Christmas Card 2013

Merry Christmas! And welcome to our Christmas newsletter!

Last year there was *ahem* some disagreement about what kind of Christmas cards we should send out and what pictures we should use. (Cute Christmas cards? Do you include a picture with them? How about a newsletter? Can you just put pictures in that? What about an all-inclusive photo card...?) That culminated in not sending out any cards, so if you didn't get a card from us, it's not because we didn't think of you.

This year, though, is different! Hopefully you've gotten one of our Christmas cards. And to save the trouble (and also paper!) of writing and printing off dozens of newsletters that people may or may not care about, I just included a link to our blog where I'd post a newsletter for people who care.

And I see that *you* are one of the caring few! Aww... A special gift for you at the end of this post. If I could figure out how to make chocolate peppermint cookies appear out of your screen, I would.

So here's what we've been up to this year!

Family Adventures

One of the most exciting developments this year was when we found out we were expecting a new baby Sullivan! Baby is due January 24, 2014. We've been very happy with our choices to have home birth with a midwife for our other kids, so we're planning to do that again for this baby. Since our insurance doesn't cover this route, and since ultrasounds are crazy expensive when they're not covered by insurance, we're going to leave the gender of this baby a surprise. We're already prepared with baby girl and baby boy necessities anyway! You can check back on the main blog page to find out baby's name and gender when we do! (For the record, we were both certain this baby was a boy early on, but now we're both leaning toward girl, so anything could happen.)

Joseph in the new car in Lynchburg, VA.

With a third baby on the way and only a small, faithful sedan to our name, we knew we'd have to upgrade to a larger vehicle. Our main requirement was that the car we found would not be even a little bit like a minivan. After a lot of research, we settled on a 2012 Mazda CX-9, a sporty seven-passenger vehicle with a pretty good fuel economy.  After even more research, we found that the particular car we wanted basically didn't exist on the West Coast. The same model and year could be found in larger quantities for $5,000-$10,000 less in places like Texas, Florida, and Virginia. It made the most economic sense to buy a car from one of those places and then drive it home ourselves. Because we have good friends in Virginia, we bought our car in the Washington, D.C. area. With our two adventurous kids, we traveled from Virginia straight through the middle of the country to West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and finally back to Oregon. The entire trip took about two and a half weeks. Along the way we visited friends, stopped in at some fire departments that used Active911 (more on that in the "Joseph" section), took a tour of the nation's playgrounds for leg-stretching and kids' sanity breaks, saw Monticello, visited adorable little towns and local farmer's markets, and learned to be road trip experts. There were lots of charming and picturesque places along the way, but we didn't see anything that compared to our home in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. 

The view from our future driveway.

In fact, we love living in Philomath so much that this year we bought a new piece of property in the same town, only about a mile and a half east of where we live now (in the Neaback Hill area, for those who know Philomath). It's about half an acre in a nicer part of Philomath and on a hillside, so it should have an incredible view of the town, the countryside, and the coast range with Mary's Peak (when it's not covered by clouds) when we finally build a new house. We hope that will be within the next year or two. 

In the meantime, we've still been fixing up our current house. Since buying it in 2010, we (mostly Joseph and his family) have: rewired the house, re-plumbed the entire house out to the water line at the street, removed an old porch and sidewalk, designed and planted a new front yard, poured new front and back patios, insulated and put up new sheet rock in the two bedrooms and hallway, completely torn out and remodeled the bathroom and kitchen, and installed a laundry room and a laundry sink in the garage. Our house is SO much nicer to live in now than it was even when we first bought it! This year, we: installed a new fence, designed and planted a new back yard, put carpet in the bedrooms and hallway, and had someone come to put on a new front porch (that Joseph designed and built) and redo our roof, install new skylights and doors, and replace our icky aluminum siding. The house looks great with the face lift!

Before (top) and After (bottom). Still needs a few cosmetic touches like new paint, but it's already so much better than it was!

Joseph

Joseph during a rare and relaxing weekend at the coast.

Joseph is constantly busy, which is secretly pretty much the way he likes it. There have been some particularly stressful times, but mostly he comes home every day telling us that he is the happiest man he knows and he loves his life. I'd say the year is pretty successful by those standards! 

