Happy New Year!

We're ringing in the New Year with my brother and his family in MD this year. We've been enjoying just hanging out with them, letting the boys play and generally loafing around all day. It's a lot of fun!

We hope you and yours have a fun and safe celebration and a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2008!

Ice skating in Atlanta

We went downtown to the annual ice skating rink with the Campbells tonight - it was lots of fun! We ate dinner at the Varsity, and even though the prices have gone up it was still good fast food. The ice skating rink was full of people slipping and sliding around in a big oval, so it was fun it was cool to look around and see CNN, the World of Coke, and the Omni hotel all around the park. It was great to catch up with Doug and Roberta, and see the Stephen and Kevin playing with the Campbell boys. Woohoo!

Merry Christmas!

We have enjoyed the whole season, and are having a great time celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior. The season brought many fun events: I went to a play with the people in my office (thank you, Mary!), Sue enjoyed the annual party at the MacBrayers, we heard Christmas concerts, and we had a great time decorating and looking at other people's Christmas decorations. My parents came up to celebrate with us (woohoo!), so we enjoyed spending today together, going to the Cmas Eve service at Harvest Point, watching "A Christmas Carol", and opening a gift before bedtime. We're looking forward to a fun morning, then maybe a nap, and then making and eating tacos (our traditional Cmas meal :-).

We wish you a Merry Christmas wherever you are, and hope you see the true meaning of this wonderful season when you see the baby in the manger in the many nativity scenes you come across.

Christmas Season in full swing!

We are going fast and furious with the fun of Christmas, doing stuff all the time and shopping in preparation for the traditional gift-giving that happens. We had a good Pinewood Derby in Cub Scouts this past Friday night, and as Sue and the other kids are ready for Return to Bethlehem at our church Jacob is getting ready for a Boy Scout campout (I'm the dud again - I'll be working on the basement :-) Hope you're enjoying this year's celebration of the birth of Jesus!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We have had a pleasant day just hanging around the house, cooking and eating. Sue's sister came over from SC, and our friends Anne and Julie came over to share the feast with us. We watched Spiderman 3 in the basement to top the day off. Hope your celebration of our blessings was good!

Still "Going Steady"

Sue and I are celebrating our 25th annniversary of "going steady" today! I remember vividly how I gave her my class ring that night after her high school band had been at contest all day. It was exciting to be dating her then, and is still exciting to be dating her now :-) Woohoo!

Jacob did his Eagle Project today

He had a lot of people helping him, from his fellow Boy Scouts to parents/leaders in his Troop to friends from school and friends from church (many more than were around for the picture above). It was good to see him lead the efforts to put up the flagpole and do some landscaping around it at the local food pantry. You can see pictures of his and everyone else's efforts at http://picasaweb.google.com/davidholly/071110071117JacobSEagleProject.

Quick game on a Friday night

Well, I had a good week working in Virginia, and came home this afternoon. I took the family out to Fuddruckers hoping Jacob would get to eat an ostrich burger, but they didn't have ostrich here in Georgia. We went home with full bellies anyways, then played a quick game of dominoes (in honor of Sue's friend Cathleen being in town :-) It was a fun night, and I'm really glad to be home.

Happy Birthday, Megan!

Our beautiful daughter turns 14 today! Sue threw a slumber party for her and had 13 girls at the house overnight - whew! Megan said she "had a blast" and that she was up until 4:30am (obviously I wasn't there :-) Happy Birthday, baby!

Hectic evening

Tonight is one of those nights Sue and I knew would happen someday, and now we realize it will be happening more and more as the kids get older. Jacob is at the away game with the band, Megan has a middle-school band concert, and Stepehn and Kevin have the Fall Festival at their school. On top of that Sue, as a PTO officer, has helped organize and set up as well as has to work the Fall Festival! So we divide and conquer - she's got the little boys with her, I'm at the concert with Megan and a video camera, and Jacob is out there in the stands or on a bus. Whee!

