Good Bye 2008!!

There were certainly plenty of things to be thankful for over the last year. As far as my savings and finances however I will not be sad to see the sun set on 2008. As I am sure many have we have now taken to calling our 401k a 201k since it is at approximately half of the value it was at the beginning of the year.

Additionally our house is down about 20% from it's peak (fortunately it was up a good bit more than that over where we bought it).

Now I am turning to thinking about new years resolutions. In the past these are something I had taken pretty seriously for one reason or another. Lately it has been hard to keep up with them for example last year I had made a resolution to read one book a month (doesn't sound like much I know). But alas I was not even able to keep up that pace.

So now I am trying to decide what I want to have as resolutions this year. Self improvement? Community activity? Something with my church? I don't know yet and it may have to be a "game time call" as they say.

What will your resolution be?

Gone to the dogs

We have really gotten into the grove around here in terms of dog sitting and now combine that with our new flip video camera and we are dog video ready baby!

We've had two dogs around over the last two days - Waters the lab and Buddy the Great Dane and something mut mix.

First we had Waters on Christmas Day when our friend Val brought some yummy homemade sticky buns by as a treat.




Then we dog sat buddy. He and the kids were up early so we decided to take him for a walk.



Later in the day we rough housed with buddy. He is really good at it with a soft mouth but plenty of play!!



Of course this means that he starts to get worn out and lay on the floor. This means that the kids will try take advantage of that and lay on him.



Then Buddy started looking for a more comfortable place to lay down. Of couse he found the couch.



Which was a surprise to me, but apparently Melissa had prepared the couch for him.



Pretty funny! We've gone to the dogs.

"The Road" - Wow a must read

I just finished (in under 24 hours) a Cormac McCarthy book (same author as No Country for Old Men) called "The Road" and all I can say is wow!!!

This book tells a post apocalyptic story of a father and boy moving through America in the bleak aftermath of some terrible world destroying event. It is about the mans love for the boy and their struggle for survival against all odds. It is currently being made into a movie and I cannot wait.

If you like this kind of book (for me I could NOT put it down) I highly recommend it although it is not exactly light holiday reading. Some people call this book depressing however I found it thought provoking. It made me wonder if I could do what the man did for one or all of my children. Could I find that kind of inner strength and resourcefulness. I hope so.

For more information check out this blog.

Merry Christmas 2008!!

We hope everyone is having a safe and happy Christmas!

Here at chez Kreisa we had a 5am (yes you read that right) wake up call from Julia however we able to keep everyone upstairs until 5:50 before we unleashed the kids. Everyone is now happily playing with various toys.

Here are a few short videos from the morning.

Malfunction at the pump?

After suffering through a brutal summer and fall in terms of gas prices it seems relief has finally come! Melissa and I shared a very similar story and you may have experienced this as well. We were filling up our cars and when the pump stopped we did a double take at the price. I was sure that the pump had somehow shut off prematurely. In my case it said $27 which was less than half of the peak I had seen earlier this summer. In Melissa's case it was $44 which was also way down from the peak where I had spent more than $100 filling up in July!

Happily the pumps were not malfunctioning and in fact we enjoyed an early Christmas present!!

Happy happy, merry merry!

In a full pre-Christmas froth!!

I hope everyone is ready for Christmas day at this point! (although I hear there are some fantastic deals at the stores still)

I can say that here at Chez Kreisa the kids (in the prime ages for the event) are in a full pre-Christmas froth! What is that you ask? They have been bouncing of the walls with energy and breaking out into spontaneous Christmas carols all day. I am afraid at some point they might burst into flames and take off!!

Hopefully Melissa and I can keep the lid on just a little longer!!

What happens while I am at work....

Melissa just sent this note about the goings on while I am at work. I thought it was pretty funny!

"They were too quiet. I went upstairs to check it out. Was met half way by Julia who asked me to come up and meet Sharpay (from High School Musical)... Julia and Lea had Nicolas dressed up in a red velvet dress with a purple jacket. They had put my lipstick and mascara on him. They made him sing "Fabulous". He looked lovely...

Then Julia said matter-of-fact, "Hey Mom can you come into the bathroom and help me poop. I have one stuck up there".

My life...
Gotta go to swimming..."

Wow!

Julia the volunteer

By now you probably know that Julia has a few adorable quirks. One that we have not quite figured out has been her desire to volunteer at the school cafeteria. I guess it is not completely volunteer since she gets free lunch but for the record we have not asked her to do that.

Here is some video of her and her current BFF (best friend forever for those that are not Internet savvy) named Kayla where they are working the food line. They are pretty cute with their little hair nets and gloves working along side the very much more experienced food ladies.

Pretty funny! You never know what motivates these kids!

Some overdue pictures

Here are a few somewhat overdue pictures of me and the kids.


Lea and I on the morning we went running (and riding) with Waters. We went about 3.5 miles and both Lea and Waters were troopers. I on the other hand whined constantly. (Brr it was about 38 degrees)

Julia and Lea in their Christmas play costumes from last weekend. They look so grown-up!

Here is a fun little game the kids play with Waters call "drag a kid around the house!" The way it works is the kids grab a hold of one end of a toy and Waters grabs the other. He then proceeds to drag them around while the squeal with delight, which only spurs him on even more. This game is particularly fun when Nicolas is on the other end of the toy and Waters gets up a real head of steam. Watch the breakables!!!

