Holiday Card 2013

Holiday Letter 2012

To Austin and back again...

Last year’s letter closed with a bit of foreshadowing that 2012 might offer our family an adventure, and indeed it did with a semester abroad in the Republic of Texas!   It could not have been a better experience.  The people we met, the school Eleanor joined, and the colleagues with whom Mike worked – no one could have been more welcoming.  We made new friends, reconnected with old friends, and learned the genuine pleasure of living within driving distance of parents, brothers, and sisters.  Quite possibly, we were overly courted by a Hill Country spring, but Austin swept us off our feet.

Still, we are really happy to be home.   We missed it here with our house, our friends, our backyard, our delicious tap water.   Our time in Austin revealed a few things, including our inner Hobbit.  While the Pacific Northwest inspires a lifestyle considerably hairier and paler than any other, it is also a life grounded in seasons and sustained by a familiar cycle of creature comforts -- on those two points we are quite smitten.  It’s good to be back in our cozy home.

Spending a mild and sunny spring in Texas made possible weekend after weekend of adventures all around the state, but it also gave us a middle-of-the-country perch from which to launch farther flung trips, like a LittleHouse pilgrimage to Missouri and an awesome two week road trip from Austin to Portland.

The second-grade-Eleanor loves math problems, she’s still playing the violin (we’ve made it to Suzuki Book 2 – Hooray!), she likes making stuff, and she loves playing with her friends.  At almost eight, Eleanor is fair, thoughtful, and (as I’ve said before with great relief) true to herself when it really counts.  These days the big news is: she reads like a maniac.  I dedicate a good portion of the time she’s off reading to finding more books for her to read. 

The chance to mix-it-up a bit at work with Austin’s projects proved to be reinvigorating for Michael.  He still works for the team in Austin and as such he spends some weeks here and some weeks there.  We miss him when he is gone, but when he is in Oregon he is really home.  Like, all the time.  He works from our home office now and eliminating his long commute to Intel’s local site has been great for all of us. 

I feel like I spent the year getting lost, shopping for groceries, and getting lost while shopping for groceries.  It was, of course, a bit more complicated and interesting than that but you get the gist of it.  I continue to serve on two boards, one local and one national, I am slowly moving in and falling in love with the new painting studio in our backyard, and I almost never think about the fact that I turn 40 in 55 days.   (I joke.  Usually it seems kind of young compared to how I feel and that somehow seems like I’m winning a race, which is backwards now that I think about it….)

This year required each of us to s-t-r-e-t-c-h a bit.  And for that I’d like to raise a toast to my little family -- especially to Eleanor -- for meeting the challenge with gusto.  While I hear this kind of shake-up keeps you young at heart, and while I spent many a younger year longing for the uprooting kind of adventure, I guess it’s like that country song for me now.  There’s just no better view anymore than that from my own front porch looking in.

And in the words of the irrepressible Bruce Springsteen… may your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love bring us love!

Holiday Letter 2011

We hope this letter finds you doing well!  We are, and life is chugging along up in these parts.  This appears to have been a good year for us to travel, and I have to say that six-year-olds make comparatively fantastic travel companions.  Somehow we managed: Disneyland (because Wisconsin was playing in the Rose Bowl), Sun River (with friends and snow), Maui (we saw humpbacks breach, dolphins spin, and snorkeled with sea turtles), Wyoming and Utah (we hunted fossils older than dinosaurs!), Texas (we hung out with family and watched the last Shuttle launch from NASA), Wisconsin (cousins! cousins! cousins!), camping (beach + biking + staying up late + rarely showering = six-year-old paradise), and a small trek north to Seattle and Vancouver British Columbia (two fantastic aquariums and our first chance to christen Eleanor’s passport).

