thought i'd better get one last post of the year in...a lot has happened, and is happening since i last checked in here. the t-systems contract did get signed with deluxe, as expected, so i am now officially a t-systems employee. received my first paycheck from them yesterday, which was nice seeing as i haven't really lifted a finger for them yet.
there are three things i love about the holidays. i love the anticipation of them, i love them while they are here, and i love to see them go. the same could be said for relatives, bah-dah-boom! (just kidding :-)
christmas was outstanding this year. we did christmas day morning with allie's dad, brother's and family, and then hosted our first at our "new" place with my family. it sounds like this may turn into a tradition...we'll see how it goes with that.
anyway, it was nice having both of my sisters, & all the relatives, grand kids, and grandparents, together under one roof. a first under any circumstances. here is the digital documentation from said events --->.
i still look forward to enjoying the rest of my vacation, & have a few things left that i'd like to do before i head back to work.
have a happy new year!

definitely the last post for awhile, possibly 'til '04? for those who have asked, nothing happening on the job transition front. contract negotiations have stalled but it definitely will happen. it's just a question of ti-ime.
added a couple of pics from allie's birthday last week.
looking forward to my much anticipated, long awaited holiday vacation. peace on earth, over and out!

-skip

i had thought that it might be appropriate to give an overview or re-cap of this past year, similar to what many people like to include in their christmas cards. the difference: if you receive a christmas card in the mail with the "what we did last year" annual family newsletter, you feel some sense of obligation to read it, even though you may not care that 6 year old billy started soccer this year, or the family vacationed at yellowstone national park. your reading of the following paragraphs, is in direct contrast, voluntary only. if you have zero interest in topics, such as those i referred to above, please stop reading......now. otherwise, what follows is a fairly detailed summary of the price family activities for the year 2003. this does not by any means replace the standard christmas card you will no doubt receive if you are on our "nice" list. so, without further ado, from my journal archives, to you, the gentle reader, here goes:

january-

2. the biggie of the year, right off the bat! though he had his own ideas about how and when he would arrive, owen patrick price is born on january 2nd, checking in at 9 lbs, and 5. oz. i was nothing less than thrilled at the idea of having a son to go along with my 2 beautiful daughters. also, arguably the coolest birthdate ever, 01-02-03.

9. my wife and i celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary by taking the entire family to baker's square. nothing says "i love you and thank you for 10 wonderful years" like french silk pie. alaina will add that it was the first time that we went anywhere in our car as a family of five.

21. i dislocate my pinkie finger playing basketball at the Y. is this newsworthy? not sure about that, but it was extremely painful!!

27. i accept the volunteer position of webmaster for the chamber music minnesota organization. i will later discover that this job does not pay well.

february-

10. my parents vacation in arizona (ok, its a slow month!)

14. for valentine's day, we do basically nothing (see being married for 10 years above).

march-

2. owen is baptized

9. i turn 35 years old! retirement is only some 30 years away...

april-

4. me and my buddy lon go to the twins home opener, against toronto, which they lose. i then join him and his buddies for my first official acoustic jam session. it was way fun!

5. we go down to my sister's in rochestor to celebrate my nephew noah's first birthday.

24. dad's birthday

29. a somewhat rocky softball season starts.

may-

6. our oldest daughter alaina turns 6 years old!

18. my mom turns ??

30. we start our house-hunting quest in earnest.

june-

2. our youngest daughter noelle turns 4!

12. pending offer on the house we will eventually move into. also it's alaina's big dance recital night.

21-22. we pack like crazy and i store boxes in the garage from floor to ceiling. i also spend the weekend on home activities, preparing for eventual house-showings.

27. we sell our old house on continental, for asking price, after only a couple of days on the market. greeds sets in and i wonder if we under estimated it's worth. i finally realize that we are very lucky to have sold it so quickly and we make plans to move into our new home.

july-

4. we celebrate independence day at my folks in eagan, with all our many relatives. a good time was had by all.

5-31. we put the final plans in place to make the big move. we are pretty much living out of boxes and getting by with basic requirements for survival at this point.

august-

6-13. rather than take an official "vacation" this year, i take a week off to move into the new house. it went off without any major hitches.

14. i go back to work to rest!!

19. fall softball league starts.

26. me and my fellow IT techs spend the entire night combating the blaster virus. good times!

29. me and the family take our annual pilgrimage to the minnesota state fair.

september-

1. we celebrate labor day with our family at our new house. it was the first official "event" recorded at our new address.

