Finally! New Pictures!

Sorry for the major delay in posting. I know, I know... EVERYONE is busy. Well today was a rare rainy day in San Diego so we've been catching up on long overdue items, this being one.

Our "stories" in pictures (by popular demand):

In December, we had our new annual tradition - a small wine tasting party where each guest brings a bottle of wine to taste along with food to complement it (or is it vice versa?!?). Picture below is of the (empty) bottles that were served. GREAT idea for a party, by the way! Very fun and fairly low preparation required!



Next, Jamie's 8th birthday party - this year she chose a party at home. We had an animal theme, with a great live animal show from Pacific Animal Productions. Here's our "baby" blowing out her candles.




Also in January (and in February, and in March...) - it's Girl Scout Cookie time! This year Ann is one of the troop's Cookie Moms so we are immersed in cookie paperwork, cookie boxes, cookie distribution, etc. Here's Jamie in sales mode.







Our first major trip in 2008 was a week-long ski trip to Breckenridge. We stayed at Beaver Run Resort, just at the base of Peak 9. The accommodations were average, but the location was GREAT. We skied 5 days and did a day of tubing at Keystone. I never thought I'd say it, but a week-long ski trip was a bit too long. We had allowed an extra day at the end of the trip to make it to Denver (in case of bad weather). We were calling the airline for options to return early, we were ready to play golf!!! But all in all, a good trip. Jamie is very comfortable (but cautious) on the slopes, and had fun in ski school for 3 1/2 days.

We had 3 fantastic weather days, the rest of the time it was a bit gray with some snow flurries. Our last ski day was sunny, almost Spring ski conditions. Jamie got tired of skiing, so Jim and I took turns with her at the resort pool. Great contrast to see her in her bathing suit and Jim skiing up to say "hi" in the background!


Family photo at Keystone... The next photo below is of the Keystone tubing hill. And finally, pictures of our own snow bunny!!!











On our way from Breckenridge to Denver, we made a stop at the Phoenix Gold Mine in Idaho Springs. Greeted by two old "geezers" totally in character with the mining theme, little did we know this would be one of the highlights of the trip! Totally fascinating tour, and quite a famous gold mine, too. Our guide chipped some small sample stones for everyone in the group so now we have our own gold-veined nuggets. I'd totally recommend this stop if you're ever in Colorado.

2007 Holiday Letter

Happy Holidays to our family and friends… We hope this letter finds everyone safe and healthy! It’s been another busy year with work, school and travel. For Ann and Jim, not much has changed in terms of work. Ann is still a VP at Fair Isaac and Jim still a Master Black Belt at Solar Turbines. Ann’s traveled a bit more this year – to the FI User Conference in Lisbon in February with a stopover (for fun) in Ireland. Then after Thanksgiving, she took a two-week trip to Singapore and Bangalore, making Christmas preparations a bit challenging!

Jamie is doing well in school (she’s in 2nd grade), and we keep her involved in lots of activities. This spring she played Little League (boy’s) with her friend Sammy, and Jim was one of the assistant coaches. She’s still taking dance (three classes/ week), is in Brownies and Pop Warner cheer. Cheer started in August with practices 4 times a week for 2 ½ hours each. It was much more intense than last year, continuing with either practices and/or games 4 days a week through mid-November. Ann was the head coach for Jamie’s squad, and though it was fun and rewarding, the time commitment and stress of leaving the office a bit early every day took its toll… so, Ann’ll be watching from the stands next season!

After our ski trip over Christmas ’06 to Aspen/Snowmass, we took one more ski trip to Utah in March. Then we met up with the extended family for Vanessa’s first communion in St Louis in April. Our vacation highlight was a Disney Cruise in the Mediterranean, sailing from Barcelona to ports in Italy and France. Ann’s Dad and Nan joined us so it was a special treat to have the three generations traveling together. We started the trip with a great couple of days in Madrid (highly recommend it!) and then ended with a stopover in Heidelberg.

We were lucky again with the San Diego wildfires in October. We evacuated for just one day – packed up both cars and dogs and headed out… Schools were closed for a week, work for a couple of days – it was a stressful time. Unfortunately, our friends Jacques and Marcyn weren’t so lucky and lost their home.

We’re still golfing as much as possible. We cheer for the Padres, attending about 10 games a season. This year we saw a few traveling Broadway musicals, and headed up to Los Angeles to see Wicked – it was great! Jim and Ann work out together with our trainer on Thursdays, and Ann squeezes in additional workouts over lunches. We’re in the Superbowl next week for our Fantasy Football league – wish us luck!

Fun after a long week

We had a little fun tonight after the long week of fires and disruptions...

