didn’t even notice it happened, but Jessica started getting pieces of rubber in her windshield while following behind me. She pulled up beside the car carrier and could see one of the tires falling apart, then signaled to me to pull over. Now we find ourselves on the side of a freeway not knowing where we are or what to do. We had to act quickly because staying there wasn’t an option. We pulled up Google Maps on our phone and could see that the next exit was less than 2 miles up the road, so we started driving slowly on the freeway with our hazard lights on until we reached the exit.

Once we were out of harm’s way I pulled out the paperwork from Penske and called their roadside assistance line. I wasn’t worried about getting help, mostly because I had taken out extra insurance on the truck and car carrier, but according to their phone system it was going to be a 30 minute wait to speak to someone. It was in the mid 90’s that day, so waiting outside wasn’t really an option. I hopped into the van with Jessica and the kids and waited for someone to pick up the phone.

While we were sitting there, a couple who appeared to be about our parent’s age pulled over to check on us and see if we needed any help. At first we were saying it was fine and that we were just waiting for roadside assistance to answer our call, but it soon became obvious that they weren’t going to leave us there sitting alone. We could tell they were genuinely nice people, and eventually the wife invited Jessica and the kids to come into their house to relax in the air conditioning while the husband and I waited to get the truck repaired. I could tell from the look on Jessica’s face that she felt safe with them, so we took them up on their offer.

The husband, who turned out to be a retired police chief, stayed with me at the truck, but eventually I started following him slowly down into town because there was a tire repair shop that could take care of my problem. While heading down there, after 45 minutes on hold, I finally got someone from roadside assistance on the line and they confirmed that the shop we were heading to was an approved Penske vendor. Once I got there it literally only took 15 minutes to swap out the tire, and due to the extra insurance I’d taken on the truck, it ended up costing me nothing more than a couple hours of our time.

While this certainly wasn’t part of our plan, in a strange way it ended up becoming a highlight of the trip. It’s nice to know good people like this still exist in the world, and we will never forget their hospitality. Jessica even took a picture of their address so we could send them a thank you card. From now on whenever I think of Utah, it will be this experience and hospitality that first comes to mind. I may even become a Utah Jazz fan because of it…

We ended up arriving in Provo a couple hours later than expected, but still had time to go out to dinner and take the kids swimming at the hotel. We drove into the heart of town looking for a vegan restaurant we’d found online, but it turned out to be closed. Luckily we found Fat Daddy’s Pizza next door and just decided to do that. We were pleasantly surprised to see they had a vegan pizza menu, so it seemed like it was meant to be. The food was great and overall Provo turned out to be a really cool little college town. After taking the kids swimming later that evening everyone slept well.

Friday was by far the hardest day of the week, and once again it started very early. We were on the road at 6:00am because the truck was due back that evening by 6:00pm in North Las Vegas. Jessica followed me all the way to Vegas, and the scenery that day was incredible. Southern Utah and northeastern Arizona are so beautiful it’s hard to describe. The different colors of the rocks, and the canyons you wind through can’t really even be described, you just have to see them for yourself.

Once we got to Vegas, Jessica took the kids straight to Nana’s house while I first went to the Penske dealer to detach the car carrier from the truck and park my car in the parking lot. Once that was done, I headed to the storage facility near my Mom’s house where I would meet up with Jessica, Uncle Terry, and his friend Nick. It was literally the hottest day of the year, and unloading our entire truck into the storage unit was quite possibly the hardest physical labor I’ve ever experienced. Each of us felt like we might faint at various points throughout the day.

We ended up packing our 10’x20’ storage unit to the max, but still had stuff left in the truck, so we had no choice but to put the rest of our stuff in Mom’s garage. By the time we finished filling up her garage it was 116 degrees. Jessica looked like a ghost and my clothes were drenched in sweat. Ultimately I was able to get the truck returned on time, got in my car and closed the door, then let out a holler that would make the Dukes of Hazzard proud. We had done it! That evening I brought a few things over to Devin’s house to store, came back to Mom’s house to get cleaned up, then Jessica and I went out to celebrate.

Saturday morning we wasted no time in getting started with our house hunting process. We met up in Henderson with Rowena and Sassy, our realtors who our friend Linda had connected us with, and started viewing houses. We liked the first one and rated it 7/10, then went to see another one a block away that had just come back on the market. I had seen this one a couple months earlier on Zillow and really liked it, but it went into contract so I removed it from our list.

As it turned out, that sale had fallen through and the house had just become available the previous day. When we arrived the owner was there doing some work around the house, but invited us in for a tour. It was nowhere near show condition, but Jessica and I quickly saw past all that. It had everything we wanted, even though the pool and spa were still under construction. The appliances were all brand new, we loved the 4 car garage, as well as the layout and the schools. Considering how crazy the Las Vegas / Henderson real estate market is, and how reasonable the price was, we decided to place an offer that day. Ultimately it wasn’t meant to be though, and after feeling like we were getting the runaround for a week, the owners decided to pull the house off the market. I assume they’re going to finish all the construction, get it in show condition, and raise the price, but at this point we’ve moved on and don’t really care.

On Friday we went and saw another house in Henderson, and honestly we like this one even more. It’s 4,000 square feet with 6 bedrooms plus an office, 4 car garage, and a gorgeous backyard with a pool and spa. It’s in a gated community sitting in the middle of the best school district in the state of Nevada. The inside of the house is a bit dated, and there are things we would want to do before moving in, but the intangibles are all there. We wasted no time in putting in an offer and hope to get a response later today.

Other than house hunting we’ve just been focusing on getting settled and spending quality time with Nana. After a few days we were able to organize our stuff in the house and garage, and I have already joined a local Jiu-Jitsu school. We frequently go swimming at one of the pools in the neighborhood, although that has had its challenges as well.

On our first full day in town we took the kids swimming and Ava jumped feet first into the shallow end of the pool, slamming her heel into the bottom. It was really bothering her for a couple days, but then the very next day Jessica did a cannonball into the deeper end of the pool (which is still only 4.5 feet), and slammed her tailbone into the bottom. By Monday they were both very sore and I ended up taking Ava to Urgent Care for an x-ray.

Much to our surprise, the x-ray showed what they thought was a fractured heel, so Ava had to get a temporary cast and crutches. We made an appointment with a specialist later that week, so for the next few days she and Jessica were in bad shape. Luckily things turned around after seeing the specialist when he confirmed that there was no fracture in her heel and that she didn’t need to be in a cast. We were worried about her Summer being ruined but luckily that is no longer the case.

Working from my Mom’s house has been fine and I don’t foresee any issues there, so on this most recent Friday night Jessica and I decided to go out for a night on the town to celebrate our first full week in Las Vegas. A brand new casino on the strip called Resort World had just opened the previous day, so we decided to check it out. We walked in and there was this huge line of Rolls Royce’s all lined up inside the casino. I’d never seen anything like it! Then, while walking through the casino, we saw Michael Voltaggio, one of our favorite chefs from Top Chef, just hanging out at a blackjack table. We knew it was him because a couple other people had just recognized him as well and were asking for a photo. We didn’t say anything but it was awesome.

