Oh how time flies!  It’s that time of the year again when I look back on a year’s worth of pictures and memories.  What sticks out this year the most for me is just how much the littlest of my two little girls has grown up.  Compare last year’s picture on the left with this year’s picture on the right.

 

And that change matches with my memories of Jaimee this year as well, one that started with a very difficult two-year old and ended with a much more mature and loving three-year old.  She’s still strong-headed, that’s not likely to ever change, but has much more control over her emotions and a better understanding of consequences.  She’s become a snuggler, and very attached to her mommy and daddy.  She’s daddy’s little girl.

We began last year as we begin this one – still recovering from a busy Christmas holiday and playing with out new toys.  Katlyn and I both put in a fair amount of energy in January of this year getting her new fish tank set up and stable.  Surprisingly that little six gallon tank was the most challenging tank I’ve ever started and threw everything it had at us from bacterial bloom, to fish diseases, and uncontrollable algae.  Eventually we got it stabilized, to the point where we even had some baby fish hatch in the tank.  Katlyn took pictures of her fish tank with her toy digital camera.

As the holidays wound down, I went back to work taking on a new role at Open Text as product manager for the flagship product, Livelink.  It has proven to be one of my most challenging roles yet, but one with plenty of opportunity both for me and the company.  The increased travel and general unpredictability of my schedule under the new role has had the most significant impact on Jodie’s real estate career, as she’s found it nearly impossible to respond to both the needs of the family and impromptu needs of her customers without knowing if or when I’ll be around to assist.  In response, we’ve asked Jodie’s mom Diane if she’d be willing to move from Welland to Milton and help us out on a full-time basis balancing work and family.  She has accepted, and plans to move here just as soon as she can sell her house.

The new role has taken me around the world this year, to Munich where I witnessed my first lederhosen fight (and again later in the year where Oktoberfest  got the best of me).  I lost my luggage in Zurich and showed up for a high-level meeting with Swiss bankers in jeans and a sweatshirt.  I traveled to our Chicago office and brought with me a foot of snow which closed down not only the office, but pretty much the entire city.  I visited countless customers all across North America, and my coworkers have coined a new term “pnear’ed” which is what happens to someone when they travel with me, or in proximity to me, and as a result have their travel plans go completely awry.

Photos below:  City Hall in Munich, snow in Chicago, church in Zurich, Steffen (coworker) at Oktoberfest

 

We got in some pretty good personal travel in 2008 as well.  In February, we took the entire family to Florida once again to join Grandma and Grandpa Near at a condo on the beach in Fort Myers.  Katlyn spent as many waking hours as possible hunting for shells on the beach, and has asked several times since the trip why we can’t move to Florida.  In between the relaxing, we also took some day trips into the Everglades and a few trips into the city.  On the municipal pier, it was amazing just how tame all the birds were as they waited on the dock for fishermen to pull in something too small and let them eat it.  Katlyn decided (likely at my urging) to see if she could touch one of the pelicans, and it bit her on the leg.  No damage done other than some emotional trauma.  A school of dolphins kept swimming right up close to our beach fishing, and Jodie was determined to touch one of the dolphins (ignoring the possibility that her hand might look like fish to a hungry dolphin).  We all had a great time in Florida, and the kids are very disappointed to hear that we’re not going this year.

      

In July, Jodie and I headed off for Hawaii to take part in Sarah Jones’ wedding to Geoff Evason.  While there we learned how to surf, went scuba diving forty feet below the surface, and drove around the entire island of Oahu.  We enjoyed a good many evenings at the “estate” that Sarah and Geoff’s families had rented where we hung around a pool overlooking the ocean with the rest of the wedding party.  Being plane geeks, Sarah’s father and I particularly enjoyed watching the comings and goings of the Marine base on the other side of the bay.  The wedding was a nice little ceremony on the beach, and after spending a week together was particularly memorable to be sharing the moment with newfound friends.

With the remaining weekends of the summer, we did get an opportunity to go camping a few times.  We mostly took advantage of the Canadian long weekends, and escaped to the New York state parks which weren’t quite as busy as the campgrounds on this side of the border.  Incidentally, we were joined at Letchworth this year by my stalker who I later caught up with over coffee to discover he’s a pretty normal guy.

We also got hooked this year on a new hobby called Geocaching.  Without going into too much detail, it’s a game where you hide containers (aka caches) all around the world, and use your GPS to find other people’s caches.  The girls decorated their caches and hid them here in Milton, each cache has been been found by 44 people so far.  It’s also given us a great opportunity to get outdoors and do some hiking in the woods together.

Other happenings this summer include the marrying-off of my good friend Darryl, my new wood smoker and a pulled pork party for forty-five friends, and lots of baseball/gymnastics/swimming with the kids.

Top of mind for Jaimee as the new year approaches is that she gets to go to the same school as Katlyn in 2009 (albeit not until September).  Katlyn has had a fantastic year at school, and seems to be doing very well on all levels.  I suspect that her happiness is one of the reasons why her little sister is so anxious to join her.  Katlyn’s senior kindergarten teacher, Mr. Laird,  is fantastic and has worked wonders.  As you can tell from the smile on her face in the first day of school pictures, Katlyn really loves school.

At Halloween this year, Jodie and I both went a bit crazy with our projects.  Jodie did an amazing job decorating pumpkins, prompting pretty much all of the adults who came by to make note of them.  For my part, I spent a little over a week preparing for my Halloween costume.  I grew out a beard and dressed up as my coworker Nick, also taking on his online persona via twitter, messenger, and facebook.   Both Nick and I had a really fun day with it.

Fast-forward to Christmas, which I’ve written a fair amount about in the last few days.  It’s been a snowy Christmas, and we had lots of fun playing outside in the white stuff this year.  Today I built an ice rink in the back yard, and with temperatures at about –15 degrees tonight I’m hoping it will freeze over in time for us to get some use out of it before heading back to work.

This has been a good year for us.  We count ourselves lucky to have had the happy and healthy year that we did, and we feel for other families who may be struggling during this global economic downturn. 

I leave you with this video that we took with the kids as we counted down tonight to the New Year in London, England before heading u p to bed for the night.  Cheers, and Happy New Year!