We attended Jim W and John's annual Halloween Party. They have a great house overlooking Mission Valley, with multiple levels of decks and a fabulous party bar and patio downstairs. We met up with old and new friends and almost everyone was dressed up for Halloween. Check out our costumes below.
Jim = pirate. Jamie = Lady Bug. Story behind that... every year up till this one, she's been a Disney princess of some sort. This year she's outgrown the princesses. Since our little dog Candy is going to be a bumblebee, Jamie decided on a Lady Bug costume to complement Candy's costume. Ann = Lindsay Lohan (sort of). My intent was to be Lindsay (you know that "famous" photo from May where she was passed out in the car?)? Anyway, I decided that would be fun to do and a friend suggested I should play up the DUI aspect and make a cardboard box "car" to go along with the outfit. Sooo... thinking it would be a couple of hours, I proceeded to spend about 5 hours on Saturday making a Halloween "car costume." And bought the blond wig to be Lindsay. But then even with the extra make-up and wig, Jamie told me that I looked nothing like Lindsay Lohan (leave it to the children to set us straight). So I told her, well, then... I'm Lindsay's mother! So my last minute costume change was from Lindsay to "Mrs." Lohan...

Happy Halloween, all! And good luck with the re-habitation and clean-up in San Diego.

San Diego Wildfires - ash "fallout"

OK so a totally weird but in Ann's view, picture-worthy thing. The ash is still falling, and it gets in pools and makes for very dirty water. And as it turns out, dirty pool bottoms. Below is a picture of our creepy crawler pool cleaner, sucking up the film of ash at the bottom of our pool - you can see the tracks/path it takes as it's cleaning up...

Email update from yesterday

Ann, Jim, Jamie, Cookie and Candy are safe and back home. We were evacuated from Scripps Ranch yesterday around 3pm due to the Witch Creek fire. We were mostly packed, so Ann, Jamie, Cookie and Candy headed out about 4pm and Jim stuck around the house until about 9. We headed down to stay with Bill, one of Ann’s friends from work. THANKS BILL! We tried to make the adventure “fun” for Jamie – so we ate at Corvette Diner last night and had a slumber party with our sleeping bags on the living room floor at Bill’s. I think Jamie was a bit scared, she wanted to sleep in the middle between us so we opened up the sleeping bags into one huge bed and by the time we were finished, she was laying on top of the pile doing “snow angels.” We got some sleep, unlike the night before where Jim kept waking up to check outside…

San Diego schools are closed for the rest of the week. Jim’s office is closed today, Ann’s office is in an area that’s still evacuated so it’s closed at least through Wednesday. We’ll both work from home as much as possible, we have our computers with us. Air quality continues to be a concern, the ash is a tiny bit like snow at this point and from what we remember from the Cedar fire, it will take weeks to clear up and won’t be totally gone until we get several good rains. So, no outdoor activities and keep the A/C running continuously.

We really feel for the families who have lost their homes in this tragedy. We know of two friends so far who are impacted – Marcyn L (Rodney K's sister) and her family (she grew up in New Orleans with Ann) and Tony Z (who works with Ann). We’ll pass along the word as we hear what assistance they (or others) need…

Also, it’s sooo stressful to be evacuated and be glued to the TV hoping for a bit of news on your particular neighborhood and praying. We kept calling our house to hear our answering machine pick up (a good sign!). At its peak (so far) there were >500K people evacuated in the San Diego area. The fires still rage on, the winds are changing now so they are changing directions and are quite unpredictable. We are not unpacking the boxes with papers, pictures, etc., they’re sitting in our front hallway in case we need to evacuate again.

We hear that the news about the fires is sketchy outside of Southern California. If you’re interested in tracking, at least for now the best web site I’ve found is www.cbs8.com. Regular programming is pre-empted here and it’s 7x24 coverage on TV…

Thanks so much for the emails, calls, etc. and sorry I haven’t answered each one individually. We’ll keep everyone posted if anything changes.

Back home again

We were evacuated around 3pm yesterday/Monday. Ann, Jamie, Cookie and Candy headed down to our friend Bill's house in University Park. Jim stuck around the house until about 9pm then met up with us and spent the night down there. THANKS so much Bill!!! After a nice breakfast out (where we ran into another co-worker) we got back to Bill's house and got the news at a noon press conference that Scripps Ranch is back open again. So we headed home and are glad to be here!

Schools are closed for the rest of the week, Ann's office closed at least until tomorrow (the fires are still in the Del Mar area near the office).

We'll email some updates as well and may post again later - Jim took some pictures of the fires in Poway just north of us after dark last night.

We've fine for now - San Diego Fires

It's Monday, we're both home from work and Jamie's school is closed. The air quality is poor so we're staying inside, but for now, all is OK in Scripps Ranch. There are police and tow trucks staged at the local grocery store parking lot, we think they are waiting there in case there is an evacuation order for our neighborhood. Also, the Vons/Safeway was a madhouse around lunch time, all the bottled water gone and lots of RVs in the parking lot (evacuees). Unfortunately, we've heard from one of Ann's friends from New Orleans (Marcyn) and they believe that their home in Rancho Bernardo has burned down. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by this emergency. Marcyn and her family may come stay with us for a while...

We're posting a few pictures, from the good times and bad below...

The annual Miramar Air Show, this year featuring the Thunderbirds... Jamie and I watched from a local park as the planes flew over Scripps Ranch.

This past weekend was the cheer competition for San Diego Pop Warner. Jamie and our Mitey-Mite squad were OUTSTANDING. At her age group, it's an exhibition performance only, but they did great! All three of the competing Scripps Ranch squads took first place in their divisions - Go Falcons!

And lastly, a couple of pictures of the smoke from our balcony this morning at sunrise and from yesterday afternoon when the fires were blowing smoke over to the west.