As summer came to a close, Eleanor lost four teeth in as many weeks and so started the school year looking very much the part of a First Grader.  At six and three-quarters, Eleanor has a strong sense of justice and is very loyal to rules.  Yet, she is enough of a critical thinker to question the rules.  This requires patience.  But as 1) she often makes a good point and 2) the trait reminds me of a number of her kin, it makes me proud and hopeful for her future.  Eleanor learned to ride a bike this year (just in time for summer), she loves school, and she is sticking by the violin (we’re at Etude now).  We like doing math problems and art projects together.  She likes playing with Daddy (always the master of funny voices and creative characters).  Eleanor is a thoughtful and faithful friend.

Mike’s work has really kept him busy this year, with several trips and many weeks of 18+ hour shifts six days a week.  His work may be presenting us with a new adventure…but more on this at the end.  I’ve spent most of the year just trying to cover the bases, with many of my own projects left sitting on back burners.  Here’s to 2012 bringing either more productivity, or more peace with the lack-thereof!  I will point out that 2011 may very well mark the end of “studio construction.”  And when that decade-long chapter finally closes it will be none too soon.  The tear down happened in mid-August; the rebuild has been a chore (hiring a contractor does not = a quick finish); you can see photos online; the new building will be dreamy; and that’s about all I have to say about that.  Ever again.  We hope to have tales from within the studio by next year’s letter.

Now, for the new adventure that isn’t quite print-ready yet but oh well.  We may be temporarily relocating (with Intel) to Austin, Texas, from January to June.  But, we won’t know until pretty much the last minute.  A daunting task for sure, but an adventure none-the-less.  Those of you who love Texas will understand why I’m pretty darned excited about our chance to live abroad for a season (Texas really is a whole other country).  And those of you who love Oregon will understand why we’ll do our darndest to be home in time for berry season.

We wish everyone a year of good health and great peace!

Love, Stephanie + Mike + Eleanor

Holiday Letter 2010

As I’ve tooled about town thinking on this letter, I’ve wondered if it’s even possible for a family with active Facebook, Picasa, and Vimeo accounts to write an original Holiday missive anymore.  With the tid-bits of our lives published in other more pithy and colorful media, does this embarrassingly tenuous tradition (note our two-year lapse in production) stand a chance? 

For those of you that don’t keep up with our online proxies (see appendix B) here’s a little something: 

Eleanor is almost 6 years old, she’s lost her two bottom-front teeth, she’s reading (a little, and it seems to wear her out), and her sense of humor is blossoming.  She’s got a solid grasp on genuine jokes (see appendix A) and those moments when she deviates from standard form are truly delighting.  But still, in her own words, “funny adults are confusing.”  I get that.  Fifteen months ago Eleanor started Suzuki method violin and she’s proud enough of her hard work to love performing for visitors.  (For those of you that know Suzuki code, she is at “Go Tell Aunt Rhody”.)  I think it’s worth noting for posterity that at the age of almost 6, Eleanor can stand up for herself and, conversely, be flexible -- both are issues I’ve worried about in turn.  I’d also like to note she is a kind friend to her fellow kindergartners.

Mike still loves his job. This year he spent two weeks at an Intel site in Israel, a week at one in Austin, and a couple of weeks at sites in California… which really isn’t much traveling relative to someone who travels, but still, we miss him terribly when he is gone because we all do better together.  Sometime since we last chatted, he was given the title of Principal Engineer at Intel, an honor second only to his recent promotion to Accompanist to Eleanor.  It’s a treat to see them perform together (and you can, because there is a Vimeo video for this). 

I continue to divide my time between Eleanor, Arm Bibs and volunteer community organizing.  Since our last letter, I’ve had the rare experience of seeing one of my volunteer projects really take off -- greeted with great enthusiasm, in its first few months Solarize Portland more than tripled the number of residential solar-PV installations in Portland.  It has since spread around the state, and the City of Portland is now licensing the name from me and doing the heavy lifting.   Help me remember this success as I bang my head against a wall for the next decade or so on other projects.

