O, P, and Q days!

O day was for Owen Beach. It fell on a weekend, and we had mixed weather. It did rain on us, but only for a few minutes, and after a bit the sun came out and it was actually nice! The kids each had a friend over. Ilea's friend was Sammy, and Kyler had Joshua. They had a great time playing by the water, walking on logs, and throwing rocks. Owen's beach is at Point Defiance, a wonderful park in Tacoma. We could have spent all day there if we had time. We did stop at the park at the front entrance, and let the kids run over to the island in the pond. They saw ducks and turtles. It was a pretty good trip.


P day was sort of a mixed bag. Kyler went on a Playdate with Lucas, which sort of counts, right? And Ilea, Kipp and I went to go see Harry Potter, which also has a P in it. We loved the movie. For dinner we had Potstickers and Pork fried rice. That was all we could do.

Q is a tough one also. In the afternoon, the kids and I went to a park. Ilea and I played Qwirkle. Kyler didn't want to play. At the end of the game, he came over saying he had gotten hurt, and wanted to go home. He had made a big jump, and seemed to have gotten the wind knocked out of him. The jump kind of hurt his back, traveling up his spine, and he just wanted to rest. So we went home then, for him to go to bed. He was fine the next day. For dinner that night we had chicken Quesadillas. They were pretty tasty. There's not too much you can do on Q day...

L, M, and N Days

Ok, we did much better for L Day. We went Letterboxing and the kids made Lollipops from scratch. We chose salted caramel Lollipops. It was the first time we went Letterboxing since December, which is a pretty long time for us! Because I've had a few surgeries and some complications, we haven't been able to get out for a long time. But this was a pretty good morning. We went with Amalea and her kids, Morgan and Peyton. It was quite a success, especially for their first time, and we found all 4 letterboxes. If you'd like to know more about letterboxing, go to www.atlasquest.com or www.letterboxing.org! Call us sometime - we're always game to go!

Later in the day we made Lollipops. The kids have never made candy before, even though it is so easy. If you're thinking that those pops look a little dark, you're right. We followed the recipe to the dot, but they came out tasting burnt. We had to make another batch. Luckily we still had enough of everything. I took about 50 degrees off of the recipe, and the second batch came out great. I don't know if my candy thermometer is off or if the recipe was off, but it finally worked.








For M day the kids decided on Marshmallow Martians. They had fun creating them with different size marshmallows and toothpicks. Then of course they got to eat them! They also made up an M tongue twister.... Marshmallow Martians from Mars Meet Meaty Meerkats! Say that 5 times fast. We had Meat for dinner....


On N day they were having a hard time coming up with something until they were very creative and came up with New art. They decided to paint with toothbrushes. We got some New paints, which they had been wanting for a long time, and they used one of the ten million toothbrushes we seem to have to paint the pictures. Kyler's is obviously sky, and Ilea's is a hot air balloon. You can almost see it... but art is as to the artist, right? Anyway, they had fun, and it kept them both occupied for a good hour or two. Plus, Kyler painted a rock. With a toothbrush. That's New. He also played Nintendo. That's Not New.

G, H, I days

G was for Glowgolf. Kyler got to do this once for a birthday party, and they have both been wanting to do it every since. So we went to Auburn Supermall and they played Glowgolf. It's a neat concept - indoor miniature golf, with lots of glow in the dark paint. The whole course, and even the balls glow in the dark. It took them about 45 minutes, and they had fun.




Then we got a little bit lazy....H was going to be out of order because Ilea was going to go Horseback riding (another birthday present), but we couldn't get the appointment on the right day. So stay tuned for H day. We had a hard time thinking something good up for I, J, and K, so we used our names. I day was Ilea "queen for a day" idea. Kyler ended up at a friends house, and she and I played games. She also got to pick out the dinner, and generally had a pretty good day. I is one of those hard letters.




J was Jenny (queen for a) Day. Um, I don't know what I got out of it. I always pick dinner, since I make it most every day. K day was pretty similar, although I think Kyler claimed it, instead of Kipp. I think we had Orange Chicken from Safeway, which is still Kyler's favorite all-time meal. At least he's easy to please! The boys claimed to be Kings for the day. Stay tuned, we did better with L and M.

D, E, F

D was for "Walk Duffy the Dog!" Our neighbor has a half mastif half lab puppy who is huge! He's about 10 months, and bigger every time we see him. We've gotten to know them mostly through seeing them with the dog! He's so friendly, and the kids wanted to walk him for D-day, and they were gracious enough to let us take him. Thanks Becky! We also had doughnuts for breakfast, which I think we've done every year. It seemed like a natural thing to do!


