New Beginnings

Well it's been a long time since I posted. The kids are teens and almost 15 now.  They are so tall, I wasn't ready for them being taller than me (I'm 5'11"). They started high school last month. Last year, we applied to Chicago Public Schools that require tests (and grades) for admission and they both got in, so we bought a house in the city! Then within days my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian/fallopian tube cancer. So the year has been a bit of a blur. She's had multiple surgeries and multiple rounds of chemo since then, which she is almost done with now, at least for now. She turned 78 in May and will be fighting this for the rest of her life unfortunately. Since her diagnosis in March, we've spent every possible break in Wisconsin with her instead of on vacation. 

We "moved" over the summer, but since we are keeping our house in the suburbs (at least for now) we didn't really move that much. We bought new stuff for the new place. Thank goodness for the minivan, though it doesn't fit in our new garage. We are loving Old Town so far. The kids are getting settled in and making friends and getting ready for their first HOCOs. Marielle made varsity dance/poms so we've been doing football season and gearing up for competition season. It's been 21 years since I left the city (26 for DH) so we are being old in Old Town. Today is our 20th anniversary!!

Celebrating DH's 50th B-day in California last November

11!

The twins are 11 already! My how the years fly by! They are fifth graders now. They are both killing it at school. They’ve both taken up the cello this year. She’s still into dance and started at a new dance school last summer. She’s trying out for the school musical this year. He is still into soccer as his sport of choice but is also getting interested in basketball. We had fun watching the World Cup. He’s also really into history and gaming. They both like to join clubs at school.

They are getting so tall and grown up. I don’t think I was nearly this grown up at their age. We had some fun trips this year. NYC to visit my sister as always and then summer back to NY and coastal New England. We are headed to Mexico for NYE and early January. I haven’t been in years and it's the first time for the kids and DH. Yay for new countries!

I just published a post I wrote earlier this year about getting another colonoscopy. I did this partly because I now have an old friend (we started our first jobs out of college on the same day, and later became roommates in Chicago) who is fighting stage three colon cancer at 45. She has a son the twins' age and has been having an unusually hard time with her treatment (surgery, chemo, radiation, etc.). She lives in Canada, but spent the first two plus years of the pandemic semi-stuck in Bali, where she obviously wasn't getting good care, as she had symptoms and nobody did a colonoscopy for years. It makes me angry for her.

And on the cancer front, because that's always a running theme, we lost my uncle Gary earlier this month to lung cancer. His wife, Laura, died of recurrent breast cancer back in 2013, and now their two kids are orphans in their 30s. He's the third of my father's siblings, and first of the four to pass away.

So it's September...

Which is my favorite month by far, but it's been a crazy year for us all. I started a post back in the winter about the seemingly pressing issue (at the time) of the kids trying to qualify for gifted and magnet programming (she did, he missed it by a hair, oh well, it's almost time to test again). Little did we know school as we knew it would be ending soon.

I took the kids on a great trip to Boston for President's Day weekend when things with Covid were starting to look hairy and then the shit really hit the fan. We stayed at the Seaport and the Boston outbreak really took off the week after we were there. Our planned trips to NYC for Spring Break and Nantucket this summer unfortunately couldn't happen safely.

The kids have been home for six months (now two weeks into 3rd grade) and for the foreseeable future, ditto the working husband, and my work project got put off in early April (and just got green lit again today for next month!), so I've been experiencing my very first taste of compensated unemployment, yet not at a lack for seemingly endless things to do. 

We found a new (to us) house in April near our old one and then moved in in June. We bought it from a lovely old lady whose late master carpenter husband built it with his friends 50 years ago and they raised their six kids here and (bless her busy perfectionist heart) she had the whole house completely redone to sell it (so I didn't have to!). We were thinking of building new, out of desperation, but I didn't think I (or our marriage) would survive that many decisions. I couldn't talk the kids into changing schools where we are all happy and the hubs didn't want to relocate either. It's rooms and closets are bigger and it has an amazingly huge yard, which is hard to find in our built up suburban area, and it's been a wonderful change, especially given all the time we've been spending at home. Now we just have to sell our old one of 15 years... 

