May 2006

Here's the latest on us . . .

Jensen turned 8 on May 15. He had a great STAR WARS birthday party. I made it to the family party (May 14), but unfortunately missed his party with friends on May 15 as I had to fly out to Chicago on the morning of May 15 (more news on Chicago later). Jensen is almost done with second grade--the kids actually finish on June 1. He will be going to some summer school to help him with reading and math. He has been excited for his Horton grandparents to open their pool so he can play over there with his cousins.

We are getting ready for Andrew to turn 11 on June 5. He, too, will be attending some sessions of summer school. He has made some good gains this year in school, and will be in 6th grade next year.

Brittany finished sixth grade next week. She is big into the "social scene," and has quite a few friends. This last Tuesday all the 6th grade classes from Longview Elementary went to Boondocks, a fun center with miniature golf, climbing wall, go-karts, laser tag, bumper boats, arcade games, etc. I took 4 hours off of work and went with her; it was a fun time! She has her sixth grade promotion on Tuesday; later that afternoon, Jensen has his 2nd grade "Patriotic Program."


We are gearing up for summer, and Cindi is rearranging her schedule to accomodate the kids' new hours. She will work three days a week for Gary, her brother, at his engineering firm and continue to work two nights a week at the GAP.

At Fluid, we have been very busy. I have had to replace some key personnel--they got some great job offers from other companies. We are also bidding on some packaging work for Wal-Mart, which if we get should really help our billables for this year!

The highlight of this past month was going out to Chicago and Wisconsin. Cindi's brother, Carl, lives in Wisconsin with his wife Jessica and their kids. I left on Monday the 15th and Cindi, Brit, and Alyse (Brittany's cousin) came out on the evening of the 17th. I finished up my conference on Thursday and took the "L" train into downtown. The girls were already there with Jessica and their daughter Dasha. I met them at American Girl Place, then we walked the Magnificent Mile (lots of department stores and shopping), went to eat at an Italian restaurant in the theater district of Chicago, and later went to see Wicked.



The next morning (Friday), Carl and Dasha were our hosts. Carl and I walked to see the Bean (a mirrored sculpture shaped like a bean in Millenium Park) while the girls got ready for the day.


We then went to see Navy Pier, and then saw Chicago's Chinatown. From there, we drove a few hour out to the Wisconsin Dells, where we met Jessica and the other kids. The Dells are known for their world famous waterparks--it seemed like a great resort town! We stayed with them at the Kalahari resort and waterpark; needless to say, we all had fun.

We stayed at the Dells for much of the day on Saturday; Carl and I ran 10 miles in the early morning to help me get ready for my marathon on June 3rd. After a day of fun at the waterpark, we went back to Carl and Jess' house, spent the night there, and got up on Sunday and back to O'Hare for our flight back to Salt Lake.

Well, that's it for now! Take care!