We walked all around that night, checking out Resort World, Fashion Show mall, and the shops at Wynn. We even went to a vegan ice cream parlor at Resort World. Later that evening we were on our way to a restaurant near home when we saw a sign saying “Chef Kenny’s Vegan Dim Sum – Grand Opening”. I called an audible and immediately pulled into their parking lot.

As it turns out, Chef Kenny has more than one vegan restaurant in town, but he was there that evening for the grand opening of his new location, and ended up chatting us up quite a bit. Everything on the menu is 100% vegan so you don’t have to worry about what you’re ordering, but you would never know it from eating the food. He recommended the steak roll, which is one of his signature dishes, and it was amazing. I swear you would never know this isn’t real meat. We also had a couple sushi rolls, and honestly it was one of the best rainbow rolls we’ve ever had, real fish or not. It’s just incredible how you can make plant-based food look and taste like real meat and seafood, or even raw seafood in this case. We also had sweet and sour shrimp that was absolutely amazing. This place, along with Violette’s Vegan (which we’ve already been to 3 times since moving here), have immediately become some of our favorite restaurants in Las Vegas.

Overall we’re very happy to have made the move, but leaving our family and friends behind was really difficult. There were a lot of emotional goodbye’s, but we really are committed to coming back to visit as a family every Summer. There are simply too many people we love in Washington not to do so. We figure if we can come up once a year, and we can convince people to come down for a visit once a year, we’re getting two really good, multi-day visits in. These will be very memorable visits too because we’ll make sure to do special things while in town.

We can tell the kids are enjoying themselves, even though things are so different. They love all the time they’re getting with Nana, and Enzo has already said (while chilling by the pool) “I hope we’re not moving again because I love it here. It’s so relaxing.” Elise has also said “Most people probably wouldn’t know it, but I never really liked the weather in Washington.”

Certainly there are times when the heat can be intense and start making everyone grumpy, but we have no doubts that we did the right thing for our family. I know we have a lot more excitement coming in the near future, hopefully in the form of a new house. We knew it was going to be easy as a seller and difficult as a buyer, but that’s fine. Hopefully this new house we’re bidding on will work out, but we know there are multiple offers already, so we’ll see. If this one doesn’t work out another one will.

For now I’m just thankful that we made it here safely, we’ve settled into Nana’s house nicely, and we’re wasting no time in looking for our home. I’m also relieved that none of our pool injuries are serious, and hopefully we’ve learned some lessons about jumping in. I also have a newfound love for Utah and look forward to taking a road trip back there, most likely sometime this fall. I’m looking forward to taking a four day weekend for the 4th of July and promise to update everyone as soon as one of our house offers gets accepted. Until then, here’s some recent pics!

No one was more excited about the end of the school year than teacher Mom

Visiting the beach in Shoreline one last time, for now.

Paying our respects to Grandpa Elmer before the move

We normally do this family photo in front of the house every year on the 4th of July. This year we did the final one a little early.

Jessica got to do some serious hiking with friends before the move

And she rocked it loading and unloading the moving truck

Luckily Ava was only in a cast for 3 days

The most magical of weeks

On Saturday night, after about 18 hours of travel, our family returned home to Washington State after spending a week in Orlando, Florida at the Walt Disney World resort. It’s a trip that Jessica and I have been planning for two years, which was originally supposed to take place in April 2020 for our tenth anniversary, but ended up being rescheduled three times due to the pandemic. As expected, it was an amazing week that I’m very excited to talk about, but first I need to give the utmost credit to Jessica for making this happen. She spent so many hours planning things out, getting up at 5:00am to call Disney customer service to make reservations, and making sure every last detail was covered. Above all that, she had to do everything multiple times due to all the rescheduling that went on. She really went above and beyond to make this special trip happen for our family, and we’ll never forget it.

Our trip started on Saturday, May 8. I dropped off Peach and Spencer with my sister Dana and nephew Kallan to spend the week at their house in Bellevue, then late that night we headed to the airport. We had an overnight flight which didn’t leave until 11:00pm and arrived in Miami at 7:30am. The kids were able to sleep a little bit on the flight but no luck for Jessica and me. Overall the flight was fine, but poor Enzo started getting sick to his stomach and ended up throwing up in the bathroom on the plane. It got worse for him once we touched down in Miami, and he started throwing up all over himself in his seat while we were waiting to get off the plane. Luckily there were several moms nearby who started handing us wet wipes and baggies to get things cleaned up.

We had an hour layover in Miami and our primary focus was to get Enzo changed into new clothes and nurse him back to health. Luckily we were able to do that, and our flight from Miami to Orlando was uneventful, but it was a crazy way to start the trip.

Any Disney trip is going to involve waiting in lines, and for us the lines began at the airport. The line to get onto the bus to our hotel was pretty insane, but they moved it along pretty well and we were on our way in no time. We learned on the bus that Disney World is 44 square miles, which is the same size as San Francisco! It was a hot muggy day when we arrived and I think Enzo put it best when he said “the air feels different here”.

After arriving at the Art of Animation hotel and getting settled into our room, which was themed after the movie Cars, we went down to the pool for a swim. We were all tired and hungry, but the pool was calling and the kids would have nothing else. We spent an hour in the water, but I think everyone started hitting their breaking point, so we ended up going back to the room and taking a 3 hour nap.

We spent the rest of that evening exploring different properties via the Skyliner, then had dinner at our hotel. It wasn’t our usual way of celebrating Mother’s Day, but it was special and memorable nonetheless. We were also immediately impressed by how gracious and friendly the staff, I mean “Cast Members”, was to our whole family. They would take time out of their day to talk to us extensively and tell us how much they appreciated us coming. There’s something so special about the experience you get from Disney properties and we felt that from day one.

Monday was when the trip kicked into high gear, as that was our first day visiting one of the parks. We spent the day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which is one of their newer parks, and it ended up being one of the best days of the trip. Several of our favorite attractions were there, including Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad, the Tower of Terror, and Star Wars Rise of the Resistance. The Star Wars attraction was a special one that not everyone can get into. They only release so many passes per day and you have to be on the app at exactly 7:00am to make your reservation. The spots all fill up within 15 seconds and you have to use an atomic clock to request it at exactly 7:00am. The clock on your phone is liable to be off by a few seconds, which can be the difference in not getting a pass, but we did everything right and ended up getting passes for that afternoon. I’m so glad we did too because Rise of the Resistance was Jessica’s favorite attraction of the week, and mine as well. It was such a cool combination of traditional ride, human interaction with actors, and a huge set to walk through.

We had a really fun lunch at Hollywood Studios that was themed after an old drive in theater. Each table was designed like a car from the 1950’s and the movie screen was showing all kinds of old sci-fi movie clips. The food was great and the kids had never seen anything like it before. They couldn’t believe people used to get in their cars to go watch movies, which was funny, but when you grow up in the on-demand tablet era it makes sense.