E day was part of Kyler's birthday. He chose Electronic games at Gameworks. We used a Sunday special they have and dinner for 4, and then the guys had 2 hours of gameplay. Ilea and I went over to Barnes and Nobles and enjoyed ourselves. Ilea chose Education for E day for herself. She looked up information on dolphins and learned what she could. She shared the facts she learned with us. It was a pretty good amount of research for such a short amount of time!


We got totally lucky that F day was on the Fourth of July and of course we did Fireworks! The kids enjoyed tons of sparklers at our neighbors house, and then the most incredible Firework show you can imagine. With no rain, it was a pretty good Fourth!

Summer

So we haven't been great at using the blog much any more since Facebook. We're more into the instant-quick-short-pic-and-explanation! But, this summer, once again the kids wanted to do the ABC's of summer, and it's too much for FB. So I'll try to get caught up with a series of posts.

If you are interested in the past years, look up blog archives (scroll to the bottom to find A, then work your way up. I was better at blogging then), either

http://www.hijkk.net/blog/2008_07_01_archive.html

or

http://www.hijkk.net/blog/2009_06_01_archive.html

This year we started on June 24 with A day being Auburn Performing Arts to watch Ilea dance. This just happened to be the day they wanted to start, and there was an A in the name of the place we were going, so we were off. This is the only picture I have of her in her costume. It was at her practice. She did a great job at her performance though!

B day was Bubbles and Biking. They had fun with both, although Kyler likes to bike more than Ilea. Her seat wasn't adjusted from last year, and it was pretty short at first. Kipp fixed it and it was better.

C day was Cake and settles of Catan, a great game Kipp got a year or two ago. It was actually a pleasant day outside, and we played in the backyard. Kipp always wins, so it was nice not to have him home! I finally won, but it was a close game. We need to get an expansion pack so that more than 4 people can play. The kids made a spice cake with cream cheese frosting. It was delicious.

Ilea's Father's Day gift to me. Awesome!

Ilea was struggling on what to give me for father's day because I'm pretty hard to shop for and the family hasn't been able to go shopping due to sicknesses, back issues, school plays, etc... So on Father's day she spent a fair amount of time and gave me a great Father's day present yesterday (in addition to baking me some cookies):

THE AMAZING MULTI-PURPOSE FATHER-OVER ONE THOUSAND USES!

Capable of so many things, "dads" are the newest in parental technology. They will assist with varying degrees of difficulty in assorted activities, including homework, puzzles, fixing the computer and any other problem you may have, when required. They do yardwork, they do the dishes, and they use a hammer and nails. Fathers may not be known for five-star cuisine, but anyone who has been around their helpful and loving personalities cannot help loving them in return. Guaranteed to be both strong and knowledgeable, your personal dad can help you with anything, even if you think he can't. Remember he has experience - he was a kid once, too! He will occasionally take you to do a fun thing, such as a movie or miniature golf with him. This is normal - go with it and have fun hanging out with him. Dependable and hard working, fathers need next to no nourishment, but do require plenty of love and trust. In return, they will gradually teach you about merits such as responsibility, fairness, honesty, and courage. And while Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts do the same thing, fathers provide a more permanent and personal relationship. As you can plainly see, when Mrs. Grandma and Mr. Grandpa are combined, anything is possible! Buy today! Limited time discount when purchased by mail. Restrictions apply. If quality is undesirable, exchange is optional.

By Familyforever Inc.

-- Ilea Howard (age 12 1/2)

I loved it but I'm not sure about that ''exchange'' part. I've never heard of that option.

Innocent boy

Our family was looking together at a collection of beautiful fall pictures (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/fall_is_in_the_air.html ), and we came to this picture. Kipp was sitting the furthest back, and he blurted out, "Is that girl naked?" I said no, she's in a bikini, and glared at him for bringing something like that up in front of the kids, because if she HAD been nude, I was hoping the kids wouldn't have noticed. Then Kyler pipes up, "Come on Dad, think about it...why would they put a picture with a NAKED girl in it? That would be silly." Kipp and I started laughing...yeah, why?

Kyler fell out of bed and bumped his head...

