It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. This summer, we lost Benjamin Aaron Gregory. He was not yet born, but already greatly loved. Good-bye little Ben.
Julie is now pregnant again. Hope and joy, more circumspect, creep back into our hearts. Endless crying, sleepless nights, and mysterious stains on your clothes: a decade ago if you said this was someone’s deepest desire; we’d have pronounced them insane. So, call us insanely happily hopefully anticipating our bouncing baby girl due in May.
Scott
knows that he’s going to be a big brother, in the way that he knows that light
bulbs run on electricity. It’s a mildly
interesting concept, that probably won’t fully sink in until he gets zapped a
couple of times. Until then, he’s happy
helping us shop for a not-so-mini van to hold the expanding family. You see a flicker of hope in the car salesman’s
eyes when (as he invariable does), Scott declares that this is the best one
that we’ve seen so far.
Every
so often, we are mailed a booklet that advertises classes offered within the
community. The classes all have titles
like “Singing for the Tone Deaf”, or “Gift Basket Art”. Well, look who we found inside the latest
issue. Not yet three, and he’s already
a published sports authority.
We
came back from our first Hawaii vacation of the year only to discover that our friends
Ron and Hitomi had up and decided to split the difference between Edmonton and
Tokyo and get married in Maui. We don’t
think it’s possible to tire of those beautiful islands, but we’re willing to
keep trying to find out. Scott liked
the pre-wedding luau, but was more into throwing than wearing the lei.
This
was the first Halloween when Scott “got it”.
He wasn’t up for wearing his costume to be photographed with his
buddies, but one word about free chocolate, and he was suited up and ready to
go. Had he worn it for more than the
thirty minutes it took to extract a bag full of chocolates from the neighbors,
you would see him dressed as “Thomas the Tank Engine”, a train. You can (sort of) see him here driving the
Sugar Cane Train in Maui. He 
reads
train books; watches train videos, and rides the trains like a hobo. He was never interested in building his
wooden track layouts until he first learned how to make them on the computer.
Scott
has the world’s best nanny. Here, she
teaches him the Spanish for “I have sand in my diaper”. One of our favorites is when Scott
accompanies Susy on guitar with his paino and singing.
Here
you see, Scott and cousin John help their Grandpa get jelly beans out of “his”
new toy.
Brent
continues to develop chip design software for Synopsys, and spends time at home
debugging the household appliances. For example, the image on the left was
taken with our digital camera, and it shows the pulse pattern emitted by a
malfunctioning infrared remote control.
This was the the key to the final solution which involved a
strategically placed square of aluminum foil.
Julie continues to manage a
product development group at HP, but this year she has a firmware team. As one can tell by reading the local paper,
HP has been an environment of change in 2001.
Thanks for reading our annual
“what’s up”. We wish you a joyous holiday
season, and a prosperous new year.