That night we were all exhausted and everyone slept really well. It was a very hot and humid day, and we walked 8 miles throughout the day, so we crashed pretty hard. Hollywood Studios ended up being Jessica and Elise’s favorite park of the trip, so it was a great way to kick things off. Luckily we were able to sleep in the next morning because Epcot Center, our next park, didn’t open until 11:00am.

We arrived at Epcot Center a few minutes before opening and ended up spending about 10 hours there. It was an all-day thing, and for Enzo and I, it was our favorite day of the trip. It’s more old school compared to Hollywood Studios, but it had some awesome rides, and I really loved visiting all the countries. The ‘Soarin’ over the World’ attraction was our first one of the day, and it was definitely my favorite thing we did that day, but Mission Space and the Chevrolet Test Track were family favorites as well.

We had our only character meal of the week at the Garden Grill at Epcot Center and it was really fun. Mickey, two of the chipmunks, and Goofy all made multiple appearances at our table, which everyone got a big kick out of. The dining room sits on a slowly rotating surface, so you’re constantly moving around in a big circle. By the time we finished our meal we were exactly back to the point where we had begun.

By the time we left Epcot Center that night it was nearly closing time and we had walked 10 miles. We visited every country, the kids got stickers from each one, and did basically everything the park had to offer. It’s a bit more of an educational experience compared to the other parks, but it still had some really fun rides and attractions. Overall it was a hit for everyone, but Enzo and I loved it the most.

Wednesday was our rest day, so we slept in and spent the rest of the morning at the pool. Later that afternoon we took a bus to Disney Springs, aka Downtown Disney, for shopping and dinner. We ended up getting caught in a crazy rainstorm unlike anything you’d ever see in Seattle. It came down incredibly hard for about 30 minutes, then cleared up and the sun came out. We walked around shopping for a while, then had dinner at an Irish restaurant called Raglan Road. It was fun because there were dancers doing all kinds of traditional Irish dancing, plus they had traditional live music being played. It was a fun experience and the kids got a huge kick out of watching the dancers.

Thursday we spent the day at Magic Kingdom and started the day off with Space Mountain, which has always been one of my favorites. We ended up doing all the famous attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, the teacups, the Swiss Family treehouse, and Big Thunder Mountain. It was a nostalgic day for Jessica and me because it reminded us of our childhood, and the kids had a great time as well, but oddly enough it wasn’t anyone’s favorite park. Compared to the other parks, Magic Kingdom is more old school, but still has all the Disney charm. We were there for 8 or 9 hours and once again everyone was exhausted by the end of the day.

Friday was our final day of the trip and we spent it at Animal Kingdom. We weren’t really sure what to expect but were pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be Ava’s favorite day of the trip, but we all loved it. There were a variety of fun rides and attractions, but definitely ‘Flight of Passage’, which is an immersive experience based on the movie Avatar, was my favorite. Regardless of whether you’re a fan of the movie or not, if you’re at that park it’s something you have to do. The other thing that we really loved doing was the Safari, which was by far the closest thing to a real Safari any of us had ever experienced. They have so much open land for the animals to live on that you could fit all of Magic Kingdom just within the Safari area. We saw hippos, rhinos, giraffes, ostrich, elephants, and many others. Unfortunately the lions were sleeping but it was still an awesome experience.

By the end of the day everyone was exhausted once again. The days are really long and you’re on your feet all day, but we were very proud of the kids. There were times when everyone had a bit of a breakdown, but overall they did great and it was a trip we’ll never forget. The only thing I would change would be Disney’s mask rule, which was as strict as I’ve seen anywhere. You literally had to have a mask on at all times unless you were stationary eating or drinking.

I had an experience where I was drinking a cup of coffee while in line for a ride, which was fine because I wasn’t moving, but as soon as I started walking forward without my mask on I got called out by some kid working in the park about having to be masked up if you’re moving. We also had experiences where we would walk into a store in a Disney park wearing our masks and would be reminded by people not to remove them. It just felt a bit overboard at times, and we’re saying this as residents of Washington State, which is pretty strict already when it comes to Covid protocol.

The most ironic part of the whole mask thing was that right after we got on the bus to head back to the airport, Jessica pulled up a news article on her phone saying that as of that day, Disney was no longer requiring guests to wear masks while outdoors. The new rule was literally being instituted as we were leaving, and it was like the old mask rule was rolling out of town on the bus with us. You couldn’t script this stuff! The masks were especially rough outside too because of how hot and humid it was, but there’s nothing we could do but comply. We knew what we were getting ourselves into and weren’t going to let it ruin our trip.

Saturday ended up being an incredibly long travel day for us. We were up at 6:30am and on the bus at 7:45, but our flight wasn’t until 11:20. You had no choice on when to board the bus, so it was an earlier than necessary start, but it was beyond our control. We flew from Orlando to Los Angeles, which is a 5 hour flight, and I had the pleasure of sitting with Enzo and taking him to the bathroom every 20 minutes. He kept thinking he was going to throw up, even though he never did. He’s never had motion sickness before but perhaps this is something for us to be aware of when flying with him.

We got to Los Angeles and then had a 5 hour layover until our flight home. This was especially annoying because we didn’t book our flights this way, but the airline shuffled our flights around and that’s how it all ended up. It was a bit eerie at LAX airport; even on a Saturday afternoon it felt like a ghost town and practically everything was closed. The flight from L.A. to Seattle that night was nice and easy but everyone was exhausted. By the time we landed around 9:00pm, we had all been up since 3:30am Pacific time, so all we wanted to do was get to our van and go straight to Auntie Dana’s house. We were very excited to see Peach and Spencer, then we crashed hard. Unfortunately we were all still on East Coast time, so the kids and I were up at 5:30am on Sunday.

We couldn’t go home Saturday night because our house went on the market on Thursday and they were going to be showing it all weekend. We had an agreement with our realtor that we wouldn’t come home until 6:00pm on Sunday, so we spent the whole day hanging out with Dana, Kallan, and Anna at their house. It was a beautiful day so we spent a couple hours at a park that morning, then hung out for the rest of the afternoon at the house while the kids played soccer in the yard with Anna.

That evening was when a new type of excitement set in, as we were finally able to go home and talk with our realtor to evaluate offers on our house. It took basically all night to settle on an offer, but his strategy of listing low to get a lot of eyes on the property and encourage a bidding war worked out like a charm. In the end there were two families trying to outbid each other and I’ll just say that we could have never imagined things working out the way they did. We feel beyond fortunate with the way things worked out and owe all the credit to our realtor Bunsong Pumma.

The only downside to our home selling experience is that we were hoping to be able to stay in our house until the end of June, but instead we’re going to need to be out by June 16. This means that the next four weeks are going to be pretty crazy for us but we’ll be fine. We’re just trying to get everything wrapped up, scheduled, and figured out. We still have family and friends we want to see but we’ll make it all work.