Where the hell does the time go? A decade ago I was still trying desperately to get pregnant. 25 years ago I graduated from high school and moved to Boston and left Wisconsin forever. My first boyfriend from my new life in Boston just died a few weeks ago. My college bio classmate Maeve died in April, along with her 8yo son. Yeah these are crazy times. We are all still healthy, thank goodness, and my family is going crazy not being able to come see our new place.

The kids have done great with their upper expanders (now out after a long delay, they were due to get them out the day everything shut down), now a retainer, and lower braces. And the lowers come off in a just a few short weeks. We thankfully didn't lose any treatment time even with three plus months of no adjustments.

It has just started thankfully cooling down after yet another record setting hottest summer ever. It felt like a very long sweaty hotflash. Next big project is putting in an inground pool (next spring hopefully).

He's not even taller than her, they are both 4'9" and climbing, it's just hair...

Watch out THIRD GRADE!

Who’s a shitty blogger? (2018 wrap and dump)

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but I should probably make one to do a better job documenting our lives. I completely skipped blogging in 2018.  Oops. Life is pretty good, but busy and exhausting. I should try to make this blog more than the year end letter I never actually write (until after the fact) or send to anyone.

We just got back from three weeks in India, our first visit in five years. My brother and sister in law had another baby last spring (a boy), so after avoiding the trip for several years (we went last after their daughter was born), it became unavoidable, even though I fell deathly ill last time and was avoiding it like another plague. My mother in law last came to stay with us three years ago, so we were a bit overdue. I don’t dislike it there, it just doesn’t seem to agree with sensitive Northern European/Midwestern constitution unfortunately. I was less sick this time than I usually am there, so that’s the good news. Yay for expensive new prophylactic antibiotics! The weather was lovely in Nashik (if a bit cooler than usual at night) and the kids had fun. It’s just kind of boring, as I spend a lot of time sitting around.  I made sure to bring some books to catch up on my reading, which was good, except that there isn't anything else to do. Many of his relatives don’t speak English, which is isolating. One of his many cousins happened to get married while we were there, so that was fun for everyone. Indian weddings are crazy.

Thankfully, we booked our last week to be just us four in Goa, which is a beach resort down the western coast and a former Portuguese colony. I felt like a heel leaving his family for a vacation in India, but we needed it, badly. We stayed at a fancy resort on the sea and ate way too much.

I went out to NYC in the spring to visit my sister, and of course it was monsoon season (per usual). After sixish years in Brooklyn, they finally moved to the Bronx to be near her NYPL branch and because they needed more space since her new husband’s adult son is now living with them (long story). I managed to injure my hip somehow (I always walk dozens of miles when I go), and that has sort of been plaguing me since. I went to an orthopedist (for the Bears, hello overqualified) and of course it’s another mysterious unexplainable problem, so I did many weeks of PT, which helped, but it’s still not great. Besides being annoying, it has also affected my mobility enough to contribute to gaining a good ten pounds, which is making me crabby after being the same weight/size for decades, including for years after having the twins.

It probably also didn’t help that the initial injury coincided with my first/only failed foray into anti-anxiety meds, which I’d started the previous year and my Dr. tinkered with unsuccessfully for months. They did nothing. So while I should be exercising to help not be a nervous hot mess, I have pain simply walking. My problem hip is my left where you may recall I spent four months residing back in 2011. Payback time isn’t a good time.

We took my mom and eldest sister with us on our summer vacation to the Hamptons this year. My mom has been doing a lot of genealogy research the last several years, since she left her job as a nurse to be a caregiver for my grandma, then my sister, and her grandkids, and most recently my late step dad. Unfortunately most of it since she lost her mom, who would have gotten a real kick out of all she’s found. She had mentioned the previous year when we were there (without her) that we had some connection to Shelter Island (which none of us had ever been to), but didn’t elaborate until we got there this year.

Well it turns out, across the shortest ferry ride, we had ancestors who owned the whole flipping thing!? We went together to visit Sylvester Manor, which is still there even though most of the land was sold long ago. And that was just the beginning. So the big news is I’m now working on a book on our Brinley ancestors who also owned huge swaths of Newport, RI, Boston, and NJ from the 1600s, because why not take on a ten year project. It gave me some serious direction and work for my September solo trip to New England, which I likely would have taken anyway, but was pretty mind blowing. Planning on NY/NJ next, with England to come.