Good Cub Scout campout this weekend

We all went to Spook-o-ree this weekend. It was a lot of fun camping
with the Cub Scouts, and I learned a lot from Richard and Robert on
how to do all the little things that have to be done by the Cubmaster.
The boys all seemed to enjoy it, and the none of the parents grumbled
or anything so I think it went well. It was lots of fun!

Great cruise to Hawaii

Well, we left the kids with my parents and went on a cruise to Hawaii the past two weeks! Sue "hired on" as an interpreter for a deaf group, and I got to go along and handle her baggage :-)

After flying to Vancouver, BC, we spent five days at sea, then went to the Big Island, Kauai, Maui, and Oahu. It was an awesome trip! We made lots of new friends and saw many great sites. Check back for a link to some pictures and stories in the next few weeks. Aloha!

Click here to see some highlight pictures!

Quick trip to FL

Thekids have a week off from school, so we took them down to my
parents' house in FL to spend some time with them. We're hoping the
have some fun - I cleared a path at the lake so Jacob could get out
there and fish, and Megan is looking forward to spending some quiality
time with MiiMii. It will be interesting being without the kids, but
I'm sure Sue and I will figure things out :-)

Happy Birthday, Michael!

Today my brother turns 37! He and his family will be celebrating sometime todah, and hopefully the people that work for him know and will do something nice for him. In a continuing bad tradition I still have his present with me, and will hopefully get it in the mail today Have agreat day, Michael!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mother's birthday. We are going to celebrate with her later on this month, but know that she will have a good time today. Have a great day, Mom!

Happy Birthday, Kevin!

Today Kevin turns 6 years old! Wow! We've inviited some of his friends over for a party at 9:30am (don't ask :-) and are looking forward to an exciting day of playing with Hot Wheels, pirate ships, and all sorts of stuff. Woohoo!

Rainy summer night

I'm sitting out on my front porch listening to the rain fall and run through the gutters tonight. So often I don't stop long enough to do these kind of things, so I chose to come out here rather than sit on the couch and watch TV.

I hope the end of summer finds you rested and excited to back in the school routine, even if you aren't going to school or don't have kids in school. Take time to relax and enjoy life!

Happy Birthday to me and others!

Today we are celebrating my birthday - woohoo! But we also want to wish some friends and family a happy birthday, too: our nephew Robert Emery, and friends Brenda Waldner and Pam Coffey! We hope you all have a joyous celebration and wish you many more!

My parents are in town, so we're all going to go eat mexican food tonight and just chill out after that. I took the day off from work and have spent the installing my Dad's new XM radio and talking with my mother. What a nice, relaxing day...

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My father celebrates his 69th birthday today! He's got a busy day planned, running around town with my mom and ending the day with a six-hour drive to come see us. Happy birthday, Pop!

First day of school

Well, even though summer isn't really over the kids go back to school this week. We've cut it down to three schools, which is better than last year, but now Sue is struggling with what she's going to do with all her newly-freed-up time. She'll be working a couple of days a week, and I'm hoping she starts working on her next national rating for interpreting. I am busily learning everything I can at work, and enjoying most of it :-) Hope you are having or had a good summer!

Congratulations, Cathleen!

It's official - Sue's good friend Cathleen has earned her college degree! She's worked hard at it for quite some time, doing stuff on the computer and learning all sorts of new things, all while working, and having a family. Way to go, Cathleen!

Happy Birthday, Karen!

Yesterday Sue's friend Karen Williams celebrated her birthday! Hope you had a good time, Karen!

20th Wedding Anniversary

Today marks 20 years of marital bliss for us - woohoo! We've been celebrating for about a week - Sue spirited me away Friday night for a fun dinner at Dante's Down the Hatch in Atlanta and then a relaxing stay at a hotel in Buckhead. We had a good time exchanging gifts then and today - nothing big, just things we knew each other would like. (She is now the proud owner of a Bluetooth headset for her phone :-) I took today off and we went to breakfast like we did during my time as a supervisor, and we're going to go bum around Stone Mtn or something this afternoon. The biggest thing is that we're together, having fun in all that we do.

