2008-2009 Christmas update

Dear loved ones,

We hope this holiday season finds you all happy and with loved ones. Although we couldn’t muster to get a Christmas letter out last year, there is much to tell and update you on from the last two years so here’s a letter covering both last and this year!

The last two years have been full of so many exciting events and changes we don’t know where to begin! I suppose we can start by letting those of you who don’t know that Dave got out of the Navy in fall of 2008. He also graduated with his MBA from University of California San Diego in August 2008 to prepare him for a civilian career in business. Luckily, he was able to land a job starting right when he got out of the Navy. He has been working for Booz Allen Hamilton, a large business consulting firm. Their San Diego office does a lot of defense consulting so Dave started with them on a contract to look at how to make Marine Corps aviation more cost effective over the long run. He has really been enjoying it. Amber in the meantime stayed busy with her work at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In March, she completed her third full year working for the federal government helping out endangered species and trying to prevent widespread construction in San Diego from destroying the entire natural environment there. One upside to the downed economy was that most developers have either gone bankrupt or haven’t had the money to move forward with their projects, so Amber’s work hasn’t been as stressful as it was in previous years.

This year we have also had some good travels. In October 2008, we went to Italy for a couple of weeks and saw some of Amber’s friends in almost every city we visited. We started in Milan, travelled up to southern Switzerland for a weekend, toured Venice while staying with a friend in a 15th Century villa, a few days in Rome, a quick hello to friends in Naples, and Palermo before heading home. It was great to introduce Dave to all of Amber’s friends and to her favorite country! Good thing he enjoyed it...so much in fact that he’s already plotting how we will someday find jobs in Rome and live there for a couple of years! Amber also got to attend a great marine conservation conference in D.C. in May 2009 and a follow-up conference in China in July 2009. China was definitely an unusual and amazing country to visit. Her conference was in Beijing where she also visited the Forbidden City, Ming tombs, night markets, and city neighborhoods. Then she went to Xi’an where she saw the terracotta warriors (thousands of life size clay warriors that guard an emperor’s tomb) and Luoyang where she saw the Longmen caves (6 story tall buddas carved into cliff faces). She ended her trip in amazing Shanghai, where old colonial China and modern day massive skyscrapers meet.

In February 2009, we adopted an adorable 2-year old puppy named Maggie. The best we can describe her is a 3 month old Newfoundland with a black cocker spaniel/retriever head. She has the most adorable big brown eyes and has been a wonderful addition to our family. The two biggest pieces of news for us this year are still coming to fruition. The week before Amber left for China, we found out she was pregnant. Made the trip a little hair raising for both of us! But she managed through and is now in her last trimester. The baby will be a little girl and is due March 10, 2010. Up until this summer, all of Dave’s immediate family was in San Diego, but in July Dave’s dad took a new job in southern Maryland and Dave’s sister is applying to get into the Bastyr University naturopathy program in Seattle. We had been talking about moving to Seattle sometime in 2011 to be able to spend time living near Amber’s parents, so having Dave’s sister around would have been fun as well. But life fast forwarded a little and presented Amber with an amazing job opportunity in September that she couldn’t pass up to get back into the social sciences and fisheries management. Best part was that the job is in Seattle! The slightly difficult part was that they wanted Amber to start right away. After a lot of hard thinking about what would be best for our family, we decided that Amber should take the new job. She is now working for the National Marine Fisheries Service as a social scientist. She will be researching the effects of different fisheries management programs on the fishermen in Alaska. It’s as close to a perfect job for Amber as you can get for this next phase of her career.

Since Dave needs to find a job in Seattle now as well, we decided that Amber would go to Seattle to start work at the beginning of November while Dave stayed in San Diego. Amber’s new job has agreed to let her come home to San Diego at the end of January to work her last five weeks at home before the baby comes. She’ll have the baby and do her first two months of maternity leave in San Diego. Then we’ll officially move to Seattle in mid-May 2010. Hopefully, Dave’s sister will move there as well and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to convince Dave’s brother to move up as well.

We are both very excited about all of these new changes in our lives. We can’t wait for the new baby to come. She will be the first grandchild and great grandchild on Amber’s side and the second grandchild and 19th great-grandchild on Dave’s side. Our next letter to you all will have pictures, we guarantee! We wish you all a joyous holiday season and hopefully we’ll see you soon!

Love,

Amber, Dave and Maggie (and baby Cornell)

Starting of new phases

Seeing as though everyone has started doing these blog thingys (that's the official term for them), thought we might as well start too. It'll be a great way to keep everyone updated on the next phase of our lives in Seattle and with our new baby.