Having the trip behind us was a major checkpoint on this whole journey and now that we’ve accepted an offer on our house I feel like these next few weeks are going to fly by. We’ll be on the road heading to Las Vegas before we know it, and it’s crazy that we’ll be there before Father’s Day. My mom is already going well out of our way to help us in any way she can and she can’t wait for us to arrive.

We took a ton of photos on our trip, and I’m so glad we got the Disney photo package, so here are a bunch of our favorites.

Elise exploring the Art of Animation hotel grounds

Checking out the Star Wars exhibit at Hollywood Studios

Enzo showing what ‘Disney Tired’ means after day one

Getting started at Epcot Center. Each of those characters behind us is made entirely of flowers.

Someday Jessica and I will go to Italy together. For now Epcot Italy will do.

Visiting Mickey at our character meal. Elise couldn’t be bothered to remove the bread from her mouth.

We weren’t allowed to remove our masks at the photo studio. Oh well…

We found Enzo’s Hideaway at Disney Springs

The kids enjoyed this rollercoaster so much we did it twice

The next life chapter

Chances are if you’re a regular reader of this blog, then the news I’m about to share is something you’re already aware of, but regardless Jessica and I are excited to publicly share with the world that we have recently finalized the decision to relocate our family to Las Vegas this Summer! In all honesty, this isn’t something that we’ve been considering for a long time, but after my recent trip down there to visit my Mom, I came home and asked Jessica if our lives have changed enough in the past year that a move like this would now make sense. After discussing it in detail, we both agreed that it did.

The reality is that, although we certainly have thrown around the idea of moving in the past, we really felt like it was no longer an option, and I distinctly remember Jessica and I talking a few years ago when she said “that ship has sailed”. We were happy with the decision to stay put in the Pacific Northwest and that was that, but then the pandemic hit and so many things in our lives began to change.

For starters, I’ve been working remotely for over a year now, and the tech industry (along with many others) has changed permanently. People that worked remote used to be the outliers and the exception to the rule, but that’s no longer the case. At this point many companies use remote work as a selling point when trying to recruit you, and I was relieved after talking with my new manager when he said he had no problem with me working remote indefinitely. It sounds like after our campus is back to being fully open I will be making regular trips every month or two up to Redmond so I can see everyone and get some face time, but that’s still a ways off.

The other big pandemic-related work change for us is the fact that Jessica is no longer working at El Gaucho. Technically she could go back now that they have reopened, but she has more than enough on her plate with homeschooling the kids, and frankly, we don’t feel like Seattle is safe enough for her to be going there alone at night time. The decline of Seattle since we moved back from San Diego in late 2012 has been drastic and disheartening. It’s gone from a city we loved and will always have nostalgic memories of, to a disgusting and unsafe dump that we want nothing to do with. I know that sounds harsh, and I don’t even feel good saying it, but it’s true. Anyone who hasn’t been to Seattle in a long time would be shocked at what has become of it.

One good thing about being on the outskirts of Seattle, however, is that our house has appreciated considerably since purchasing it in 2014. As I’ve always said, the only way to take advantage of that equity is to move far away though, because the next step up in houses here is ridiculously overpriced. That said, we can take that equity down to Las Vegas and get the type of home we never even dreamed of living in. The homes we’re looking at down there are big, beautiful, and for now we have our sights set on having our own swimming pool.

There’s a big family aspect to this move, most of which is good, but some is bittersweet. Obviously my Mom is over the moon about us moving close to her, and as her only child, it feels so good to be able to give this to her. I want to be there for her as she gets older, and I don’t think there’s anything in the world I could do to make her happier, but it goes further than that. Amy and Tom frequently like to drive their RV to us, and that drive just got cut in half based on this move. Additionally, Rick and Chris frequently fly out from Cedar Rapids, but when traveling to Seattle they have to take a connecting flight because there are no non-stop options. That all changes with us in Las Vegas. Not only is it easier for them to come to us, but it also becomes viable for us to put the kids on a non-stop flight to Cedar Rapids, with them waiting at the gate on the other side. The idea of our kids getting more time with their grandparents is really appealing to us because Jessica and I both grew up spending a lot of time at our grandparents houses, and we have always wanted that for our own children but so far it hasn’t been an option.

Another benefit for Jessica and I specifically is that we are going to start getting so much more time to ourselves. Since becoming parents, we’ve never had a grandparent nearby to drop off the kids with and go out to dinner, so we usually only do that kind of thing when one is in town. That’s all about to change, and obviously Las Vegas has so much to offer in terms of dining and entertainment.

Another thing we’re excited about is going on more road trips. Las Vegas is a central location with a lot of cool destinations within a few hours. You can be in Southern California in 5 or 6 hours, the Grand Canyon is only a few hours away, Utah has places like Zion and Moab, and New Mexico is a place we would love to check out. Jessica’s van is the perfect road trip vehicle, so we’re looking forward to taking more advantage of it.

Finally, not only do we get a lot closer to family from this move, but we have some amazing friends in Las Vegas who are really excited about this change. Devin, Tiko, and Tina are friends that we love and can’t wait to spend time regularly with. Tiko and Tina have two young daughters, so being able to get the kids together is going to be good for everyone.

As mentioned, it definitely is bittersweet though because we have family and friends in the Seattle area that we hate to leave. People like my nephew Kallan, Uncle Jim and Aunt Brenda, Kristy, Beto, and Madi are all going to be missed deeply, but we’ve tried to make it clear that we are buying a bigger home with a guest room, and they all always have a place to stay in Las Vegas whenever they want it.

Although it’s been difficult to share the news with plenty of people, so far everyone we’ve told has totally gotten it. We just want more for our family and based on the way things have changed in the past year, we have a lot more options now. It’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster so far, but overall the kids are really excited. We’ve promised Ava and Elise can have their own bedrooms, and Enzo was sold as soon as he found out they do BMX bike racing all year long in Vegas.

As far as the timeline goes, we met with our real estate agent on Friday and decided that it makes most sense to list and show the house while we’re on our Disney World trip in May. That way we will all be out of the house, including the cats, so the agent can stage the home and hold open houses, then when we return we can evaluate offers. Based on how hot the real estate market is here, we expect the house to sell quickly, and most likely for more than our asking price.

If all goes according to plan, we will be moving out sometime between June 15 and July 1. We’ll be using a moving POD to send most of our stuff down there, but we’re also going to rent a small Uhaul trailer to tow behind the van. One of us will drive the van with the kids, and the other will drive my car with the cats. Rather than get down there as quickly as possible, we’ve decided to break the trip up into 3 days. We’ll go to Boise, ID on day 1, which is about 8 hours, then from Boise to Salt Lake City on day two, which is about 5 hours. On day 3 we will then drive from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, which is about 6 hours.

One of the things we’re going to try to figure out as soon as possible is whether we can do a “double move”, meaning we sell our house and purchase the new house before we get there, or if we need to stay somewhere when we get to Las Vegas while we house hunt. This part is yet to be determined but we’ll see how it goes. As it is, things have been moving very quickly since we finalized our decision, and I have no doubts that it will all come together nicely.

