2006 HOLLAND FAMILY REPORT
Family
We lost another family member as well this year: Bobo the cat succumbed to kidney failure in April. And for Lucky, our dog, 2006 brought additional health challenges: another torn CCL (and another TPLO knee surgery) and a resurgence of separation anxiety brought upon by moving into a new house. By the end of the year, however, she seemed pretty stable on all counts.
Work
CC's client base is still expanding, this time, with some additional journalism clients. She began writing for Law.com this year and just agreed to become a contributor to BNet.com, a business-focused offshoot of CNet. She continues to maintain a number of corporate clients as well and did some traveling for one of them early in the year, which was a nice change from being deskbound. Overall, she is enjoying life as a freelancer, and is still able to carve out some free time.
Travel
House and Home
Recreation
And that wraps up our 2006! Here's hoping that 2007 will find all our family and friends happy, healthy, and with lots of joy in their lives.
Love,
Welcome to the third edition of the yearly Holland Family Report! Without further ado, here are our highlights.
Just as we were hitting our stride as a family of three, we had to go and upset the apple cart by getting pregnant again. CC is due next May and we have it on good authority (okay, on genetic testing!) that at long last, the Holland clan will welcome a girl. We're all excited, even Jackson, who is happily planning to teach his baby sister how to sing, dance, jump, play soccer, and a host of other necessary life skills.
Jackson's second birthday was a bittersweet milestone for us. We spent the latter part of what should have been a joyous May 21 traveling back to Boston on a redeye in response to word that CC's father had taken a turn for the worse with his cancer. Sadly, we landed too late to say goodbye; George passed away while we were in the air, mere hours into May 22. We spent the week with the Sandorfis and arranged for George's ashes to be scattered at sea off Seagull Beach in Cape Cod, a favorite getaway for CC's family. Jackson accompanied us on his first boat ride and, while he didn't understand everything going on, moved us all to tears by calling out "Bye bye, Napo" several times as we headed back to shore.
On the bright side, Jackson is well on his way to becoming a big boy: He started preschool in September. Aside from a challenging four-week bout of crying and clinging to Mommy when she'd leave, which hit in November but did pass, as everyone assured us it would, he's been doing fabulously well. He's made lots of friends, and the icing on the cake is that his "soul brother" and buddy Noah is also a student there. Jackson's soaking up knowledge like a sponge and working on big concepts like sharing, quiet time, and listening to directions.
In other changes, we bid farewell to Maiko, our honorary family member and Jackson's nanny since he was 3 months old. She got married and decided to move back to Japan to start a life there with her new husband, much to our dismay. We don't know how we would have gotten through the challenges of new parenthood without her! Rachel, Andy and Noah, who also benefited from Maiko's warmth and caring, joined us in giving her a rousing sendoff.
Dave is hitting his stride with his new group (the commercial mortgage division) at Wells Fargo. Happily, his supervisors and co-workers are according him the respect that was lacking in his last position, and he's enjoying flexing his brainpower and taking on lots of new challenges with the group.
We reprised our annual Holland Ski Trip in Lake Tahoe, where Jackson enjoyed playing with his cousins and his first snowball fight. We also spent as much time as we could in Boston to be with CC's family as her dad's health failed. Our first trip was in late March and was lots of fun; George was able to enjoy Jackson and we managed to snap a family portrait of all the Sandorfis together. Our May trip, as mentioned above, was less lighthearted, but it was good to be with family. We logged a third trip in September, accompanying CC's mom to Cape Cod for several days and tacking on a side trip to Maine to visit Dave's good friends Brian and Ed, who own a B&B in Boothbay Harbor. We also made multiple pilgrimages to Dave's parents' place in Sacramento, where we reprised Camp Decadence with friends Rachel, Andy and Noah and Nancy, Bob and Katie. These days, Decadence is more about watching the kids goof off than letting the adults get crazy -- but we wouldn't have it any other way. Finally, CC had a girls' tennis trip to Utah in the fall, soaking up a three-day Vic Braden tennis camp and enjoying a spa experience to boot.
After months of searching, we found our dream home! It's a 4-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath mid-century modern in the Montclair area of Oakland, walking distance to Montclair Village and the park. We fell in love at first sight, especially as we realized it had everything we wanted and then some -- lots of flexible space, a big yard, and a great location. The down side, of course, is that much of the original 1956 construction needed some TLC. We purchased the house in April, then spent two months working with contractors to upgrade outdated wiring, fix faulty plumbing, add shear walls to make the house earthquake safe, finish the unfinished basement, remove lead-based paint, and numerous other projects. Sadly, few of the projects were "sexy" ones like kitchen remodels (that will have to wait); rather, the lion's share of what we had to do was hidden behind walls. But when we moved in in mid-June, we felt a great sense of accomplishment -- and our new house felt like our home right away. (See before and after pictures!)
Yep, you guessed it: tennis, tennis, and more tennis. Even Jackson is hooked on tennis! We did a little skiing on the Tahoe trip, a few watersports on the river in Sacramento, kayaking in Maine, and a bit of hiking, but 2006 wasn't much of a year for expanding our sports and recreation horizons. Perhaps 2007 will find us being more intrepid.
CC, David, and Jackson