Lea is a snaggle tooth kid!!

Lea is right at that age where she is loosing teeth faster than I am loosing hair! (OK, actually I am not loosing hair but it sounded good)

Here is a picture from today that shows her missing her two front teeth. She has been taking pride in all of the new things she can and cannot do. For example, she cannot suck in spaghetti but she can cram two good size pencils in the gap (against our recommendation of course.) She also likes to consume Jamba Juices via a straw without opening her jaw. She also has a killer lisp at the moment.

Fiddler a little aloof

I must admit that any real musical talent that the family had (and I have real reason to believe there was some) seems to have departed with my gene combo-pack. Still I was glad when Julia voluntarily decided to pick up the violin. She has practice twice a week in which she diligently carries her rented (for now) violin up to school. She does not practice much at home (which one could see as a blessing in disguise) so I know her progress may be coming along a little slow. That said there will be a recital tomorrow evening at school (cough, cough, honey you go, I may be catching a cold and don't want to infect the children). :) It will be interesting to see where the other children are relative to Julia.

Here is a rare photo of Julia actually playing her violin.

Little Man - Not So Good at Keeping Secrets!! (REVISED)

On Sunday I thought I would take advantage of Melissa and the girls being at the Christmas play and do a little shopping with Nicolas. We braved the mall and surprisingly it wasn't that crowded (unfortunately for retailers).

We ended up in one of my favorite stores for Christmas shopping - Macy's and found our way to the jewelry section where we picked out a couple of cute pairs of earrings for Melissa. Nicolas hand-picked one of the pairs himself and he was very proud of that.

We went home and stashed the gifts safely away so that we could wrap them later.

When Melissa and the girls came home we met them in the entrance to our house. Nicolas (bless his heart) was so excited that he ran up to Melissa and to my surprise said "Mommy we got you earrings for Christmas!" I quickly tried to shush him and remind him that the gifts we to be a surprise for mommy. In the mean time Melissa had headed back out to the car to bring some stuff into the house. When she re-entered Nicolas, trying to correct his mistake, ran up to her and said "Mommy, we didn't get you earrings!" The cat was (if it wasn't already) was out of the bag. Now I started worrying that Nicolas would spill the beans on the shirts we got for the girls but he held firm.

Melissa being a good sport just gave me a little smirk and pretended not to hear him. I am sure she will be surprised just the same.

THIS JUST IN on Tuesday!

Melissa just told me that when Nicolas saw her this morning wearing earings he ran up to her and said "Mommy, you are wearing your new earings!!". I guess he still doesn't quite get it! (In his defense they are similar)

My interview with Sundar

A month or so ago I was interviewed by an Indian blogger regarding my role at Mark Logic and in Product Marketing as a profession. He has just posted the interview on his blog Coffee with Sundar.

http://coffeewithsundar.com/john-kreisa-director-product-marketing-mark-logic/

I was hesitant to read it until a colleague of mine assured me that it sounded OK.

Enjoy!

Big busy weekend

We have a huge busy weekend here around the Kreisa house. This is the weekend that the girls have been working towards - the Christmas play. After 10+ weeks of rehearsals and family support the show is on! The play is called "The Silent Bells" and is based on a book by William McKeller an is about a young Swiss girl who dreams of having the bells in the town cathedral sound again after 200 years of silence.

Now Julia and Lea have relatively small parts as villagers but the production (like last year) is very high quality so they are getting great experience.

There was a full rehearsal Friday night, two shows on Saturday and one on Sunday. In addition we had my company holiday party Saturday night at Pampas in Palo Alto. It is an Argentinean restaurant that serves all kinds of grilled meat and was AWESOME.

Anyway the plays have gone really well and we are very proud of our young actresses. I'll post some pictures as soon as I have them.

Exercising my travel deamons

Well after more than 80,000 miles of travel this year I finally experienced my worst travel day of the year during my trip to Boston this week.

It all started with an early flight at 8am out of San Francisco airport. In order to get to my plane on time I had to leave our house at 6am. Things started going wrong when my flight was delayed by more than two hours taking off.

We finally got in the air and things were going along fine. We had our drink service, the movie was on and people were generally settled in at 30,000 ft.

Suddenly there was a pretty strong shudder and thump in the plane. As I looked around and out the window we were starting to turn to the left and lose altitude! Shortly after that the audio and lights went out. Now I was starting to get a little worried. Finally after a few more minutes the pilot came on to tell us that we had lost oil pressure in one of our engines and that we were diverting to Salt Lake City. When we landed all of the emergency vehicles were out and ready for us.

Thinking quickly I actually called the airline to get myself re-booked on some alternate flights. There were no direct flights available however I actually had a new flight through Denver before we even reached the gate! It was fortuitous since they only let the most elite fliers off the plane.

I caught my flight to Denver but unfortunately that flight was an hour delayed too! This was starting to look like the travel day that would never end, two delayed flights and an emergency landing. But there is more...

When I finally got to Boston around 11 (14 hours after I left) my path to the hotel was blocked because our exit off of the highway was closed due to construction. Now we had to go around a long way back to the hotel and there was surprisingly a lot of traffic. Suddenly the car in front of us hit the brakes and although my cab tried we hit the car. Now I was really starting to think this was the day that would never end.

We pulled over and they exchanged insurance info and I was finally able to get to the hotel.

What a crazy day! I hope I have exercised my travel demons for some time!