January Update

It's been a busy month! Started out the New Year at home with Wilbert with a nice dinner, a glass of champagne in some beautiful, colorful new champagne glasses Wilbert's sister had given us for Christmas, and the usual 12 grapes (a Spanish tradition, for good luck of each of the two months of the new year). We went outside, chatted with our neighbors, and made it to bed pretty early.

Work has been busy because we're down one team member right now... hoping to hear tomorrow if a great lady from the U.S. will join us.

Started working out at the gym and was doing pretty well for a while, but about two weeks ago injured by back and ended up flat on my back for two days and in physical therapy. I will get back to it again next week... had pretty much just been walking... and will continue sticking to a balanced diet. My back (the middle part of it... not the lower, funnily enough) is getting slowly better.

Which is a good thing, because after a month of rest, it's back on the road again, and when it rains, it pours. First it was just going to be Denver, with a nice weekend stopover in Des Moines to visit my parents and friends. Then all of the sudden it was Des Moines, Denver and Ottawa. Now just the day before yesterday, Kiev, Ukraine, has been added to the list. There and back in 36 hours. This is the craziness of my life.

Wilbert and I had a great meeting at the hotel where we're holding our wedding party in The Netherlands on Friday night. Good progress on nailing down all the details. We're very happy with the place, the arrangements and the way we're being treated. We're looking forward to it. We're now reviewing the contract for the party in D.C., which, in typical U.S. fashion, is far more complex and legalistic. Now we need to get to work on the church ceremony. The minister in D.C. is being really lovely and flexible about how we put it together, and I got some great books in the U.S. and seen some great resources online, especially the from the denomination I grew up in, the UCC. They support gay marriage and have a Rite of Marriage ceremony that is gender neutral that we can use as the basis for our ceremony. We have also decided to abandon the idea of using the church's own music department because we are not happy with their attitude and lack of responsiveness. At the same time, the minister is really lovely and we are looking forward to working with her. We'll ask friends and family to provide the music as well as choosing some recorded music ourselves.

My in-laws are coming over this afternoon so we can ask them to be our witnesses at our Dutch wedding, just as we've asked my parents to be our best man and matron of honor in the U.S. Since neither set of parents will be at both weddings, it's a beautiful way to connect the two ceremonies together into one, beautiful whole.

So that's the update for now.