Merry Christmas!

I'm thankful for God's blessings on our family this year.

And for the 2-week vacation coming up. This will be my first contiguous 2-week time off since I started working. Well, factoring out time off for newborn babies. Get ready for a backlog of blog updates, beginning with the blog version of our Christmas updates for 2007.

Here's what we're thankful for in 2007

• Not sure how this happened, but Colin (7) is in second grade, where he is reading, ’riting, and ’rithmeticing. He can make change, tell you the capitals of most Central and South American countries, and his handwriting has improved dramatically—unclear how useful any of those skills are going to be in his adult world, but we’re grateful he’s growing up to be a polite and thoughtful if somewhat serious boy. Gee, wonder where he gets the serious from?

• Katye (4) is our free-spirited pre-kindergartener. She’s in a half-day program at a nearby Lutheran school. She chose the spelling of her own name; you might recall that last year, she was just Katie. Her class has just 4 students, her teacher is a first-time pre-K and K teacher, and Katye just adores the whole scene. She loves singing, craft time, memorizing Bible verses, playing on the computer, and surprising grown-ups with her savviness about the world.

• Cameron (2) is our family’s clown and is chatting up a storm. Even though he’s putting together short sentences now, complete with subjects and predicates (“I went to Jarrod’s house”), we think about half of his vocabulary is still Star Wars characters. Distressingly, Darth Maul is his favorite. Not sure what we did to encourage that outcome.

• Frank’s company Opsware got acquired by HP this year, ending his almost 7 year run at a single company—an all time record. This is the biggest company he has—and will ever —work for. It’s a bittersweet conclusion to the years of small camaraderie. But as usual, Frank’s looking for the silver lining. This is the first company he’s ever worked for with a 401k match. Also—anyone need the employee discount on laser printers or inkjet cartridges? (Note to new HP coworkers: just kidding -- I know this contravenes the Employee Purchase Program policy.)

• Fedora continues to work with All Things Creative creating custom printed goodies to help celebrate the joyful occasions in life. And the rest of the time is filled with the all-important mom-stuff!

We’d love to see you in person, so please call or e-mail (or break tradition and send us snail mail!) and come on by!