And spent the night at Harborview Hospital! While we were in Bonaire! When we got off the plane, we found out that different friend was picking us up. When she drove up, Kyler said, "So, do you know what happened?" Turns out that Thrs night while he was at camp, on the middle bunk bed, he fell out about midnight onto the concrete floor. His counselor heard the thump, and Kyler was out, and they woke him up. The counselor checked his pupils, which were fine, and took him to the nurse.
Kyler stayed with the nurse, but didn't sleep well. He asked for something to help him sleep in the early morning, and got some benedryl. Later his head was hurting, and he got some Tylenol, which he threw up. He did sleep some more though. Our friend, Patti (who was also in charge of the food for camp), had been listed as a guardian for Kyler. Of course, we didn't think she'd really have to do anything!
Around 1pm, he woke up and tried to eat some food, and ate a sandwich. He was up for a bit, and had a snowcone, but then threw that up too. Around then they decided to take him into the hospital to get checked out. It took a while, of course. He had a cat scan, and it revealed that he had a bleed on the brain, which earned him a trip to Harborview. Patti and Kyler rode in an ambulance up to Harborview, which apparently is the number one pediatric trauma center. He was admitted there, and finally observed for the night. Patti stayed with him through everything. What a saint! Her husband came up and picked them both up today, and then Patti came to the airport to pick up Kipp and I (minus luggage - it stayed behind in Houston, due to a quick plane transfer), and told us the whole story. So much to take in! Thank God all is well, and Patti for taking such good care of my baby (she had to keep explaining to people that his crazy parents were in Bonaire, and no, she didn't know where that was....). Now we just have to keep him quiet for 3 months. That should be fun!

Ilea's Poems for Dad

Recently, Ilea has been writing a few poems for special occasions. Here are a few:

Valentines Day

Ilea hid something for me (and the rest of the family) and wrote each of us poems as clues to find the surprise. Here was mine:

Dad

You have a skill that's hard to find.
I consider you a mastermind

You use it each and every day.
In the same place you never stay
You little trifle of a sweet
can be found where man-made things will all others beat

You special treasure I will place
by a large brain to match your case (of smartie fever) (brainpower not candy)

You new quest is now to find
just where I put your home made love mine!

As fast as lightning you must go.
Find your treat and don't be slow!

Now off to search!
Off to find
the wonders of your valentine
Have a great time!

The candy was hidden under the desk in my den (the thing I use every day but do not stay) and it was on top of a computer (brain) case.

---

Dad (drawn in little hearts)

You are special.  You are unique.
I'm so happy you're my dad!
I feel so good when I'm around you.
You are strong and smart and tall.
Because of this, sometimes I think that you know everything.
Let me be near you.
For I want you to know...
I LOVE YOU!

Thank you Ilea. I love you too!

This stuff just melts your heart.  I wanted to get this down in our blog so that I (and Ilea) could see it again someday when we are reviewing this.

Olympics Day 3

Last Day - Good riddance to the Bollywood Motel! Another long night, but I think we're getting used to the smell. We packed up everything, and got going again by about 8:30. We had the whole day to look around and shop.
We got off at a different station this time, Waterfront, and headed down another 4 or 5 blocks to see the flame. It's quite far from any of the other venues. Now I understand why Gretsky had to get into a car. It's a few miles from BC Place where the opening ceremonies were. There are big fences around it, so you can't get very close, but there is an opening in the fence so that you can get pictures. We could see it just fine. It's pretty impressive, with the water behind it. I guess the ships coming in can see it too.
Another eagle! We had heard that there was a neat place called Live City, so we headed over there to see what was going on. After a long line to get in, it wasn't as cool as we thought. There was a sponsor display by Coke that was supposed to be fun, but had a 2 hour line and we didn't have time for that. We did see a display by Panasonic, on a 102-inch high definition 3-D TV. It was a 15 min highlights of Olympic events, and it was pretty impressive. There were big screens in the Live City, and a few other displays, but not much going on for us. We looked around, and worked our way back toward the main arenas, stopping for lunch. We also finally braved the giant line and went into the main Olympic Superstore and got some sweatshirts.

