Christmas 2006

Hello all, I hope this tool will help us keep in touch better. I feel really bad for having lost touch with folks near and dear to me. It has been a busy year for us. We moved to the Pacific NW in August of 2005. I am now the Pastor of First Christian Church in Sumner, WA. The new ministry post has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career. I seek and find the Lord's presence in what I'm doing here and it has been a truly wonderful experience. Little Alexandra is not so little anymore. She's 2 years and 5 months. She's wearing 2T clothes and speaking full sentences. She loves the Teletubbies which is only slightly troubling to me =). She is definitely developing independence and has her "moments" but mostly she is a great joy and a lovely child. I feel very blessed as a mother. We will be having my folks out for Christmas this year and we are definitely looking forward to it. They have not yet seen our new "old" house that we bought back in September. So yes...we moved in August 2005 and then again in September 2006. We love our 1941 craftsman-style home. It is not even a mile from church and in the heart of Sumner which a smallish town with a great sense of community. Last night we heard a fire truck siren going on and off somewhere nearby and a neighbor called to let us know that that was Santa coming down the street. So we took Alexandra out and there was one fire truck, a sled with Santa, two police cars and an ambulance. They were handing out candy canes and toys. It was quite a parade and Alexandra loved it.

Our Home

This is our cozy abode in Sumner, Wa. With a finished attic, walk-in basement and detached garage, we've suddenly got a lot more usable space than we've had before. Of course, with a house that's 60+ years old, there are always plenty of projects to keep us busy.

Big Blue

Since coming to town, I've been working for Vallent Corp., a small-but-global software company in Bellevue whose products are used by cellular providers to keep their networks working right. I'm the proposal manager... for the world. That means time zones and international datelines often make for unusual work hours and difficult deadlines. When two giant requests for proposals came out concurrently in Australia last month, I had to hop a plane on short notice to hole up down under in Sydney for a couple weeks. (And I didn't escape for even one afternoon of sightseeing!).

Life at Vallent is about to change in a big way -- a really big way. We announced in November that IBM is acquiring us into its Tivoli software group. I'll go from working at a company with fewer than 450 employees, where I am on a first-name basis with the CEO and most of the senior officers, to one with more than 350,000 employees and a CEO who will never know I exist.

But that's OK. These are exciting times for us. Vallent was a privately held company constantly looking for a suitable buyer or an opportunity to go public. IBM is a leader in the field and known for taking care of its employees. As I look into this vast corporation, I see nothing but opportunity and open doors. With any luck, they'll enable me to prosper in this corner of the country where I hope to make my home for many years to come.

The sale will be finalized sometime in the next couple of months once we get all the necessary regulatory approvals.

Photos

likemyhat

Our crazy little girl in the photo that made it onto our Christmas cards this year. You can find some more photos of her (and a few of Rochelle and me) by clicking here.

Crazy weather

I love it out here. Since the first time I set foot in the Pacific Northwest more than 10 years ago, I've wanted to live here. But along with the good, comes the rest.

We've had a crazy run-up to winter. First, we set a record for rainfall in November (and that's saying something for this part of the world). Then we cap it off with a storm that brings record-breaking flooding across the area, followed a few weeks later by a crazy snow and ice storm. (The day that hit, it took me nearly 5 hours to drive 30 miles home from work. Many, many people didn't make it -- they abandoned their cars along the highway and started walking.)

Then, in early December, the jet stream brings ashore a huge low-pressure front that funnels gale-force winds through the valleys that lie between Puget Sound and the mountains, leaving nearly 1 million people without power in freezing temperatures. That was late last week, and today (Dec. 18) 250,000 people or more are still enduring sub-freezing temperatures without power. And every day we hear reports on the news about people being overcome by carbon monoxide after bringing barbecue grills inside to keep warm.

Somehow, we've narrowly managed to stay out of harm's way: The flooding came to within a few blocks of us. During the wind storm, neighors around the corner had a 100-year-old tree smash through the top story of their home (I sent a photo to the TV station), and we were among the lucky few in this part of the state whose power never went off.

Summertime, on the other hand, was sublime. With the sunny, clear days near the summer solstice averaging about 16 hours of daylight, we spent much of our weekends outdoors, heading out to Point Defiance in Tacoma or up Puget Sound to some secluded park, or perhaps up into the mountains. A favorite close-in destination of mine is the Foothills Trail, a converted railway line that runs from Sumner 15 miles up toward Mount Ranier along a salmon spawning creek and off into the woods. I've bicycled its length many a Saturday, sometimes with Alexandra bumping along behind me in the bike trailer.

So, yes, come see us in the summer.

Welcome

We don't know much about blogs, but dumber people than us have figured it out. So here we go.

The initial purpose of this site is to update friends and family about all the changes in our lives following our move to the Pacific Northwest. We're putting it online just before Christmas 2006 because we're too lazy to print out letters to send with our cards.