Certainly there will be many more updates on this in the coming months, but for now all I can say is that we’re so excited for this new chapter in our lives. This is a life changing event for everyone in our family, and we don’t take that lightly, but we’re trying to do what we think is best for our family given our current situation. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s certainly going to be memorable, and we’re happy to be able to share this experience with our friends and family.

Although all this moving stuff has been dominating our lives recently, we’ve still had some other fun and exciting stuff going on. Today is Easter Sunday, so we started off our day with a neighborhood egg hunt, then Kristy, Beto, and Madi came over to spend the day with us. Sharing the news about our move with them was tough but they totally understood, and it sounds like they’re looking forward to coming down for visits. We spent most of the day hanging out, playing games and cooking. I made a couple dishes from the vegan cookbook they got us for Christmas, then we put together candy chicken coops, which are basically the Easter version of Gingerbread Houses.

Yesterday was our 11th wedding anniversary, but we felt like we had too much going on in terms of packing and yard work to do any celebrating. We figure we’ll celebrate in Disney World, as well as once we get down to Vegas. That said, it was still fun to stop and reflect about all the adventures we’ve had in these first 11 years, and what is yet to come.

April Fool’s Day was probably more memorable this year than any year previously. Jessica and I taped plastic wrap in front of the kids’ bedroom doors, but Elise was the only one who fell for it and walked face first into it. Enzo saw it and ducked under, while Ava doesn’t remember seeing it yet somehow mysteriously got through it unscathed.

For breakfast that morning each kid was served a frozen bowl of cereal, and after lunch they were promised brownies, but what they really received were instances of the letter E cut out of brown construction paper and served on a plate. Later that afternoon they even got me by hiding all of our Jiu-Jitsu stuff. I was trying to get us ready for class and couldn’t find anything, so they all got a kick out of watching me freak out for a few minutes.

So, I guess that’s basically it for now. I know this was a long one, but it was important to me that I thoroughly explain our thoughts behind the decision to move. Not only for everyone who will be seeing this now, but for our kids, who will be reading this someday in the future. While they do understand it to a certain degree right now, I think this will shed more light on the situation when they’re older. I expect next month’s post to be a long one as well because we’ll have the whole Disney World trip to talk about, plus most likely our house will have sold!

Here’s a few recent photos from our world.

Our final neighborhood Easter Egg hunt. We’re going to miss Avery and Nathan so much.

Making chicken coops with Kristy, Beto, and Madi

Enzo seems to approve of our new cat carrier

The next work chapter

A quick update about my new team at Microsoft, as well as my recent trip to Las Vegas.

After spending the past 6 years at Microsoft working on the azure.com website, today is my last day on the Acom team. I’m certainly not leaving Microsoft, but Monday I’ll be joining the Treasury Engineering team, working on systems related to employee payroll, business-to-business payments, and currency conversion. As the tech industry goes, 6 years is a pretty long time to be on the same team, so I’m excited to get a chance to switch things up by working on new projects with new people.

The funny thing about this new role is that I wasn’t even looking for it; it completely fell in my lap. The manager of the team is someone I collaborated with about 3 years ago when I was assigned to work on startups.microsoft.com, and we have remained friendly ever since. He wasn’t managing a team at that time, but somewhat recently he started managing the Treasury Engineering team and ended up reaching out to me about an opening on his team that he thought I would be a good fit for. Obviously I was flattered about the opportunity, and after hearing more about it I decided that there was a lot of potential for me in this new role. I interviewed a couple weeks later and ended up receiving the offer shortly thereafter.

Anytime you’re making a change like this it’s going to be bittersweet because you become close with the people you’re working with, and there’s a bit of a comfort zone there, but I have no doubts that this change will be good for me. I also think there’s a great life lesson here for my kids to learn from, which is that you should always treat everyone with respect because you never know when the good impression you made will come back around in the form of a new opportunity. I will certainly have more updates about the new role in the coming months once I’ve gotten ramped up, but for now I’m just feeling energized and excited to dig in!

The other exciting thing in my world is that I just got home Wednesday evening from spending 5 days at my Mom’s house in Las Vegas. I hadn’t gotten any one-on-one time with her in years and Jessica was very encouraging of me to get down there for a visit. As expected, it was a great time. We got a lot of quality time together, watched almost all of Schitt’s Creek Season 3, and had some delicious vegan meals. In addition to getting time with her, I got to see my Uncle Bob, plus my friends Devin, Tiko, and Tina. I also got to attend classes at Zenith Jiu-Jitsu, which is a famous school in Las Vegas owned by Robert Drysdale, who is a world champion. I ended up getting a day pass so I could attend a morning class and an evening class on Monday.

On Saturday night Devin had a few of us over to his house to watch UFC and have dinner, then on Tuesday morning he picked me up in his Tesla Model S and we took a drive out to Red Rocks Canyon. I got to drive his 550hp beast on the highway out there, which was obviously a blast. I also bought a beautiful Shoyoroll Jiu Jitsu gi from him that he bought last year and never wore. It’s a limited edition gi called the White Mamba, which was a tribute made in limited numbers after Kobe Bryant’s untimely death. It’s white with purple and gold patches, and just such high quality that I instantly fell in love with it. I wore to class last night and broke it in properly. I even got a blood stain on it, although I’m still not sure whose blood it was and have since washed it out.

While I was away Jessica went out of her way to do a lot of special stuff with the kids. They went roller skating, swimming, got takeout, and rented movies. Overall they had a blast and probably missed me less than I was missing them. Obviously we were all happy to be reunited on Wednesday, and went straight from the airport to Avocados, our new favorite Mexican restaurant, to enjoy a nice dinner together. In addition to making all the classic Mexican dishes we all know and love, they have a nice selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes, so it works well for our family.

Now that the Vegas trip is behind us, our focus moves onto Disney World, which is only 6 weeks away! At this point we’ve been planning the trip for 2 years so we’re super excited to go. The weather in Florida should be beautiful and everyone is ready for some sun and hot weather. Right before that, however, we’ve got Kristy, Beto, and Madi coming over to spend Easter Sunday with us. Madi’s 15th birthday is just around the corner, and based on her new love of cooking vegan food, Jessica and I got her a really nice little chef’s knife from Cutco. It’s a 7” Santoku with a red handle, and I actually have the exact same knife (except mine has a black handle) which Jessica got for me years ago. It’s an awesome little knife so hopefully she loves it.

That’s all for now. I’m intentionally keeping it short because I know we’ll have a lot to write about in the coming months. Here’s a few photos from my trip to Vegas.