Late in the day we headed off to our last event. Short track speed skating, at the Pacific Colosseum, where I saw the Men's Figure Skating. We had way better seats than I had! We got there about an hour early, and looked around. Kipp got a hat that had the logo on the front, and was edged with flags. It's pretty neat. When we got there, the men were already warming up. We could see Apollo Ohno warming up, with JR Celski. It was fun watching all of them. Did I ever mention that it's cold in those arenas? We all had those cute red mittens by this time! This last event was from 5pm to 7:30pm. It was fun, because it was mixed. We saw Ladies 500m quarterfinals, men's 1000 m heat (both US men qualified!), women 500m semifinal, 2 men's 5000m Relay (now that's a fun one - 40 laps, 4 teams at a time on the track, and they all push each other to change turns! It's wild! Fun to watch, hard to keep track of who's in front sometimes...US did well, qualifying for the final), then finally the Ladies 500m Finals. China won Gold, Canada Silver, and the crowd went wild! It was very exciting. The only drawback to my Olympic experience is that we don't get to see the medals getting awarded. Because they are so greedy, you have to pay to go see a medal ceremony, which takes place the next night at another place to see actual medals placed on necks and hear anthems played. I knew we wouldn't see anything for hockey, and also for figure skating, since I was going to the short program. But I thought we would see the medals awarded for this event! But no, all we got to see was a "flower ceremony", and there was no anthem played at all. I really think that is rotten. The audience is cheated out of that memory, and the people who see the medals awarded, for the most part, have nothing invested in the athletes. I'm sorry they have gone that way, and I don't know when they started doing that. So we left after the flowers. Back to the bus, then the skytrain, and back home. We made it back to Covington at 11:45pm, and into bed. It was a wonderful trip, and I loved it all. The kids got tired of all the lines, but that was to be expected. They handled all of it well, and I was really proud of them. They had fantastic behavior the whole time. We have souvenirs, pictures, and memories to last a lifetime!

Olympics Day 2

We had a very poor night. The full size beds were pretty uncomfortable, no blankets, only a sheet and a bedspread, no heater - there was a portable space heater brought in while we were gone, which had it's own lovely scent, creative lighting....well, it was a place to sleep! We had seen other hotels along the road, and Kipp tried to call a few before we left, to see if we could change for the second night...yes, Holiday Inn had a vacancy....$400/night. We stayed where we were.We got ready early, and were on the train by about 8:30am. We wanted to try to shop in the main Olympic Superstore. This picture is the line to get INTO the store. It had been open for 1/2 an hour at this time. The line looked like this most of the time we saw it, plus or minus 50 feet. We had been hoping that if we got there early, the line wouldn't be very long. So instead we went to Starbucks, and looked around. They were encouraging people to get to the venue 2 hours early. Our first event, Ice Hockey started at 12, so at 10am, we started to head for Canada Hockey Place.

We were so excited! We were seeing Men's Hockey, USA vs Switzerland. The US were favored to win, which was good, and this was the first game played. They had security set up, of course, and it moved pretty well. Then they scanned your ticket, and you were in! They had shops of course, with mostly hockey jerseys, and other stuff. They had this fun eagle in one of the shops. We didn't find anything we wanted, since we wanted just "regular" olympic stuff, not hockey olympic stuff. We went to find our seats, which weren't too bad. We could see pretty well, and the game was good. No score until almost the end of the first period, when US finally scored. We did win the game, 3 to 1, and it was exciting. Hockey is pretty fun in person! Everything here is Olympic, even the ice machines were decorated in Olympic rings. The outside of the building, as we were leaving. We needed to go right to the skytrain, for me (Jenny) to get to the next venue, for Men's short program Figure skating. I was getting a little sad - not sad - I was REALLY looking forward to seeing this - it had been my dream. But leaving the family and going alone, I realized that it would be a little bit lonely not having someone to share it with. Boy, is God good. So I got off by myself after 5 stops, and the rest of the family stayed on the train. They went to a mall, shopped and had dinner. They were thinking of a movie, but Kyler didn't want to see it. I jumped onto an express bus they had, and took it right to the Pacific Colosseum, where the Men's Figure Skating was. I was about 1 hour early. I looked around a bit, and finally headed up to my seat. And I do mean UP. I was so high, I could almost touch the roof! I was only a few rows down from the top! I got to my seat, and next to me was a single gal, also named Jennifer, who is an ice skating coach! What a nice lady! She and I hit it off, and had a fantastic 5 hours of watching all 30 men skate! She told me everything I needed to know, why they were good or bad, what to watch for, what was being scored. It was great! We had a good time. There was no one on my other side, and no one on her other side. We could see Scott Hamilton, and every one of the skaters well (on the screen, anyway). It was amazing. I loved it. The event was from 4pm to 8:45pm, and we ended up heading back on the bus to the Skytrain the same direction. She got off just a few stops ahead of me. It made my night just really enjoyable, and I couldn't have had a better time. Kipp and the kids came and picked me up at the train, and we got back to the motel late, at about 10pm. It was a long day, and even the smell couldn't keep us up too long.

