Giving Thanks

We hope that everyone has had a happy and safe holiday. As for the Kreisa's we spent our second year helping out in various ways at the Thanksgiving dinner at our church.

We started the afternoon by making center pieces for the tables. Nicolas, Lea and I went over early and gathered leaves and pine cones and mixed them with flowers. Then the kids made welcome placards for each of the 35+ tables set up for the dinner.

Melissa helped organize the driving for about 40 refugees from around the area who were excited to join us at church for their very first Thanksgiving in America.

This community event has been going on for years and is very well organized. There are pre-dinner activities of games then a whole team who cooked ahead of time and then another who serves food and drinks during the meal. More than 300 people from all over town (and all walks of life) come to enjoy the homecooked meal. It is a mix of church families & neighbors, homeless and refugee families. For some it is thier only warm meal of the weekend. The dinner itself is traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes, vegetables, cranberry sauce and gravy. Then a big dessert table which the kids were really excited about!

We shared our table with the patriarch of a large family who just arrived here 3 weeks ago from Bhutan. He was an educated engineer / surveyor in Bhutan for most of his early life. 17 years ago he was forced to leave his country and flee across the border to a refugee camp in Nepal because of the genocide that is happening to his people in the southern part of the country. He was a very gentle soul. He spoke english very well. Here is more on the situation in Bhutan http://www.geocities.com/ben_saul/BhutaneseRefugeesOverview1.html

After dinner, I drove another Bhutanese family home to San Jose and very much enjoyed hearing their stories of how they are adjusting to life here. Two already have good jobs at Fry's and were going to go into work at 4:00 the next morning to prepare for Black Friday (a very strange idea to them!!). They asked all about the traditions of Thanksgiving in America and Julia was able to answer better than I!

All in all it was a really great day. The kids had fun, we all had great food and we were really able to think about and share our may many blessings!

How to cook a turkey

This is a classic email chain that seems to go around every few years. It still makes me chuckle!

How to Cook a Turkey
1. Go buy a turkey
2. Take a drink of whiskey (or scotch)
3. Put turkey in the oven
4. Take another 2 drinks of whiskey
5. Set the degree at 375 ovens
6. Take 3 more whiskeys of drink
7. Turn oven the on
8. Take 4 whisks of drinky
9. Turk the bastey
10. Whiskey another bottle of get
11. Stick a turkey in the thermometer
12. Glass yourself a pour of whiskey
13. Bake the whiskey for 4 hours
14. Take the oven out of the turkey
15. Take the oven out of the turkey
16. Floor the turkey up off of the pick
17. Turk the carvey
18. Get yourself another scottle of botch
19. Tet the sable and pour yourself a glass of turkey
20. Bless the saying, pass and eat out.

B-day on the road - but never alone

This past week I had a pretty grueling travel schedule which involved 21 separate meetings in 2 cities (NYC and Boston). In the midst of all of that was my birthday. Now my family was extremely disappointed that I could not be with them and could not understand why the trip was not planned around me. Needless to say I was disappointed too but able to rationalize that things sometime don't work the way we prefer. I did receive some very nice "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY" voice mails seemingly screamed into the phone at the other end. Those were appreciated and nice to catch in between meetings.

I was also traveling with two colleagues though it must be said they didn't (thankfully) make too much of the affair.

What I thought was particularly nice and interesting was that this was my first "facebook" birthday. Facebook if you are not familiar is a social networking site where you can find and associate with friends, co-workers and acquaintances and amongst other things you can post personal details like family status, contact details, links to blogs and birthdays. I am a pretty open guy so my birthday information is there and Facebook is kind enough to notify people when "friends" have an approaching birthday.

What was surprising were the number of "happy birthday" wishes I got from my relatively modest number of facebook friends, which includes close and distant friends, work colleagues past and present as well as other acquaintances. It didn't matter that I was on the road in the middle of a near death march of meetings, people literally reached out to me from across the globe to give me best wishes (and in some cases medical advice for Nicolas's eczema, thanks Kate!).

It definitely warmed my heart to know folks out there actually pay attention and care enough to take the time. to send me a note.

Thanks to everyone for making my b-day on the road a little less lonesome!

I vow to return the favor as often as possible.

Itchy little man

I've blogged before about Nicolas and his fairly severe eczema. It waxes and wanes in terms of severity and just at the moment it is quite bad for one reason or another. He has been scratching some of his worst spots until they are raw and sometimes bleeding.

It is so bad right now that Melissa has taken to giving him an oatmeal bath every night and we slather him in cream morning and night and it still bothers him. He wakes up in the middle of the night itching and comes into our room where we put more cream on him. We have taken the extreme step of giving him Benedril which actually seems to make things bearable for him.