I literally used to walk every day past Boston’s King’s Chapel cemetery (its very first), from one crappy job to the next, where my ancestors were buried and have a historical plaque proclaiming them “the richest Bostonians of the 18th century” (turns out their portraits are hanging in the Met for crying out loud), and a couple generations back further (to the immigrant one) were the same for the 17th. Just three centuries of Harvard guys. Well that’s about 25 years too late a discovery to be helpful to me. Oh well.  I used to row early morning crew on a river named for the King of England who my 10th great grandfather worked for. Remember I was a scholarship student, whose family barely went to state schools, and thought I was crazy for picking up and moving to Boston. How’s that for mind blowing? Oh and they are also my familial link to the current British royals (via the late Queen mum).

Sagar started a new job in late September, which seems to be going well. The whole process took awhile, but I think it's better. He was done after nine years at his old firm, which was well past ridiculous. The new one is a great firm where he is building their public practice from scratch. It's big time and I'm super proud of him. Of course they also offer market leading infertility benefits, and irony is never lost on me. Too old for that shit, but it did cross my mind for about a nanosecond.

I also turned 42 in late September, which should/would have otherwise been an uneventful Monday. But that morning, my boss/client/whatever you want to call him called me at 9am right after I’d sent him an update email on our project to tell me the evening before his wife (of nearly 30 yrs) had stepped in front of a train. He was still reeling and waiting for their three grown kids (b/g twins + another daughter) to arrive home from all over to be with him. Talk about sad. I had only met her once briefly when they hosted a party for the team at their old home in Barrington Hills back when he was my CMO. I didn’t know she had a PhD and was a clinical psychologist. Just goes to show that you can “have it all” (and be a mental health professional) and still have and succumb to serious mental illness. He is the nicest guy (and basically my professional benefactor, as I’ve been able to work from home on my own hours making beaucoup bucks for the last three plus years because of him), and I’m just glad I was in a position to completely take the project over, so he had one less thing to worry about. Probably one of the saddest funerals I’ve ever been to, and for someone I didn’t even know. I just can’t imagine. Now I get to feel guilty for having my best year yet, and for making a bunch of extra money because his wife killed herself. Mostly using it to travel, which it seems she would have liked.

The twins just turned seven, though as always, the celebration is a month long as their big party was later in January, after all the holiday/break craziness dies down. They are both loving and doing great in school (1st grade), though I’m already worrying about fall when their regular trimester testing will determine if they get tracked for the magnet program (at yet another elementary school for 3rd-6th, and our neighborhood middle for 7th-8th), gifted (at their current/each school), or regular acceleration (which they have now).

She is consistently on track to qualify for magnet (98%ile or higher for both math and reading), while he is right on the cusp for the gifted program (95%ile plus). These are the same kids who didn’t do much “on time” folks, in case you are wondering how relevant most milestones are. So now I’m faced with separating them potentially (worst case), and while they have been in separate classes for three years (and separate preschools back in half day pre-K), it's not the same as a separate school, I'm not thrilled with the prospect. I wish they could stay where they are and get what they need, at a school of our choosing, though the magnet school is another great school of choice (it’s thing is Mandarin immersion, though I don’t know yet if the magnet kids automatically get into that program or not). Two schools with two different schedules (ours now is late start) on two different buses, on different ends of town isn’t ideal. We could move to get him into the school, though that would likely separate them for junior high, and feeds to a different high school, or I could apply to them as a choice school, but the decision would be due before she finds out. Ugh. Maybe we’ll be cramming for 2nd grade testing this summer like a bunch of fools. They don’t send a new group into each program until 5th, if they don’t make the cut for 3rd.

Finally took them to the pedi for their 7 year visit now that we are back and they are continuing off the charts tall. Operation try to chub up the kids continues.

Hence my main genetic offerings, smart and tall. Rock on giant geniuses!

Obligatory year end post (2017)

Well hello there.  I had started a back to school post back in September, but then life got really crazy and it didn't happen.  The kids are doing great.  They just turned six and they are growing like weeds and losing and growing teeth right and left, and loving their new school.  We seriously won the lotto.