Olympics - Day 1

We started off after a great breakfast of eggs and cinnamon rolls :) Ilea decorated her window of the car. We were all very excited. We got off by 9am, and made it to the border by 11:30am. There was only 1 car ahead of us! We got to our motel in another 15 minutes. Our friends had given us instructions on how to get downtown using the skytrain from Surrey, where our motel was. The motel, The Bollywood Motel, did leave a little to be desired. It had an overwhelming smell of Lysol, so at least we knew it was clean! They also had our reservation, so that was also a plus. They also didn't charge us as much as I had heard on the phone at one time, so that was also a plus! The downside was that it was about as poor a room as we had ever been in, but we were only there to sleep, and at this point we were so excited about the Olympics, we didn't care too much about the room. We left our stuff, and drove a few miles down the road, grabbed lunch at Burger King, and got onto the Skytrain.

The Skytrain is mostly above ground train, with about 12-15 stops to downtown, which took about 1/2 hour total. We got on at the very end of the line, so we had seats, but it filled up to standing room only by the time we got off. We got into the city by 1pm.

Our first goal was to pick up our tickets at the will-call site. This was at 1010 Hamilton St. We headed toward the street, and turned up it, needing to go about 4 blocks. When we got to 1010 there was a Cosmetic Laser surgery and Dental office. We were very confused. We had the confirmation page I needed, but not the page with the address, we had just penciled that in. Another group showed up a minute later, also looking for the same thing. They charged right in, and a minute later we found out the street had changed names and we were now a block off. So we all trooped around the corner to the real Hamilton St, and got our tickets. Kipp meanwhile was figuring out our phone plan, so that we could call each other, our friends in Surrey, and check email, maps, Facebook, web, etc.
After we got the precious tickets, we had some time to just wander around. We found more of the great art eagles that we had seen in the summer in Victoria.We went back to the main arena, BC Place, where the opening ceremonies were. There wasn't a ton to see from the outside right then. We looked around. There were lots of people. We did get a souvenier for Kyler, a stuffed animal called Sumi, one of the mascots. He really likes it. Then we rode the Skytrain back to Surrey to meet our friends for dinner. Joe and Anne have 3 daughters, and the kids all had fun playing Wii, although Leila did take time out to bake us dessert! We got Ilea's name from playing around with Leila's name backward.

Howard Family Blog moved to http://blog.hijkk.net

Hi everyone, it appears that after reading lots and lots of pages about what is happening to Blogger's discontinuation of FTP for publishing blogs, it appears that for now, we need to announce that our blog has officially moved to http://blog.hijkk.net.  Thus, those that are reading this blog via a blog reader, will need to go that page and resubscribe (select that RSS feed icon in the URL line) or just change your subscription to utilize: http://blog.hijkk.net/feeds/posts/default.

Currently the old pages will continue to reside at the previous URL (http://hijkk.net/blog/) but I believe that only the new URL will continue to be updated.  Blogger is suppose to have some tool available in a few weeks that will help in some of this migration so things might be a bit easier later but for now, you will have to resubscribe.  Sorry.

If this is all utterly confusing and you have no idea what I'm talking about send me a note and I'll help you get setup correctly.

Migrating blog to a new domain name

Blogger (the blogging service we use) had decided to discontinue the use of FTP. This is what we use to publish our blog to our hosting provider. Thus for the next little while, our blog may not be working properly (hopefully no one will notice). Ultimately the new URL to our new blog will be http://blog.hijkk.net rather than the old http://hijkk.net/blog/. If you go to the new blog, you should be redirected automatically (which should include RSS feeds as well). We'll see how it all turns out.

Christmas Newsletter

Yes, it's finally here! We didn't get it out before Christmas, or New Year's, but almost got it out before our Tree got put away....since the boxes aren't actually in the attic yet, this might count, right? This year it's the thought that counts! We have been asking our kids what the high point and low point of their day has been. We've had better discussions this year than in most years, and way better than the typical, "How was your day?", "Fine" conversation. So we thought we'd translate that to our Christmas letter and let you know how our year went.

Kyler

Winter 09

• High Point – Inner Tubing w/cub Scouts - this is an annual event with his pack. It's free for all the boys who help sell popcorn during their fundraiser in the fall.