 Now for the rest of our update which, for many of you, holds the only “news” to be had in this letter.  There are two small moments from our year I’d like to tuck safely in these lines for a future unearthing.  Their print worthiness is debatable, but still…

• The rain’s edge. One fairly ordinary day we found ourselves sitting, quite extraordinarily, at the rain’s edge.  After marveling at an unusually hard rain coming down over our back yard, Eleanor and I wandered by the windows in the front of the house only to find Mike casually moving the trash cans as if nothing was pelting him in the head.  And nothing was!  With a visit to the driveway we found our house sitting at the very place where the rain stops.  Or starts, I guess.  Clearly this is happening all over the world, all of the time, but it was the first time any of us had seen such a border up close and so precise.  It was something. 

• Caterpillars poop.  Worried about a lack-luster crop yield from the Red Currant bush the previous Spring, Eleanor and I set out to inspect the thing early this Spring and we found it covered in iridescent green caterpillars.  Covered.  Alarmingly so.  The ensuing investigation as to the intentions of these little guys involved some *careful* caterpillar observation, during which we noticed a growing number of teeny-tiny, royal-blue beads collecting around them.  Speculation varied, but the origin of these beads was settled when we witnessed one actually emerging from the back end of a caterpillar… ploop!  Tiny, royal-blue, caterpillar poop, right in our own hands.  Ok, so having put that down on the page it seems a little lame, and quite possibly inappropriate for a holiday letter.  But really.  At the time it seemed like great luck to witness such a small and fleeting moment.

There you have it, one moment as big as the whole sky and one moment as small as a bead, heretofore un-posted in any media at all.  We wish everyone a year of good health and great peace. 

Love, Stephanie + Mike + Eleanor

Holiday Letter 2009

No letter, but here is some holiday cheer!

Holiday 2008

No letter this year, but how's this for holiday cheer?!

Holiday Letter 2007

Written by Michael

“I am soooo big I don’t need arm bibs, actually”*

This year marked the beginning of Stephanie’s entry into the realm of small business owners.  As of the end of the year, she has an LLC, a website (www.armbibs.com), and an official “order” into the mill for her first full-scale production run of the Arm Bib sleeve protectors.  Wish us luck with sales in 2008!  

“Are you going to be here all day…?”*

Another big event during the year was the arrival of the new chip which I have been focusing on for some time at Intel.  As well as things went to start (it’s in the press… no trade secrets here), the chip caused a few weeks of a completely absent father followed by a month (well, maybe two) of “sporadic” parenting where it wasn’t clear where exactly the weekends landed.  Needless to say, this wasn’t the perfect environment for a two-year old, and led to a couple more months of the preceding question. 

Eleanor attended her first nursery school this year; currently she is going two mornings a week.  Apple Blossom Nursery School gave her the chance to socialize… we think.  Mostly we got reports like the one above on notes that the teachers sent home each day, and very genuine surprise from them when after about three months she suddenly broke out with full sentences (Eleanor is a “verbal” kid, just not around anyone but us).  We do get to hear a few stories from Eleanor about school, although she has also developed a very teenage “it was good…” response to the probably-too-frequent queries from her father.

“Let’s go to the airport!”*

Although there were no big expeditions this year, Stephanie and Eleanor made a 2-week tour of our Texan friends and family that coincided with the annual crawfish boil in May (I made it in for the boil, too).  We also made a pre-Christmas trip (a very, very snowy pre-Christmas trip) to Wisconsin where we all got the chance to meet Eleanor’s new cousins.  After roughly 17 flights in her life, Eleanor is actually getting a bit easier to travel with.  Next year we hope to make her carry her own bags. J

“Once I’m 3 years old, I can eat nuts!  And floss!”*

We can’t figure out the flossing bit.  But nonetheless, we’re looking forward to everything that 2008 holds for all of us.

*Eleanor-eese.  Meaning, thoughts as Eleanor might phrase them.