We lost my step-father in mid-October at the age of 64.  I still haven't fully come to terms with his passing, as it was very sudden at the end.  He was cruising along with his (stem cell inhibitor) clinical trial and chemo (though he'd lost a lot of weight) and then in late August, he got his first bad scan since January (when he first got into the trial).  This indicated that his aggressive cancer was not going to cooperate and since a bad scan gets you kicked out of a trial (insult meets injury), he wanted to qualify for another (this one immunotherapy) at Mayo, that he got into in September.  But it was sadly already too late.  He was willing to do whatever he could to get to watch his grandkids grow up.

We got to be there at the end.  It was eerily like my grandmother, who passed when I was pregnant with the twins, though she got an extra 30 years.  Within a few hours of our arrival, he was gone.

Dave became my step-dad when I was 8, a role he took seriously for the second half of his life and the vast majority of mine.  He loved us like his own, which was no small feat.  He saved us.

He met my mom when I was my kids' age and starting kindergarten and she was starting her new life.  She's doing as well as can be expected.  We just took her and my eldest sister on vacation with us, which will likely be how we do it for awhile, maybe forever.

It's overall been a pretty shitty cancer year for us.  My brother in law lost his dad and my step-mom lost her mom (both to metastatic liver cancer), and I lost a 40 year old high school friend and the twins' best friends lost their grandma who we saw every week at dance (both to metastatic esophageal cancer).  My kids have been to more funerals just this year than I did in my entire childhood.

I had my best year professionally since I went out on my own, but now that the kids are in school full time, I'm thinking of going in-house full time.  I will never be satisfied.

Speaking of that, we finally went to see Hamilton for our November anniversary. It was great.  Get the soundtrack, it's at least half the experience.

Wait for it

Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes
And if there’s a reason I’m still alive
When everyone who loves me has died
I’m willing to wait for it
I’m willing to wait for it

Well hello...Summer

Summer seems to start earlier every year, so we've been trying to make the most of May.  My step father is still fighting his cancer, and undergoing chemo and his clinical trial, but since he is still feeling ok (and his latest scan, the week of my sister's wedding, showed his aggressive tumors are shrinking), we decided we should all take a little trip together. 

We went over to Holland, Michigan for the final Tulip Festival weekend and had a great time.  The weather was amazing, which made up the many of the flowers being past prime (again those earlier summers).  Our twins found two random flowers all alone and we declared them the twins.

The kids finish up preschool (forever!) next week and then their fourth year of summer camp (now up to four hours/day, yay!) starts right away, which is great because I've been keeping busy with work (my biggest project yet, a repeat of one I did last spring, but this time I'm doing it mostly myself).  It should wrap up at the end of June and then we are headed back to the Hamptons for the week of the Fourth, since back to school (kindergarten!!) events in mid-August required a rescheduling of our usual vacation time.  No showhouse for me this year, as it starts in late July. :(

The kids are doing great and while it's been crazy, I'm so glad that they each got to go to their respective schools this year.  We've met tons of new friends and are super excited about our new school. They will be in different classes since they always separate sibs, but they are old pros and will have some things together, including the bus rides.  They will be 5 1/2 in a few shorts weeks.  The time does fly my friends.

I'm working on figuring out what to do with myself come September when the kids are in school full time (~9-3 plus bus time).  I may do contract work while we get used to the new schedule, or if something great full time comes along, I may do that.  Anything to avoid all the home projects that still don't get done with kids in school just over two hours a day.  Ack!  I'm really not looking forward to finding someone to come help us in the afternoons/evenings (see also: why I'm still a SAHM) for when the kids get home, making dinner, watching them until we get home.  Ugh, time to bit the bullet after I procrastinate most of the summer.

Happy Memorial Day weekend!  Happy Summer!

Amazing News!

Enjoying our first snow in three months

(which is already gone a few days later)

I've droned on for years about the kids' schools and I've been researching them even longer, since we've lived here nearly a dozen years now.  It's hard to believe that they are starting all day kindergarten in just five short months.  We registered at our neighborhood school (a STEM academy) last month, and then had to apply to enter a lottery for our top choice open enrollment school.  It was seriously more nerve wracking that anything I've applied for myself.  I had to write essays, though it was supposedly a straight lottery, so it drove me crazy that I couldn't do anything to up our chances.  And given we had two who had to get winning numbers (or we'd have to decide to split/try again next year if only one did), and how low acceptance rates have been in recent years, it was even more unlikely.