Melissa is going to take him back to the dermatologist to see if we can get him some more permanent relief.

Help is on the way little man!

Running with doggy

We are once again dog sitting this time with Waters a 2yr old black lab owned by a friend of ours named Val. In high school I used to run with our dog and then again after college with my own dogs Havoc and Griffin.

So I thought I would give it a try with Waters even though I wasn't sure he had done any running with Val or anyone else (we are the first to dog sit Waters). After letting him "do his business" before the run (which was quite convenient) I started off at a medium pace. Waters was a bit confused and seemed to be thinking that surely I was going to stop somewhere at some point and kept hanging back at leash length waiting. I was hoping it wasn't going to stay this way because he was pulling back slowing us down and I was starting to regret bringing him with me.

We worked our way over to the levy near our house and we continued on the 3.5 mile loop I had planned for the day. Eventually either because I finally started to slow down or he figured out we weren't stopping Waters closed the gap between us and ran at my side.

Ultimately he did a great job and I know he liked it because the very next time I went out for a run he went and got his leash and dropped it at my feet when I was putting my shoes on. Of course with this kind of proactive effort I brought him out again and this time he ran by my side the entire time.

I'll have to tell Val how much he likes running, maybe she will take him out too.

Whole lotta nothing...

Today was a day where we did nothing, nothing and more nothing. Because I have been on the road as previously mentioned we just sat around today and everyone stayed in their Jammie's until 4:30 when we made a quick trip up to the video store.

Nice!

Sometimes it just works out

I've been on quite the tear of business travel lately and all of it was to the east coast and beyond, ugh. Travel is usually not glamorous with long flights, cab rides and time alone in the hotel. Every now and then it works out though as it did earlier this year when I was able to go see a Boston Red Sox no-hitter.

During this most recent trip to New York City it turns out I was equally lucky and was able to catch a Broadway play during the trip. We we having a Mark Logic event at the Westin times square in NYC and our new VP of marketing decided she would like to catch a show after the event. Since we were spending probably $60k at the hotel we asked the concierge what they could do. Well the did a lot and comp'd us 3 seats to "In the Heights" which is a 2008 Tony award winner for best musical. The show was awesome and we had fantastic 7th row seats!

You can see a little bit of what it was like by looking at a video of the performance they gave during the Tony awards this year.

The weather prediction for the country - purple

Lately our kids have become obsessed with looking at the weather page in the morning paper. They like to look at the local forecast and they like to look at the weather for wherever I happen to be traveling that week. Nicolas likes to call out the color of various areas which of course normally predict temperature.

This morning there was a happy accident when Nicolas predicted that the temperature of the country would be "purple" today which seemed fitting given the historic event of last night with a candidate who unified more of the country by capturing a solid majority of the popular vote.

Some Halloween Pictures

Just a quick post with some pictures from Halloween this year. We went out Trick or Treating with the Wilde's and so their 3 kids are included in some of these pictures.

Julia was a gypsy and Lea was Bat girl.

Nicolas did change costumes during the day - starting off as Elmo and ending the day as Darth Vadar although he did not wear the mask much.

Enjoy!!

Train(ing) Day

I just got back from a really fun train related afternoon with Nicolas. We started at the Santa Cal train station where we saw a couple of trains coming in and out of the station which he really loved. We followed that up by going to an open house in the old warehouse where they have a large and very elaborate model train exhibit. Nicolas loved looking at all of the rolling stock they had, the trains going through the model towns, towering mountains, rail yards etc. They had a really great display and we spent some time there.

After that, and complete on a whim, we decided to buy some northbound train tickets and head out for a ride. We road up for about 25 minutes looking outside and seeing the sights. We now had to get off at a station and chose a rather barren San Antonio station. It turns out there was little to walk around to and see and we had to wait 40 minutes for the next southbound train. That was the only small glitch in a rather very fun afternoon! Nicolas continually thanked me during the afternoon telling me how much fun he was having. What fun!

The future - weddings

We had a rare opportunity to go to a wedding yesterday for the daughter of the senior pastor at our church. It was a lovely ceremony with about 450 in attendance. We had a seat near the back right on the isle which meant that we had a great view as the 12 (yes 12) brides maids filed in.

As the excitement built for the arrival of the bride I found myself getting a little choked up. I think the trouble started when I looked down at my own two daughters and started to think of the day that I would be the proud father and this would be their wedding. When the very lovely bride entered I was actually having to hold back tears as I projected forward to their day.

Then, I started thinking of the cost of it all and that brought me back to reality and I was glad that this was a day that was many (many if you are reading this Julia and Lea) years a way.

When it happens I am sure it will be wonderful just like the wedding yesterday.