Visiting with Uncle Bob and checking out his awesome Seahawks mobile

Taking in the views with Devin in Red Rocks Canyon

Had to get a pic with Marcelo Nunes after class at Zenith

My new Shoyoroll White Mamba Jiu-Jitsu gi

The kids having fun roller skating with our neighbor Avery

Love my mom so much! It was a great trip

Another Disney Countdown

For those who are familiar with this blog, or just our family, you will know that we’ve been trying to take a trip to Disney World in Orlando for about a year now. Our original plan was to go in April 2020, for our 10 year wedding anniversary. We had been keeping it a secret for 6 months, then broke the news to the kids last February. The world, however, had other ideas, so we ended up rescheduling the trip multiple times. At one point last Summer we were even considering doing a cross country road trip in order to make this vacation happen, but every time we started getting close to making it happen, the pandemic would interfere and we would find ourselves rescheduling for some arbitrary date in the future. Every time we would reschedule the trip it would seem like surely things would be fine by then, right?

When we last rescheduled the trip we chose the week of May 9, 2021 as our date. We hadn’t thought much about it until a couple weeks ago, but we’re getting close enough now that we had to make a decision on what to do. Our general thought was that Disney World has been open since last Summer, and although crowds are down (which is nice), they seem to have stabilized their operation. We’re more than willing to play by the rules, and early May is a great time of year to visit Florida, so we’re going for it. With pretty much everything already in place, all we had to do was purchase new airfare, and luckily for us, airfare is much cheaper now than it was the first time we booked the trip.

At the time of this writing we have 76 days to go until the trip. Obviously you never know what may happen, and as I’ve said many times, nothing will surprise me, but our plan is to stick with this schedule and have (most likely) the most memorable Mother’s Day ever. We’ll see what happens between now and then, but obviously we’re all very excited, especially the kids. I expect to have more updates on this in future posts as we get closer to the trip.

One of the other exciting things going on around here lately was the blast of snow we got last weekend. Between Friday night and Sunday morning we got over a foot of snow, and the best part about it was that we got our fun for a few days, then in a matter of just a few days, it was all gone. The weather warmed up a bit and the rains came in to wash it all away.

It was 2 years ago exactly that I totaled my car in Snowmageddon 2019, so I was much more cautious this time around. I did drive a little during the snow this year, but only on major roads that are plowed regularly. Part of the reason I chose the car I ended up getting was that it has all wheel drive, and you can really feel the difference when driving it in the snow. I may only need it every couple of years, but when you do need it, it’s so nice to have.

In looking back at the crash I had 2 years ago, it was a perfect trifecta of bad conditions: it was a steep hill, in a neighborhood (meaning it doesn’t get plowed), and there was a previous layer of snow already on the ground from earlier that week which had frozen and turned into ice. I definitely learned a lesson from that one and will never make that mistake again.

This year’s snow was all about playing outside with friends, having snowball fights, and sledding on tiny neighborhood hills. We did a nice family walk while it was coming down heavy on Saturday and enjoyed all the scenery. It was perfect, and again, it was all gone in a few days. The fact that we had Monday off for President’s day made it even better. A nice wintery 3 day weekend was ideal for everyone.

A couple weeks ago Ava had her first actual hockey game of the season. Only one parent or family member per player was allowed to come, so only I could go, but I really enjoyed watching her play. Unlike previous seasons, where I’m either on the ice or watching every practice, this year has been completely different. I’m not allowed to come in and watch practice, so I hadn’t seen all the progress she’s been making.

Based on this I didn’t really know what to expect, considering it’s a new team, a new age bracket, and it’s coed now, but I was pleasantly surprised to see she was the starting defender for her team. They only send out 4 skaters and a goalie at this age, meaning there’s only one defender per line, and Ava was chosen for the first line! She had a really good game and I was so happy to get to watch her. She plays tough defense, makes good passes, and shares the puck, which always gets the attention of the coaches.

Elise and Enzo have been back in their Saturday morning hockey classes, but Elise recently admitted to us that she’s not really into it. Honestly Jessica and I were relieved because hockey is such a commitment, and multiplying that by 3 was already starting to stress us out. Elise really loves Jiu-Jitsu and wants that to be her #1 athletic activity, which we’re thrilled about. Enzo is still enjoying hockey but we’re not sure what the future holds for him. I’m not worried about it but I’m really hoping BMX racing resumes this Spring and that he gets really into that. It’s clear that hockey will always be #1 for Ava, which is great, but I kinda like the idea of each kid having their own athletic specialty. We’ll see how it turns out over time.

Home school continues to go well, and the results are speaking for themselves. The personalized instruction Jessica gives to the girls is so much better than they were getting in public school, and I’m not knocking public school at all, it’s just that they have to teach an entire class and can’t afford to tailor everything to our children’s learning styles the way Jessica can. We’re still not sure what the plan is for next year but I’d be shocked if Ava didn’t choose to continue home school. We’ll see what Elise and Enzo want to do when the time comes.

The other exciting recent events for us were based on getting to spend some time with family. We were able to do a group birthday celebration for Enzo, Uncle Jim, and Beto at Kristy and Beto’s house a few weeks ago. It was the first time we saw everyone in several months so it was great. Most of the time was spent in the kitchen putting together some excellent vegan dishes. Madi is really into cooking vegan food these days so it was great seeing her working so confidently in the kitchen.

Last night my sister Dana and her son Kallan came over to spend the evening with us. Dana is up here visiting from California and I’m so glad we got to see her. The kids see her every Tuesday morning for a tutoring session on Zoom, so they were super excited to see her in person. Kristy, Beto, and Madi had gotten us a great vegan cookbook for Christmas, so we made a mushroom stroganoff recipe from that book for Dana and Kallan. It was delicious, but more importantly it was great just getting to hang out. Kalland and I played guitar, and Dana gave Jessica and the girls a lesson on how to crochet. She even made the kids a bunch of cool stuff that they’ve been wearing all day.

Speaking of the whole vegan thing, it’s now been 6 months since we made the switch and at this point I don’t think either Jessica or I could imagine going back. I could see us eating something with real cheese every once in a while at some point, and certainly when we’re traveling it may not be possible to adhere to a strict vegan diet, but that’s about it. Eating meat is totally out of the picture and we haven’t had any cheat meals or anything like that. For me, the only time I’ve cheated at all was a total accident – I had a bowl of ice cream about 4 months ago which I thought was dairy free, but turned out to be real. I was actually bummed about it because if I was going to cheat on purpose it would be something with cheese (like pizza), not ice cream, but whatever. It was still good and luckily didn’t make me sick.

To build on the vegan thing, about a month ago Jessica and I implemented the concept of daily intermittent fasting. We use an app called Fastic to track when we eat, and ultimately we fast for 16 to 18 hours everyday. It’s been really easy because neither of us ate breakfast anyway, so we were essentially already doing it, we just weren’t keeping track.

Now we’re keeping track and loving it. I feel so good at the end of each fast everyday, and there are many health benefits associated with intermittent fasting, but the main thing that attracted me to it was how beneficial it is for your body in terms of healing. As a 40 year old guy doing Jiu-Jitsu 3 days a week, I’ve always got a strained this or a pulled that. It’s to be expected, but I was looking for a way to accelerate my body’s healing process to get over these little injuries faster. Jessica has her own version of this with all the HIT (High Intensity Training) workouts she’s always doing.