He is still running two growing businesses. Alyrica Networks is a local wireless internet provider that he helped start about 11 years ago. They've been hiring new employees and have just reached 1,000 customers! However, he stepped away from the day-to-day operations of Alyrica about a year ago to focus on growing his newest company, Active911. Joseph created Active911 when he was part of the Philomath Fire Department and realized it would be much more useful to get information about emergency calls sent to his smart phone rather than listening to a clunky old pager all the time. He designed a messaging system that sent out much more information about each emergency to smart phones and tablets registered to a fire or police department. Emergency responders (firefighters, EMTs, police officers, etc.) using Active911 will get a text alert sent to their phone. Instead of having to hunt through giant map books in their responding vehicles to find the correct address, they also get a digital map in the same text alert that has the emergency location pinpointed, shows information about nearby fire hydrants, etc., and also shows the location and statuses of other emergency responders in the same department so they can see if there are other people on the way. It has been very useful for hundreds of fire and police departments around the country, and has saved some of them thousands of dollars. Instead of complicated and clunky computer systems for their stations and vehicles, they just need some smart phones or tablets and to pay a small fee for the Active911 service each year. Active911 is even used internationally! It's rewarding to Joseph and all his employees to know that they're building a business that is helping people and saving lives.

When he wasn't busy with work, Joseph and his coworkers and some family members joined a local city slow-pitch softball league. Even though he's athletic, Joseph has never played organized sorts before and really enjoyed the experience! He's also gotten pretty good at lap swimming while working out. To relax (as much as someone who loves working can relax), he visited New York City and San Jose del Cabo, Mexico with friends this year.

Nichole

Me and eight months of New Baby

This year I've been keeping busy being the pregnant mom of two very active little ones. It turns out you don't need much more than that to take up all your time. However, I've also been part of an International Moms Group that meets near the Oregon State University campus every week. Most of the international moms are here because their husbands are studying for advanced degrees at OSU and they are new to the country or at least Oregon. Every week we hang out and hear a speaker talk about a child health-related topic while the kids play. Occasionally we have events like cooking demonstrations and holiday parties that are lots of fun. Diana and Liam have been enjoying playing with the other kids (usually between 1.5-2 years old). I also got to take a solo trip this year back to see my friend in the D.C. area and her brand new baby!! It was so much fun seeing them (and holding a warm, snuggly baby!), but a very strange experience to be away from Joseph and the kids for four days.

Diana

Our Diana Bean turned three years old this year! She is a smart girl who loves learning, talking, reading, singing, and alternately spending quiet time by herself and spending quality time with people. We have our struggles- in particular, her eczema, which we are still trying to cope with after seeing multiple doctors- but in general, she is a happy and healthy three-year-old. She knows her alphabet well and can identify all the letters in a word and even sound out small, simple words like "dad," "cat," "mom," etc. I think she will be excited to start reading. She has already memorized most of the stories in her books anyway. She likes the library, playing at parks, and roughhousing or going on walks and stargazing

Diana the flower girl

with her dad. She is beginning to be interested in Disney Princesses (Yessss! Soon I'll be able to justify a trip to Disneyland!), but still loves trucks, trains, and robots. Some of her favorite books right now are, Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site and Steam Train, Dream Train. This year, Diana got to be the flower girl in a friend's wedding, and what an adorable flower girl she was! She loved her "princess dress," and still talks about weddings. According to Diana, a wedding is when you get married, but most importantly, there is a party with cake and FIRE! (Her fire obsession may lead to a career in the fire department like her daddy.) 

Liam

There never was a louder, goofier, happier, more energetic or people-loving boy than Liam. He is incredibly good-natured. He's a year and a half old now, and running and roaring around everywhere, creating happy chaos. He doesn't speak in sentences, but he knows a lot of words and communicates well by using the words he knows and his incredibly expressive face. Mostly he loves to laugh and be with people. Currently he has a small obsession with Elmo and Cookie Monster. He also likes for people to read books to him, but mostly if there are lots of sound effects and hand gestures to accompany the story. He loves his sister, and he loves babies. I hope this will still be the case when the new baby comes along. Right now he has three baby cousins under six months old, and two of them live nearby. He loves those babies. I think he'll make a good big brother.

Our 2013 was full of growing families, growing businesses, travel, home improvements, and happy, busy times with friends and family. I don't think you can ask for much more than that. We have been incredibly blessed. We look forward to 2014, especially meeting the newest member of our family.

And now, for you caring few, a selection of hilarious pictures that we didn't include in the Christmas cards because there was always someone or other who didn't look quite right. Enjoy, Merry Christmas, and have a happy New Year!

This picture would be adorable... if Liam didn't look like he didn't trust the photographer...

Great picture of mom and dad. Diana looks very relaxed and Liam again looks like he is suspicious of everyone.

And, for what it's worth, a picture showing that Liam was actually happy during the photo shoot.

Catching Up: Part II

Joey is BUSY

Joseph has some very industrious, detail-oriented tendencies which he credits to his German heritage. He is, at times, a workaholic. Sometimes it's because Alyrica demands it of him (owning a business is not what everyone dreams it is), but other times it's just because he wants to get things done. Lately he's been working on his latest baby company, Active911.