2. school starts for alaina and noelle.

13. i get the toy i've always wanted for our family room. a surround-sound home theatre system. now we can play all our raffi and veggie-tales cd's at ear-splitting, wall-shaking sound levels!

19. a full grown wild turkey is seen strutting though our front yard. ok, we don't live in the inner-city, but it's not walnut grove either. kinda wierd.

23. some moron steals the hub caps off my car while parked in the lot at work. hope you enjoyed them as much as i did!

october-

21. after much consideration and planning, i re-design my website to it's current form.

25. i go to the vikes - giants game. this is significant because it notes the beginning of the end of a team that started the season 6-0.

27. my membership at the Y expires after we had been members for 3 years. i opt to get a cross-trainer for the home, which yes, i still use 3 times a week thank you.

31. halloween. alaina-witch, noelle-jungle cat, owen-pumpkin bib.

november-

6. i move my website host from angelfire\lycos to 1and1.com. or as i like to call it, my liberation from ads and pop-up banners day.

7. allie hosts first "bunco' party at our house. this is a game that only a bunch of chatty women would find interesting.

13. noelle has first ever pre-school program.

16. next major purchase: leather sofa for the family room. it took countless trips to many different furniture stores around town, but we finally got the deal done.

22. i get to go the the "wild" hockey game with my old boss, for free, which is the only way i can afford it ($65 ticket)


27. a mellow thanksgiving at our house with allie's family.

28. i begin internet christmas shopping and launch a major project to rip all of my holiday music to mp3's. a huge undertaking that i eventually will finish.

december-

3. i find out that deluxe is eliminating many of it's IT employees, including myself, but we are offered our current jobs with one of it's vendors, T-Systems. this is currently developing...

13. the wife and i blow off the annual christmas party based on our new philosophy called, "you can't do everything". we plan to make a better effort next year.

14. allison celebrated her 30-somethingth birthday (yes, I know how old she is)

this pretty much brings us up to date. of course the afore mentioned items aren't equally important or necessarily significant. it just gives you an idea of what happened this past year. the year really did seem to fly by! if you read my web journal regularly, there's no real surprises.

that said, this will probably be my last post for awhile as i will be looking forward to some time off over the next few weeks. i may make a post or two if anything major develops from the work front. in the meanwhile, have a merry christmas and a happy new year!

-skip

well we are starting to get more information from above re: the big employer transition. have meetings tomorrow pretty much all day with t-systems HR and also for orientation. it looks like this will go down pretty much as we were told it would. still some questions re: benefits and such but hopefully it will all work smoothly.
we got hammered with some serious snow over the past couple of days, so i guess i got my "whiten up" wish. unofficially i'll say 8" in skip's yard but that's just my best guess.
more later...

what a week last week! times they are a-changin'. anyway, had a meeting with the vice-president of distributed support services for t-systems last friday. it was sort of like an interview, all the typical interview questions, but without the added stress of actually having to compete with others for a job. last i heard, offers are being made this coming thursday. i'll report back more when i know. still lots of questions.
quite a bit on the social docket this week. the daughters christmas program, the wife's birthday, christmas party on saturday night, etc. 'tis the season! i feel fairly confident in the progress i've made with shopping. maybe another item or two to pick up. things are starting to arrive.
the east coast is getting pummled with a snow storm meanwhile things are quiet around here. hopefully we'll get a little more snow to whiten things up a bit.

BIG news on this end. at least from my current employment point of view. it appears as though as of december 15th, i will no longer be an employee of deluxe corporation. this is sort of sad in some ways because i've been employed by deluxe for almost 13 years (since april of 01 i think?). the good news is that i will be offered a position next week by one of deluxe's outsouce companys, t-systems. it's sort of a bitter-sweet thing because, although i'm glad to retain my employment, many of my co-worker were not as fortunate as a large chunk of IT positions were eliminated. suffice it to say that, in short, i'll be doing the same job, at the same place, with basically the same benefits and compensation. so all in all, i'm happy it's worked out the way it has. more later...

i realized i made no mention of thanksgiving on my previous post. my bad. we had a very nice thanksgiving, thanks for asking. it was rather low-key or as much so as could be expected with a 6 and a half, a four and a half, and an 11 monther. here are some pics that give a fairly accurate description of the days' events. note: the last image of noelle and alaina was a picture taken before the making of a wish and traditional pulling of the wishbone. let's just say that there was one happy, and one not.