Notes and anecdotes for the holidays

Chicago and Michigan

garciafamily2008 — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:27:30 +0000

Highlight Reel Part IV: Michigan trip

garciafamily2008 — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:10:50 +0000

Uh oh, here it is, New Year’s Day, and I’m not even through June. The highlight of June– besides the end of the school year– was our trip to Chicago and Michigan to visit the Garcias. We kicked off the trip with a few days in the Windy City, which was fun for adults and kids. Chicago-style pizza was a huge hit, as were Millenium Park, Navy Pier, the kids’ first limo ride, and the top-floor pool in our skyscraper hotel.

From Chicago, we drove to the Garcias’ lake house on the Au Sable River in Northern Michigan. On the drive, we had another Recession Vacation stop: Holland, Michigan. The Golden Arches are somewhat different from tulips and canals but worth a visit should you happen to find yourself in the very near vicinity of Holland and in need of fast food.

The kids enjoyed fishing with their cousins Ethan, Tess and Hope, and cooking out behind the Garcias’ beautifully remodeled house on the river. We followed that up with a few days in Bloomfield with more cousins– Merrick joined the mix. A great trip that went by far too quickly!

Spring pictures

garciafamily2008 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:08:51 +0000

Highlight Reel Part III: Spring

garciafamily2008 — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:58:15 +0000

We stayed busy this spring with baseball, ballet and actually taking that much-rescheduled trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa. It was May when we finally went, and actually all the rescheduling had a wonderful outcome: we were able to meet the newest Schechter, Ethan, who was born the day after we would have left had we kept to the original schedule. We stayed at the Disneyland Hotel and had a great time visiting Disneyland and soaking up sunshine. We concluded with a few days at Grandma and Grandpa’s in Vista, along with Cathy, Kyra and Ethan. We took our second Recession Vacation while at Grandma’s– safari on the cheap, aka taking a wrong turn on a golf cart, ending up in a southern California take on the savannah, and being chased by wild geese. OK, no lions or elephants, but some remarkable similarities at a fraction of the cost. Gabi got her fill of rollercoasters at Disneyland, and both kids loved the pool at the hotel.

Alex’s baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, had another great season. It’s a great team with all his school friends and a really nice group of families. Alex made some great catches once again, including a dramatic fly ball for the final out against the Dodgers. The season concluded with a team trip to a Portland Beavers game, at which Grandma caught a foul ball for Alex– one of his all-time prized possessions!

Gabi’s school year-end was capped with her ballet recital, Sleeping Beauty. The girls had a wonderful time and a great performance.

And suddenly, we were done with second grade and had a whole summer ahead of us!

Nutcracker 2009

garciafamily2008 — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:13:25 +0000

This year’s Nutcracker production has come and gone. Gabi had loads of fun playing 2 roles: party girl and mouse. The costumes were beautiful and the girls really enjoyed performing with a company including professional dancers. The kids dance in 7 shows over one weekend– hectic but also so exciting for them!

The Year in Work

garciafamily2008 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:37:47 +0000

Somehow we managed to stay employed and even see some forward progress in the working world in 2009. As of March, Bob had been at Widemile for a full year, dividing time between workdays in Seattle and weekends at home. As the year progressed, he worked on a deal to sell Widemile to his former (Portland-based) employer, WebTrends. It took until summertime for the deal to happen, but since August he’s been back in Portland full-time. It’s true, the more things change, the more they stay the same. However, WebTrends is a vastly different experience this time around, with a new management team and with Bob involved in a new-to-the-company product line. Needless to say, we’re all thrilled to have him back around full-time.

I finished my financial planning courses in August and spent the fall preparing for the Certified Financial Planner certification exam. It was extremely difficult, but the timing is perfect: I took the test the weekend before Thanksgiving and don’t get the results until January, meaning I’m off the hook, work-wise, for the holiday season. I’m hoping to begin with a local firm in January. More on that in next year’s blog!

Our other job has been growing and managing sales of our family wine, Sol de Uco. It’s been both enjoyable and full of good learning, and we really feel like we have started a new business from the ground up. Currently we have distribution in Oregon and Washington, with little capacity to extend beyond those areas. The wine has been very well-received and we’re pleased with the results we have seen. We are finishing up the 2004 vintage and will be importing the 2007 vintage early next year. Most importantly, we got our first paycheck from that business a couple of weeks ago!

Birthday fun

garciafamily2008 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:02:09 +0000

Highlight Reel Part II: The Birthday Month

garciafamily2008 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:47:20 +0000

A picture being worth 1000 words, I will save myself a lot of typing if I can figure out what the kids did with my camera. Lots of fun pictures from this weekend’s activities.

March is the Official Birthday Month of Three of the Garcias. This year we tried something new: Alex and Gabi each had their own birthday party. Gabi had a formal dinner party– a true feat of party planning since she does not actually like to eat. The girls learned to fold fancy napkins, decorate cupcakes, and which fork to use when. (Ask your daughter if you’re unsure yourself.) We had the obligatory fire scare when the birthday candles on all the cupcakes tried to get acquainted with the heavily-starched, fancily-folded napkins (you wouldn’t actually unfold the napkin and wipe your hands on it when it’s folded in a fleur de lis, would you??).

Alex, having thoroughly enjoyed his Grandpa’s birthday the year before, had an Octathlon– eight games of skill and athleticism. Perhaps a Festivus for kids. Unfortunately no MLB scouts were in attendance for the Egg Throw event, in which one boy threw his egg from the far corner of our front yard, along the length of the yard, across the storm drain, across the next back yard and hit the house on the opposite side. Fortunately it was sleeting so there was no danger that the occupants would be outside to catch the guy.

The next part of the birthday plan involved a trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s in San Diego– a reschedule of their attempted trip up here for Christmas, which didn’t pan out due to snow. Unfortunately the second time was not a charm either when Gabi came down with a bad ear infection and we had to delay the trip.

Spring break was spent partly in Seattle enjoying the many activities there. We started our 2009 program of “Recession Vacations” with a trip to the 85-degree Butterfly Room at the Museum of Science– having got in free with our OMSI membership, we realized a substantial savings over a visit to any other place where it was 85 degrees out. Plus we saw tons of butterflies. Another great stop was the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field. We toured an old Air Force 1, a Concorde and several other jets, plus saw all kinds of fascinating old aircraft. We highly recommend this for your next Seattle visit!

Highlight Reel Part I: Winter

garciafamily2008 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:48:10 +0000

We had many activities to keep us busy last winter. Chief among them was skiing! The kids really got comfortable on the snow and we spent some beautiful days up on Mt Hood. January also brought the annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby, an opportunity for Bob and Alex to perform feats of engineering ingenuity on balsa wood. It was also a great opportunity to really give our Dutch neighbors the creeps about Americans! Fortunately Pieter and Harry seemed to enjoy the Pinewood Derby as well and they still speak to us, so hopefully the graphite dust and other fine-tuning wasn’t too frightening. Another favorite winter activity is the annual Sock Hop at school. Both kids really enjoyed dressing up this year!

Pictures pictures!

garciafamily2008 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:44:43 +0000