Active911 is actually a really cool idea. Joseph has been a volunteer firefighter/EMT with the Philomath Fire Department for the last ten years. Everyone carries around these clunky pagers (yes, apparently they still exist) with piercing alarms to let them know when a 911 call has come in. However, now everyone carries around cell phones and increasingly, smartphones. (If they're like Joey, they also tend to lose their pagers/chargers.) Joseph thought it would be a good idea to send 911 alerts from the dispatch center to emergency responders' phones. So for the past seven months or so he's been designing a system that will send alerts to any type of cell phone (iPhones, Android phones, "dumb" phones, etc.) and allow users to interact with other users in their department, letting them know whether they can respond or not. Smartphones obviously have more features: alert messages come with a map that allows users to see the location of the emergency as well as who in their department is responding (or can't respond).

Active911 very quickly took off, thanks in part to partnering to help a system called CADPage, which delivers alert messages to Android phones. Active911 is designed for any type of emergency responder, whether in a police or fire department, but is mostly used by fire departments. They have users all across the country and are adding new departments every day. However, the thing that everyone has been asking about is an actual iPhone/iPad App. For the past two or three months, Joseph has been working night and day to program an Active911 app. I literally mean night and day. He does as much work as he can on it during the day, while being interrupted with pressing Alyrica matters, and then usually programs until sometime between 2 AM-6 AM because "there are no distractions then." I've been trying to get him to sleep more, but he has been really excited about his work. He has started a few businesses over the past ten years, but this one has really gained momentum and is providing a very useful service. I think what makes it really rewarding is that it's something he's interested in and there is a base of very enthusiastic, very supportive users.

At something like 3 AM on May 8th, he finally submitted the Active911 App to the Apple App store. The word is that it currently takes about seven days for Apple to review an app and reject or approve it, so we expect to hear about it early next week. Joseph is really nervous it will be rejected. That would be a shame since it's so useful and the service has so many happy users already, but I think things will be fine either way. If it's rejected, he can tweak some things to make it more acceptable to Apple, and if it's not, there will be a bunch of happy people and he will be relieved and able to work on other things (and I won't have to fight for his attention over his laptop screen). 

Nova

Nova's preferred sleeping position.

When we came back from Mexico, we noticed something had changed about our dog. She was thinner and less fluffy. I think she went through a growth spurt and we suddenly came back to an adolescent dog! She certainly acts more like a teenager. Less puppy-like romping- she has serious energy and needs to really get it out and rough-house with someone. She has also suddenly developed attitude problems. We never had a problem leaving her at home and coming home to a very grateful dog. But in the past two or three weeks, if she feels as if she's been left at home unfairly, we'll come back to a trashed house. Now, she has lots of dog toys. She gets them out of her box and plays with them all day. I don't mind if she rips those up or chews on them or scatters them around. But for every naughty incident she has left her toys UNTOUCHED and completely shredded: the ringbearer's pillow from our wedding, a CD, the instruction manual for our dishwasher, books, pens, a stuffed sheep given to me by my great-grandmother, and she's ripped the eyes and noses off of a couple of Diana's stuffed animals. I'd say she needs something to occupy herself with, but SHE HAS HER TOYS. That sort of thing is on my "Bratty Teenage Behavior" list. Unfortunately, one of the best remedies is more exercise and keeping her occupied, and Joseph is the only one who can do that right now (and he has been busy). I am really looking forward to the time when I can take her for walks at a pace faster than a slow waddle and throw toys and play with her without pulling muscles. She is still a very sweet dog who loves us and wants to get along with everyone, we just have to work on a few problem behaviors before she'll be a really well-behaved girl. 

More Baby

I think I've written enough about how mentally done I am with pregnancy. There's not terribly much to update about the baby until he actually shows himself. He's measuring slightly behind schedule, which gives me this horrible feeling that he'll actually be in there the full 40 weeks if not longer (*weep*), but he's still active with a healthy heartbeat, which is the best thing I could hope for aside from actually being able to see and hold him and have my abdomen back.

The most common question people have is whether we have a name picked out. We really don't care about keeping names a secret since everyone's going to find out anyway. The truth is that we just haven't settled on anything. In the running are:

• William
• Joseph
• Matthew
• Patrick
• Finn
• Lloyd
• Timothy
• Arthur

all in various combinations. Some I'd only use as middle names, some Joseph prefers more than I do, some have awful nicknames... maybe it's a good thing pregnancy lasts ten months since we seem to need all that time to pick out a name. I can think of about a dozen girls names right off the bat that I'd love to use, but for some reason it's really hard to come up with a boy's name. Some of the names Joseph likes seem too grown-up and I can't imagine using them on a little boy, but Joseph points out that "he'll only be a kid for a short while and he'll be a man practically forever." I guess he has a point. Hopefully we'll have something picked out by the time the baby's actually born.