Great trip to MD!

Because of my possible job change and other factors we didn't really plan a summer vacation this year. Well, I did get a new job (still with the FAA :-), and we squeezed in a 6-day trip between finishing in one office and starting in my new office. We thought and thought, and finally figured it would be really nice to see my brother and his family again, so we called and begged and they said "Come on up! We'd love to have you!"

We drove the 14 hours to MD and crashed for the night. The next day Claudia had made blueberry coffeecake with blueberries from their back yard (!), then took us swimming in the neighbor's pool. Michael grilled chicken and played baseball with all the boys in their big back yard while the girls went shopping for VBS stuff.

We went to Gettysburg on Saturday. It was a good trip - about 2 hours to drive, then we got out to stretch our legs, bought the auto-tour CD, and rode around reliving the battle of Gettysburg in our vans. It was a great way to see the place, and was better, more comfortable, and a lot cheaper than riding the open-air buses. We ate pizza in Gettysburg, then bustled back to MD.

We went to their church on Sunday (Calvary Baptist), which was very nice. They had Michael teaching Sunday School and Claudia getting all the crafts for VBS, so I think they are glad to be able to plug some good-quality people in to help. We took the kids to see Ratatouie that afternoon (awsome movie - go see it even if you don't have kids), where I did something I've never done: I spilled the popcorn we bought! They allowed free refills, so it was OK, but I was very embarrassed. Claudia had tacos for dinner (a family tradition :-), and then served blueberry cobbler for dessert (more blueberries from the yard).

Claudia took us down to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, and she, Sue, and the kids rode the paddleboats while I took pictures. We ate some great seafood, then went back to their house and invaded their neighbor's pool again. Claudia had another family favorite for dinner, homemade pizza, and then we learned all about them on their 13th anniversary by playing the "Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus" game. (They know each other quite well.)

It was a great trip! The kids all had a big time playing together, even though Jacob acted bored. Thank you, Michael & Claudia, for having us - we had a great time!

Happy 4th of July!

We had a great time last night at Stone Mountain. We met Jennifer Jones and her kids Emily, Zac, and Kaitlin, there, then picnic'ed on the big lawn in front of the carving and enjoyed the laser show and fireworks after it got dark. The fireworks were awesome! At one point they played the Star-Spangled Banner and Jacob was the first person in the whole crowd that stood up to pay his respects to our country's national anthem - way to go, Jacob! It was a lot of fun, and as I enjoyed the booming of the fireworks the thought crossed my mind again that if this is what we do for fun why would anyone ever want to mess with us as a country? Oh, well, maybe those guys over there will get the flick and stop threatening us :-) Have a great week!

Blue moon

Today is a "blue moon" day. That means the second full moon in the same month occurred. We did something that we haven't done in a while: We had people over to our house! We had a good time hosting our LifeGroup for the evening, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it.

We hope you got to do something you do "once in a blue moon". The next one won't be until December of 2009 - I don't think we'll wait that long to have people over again, but we'll see...

Sue took the kids to FL

She had a good time taking them to my parent's house so they could spend the week there. She spent a couple of days and got to take them to the beach so they could play in the sand and play putt-putt, and she got to eat dinner with her friend Karen. She left Megan, Stephen, and Kevin there for a few extra days and went to pick them up today. They all came back saying they had a great time with their grandparents, which is a good thing :-)

Last day of school!

Woohoo! It's the last day of school for this year! The kids are excited about summer - camps, laying around, and fun stuff for everyone! Hopefully we won't get too busy with all our "relaxation" and tire ourselves out. We'll see!