By some random act of luck, we found out yesterday that they were both accepted.  Unbelievable.

Beyond being ranked in amazing company (I'm looking at you Chicago's Classicals and the suburbs' best), it is a smaller school (about half the size of our neighborhood school), all while being K-8 (bye bye middle school hell), super diverse, with mixed grade classes and a curricular focus on multiple intelligences.  It's starts/ends later than other schools, and they'll take the bus together since it's several miles away, but conveniently located otherwise.  It's basically like private school, without the bills. I will not miss having them in two different schools. 

We literally don't have to worry about where they are going to school again until high school in nine years.  We also love our neighborhood school, if for some reason it doesn't work out.  I wish I could say my work here is done, but of course it's all just the beginning.  And I wish I could claim some credit, but unlike conceiving, carrying, birthing, nursing, getting them to finally walk and talk and potty train (by force), there wasn't a damn thing I could do.  Craziness.  Now we may never move, since we'd have to stay in district anyway.

Work is keeping DH super busy, so he can't take off for a proper spring break. :(  Instead, I'm taking the kids up to visit family in sunny WI, as my step-father is still fighting his cancer valiantly (it has spread quickly and he's now doing a clinical trial as well as more chemo) and they love nothing more than their cousins.  Then I head to NYC for my solo spring break.  Can't wait!

New Schools and Year

It's been a hot and busy summer around here, so I've been off the blogs.  Living and loving real life.  Lots to update:

Marielle has already started at a new school, a local Catholic elementary, as it offers preschool for the same odd partial day that her brother will be in school.  It's her third and last year of preschool, though she'd be ready for kindergarten, if only she were a wee bit older.  It is also likely where she'd stay if we were living here and going private for elementary, but our public schools are crazy top notch (all their schools and others they could attend made this and all lists, which is another reason why we still haven't moved, our district is now amazeballs), so she is likely just going to the one down the street next fall.  This serious little girl is so big and just had to have her cardigan on and buttoned.  She just slays me sometimes.  You should have seen her dance recital, a total pro.

Alistair starts this week at yet another new preschool for his last year, the school district's, after I decided to get him assessed last spring.  He's always been a little slower than his sister (walking six plus months later, potty training a year later, etc.), though not behind his boy cousins, but she is a speedy one, so we weren't that concerned.  He's always been a leftie and sensitive (to sounds, bright light, temperature, feelings in general, etc.), and has had more trouble writing (switching back and forth/ambidexterous, less overall dexterity) and dealing with transitions.  I'd heard good things about the preschool, so we decided to give it a try.  They don't have stringent qualifications if they think they can benefit from help, so even though he has done fine in his other schools, we are hoping that some occupation therapy and extra help will get him really rocking and rolling to begin the all day kindergarten down the street arm in arm with his sister next fall.  He's also taking the bus, so that will be another exciting adventure.  My big brave boy is so excited!

After I put him on the bus, I felt jittery and thought I was really losing it (it's his first ride alone, but his third year of school).  But then I realized later when it didn't subside that I'd mistakenly had some caffeine, which totally wigs me out.  There should be some sort of disability program for mothers with low caffeine and alcohol tolerances like I have. 

My step-father's prognosis is sadly pretty grim.  He is doing well with his regimen of weekly chemo and daily radiation, but his surgery in a month or so to remove what they can of the very large tumor will be very debilitating and long term survival rates are low.  He is continuing to work as long as he can, as he wants to/can, and we are all just taking it as well as we can and we are spending lots of extra time up north to visit.

We just got back from visiting the Hamptons via NYC and Pittsburgh to beach it up and spend some time with my sister and her boyfriend (now officially fiancé, wedding date pending).  Lots of great fun, but enough for its own several posts...someday.

I've already completed a whole new project with my former CMO for the same client as the last.  And we have another international one for them on deck.  Working from home, on my own schedule, making bank with no overhead, using my brain and skills, not selling anything or abusing my social networks. Life is beautiful, so I'm riding this gravy train as long as it lasts.