We learned that fasting everyday is a great way to help your body heal quickly because it reduces inflammation, and all the energy your body would normally reserve for the digestion process can now be redirected to the healing process. Basically we just eat a nice full dinner each night, then we don’t eat again for 16-18 hours, meaning lunch the next day. If you’re going to snack, you do that between lunch and dinner, rather than before lunch or after dinner. If you’re going to eat dessert, that’s cool, you just have to do it right after dinner rather than waiting a while.

You can drink as much water, black coffee, and tea as you want during each fast, but you want to focus mainly on water. It’s been surprisingly easy to adjust to, and at the end of each daily fast the Fastic app asks you how you’re feeling. For me personally I’m always feeling either good or happy, so I see no reason to stop. Doing HIT or Jiu-Jitsu in the morning has been fine as well, meaning we’re not lacking energy, so we’re all good. It is causing me to lose more weight, and I recently had to get rid of most of my jeans, but I have to assume that it will table off pretty soon.

Overall life is good and I’m so proud of all the healthy changes we’ve made in the past year. I know it’s been a challenging 12 months for many people, but I will always look at this period as a time of positive change for us. It’s funny because I haven’t even put 3,000 miles on my car in the last year, but we’re still finding ways to stay engaged, do things that make us happy, and constantly find new forms of self improvement.

That’s about it for now. Here’s some recent family pics.

Working on some home science experiments

Enzo’s snow tube wouldn’t hold air. Love the expression.

Elise looking adorbs with her new haircut

Peach and Spencer have gotten so big! They recently got spayed and are recovering nicely.

Happy 6th Birthday Enzo!

Celebrating our little man’s 6th birthday in style. Supercars and all!

We’ve been counting down the days for the past couple weeks but today it’s official, Enzo is now 6 years old! I think one of the things that makes kids’ birthdays tricky during the pandemic is figuring out how to make them special when you’re so limited on what you can do. We can’t do a traditional party, or any type of outdoor gathering due to the time of year, so it’s a bit of a challenge, but I’m happy with how today turned out for him.

Enzo got to open a bunch of presents this morning, and he was very excited and thankful for everything he received. After his daily video call with his Kindergarten class I took him out for a special occasion. He already knew that we were going to get a Pro Scooter at the sporting goods store, but on the way there I surprised him with a visit to Cats Exotics, which is an exotic car dealership in Lynnwood that specializes in Lamborghini’s.

You can’t even walk in right now so I buzzed the front door and a lady came to greet us. I said hello and explained that it was Enzo’s birthday and that he was hoping to see some fancy cars. She told me she would ask the sales manager, and next thing you know this nice guy came out to us and said “Enzo, it’s your birthday? Well you need to see my Ferrari!”

He ended up showing us around for about 15 minutes and it was simply awesome. We saw the owner’s McClaren Senna, many Lamborghini’s from different eras, a Ferrari California, a Porsche 911 GT4, a couple cool motorcycles, and several others. I thanked him many times for making this such a special and memorable day for us, and I feel confident that Enzo will now always remember his 6th birthday.

Afterwards we got him a really cool Pro Scooter, then by his request, we picked up Mod Pizza for everyone at home to have for lunch. Since it’s Thursday, we went to our Jiu-Jitsu class in the evening and followed through with our school’s birthday tradition of doing a dog pile on him at the end of class. Later on in the evening we finished things off with some birthday cake and cupcakes.

Although today is Enzo’s actual birthday, some of our celebrations will extend into this weekend. We’re taking the kids up to Snoqualmie Pass for a day of sledding and snow play, then on Sunday afternoon we’re heading down to Kristy’s to hang out and do a birthday celebration for Enzo, Beto, and Uncle Jim, whose birthday is tomorrow. We haven’t seen them in several months so we’re really looking forward to it.

In addition to all the birthday stuff, life has recently gotten a lot busier for us. Back in mid November we went back into a phase 1 lockdown due to the pandemic, meaning hockey was cancelled, but a couple weeks ago we were allowed to start playing again, so suddenly we’re back to being busy getting the kids to their practices. It’s nice though, and they’re really enjoying it.

Home school continues to go well, and although our school district is about to start bringing kids back in person, we elected not to go that route. It would have only applied to Enzo anyway since he’s the only one currently enrolled, but we’re doing just fine here at home and don’t feel like switching things up mid-year.

The kids recently got their eyes tested, and although there’s nothing wrong per say, we still decided to get each of them a pair of glasses due to the amount of time they spend on screens. The girls just received theirs and love them, but we’re still waiting for Enzo’s to arrive.

Another recent exciting thing for us was that the kids each got their first stripe on their belt at Jiu-Jitsu! It was definitely a proud papa moment for me, mostly because I can relate so well to being a little kid coming up the ranks at a martial arts school. They were so proud of themselves and they continue to say things like “I can’t believe I got a stripe on my belt!”. I told them that it’s just the first of many if they stick with it.

Overall things are good and we had no problems getting back into our routine after the holiday break was over. Our rescheduled Disney World trip is supposed to take place in a little over 3 months, but we’re not really sure if it’s going to happen then or not. Nothing will surprise me at this point, but we’re fine taking things day by day. It would be nice to have a little more to look forward to on the horizon, but we’re not taking anything for granted. We’re all healthy and doing things we love, so it’s all good. I’m just glad we were able to make today really special for Enzo. Happy birthday buddy, we love you so much!

Getting started with his gifts this morning

Ava and Elise each made special pictures for him

This kid never met a monster truck he didn’t like

This McClaren Senna isn’t for sale, but was probably our favorite car of the day.

Enzo was excited to see this Ferrari California

This Lamborghini set a record lap time on the Nürburgring in Germany

Here he is with his own new set of wheels from today

The girls are looking lovely with their new glasses

These beautiful tulips from Nana made a perfect photo backdrop

Getting their first stripes at Jiu-Jitsu!

Seeing the first woman elected as Vice President of the United States was a proud day for our family

Having a little family fun with Dad’s new look

Singing “Happy Birthday” to Enzo. #Candlegate

Merry Christmas, 2020

A quick update our 2020 holiday season

Well, we’ve pretty much made it. The most unforgettable year of our lives is now coming to a close. While many people will look back at this year with distaste, and for good reason, I’m planning it to remember as the year I spent almost entirely at home with my family. Gone were the days of hectic schedules and fighting traffic, replaced with a lot more quality time, home cooked meals, and some much needed simplicity. Certainly I could find things to complain about if I wanted to, but I don’t really see the point. My Mom always used to tell me as a kid, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, and this year, more so than any other, was my chance to utilize that philosophy.

Before I get into our Christmas activities, I feel like I need to pick up where I left off in last month’s post, which was written the day before Thanksgiving, on Ava’s 9th birthday. My Mom was visiting us for both occasions and we had ordered Purple Carrot’s Vegan Thanksgiving meal so that we wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with grocery stores or figuring out what to make for our first Vegan Thanksgiving. The menu looked great and we were excited about it.