Good visit with Mom Emery

After visiting with the Hatch's at Meagan's graduation we drove down to Penney Farms to spend a couple of days with Sue's mother. We had a good time -- we swam, played games (especially chinese checkers), and did puzzles. Mom Emery is doing good - thanks for having us, Mom!

We then drove back home through the Memorial Day traffic on Monday. It really wasn't bad at all - we made good time and never got bogged down in traffic. But it was nice to get home and sleep in our own beds :-)

Congratulations on graduating, Meagan Hatch!

We went down to St. Mary's, Georgia, to see the daughter of one of Sue's good friends graduate from high school. The girl did a great job, and is excited to be done with that phase of her life and to be getting in to "adulthood". Her parents Tim and Cathleen were very proud of her, and threw a party for friends and family on Saturday for her. It was lots of fun!

Happy Birthday. Jacob!

Today our eldest turned 15 years old, which is pretty cool. Lots of his friends at church signed a big birthday car (thank you, Megan, for getting that :-), and he came home and spent some of the afternoon studying for the big exams in his classes this week. He opened is gifts around 5:00pm, then we took him to diner at a new mexican restaraunt in the area (it was really good). The ladies there were awesome - they sang "Happy Birthday" to him, stuck a sombrero on his head, and pied him with whipped cream - then toolk a picture! We came home and relaxed, had some cake, and then went to bed. Hopefully we can go get his learner's permit in Junee and start teaching him how to drive! Woohoo!

We went to an Atlanta Silverbacks game

Stephen & Kevin's soccer league had tickets to go to an Atlanta Silverbacks game as a group, so we all drove to the soccer stadium in Chamblee to go to the game. It was neat - the players were all very good, our seats were closeand the game kept everyone focused on the action. I was disappointed to see the players get into a fight at one point in the first half, but the rest of game was a lot of fun to watch. The announcer called out all the groups there, and ours was the loudest :-) It was a fun night!

Happy birthday, Stephen!

My son Stephen turned 8 today. He was very excited when he woke up, and we're going to grill hot dogs and hamburgers and have a fun evening. We're planning on taking him and some friends to see Shrek 3 when it opens. Happy birthday, son!

Good dinner with Michael at ATL

My brother flew from MD for some training with Clorox today, so we met him in the Atrium for dinner. It was good to sit and spend an hour or so talking and hanging out. He hand-delivered birthday presents for Stephen and Jacob, which they thoroughly enjoyed. When we were done we took pictures, gave hiugs, and pointed him toward the rental car places so he could go to his hotel get some rest. It was very nice to see him :-)

Spiderman 3 was awesome!

We did one of those things that we seldom do this weekend: we went to a movie on the weekend it opens! The special effects were awesome and the story was good. Sue felt like the violence was a little too much, but... Anyways, we enjoyed the flick. Go see it if you get the chance!

Happy Easter!

We hope everyone is enjoying the celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the dead this Easter. I was able to get the day off, and fixed pancakes for everyone before they went to church. Stephen is sick, so I had to stay home with him, but at least the rest of the family got to do their thing at church and help make the celebration good. We're planning on just relaxing this afternoon, and getting back into the normal routine now that spring break is over. We hope you're having a great day wherever you are!

Happy Birthday, Mom Emery!

Mom Emery is 78 years old today! Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Megan M!

Today is Megan M's birthday. She's one of our friends from church, and we think of her as part of the family. We hope she has a great day!

Good quick trip to FL

We made a quick run down to my parents' house in FL for Spring Break after the mid on Monday. We spent the afternoon with Mark and Mary and Sue's mom in Ocala, then went to my parents house. We got to spend some time with my brother and his family, and my mom had a big dinner with my aunt and cousins coming out to visit. It was great! I took a couple of hours to hang a ceiling fan for my parents, and the kids all had a great time running around the property playing and having fun. We came back so I could go to work on Thursday afternoon. It was a good trip!