We finally decided that we are in fact taking a trip sans twins for our tenth anniversary and my 40th birthday next month.  My mom will be busy travelling for her 50th high school reunion (though thankfully for us, my dad was opting out), so my dad and step-mother are coming down and taking on the kids for a long weekend, so we can get away.  We went back and forth about how far we were comfortable going (a few hour direct flight) and for how long (a few days) and also where (since we've been most everywhere within that proximity), but we settled on Savannah, since we've both never been and it's supposed to be fun.  We had such a great time with just an overnight away last year for DH's 40th, you'd think we'd do it more.  We can't wait!!

Exciting (school) news!

As I continue to ponder whether to send the kids to preschool before next fall, this is definitely for the annals of nerdy suburban parent, but exciting none the less.  Remember when I posted about the top rated math and science academy (M&S) in our district (10 minutes away) that the kids could go to instead of our neighborhood school?  Well...  Now I've just learned the district is turning our neighborhood school (three doors down) into another M&S academy!!!  This is what gets two STEM major parents really excited!!

Besides the curriculum, I'm hoping this will help boost our school's numbers, like it did for the other M&S school since it ends up turning it into a quasi magnet school.  Not that ours is a slouch (up to top 8% in the state) but the other M&S is up to top 5% (and top 20 of all in suburban Cook Co.). NB: It worked! We are up to top 3%!

I was also interested to learn that our district offers open enrollment for elementary schools with dual language/immersion programs in not only Spanish, but also Mandarin and Japanese.  They also have a school with mixed grade classes, which makes skipping grades much easier.  I was in a 1st/2nd grade combined class, which my mother still laments not using to my advantage.  But how on earth do you choose just one of these?!

The powers that be are really conspiring to get me to stop plotting out land in a top 1% horse country district nearby...  Well it's great news whether we stay or sell...

Good school hunting

As I am looking at pre-pre-schools for the kids, it has gotten me thinking about real school, like kindergarten (hold me).  As I've mentioned, when we bought our house in 2005, we didn't think we'd still be here when our kids went to school (and still may not be), even though there is a grade school just a few doors down from our house.  I knew that schools were important even if you aren't planning to use them (for resale, if nothing else), but given our haste in buying and other considerations (location, layout, room to grow, etc.), I didn't do even cursory research on our schools.

Count me lucky again, as I've discovered the site Great Schools which compiles ratings on all public schools.  I found our elementary school is a nine (now a ten!), middle school a ten, and high school a nine.  Our district also allows kids to attend any school in the district (not just the closest) so they could attend one of the several higher ranked schools, including the nearby public math and science academy (one of the best schools in Cook Co.) which is a ten.  Given their parents, this will be most likely be the twins' inclination, but we are obviously looking forward to nurturing their other interests as well. There is also a "10" high school in our district, which my artist aunt just happens to have attended.  I realize there is more to a school than these metrics and that many love schools that are not top rated, but I think it's helpful to have some sort of measure to know what are looking at instead of just going by other people's opinions.

It is also important to me (and DH) that they attend a school that is diverse (something that my education before college was seriously lacking, save the Hmong refugees the Lutherans in our town brought in).  The ironic thing about schools is they are usually reflective of the parents as much as the kids (or even the teachers, as important as they are). Highly educated and/or high income parents tend to have high performing kids (very broadly speaking, of course) and these people tend to cluster in specific areas (of million dollar homes, in Chicago anyway). Many of the schools in more upscale suburbs are top rated, but they also typically have less diversity.  Our district is fairly diverse, the schools are about 1/3 non-white, mostly Asian, which is a plus in my book.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the schools I attended (beware, this site is highly addictive).  My grade school and middle are eights and high school a seven (now six, four, and seven, respectively), among the best in our district.  Even in the advanced program, I was bored through most of school (one of the more reasonable reasons my sister is home schooling).  Had my parents been more proactive, I probably should have been skipping grades or getting scholarships to prep school, but instead I was making the most among peers who thought drinking and driving was a legitimate extracurricular activity (it was Northern WI, after all).

So check out the site...  How are the schools you went to?  The ones you are planning or hope to send your kids?  Were you surprised by their ratings?

Without great challenges, there can not be great victories

For anyone following my blog since I started in January (and even for those who have hopped on since), you know it's been quite the challenging year for us, to say the least. So as part of wrapping it up at the end of the year (how did this happen, BTW?), I've paged through my blog to help remind myself of all that we were up to this year. :)

Of course, the main focus of our year (and of this here blog) was the same as the last two. Getting us pregnant. And we did it! (and just in the nick of time). It took a few more surgeries and a few more cycles and few more doctors (and a lot more tests) and more than a few setbacks, but we finally did it. And for this, we are eternally grateful.

