2003
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Phyllis and Jim's family photos - Main Page
Phyllis and Jim's family photos 2003
Wow, it has been another very busy year and a wonderful one. We are thankful for so many things this year.
Most of you already know our big news. Phyllis and I are expecting a baby boy in March 2004. All the tests indicate that he is healthy. He is usually doing gymnastics, especially when Phyllis is trying to sleep, so we think he is very healthy too. We are very excited about our new addition to our family. Joe was a little worried at first; but when he heard that he got to keep his room and that he didn’t have to change diapers, he felt a whole lot better! Now, after a little time to get used to the idea, we think he is looking forward to having a little brother. Just a few days ago, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Wow, a year has gone by already?! We enjoyed a fine dinner of Swiss fondue at the Matterhorn Room at the Lowell Inn. What a wonderful first year of our married life.
Jim’s biggest news is a new job. After looking for many long months and being unemployed for just a few days short of one year, Jim landed a job which is a great fit and probably the best job he could hope for in the area. He is now working for Northwest Airlines, doing Project Engineering for the DC9 fleet. These are DC9’s built during the 60’s and 70’s and they provide good job security! Jim is working with a great group of engineers, most of whom moved to Minneapolis from the former NWA maintenance base in Atlanta. Maybe the greatest benefit of Jim’s job (after the paycheck!) is the flight benefits. Jim, Phyllis, and Joe have unlimited flight benefits, flying standby. We have taken good advantage of the benefits, flying about once a month since Jim started his job in April. It is especially nice for trips to visit our place in White Salmon, Washington. We have become very familiar with the Portland, Oregon airport, coming and going from White Salmon.
We are continuing to enjoy our White Salmon place. We get out there quite a bit. This year included many visits with Jeanne and Steve Mason, whom we are very thankful for. Wonderful friends who help us so much in looking after our place. We also got to bring friends Jeff and Nannette Sorenson to White Salmon. We got to have Ben, Gaye, and their daughter Cara visit with us. We had our friend Kevin down to visit with us. We also had a gathering where we got to visit with Jeff and Julie Mellor, now living in New Zealand.
Phyllis continues to teach second and third graders at EXPO Elementary school in St. Paul. This year, she has a new team of teaching colleagues, that she is really enjoying. She has a great group of kids this year and she also has a lot of parent volunteers. The volunteers really help, especially as she gets more tired now that she is pregnant. She continues to spend a lot of time on her job; but Jim to encourages her to spend more time on fun. Joe is now in middle school, Chippewa Middle School in Shoreview.
Joe is doing 6th grade orchestra and it’s amazing how much they have improved. Moundsview School District has a great orchestra program. Joe is now playing a full size violin that Jim built for him. It is Jim’s second violin and a pretty good one. Joe is really enjoying his Science class and he is reading voraciously. Joe really likes the Redwall series of novels by Brian Jacques.
Jim continues to build guitars. He got 7 guitar orders this year and he has had to greatly extend the delivery dates for new guitars (especially with the baby coming.) We were fortunate enough to have two winners of the Winfield Kansas Fingerpicking Championship (Phil Heywood and Bob Evans) come to our home to try out Jim’s guitars. We think that they liked them. These visits were arranged by our friend George, who knows lots of great players and for whom Jim is making a custom guitar. George and his wife Kathy are new friends here in Shoreview.
We had a nice but brief trip to southwestern Minnesota in August. We visited Blue Mounds State Park, with a nice hike on the cliff rim. A ridge of red Sioux quartzite rises abruptly from the plains at Blue Mounds. We also visited Pipestone National Monument, which was very pretty and interesting. We watched several Native Americans carving the stone and quarrying it. We also visited Jeffers petroglyphs, where another outcrop of Sioux Quartzite is covered with petroglyphs. Here, Joe and Jim got to try out the Atlatl (spear thrower). In the fall, we attended the Pleshek Family Reunion in Shawano. Jim got to meet many of Phyllis’s relatives that he had not met before and he got to talk with her brothers and her sister. It was a fun gathering. Phyllis’s Mom and her friend George bought a mobile home near Tampa Florida and we saw them off in October for their first winter in Florida. It sounds like they like it very much and we hope that they will consider coming back to the midwest in the Spring!
Phyllis and Jim's family photos - Main Page
Phyllis and Jim's family photos 2003
Last updated: 13-Jan-2010