Normally our weekly meals were always delivered on Wednesday night and we had never had a problem before this. For this particular week, not only were we receiving our Thanksgiving meal, but we also had our normal week’s worth of food, which was 3 entrees (each for two people), so we’re talking about a lot of food heading our way.

Right around the time that our food should be arriving, Jessica receives an email from the shipping company saying our shipment was delayed and that we would be receiving it by the end of day Thursday. I assume they didn’t know that our Thanksgiving meal was part of this shipment, but from our perspective this wasn’t going to work. We tried contacting them, as well as Purple Carrot, immediately but had no luck because everyone was already gone for the long holiday weekend.

This meant Jessica and I had to do the thing we didn’t want to do, which was go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving, and we were now doing it the night before Thanksgiving. I had already been planning on making Vegan Eggplant Parmesan that weekend for my Mom and was going to need a grocery run anyway, so I decided to get everything that night and have that dish ready to make on Thanksgiving day if necessary. At this point I was still holding out hope that our food would come early enough on Thanksgiving day that our original meal plans would stay intact. So Jessica and I made a big grocery run that night, preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.

Thanksgiving Day comes around the following day and we were just hanging around the house all day, snacking, playing games, watching football, etc. About every hour we would check the front porch, as well as Jessica’s email, hoping for either our food delivery to be there, or for some update from the shipping company. I held out on cooking as long as possible, but finally around 3:00pm I could tell everyone was getting hungry for a real meal so I gave in and started preparing the eggplant dish that I had been planning for later on that weekend. I kept thinking that our food would arrive while I was in the middle of cooking but it never came to be. The eggplant dish ended up being our Thanksgiving dinner this year, and in some ways felt very indicative of the year in which we ate it. The food itself was great, just not what we had in mind.

Sometime after dinner Jessica received a new email from the shipping company saying our delivery was now going to be another 24 hours late, and that we would be receiving it by end of day Saturday. Now we’re really angry because there’s so much food in that delivery and I was expecting to be able to make our Thanksgiving meal on Black Friday. I sent Purple Carrot an angry message on Twitter and Jessica did the same on Facebook, but again, no one is around to receive our messages due to the holiday. Turns out we weren’t the only ones experiencing this very unfortunate shipping delay, and they were getting blasted from quite a few customers.

The next day we both got responses, and of course they were mortified to hear about what had happened. Obviously we were refunded for our purchase, and they offered us quite a bit of extra meals to try and win us back over, but we ended up canceling our membership. Although the food was always great, this was too big of a mistake for us to accept. We entrusted our family Thanksgiving with them, and regardless of whose fault it was, we were too disappointed to carry on as customers.

In the end we never did receive our food. According to the shipping company it had been delivered to us on Saturday, but that was not the case. We hope some family who could have really used it got the surprise of a lifetime with all this food magically appearing at their doorstep, but who knows? The thought of all that food going to waste is such a shame so hopefully it’s not the case. Either way it carried on our recent tradition of memorable bad luck on Thanksgiving. We had Turkey-gate and Stuffing-gate in back-to-back years not so long ago. I guess we can call this one Vegan-gate.

With Thanksgiving behind us, we transitioned straight into Christmas mode, and although we wouldn’t be able to do all the usual things like family gatherings and Snowflake Lane, we were still excited for the holiday season. I worked the week after Thanksgiving, then (like last year) began a three week vacation which actually ends today. I would have rather started and ended it a week later, but I’m on call for my team starting tomorrow so that’s just the way it goes. It should be a really quiet week as most of Microsoft takes the week between Christmas and New Year off, so hopefully it will be an easy way of transitioning back, plus we have Friday off because it’s New Year’s Day.

As expected, my time off this month has flown by, but it’s been great. I was able to help out with the kids’ homeschooling, I designed a new logo for our Jiu-Jitsu school, rebuilt our family recipes website, and nearly finished recording a new instrumental song. I like staying busy during my free time, and consequently each day flew by quicker than the one before. Hopefully this is just a sneak preview of what retirement will be like someday, but I’m sure I’ll be keeping just as busy then as I am now.

Last week the holiday spirit kicked up a notch for our family as Grandma and Grandpa Martin came out to visit, and although our options for activities are limited this year, we’ve still been having a nice time just relaxing and hanging out. There’s been plenty of Christmas movies, baking, games, and naps. We even got about 3” of snow the night they arrived, so that was timely and fun. They have a couple more days with us, then head home on Tuesday afternoon.

Christmas morning was obviously fun and exciting, as it should be with three young kids in the house. There were tons of presents under the tree and I think everyone got what they wanted. Some of the stand out presents this year included Kindle Fire tablets for each of the kids, a Nintendo Switch from Grandma and Grandpa Rudd, the SuperDeker Advanced Hockey Training System (something I’m enjoying as well), fitness tracker watches and dolls from Nana, and a ‘Glamper’ camper for their dolls from Grandma and Grandpa Martin. My Mom got Jessica a really cool table to do jigsaw puzzles on, plus Jessica got all kinds of workout clothing and cat paraphernalia, and I got some great music and Jiu-Jitsu books, plus a countertop herb garden allowing me to grow my own parsley, basil, etc. Even the kitties got presents – a cat house that looks like a stack of Christmas presents and a little indoor grass growing kit with a special kind of grass that they can eat. Hopefully now they’ll leave the rest of our plants alone!

There was a lot more than what I just listed, but those are the highlights. Overall everything was great, and I even heard the kids saying amongst each other yesterday afternoon that this was their best Christmas yet. I don’t know how non-biased they can be when compared with previous ones, but it was still nice to hear.

With Christmas now complete, I think we’re all excited to see what 2021 brings. Certainly the kids will continue homeschooling for the remainder of this school year, but we’ll have to see what comes after that. Although I’m generally not one for New Year’s resolutions, as I always prefer taking a ‘do it now’ approach over waiting for a day on the calendar to arrive, I was speaking with my Aunt Norma (who is 94 and sharp as a tack) on the phone the other day and I told her in Italian “Voglio ti vedere a presto”, which means “I want to see you soon”, and we made a promise to start doing regular phone calls in Italian starting in January. Neither of us has anyone to speak with, and although I’m not yet conversational, I think I can hang in there and look forward to learning from her. I recently reached 950 consecutive days doing Italian lessons on DuoLingo, leaving me in the top 2% of all users worldwide. Keeping that part of our heritage alive would mean a lot to both of us, and I know Dad and Gigi would be proud.

I suppose that’s about it for now. While we don’t send out annual holiday / new year cards, I like to think the monthly updates on this website make up for that. The kids are aware of all these blog posts and look forward to reading them someday, which is all the fuel I need to keep writing them. To all of our family and friends, we love you and wish you a very happy new year. For those of us that haven’t been able to get together recently, hopefully that will all change sometime soon. Here are some recent photos from our holiday season.