• Low Point – Going to see Ilea’s concert with Grass Lake Gator Singers Kent District Choir Night- This was a long night, with choirs from all over the district. While each one was pretty good, they all had to march up, sing a few songs, then march off, and the next one came up. It was quite a production, and a very long time for anyone to sit in pretty uncomfortable chairs. This turned out to Ilea's low point too, and she was performing in it!

Spring 09

• High Point - Mom N’ Me Camp - This was a good weekend for Kyler and Mom, at least better for mom than the weekend with rain. There was sun, and lots of activities. I'm sure we'll both always remember this.


• Low Point – Cub Scout Activity/Pool Night - Kyler didn’t have much fun because there wasn’t any play time (they learned about swimming and safety, earned a badge, I think).

Summer 09

• High point – Cruise to Alaska & Church camp - It was Kyler's first time at camp, which was from Wed to Sat. He had a great time, despite this picture. It was Ilea's last time at Jr Camp, and the only time they will be together until 6th and 9th grades. Next year Kyler will be on his own.


• Low point – when Mom & Dad went on a hot air balloon ride without the kids :(

Fall 09

• high point – Macy’s parade (we were in it - the costumes are above) & Cub scout winter camp


• Low point - Ilea going to girl scout camp because he missed her - Isn't that sweet? She went away for 2 nights.

Ilea

Winter 09

• High Point – Snow - We started Winter with record snow, and it was wonderful. All day last Christmas it snowed and it was so beautiful. Lots of things were canceled, including a few days of school.


• Low Point – Singing at the Kent District Choir night with Grass lake Gator Singers

Spring 09

• High Point – Plane ride and End of School - For Father's Day Jenny got Kipp a ride on a small plane, won at a silent auction. It was fun. The kids were able to go up with him. They flew over our house, and down to Olympia and back.


• Low Point – Cub scout rocket launch day - Fun for the 2 seconds you get to light off your rocket (which Ilea didn't get to do - it was just for the scouts), not so fun for the rest of the time...

Summer 09

• high point - Cruise to Alaska - we all had a fantastic trip. The weather was great, food was awesome, and it was very relaxing. Couldn't have asked for a better week.


• Low point – Heat in Fresno - It's great to spend one-on-one time with Grandma and Grandpa, but the temp did hit upwards of 110 last summer. Lots of pool time and air conditioned activities!

Fall 09

• high point – Birthday & Girl Scout Encampment - For Ilea's birthday we went Bowling with 6 or 7 other girls. We forgot the camera and don't even have any pictures! Luckily her girl scout leader, Jane, remembered it when she took the troop to Camp this fall. They went up to Carnation, in the mountains, and had great weather.


• Low point - Hitting Kyler with the Clarinet case in the face at the end of a bad week. It was a really bad week.

Jenny

Winter 09

• High Point – Snow! I loved it.


• Low Point – Kyler’s Star Wars Slumber party with 5 boys – never again!

Spring 09

• High Point – 17 yrs of marriage to Kipp - We did end up celebrating our actual anniversary at a Mariners Game, in the pouring rain, but I still love him.


• Low Point – Gorgeous flowers out back, and then they got knocked down by a wind storm

Summer 09

• high point - Cruise to Alaska - as we mentioned, everything was great. Read the full details in our blog in Aug.


• Low point – The week the kids spend with grandparents flew by too fast

Fall 09

• high point – Hot air Balloon Ride


• Low point - Kent District teacher strike - The kids ended up starting school 10 days late, and we were all ready. We're paying for it now with missed vacation during Christmas break, and shortened mid-winter and Spring breaks (only 1 day).

Kipp

Winter 09

• High Point - Snow


• Low Point – Getting the cat declawed - We got new couches, and finally decided we had enough of her scratches. She has literally scratched every piece of furniture we own, and so we got her front claws removed. It was tough on us - she caught a cold on top of everything else, and recovery was slow.

Spring 09

• High Point – Father’s day air plane trip


• Low Point – Telling everyone that their jobs are going away because of outsourcing to India - It was rough even before that, because Kipp knew and couldn't tell them. Then you have to tell your friends the bad news, and that they have to train their replacements before they can get their severance packages. It was a rough six months.

Summer

• High Point - Cruise to Alaska


• Low point – Knowledge transfer/training people from India, and losing friends and co-workers as the termination dates were reached.

Fall 09

• high point – Hot air balloon trip


• Low point - Because Kipp got shingles in Aug, the virus made him ineligible to donate blood anymore. Kipp had donated around 96 pints of blood, and really enjoyed donating on a regular basis.