I skipped the year-end letter again this year, and we aren't announcing officially until February, but here are some other things we managed to do in 2010, in no particular order...

School:
I finished my executive business program at Notre Dame in February and took an interior design class for fun in the fall. I'm on hold for further classes now, due to my pending work travel schedule.

House:
Not much new this year, just bits here and there, after lots of big projects the last few. Our big feat was waiting patiently for a new exterior paint job (which we got courtesy of the HOA in late summer) and we are still working on our radon issue that we discovered this year. Most mitigation systems actually lower the value of the property, so we are still debating exactly what to do about this. Next project, the nursery. :)

After an unnecessarily long refi process, we closed on a 15 year fixed mortgage at the beginning of the year and have since saved a ton on interest (which will be fun at tax time) and paid off a good chunk of our remaining principle. Five years ago, our plan was for this to be our seven year house, but given the unexpected delays in starting our family and the eroding housing market, we are sitting tight for now. Thankfully, we've got plenty of room to grow. :)

Health:
Not a great year on the health front, as I was on a ridiculous amount of meds and had tons of awful s/e (ironically entirely from my two surgeries, rather than IVF). I had a random health scare in August that led to all sorts of trouble and then the mammogram in Sept. While we ended up okay, it was a tough run. The good news is we've conceived what we plan to be all of our children (before 35!) and don't plan to undergo any further treatments, with a likely FET in late 2012.

Family:
It was a really tough year for us on the family front. We lost S's dad very unexpectedly, which was made all the more tragic that we had all been waiting for a baby for them to come all the way from India to visit us again. My grandma K was dx with terminal cancer and my sister S was dx with stage 1 cancer.

Travel:
This got skimped on this year with all we had going on. We made a work trip for DH into a ski trip in March and did our best at Deer Valley in Utah. We made another work trip for me to NYC into an IF trip to see Dr. David in June. Our only "real" vacation was our week on the Cape and Islands when I was post-op in August, but this was sadly overshadowed by my own and family health issues. What was supposed to be a vacation to India (and the Maldives), was instead a funeral trip. Since I took my LOA from work for IVF unpaid, I was able to roll over the one allowed week of PTO to next year (for a total of 7, so maybe we'll take a mini-vaca before baby?) and have cashed out the other.

Money:
We opened another 529, this time for baby S, paid off the last of my student loans, and stepped up our savings and retirement contributions to the Roth IRA and 401Ks. We've been making double payments on both our new cars for the last year and are on track to have them paid off at the end of 2011, as to rid ourselves on all non-mortgage debt and give us a cushion for me to stay home and spend time with baby.

Charity:
I was nominated and served on the executive committee of one of my fave NPO's board through the end of the summer, which was a huge time commitment, then I opted to take a one year leave of absence from the board starting this fall.

Work:
Through no fault of my own, stagnation is the name of the game on this one (my sales campaign has been pushed back, yet again), which is one of the many reasons why I will be leaving my high paying, but highly unfulfilling and frustrating, job after I cash out on my mat leave next fall.
DH's industry is not doing great in this economy, but despite this he has had some big wins at work (often against his old firm ;)) and is well positioned to have a good 2011.

Now on to the new year when we have few set plans other than to have a hopefully healthy baby (and a newly minted U.S. citizen husband!) and enjoy life! :)

Vancouver Olympics begin, school done!

Oh how I wish we were in Vancouver... We loved it when we went in 2007. We made it up to Whistler (though it wasn't ski season :() and over to Vancouver Island (for an old friend's wedding). We enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies last night, though of course I fell asleep before the end. So tragic about the Georgian athlete who died yesterday, I refuse to watch the footage of the accident that has been so callously distributed.

Now we are off to the city to celebrate V-day, which since I left the plans up to S means 'Avatar' in 3-D IMAX and dinner at Tizi Melloul.

Great news! I finished my executive mini-MBA coursework yesterday, and with two weeks to spare! Yay!

What we're doing when we aren't getting pregnant...

