The Black Ham: Large update, Backfilling the last few months

I am really behind on posting to the blog. There have been a number of times that I have wanted to posted but thought that there was too much to write about and I didn't have time to post anything. Hopefully, I will cover the highlights over the last few months without missing too much.

We stayed in Seattle for Christmas. It was nice to have just our family. We tried a new Christmas dinner tradition of having crab. It was fun and the kids loved it. We will have to see if the tradition sticks.

The kids and Jess were sick in December and January. I had to take Jess to the ER in December because of it. The doctor thought it might have been pneumonia, but it ended up being bronchitis exacerbated by some asthma. It took her a few weeks to get over it, but has been fine since. She has also been going to a doctor about her stomach and reflux issues. She is trying a hefty dose of Protonix, which is seeming to help most of the time. She also found out that she has anemia, and has been taking iron supplements and enjoying some good steaks to help with that.

I flew to Utah the end of January to attend a co-worker's wedding. It was a nice wedding and it was great to see them take that step in their family. A couple of our co-workers from Germany were in town and came down to the wedding as well. One, Frank Becker, stayed an extra day and went skiing with me to Deer Valley. It was fun to have some time on the slopes.

We had a snow day on a Sunday early in February. We took the time as a family to have some fun together. It doesn't snow much in Seattle and it was nice to be able to have some fun with the snow as a family. All the kids loved to throw snowballs and build some snow men.

Sarah and her snowman

Lilly with Snowballs

Jess and Gus

Dad and Gus

Sarah fixing gloves

Lilly and Gus

Lilly

Lilly and I have been skiing a few times. Sarah has come once. We need to just take a ski vacation as a family and put all the kids in lessons for a few days. They are at different enough levels that it is hard to teach them together.

I am currently in Dresden on a work trip. I took Friday off and went with Frank Becker and son as well as Frank Arnold to Austria to ski in the Alps. It was really fun. We stopped outside of Munich on Thursday evening. We headed to the Tux valley, where we skied a glacier on Friday. The slopes were different from where I normally ski but it was still lots of fun. We skied another resort on Saturday lower in the valley, so we could leave to head bak to Dresden early in the day. The rentals I got were really good for carving, so I had lots of fun on the snow. I can say that I have been in Austria, skied in the Alps and seen /skied on a glacier.

Lilly will be turning eight years old on the 20th of March, and she is getting excited to be baptized!
Jess and I can hardly believe we will have an eight year old in the house soon, (makes us feel OLD). Grandmas and Grandpas will be coming to Seattle to help us celebrate, we can hardly wait!!