Spring is in full swing in Georgia

It's always funny every year until the pine starts blooming - people
walking around sneezing and complaining about the pollen, yellow swirls
behind us as we drive down streets, and reports that the pollen count is
over 1000 for the day (over 100 is concsidered extremely high :-) But
the blooms are so beautiful - the pretty dogwoods and pear trees, the
azelias (sp?) as they start blooming, and all the flox, heather, and
pansies going crazy with the warm weather and sunshine. Ah, spring! I
love this time of year in Georgia! We hope you're enjoying the season
wherever you are!

(The picture is of a big dogwood in our back yard. It's beautiful!)

Had to put down Tommy today

We made a sad trip to the vet with our dog Tommy today. He's been sick for about a month, not eating much and not drinking a whole lot. He's had a lot of pain in his hind quarters, and got to where he didn't even try to get up and walk outside anymore. We discussed it with our kids to make sure they understood and took him to the vet today and had him put to sleep. We'll miss him a lot - he's been a part of our family for about 11 years. I know that I'm going to miss him.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We hope everyone enjoyed Valentine's day today. I got the kids some chocolate bars, and got Sue some Skittles (since she's alergic to chocolate :-) We had a good time helping Stephen and Kevin get their valentine cards to school, but didn't have anything to do for our teenagers. Sue and I enjoyed a night out at Outback Steakhouse last night and then a nice breakfast today at the East Lake Diner. Woohoo!

Happy Birthday, Sue!

We had a good time celebrating Susan's birthday today. She went to a prayer breakfast with some people from church while I took Stephen and Kevin to our Cub Scout , then we went home to relax (I baked her a cake :-). We went out to eat at a local Olive Garden, then we will go home to eat the cake and open presents. All in all a nice, relaxing birthday.

Good visit with old friends in VA

We stopped in Leesburg, VA, and visited with Steve and Betty, our
friends from when we lived in Reston while I worked at headquarters.
They are doing well, and it was fun spending the evening talking and
catching up on all the things happening in our lives. It was great to
see their children and how they've grown, and they enjoyed seeing our
kids and hearing about all their adventures. Their son Jacob is an
accomplished violin player, and enjoyed hearing him play a couple of
pieces for us. And I learned that one of the wildest kids I have ever
dealt with (not Steve or Betty's son) has persevered from when I was his
Cub Scout den leader and is about to earn the rank of Eagle Scout.
It was a nice evening, and a great way to spend the last night of our
trip. We love our friends and family!

Great day in DC

We had a good time with Michael and Claudia in Washington, DC, today.
We rode the Metro in, wandered around the National Mall, and went
through the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The kids really
enjoyed the dinosaur exhibit and the 3D Imax movie about sharks at the
museum. We ended the day with pizza and crab cakes at Boxhill
Pizzaria. What a great day!

In DC today

We had a great ride in on the Metro and are now wandering around our
nation's capital taking in the sites. Whee!

Having fun in Maryland

We're having a great time visiting my brother and his family in Maryland
this week! Today we went to Havre de Grace, the town that almost became
our nations capital instead of it's curent location. Then we drove up
to Wilmington, Delaware, and visited the Brandywine Park and Zoo, though
we only saw a bird as the zoo closed when we got there :-( We then ate
a delicious seafood dinner at Baldwin's in Maryland - the crab cake was
awesome! Tomorrow we plan on going to Washington, DC, and showing
Michael and Claudia the ropes on getting around via the Metro down
there. It should be fun!

Happy New Year!

We rang in 2007 with my parents at our house last night, playing Mexican
Train dominoes and eating seafood all evening - it was fun! As the
peach dropped we went out and banged on pots yelling "Happy New Year" on
the front porch, then we all fell quickly asleep in our beds. Jacob
comes home today from his retreat, and then this evening we're going to
fix tacos and chillout for a while. We hope you're having a good time
doing what you're doing, and wish you safety and prosperity in 2007!