So I wrote a "holiday" letter for 2009, but couldn't bring myself to send it out because it marked our second holiday letter that wasn't announcing that we're expecting a little one. So I thought I'd post it here so you could see what we did last year, when we weren't getting pregnant...

"Dear Friends,
We hope this update finds you all doing well and enjoying the holidays with family and friends. 2009 was another very busy year for us…

After nine years with TS, S started a new job in May as a senior engineer with SC in Chicago. He is working in business development and helping them build their transportation practice. Even with the stimulus spending, it’s been a tough time for infrastructure projects, so we are hoping things pick up in the new year. After passing his professional engineer exam last fall, he also passed his professional traffic operations engineer license exam this spring, so now he can now put all of P.E., PTOE after his name, which I like to tease him about. He also started his own business last year, MME, which has gained momentum in 2009. He is the U.S. sales rep for pedestrian simulation software firm SS, based in Switzerland. He pitched to NYC Transit, sold their software product SimW to a professor in Canada and is now working with a consulting firm in Atlanta on the design of an entertainment complex in Saudi Arabia.

After two years with A, I started a new job in October with Z, where I am a senior manager on their proposition development team. I develop new commercial insurance products for a broad range of industries. I am also taking professional development courses through Notre Dame which will lead to an executive certificate in business administration at the end of February. In my free time, I continue to serve on the associate board at the Ravinia Festival, and was this year nominated to their executive committee. Ravinia is an outdoor music venue and the summer home of the CSO, but they also do community outreach in schools to provide music education to under-privileged children. It’s a great organization and don’t be surprised if I ask you to help support the cause. S is also doing pro bono work for Ravinia, in their development of a new pedestrian tunnel under the Metra tracks.

This year we continued to travel as much as our busy schedules and vacation time allowed. We went to Miami/The Keys in January, which was lovely even though we were there during a cold snap and given the recession things were very low key on South Beach this year. In March, we traveled to New York City, where in addition to visiting with friends and family, we took in the sights and experienced the first tornado to hit near the city in some time. In May, we went to Bermuda. It was one of the best places we’ve been in awhile, sunny and gorgeous every day. We did a lot of walking, sightseeing, laying on the beach. There weren’t many shells, much to S’s dismay, but we both enjoyed the blue skies, pink sand and can’t wait to go back. In July, I took a solo trip to Cape Cod to catch up with some old friends. Lastly, we went to Montreal and Quebec City over a long Labor Day weekend and had another great trip. Lots of good shopping (Rue St. Catherine…) and sightseeing.

On the family front, we welcomed niece N just before New Year’s and we are looking forward to a new nephew’s scheduled arrival in late January.

This Christmas, instead of heading home to Wisconsin as we usually do, we traveled to Ohio to visit my grandmothers, E (92) and L (87). My younger sister, J, has moved in with E so that she can live at home as long as possible, and L is “wintering” nearby in assisted living. E is doing quite well after fracturing her knee cap over the summer, which kept us from her 70th college reunion at Berea, much to our shared disappointment.

Next year, we hope to see more of S’s family, perhaps meeting his parents in Dubai (where his brother V lives), even though we’d love to take another long trip to India.

Here’s to a blessed 2010 to you and yours!

Best, K&S :)"

What didn't make it into the letter is that we went to the RE in April to figure out what was going on with our reproductive parts. A okay except for the polyp and septum. Polyp came out in May, and septum is just now coming out this week. I thought I was going to lose my job after my project got cancelled and A had massive layoffs. I sat around for over three months until they put me on anything new. I then got a great job offer in Boston in the Spring that even included an amazing relocation package, but S decided that we should stay in Chicago. :( S heard he was going to get an offer from SC the same day, plus there's that pesky housing market and finding a new job for him where he has no contacts. Spent six months talking to Z before I finally got an offer. The same day I got my results from our first RE visit, my sister E found out that her three month old N needed neuro surgery (which she had in July at Mayo) to fixed her skull bones which had fused prematurely. When they were at Mayo they announced that they were again three months along with another baby (this one unexpected). So three babies for E in less than three years. My mom has now retired to help her take care of them. My best friend from college announced she was having her second, since getting married in 2007. I joined FB, late I know, but now I can see all of the people I grew up with with all their kids and all their pregnancies. I say good riddance to 2009...