Catching Up

Hi All,

After that great post by Uncle Jon I thought I'd catch you up on the other NorCal branch of the family.

I'm sure you're all dying to log on and hear me whine about work. Happy to and able to oblige! For the first significant stretch of time since Will has been born (11 months ago), I have been absolutely swamped at work. Not good! For the last several weeks we've been trying to complete our first clinical trial of a drug to help manage celiac disease. I spent most evenings on our recent vacation to Monterey with Katie's parents typing work emails, and I never do that so I could tell I was working too much. There's nowhere to hide in a 15 person company, but that's what I signed up for I guess. Anyway, things should be calming down soon and hey I'm thankful to have a job. On the plus side, it's very interesting work and I get to learn from a lot of business people and scientists who have started and run successful small companies before. As evidenced by Uncle Jon's post, there are a lot of opportunities to start companies in California and it's inspiring to be exposed to it. I'm hopeful that in the coming months all this work will pay off with a successful result. Time will tell.

Katie's also been busy but really enjoys her job at Stanford, where she's worked for six months now. We're coming up on Will's first birthday*, which should mark the end of breastfeeding and make Katie's work days a bit easier (not having to hook up to the old milk pump every few hours). The second half of the year should be a bit of an easier schedule for her. Katie's sisters Beth and Chris are planning to spend the second half of August with us, so we're looking forward to that. Her parents will be moving to San Francisco for six months starting in January while her mom does a sabbatical at UCSF. It'll be nice to have even more family a short drive away.

Jill Lisenbee did us a huge favor by coming out to watch Will for a week during May as we were switching Will's day care. Thanks, Jill! Number one cousin of 2008! Saved us a lot of stress, especially Katie. Jill had Will used to her within 24 hours, which is a family record. It was such a generous thing for her to come out and we are so thankful she was available. After she left, Will kept going into the "guest suite" and asking "Dah (where's Jill)? Dah (I said where's Jill)?"

Will's been walking for a few weeks now. On vacation last week he got a lot of practice and is really tearing around the house and yard pretty well. I think watching Jude (and using Jude's walk-behind thing the last few months) inspired him. As shown below, he found his recent encounter with an ear of corn quite enjoyable. If you could hear the audio there's a lot of juice sucking going on there. Uncle Jeff, keep kicking that disease's butt! Hope to see at least some of you this August when we are up at Torch Lake. Can't wait to get home for a few days.




*Knowing us, we slackers will probably send out invitations to those of you in the "neighboorhood" about 10 days prior to the actual birthday. For now, I'll just say "come on over" or "come on up" (Uncle Matt & Kort) if you can get away. Details to follow soon.