Thursday, January 17, 2008

It's been a while

Hey gang,

It's been a while since there has been a post on this blog and this is my first post to our TEAM COLEMAN site.
First off everyone on team Coleman is doing well. Jenny is no longer with Frontier Airlines and is now working for an insurance company in the Denver Tech Center. There is great potential with this new career path and it was an answer to prayer for us that she got a job like this. So far it's been pretty boring work and the jury is still out if it's where she wants to be ultimately but it's great for right now.

Sara is in the middle of her 6th grade year at Morey Middle School and is doing well there. She has had somewhat of a hard time adjusting to the new math and science but overall likes being there. She and I have been learning some new music together and she's playing the string bass in the middle school orchestra which is cool. They had their Christmas concert and Sara rocked the house!

Anna is whipping through the 3rd grade, she's doing well in school and is our family comedian she's always got a joke or two on hand and keeps us in stitches at home with her jokes, dancing and funny comments. Anna also participated in her school Christmas program although I didn't get any pictures that night. So here is a random picture of Anna from sometime in the past few months. Anna being Anna....

As for me I finally returned to work after laying on the couch for 3 1/2 weeks in mid December. I worked 1/2 days for the first couple weeks which was awesome. I'd really like to have kept that schedule but unfortunately I eventually had to go back to full days which was a let down but the way it had to be. I've been doing physical therapy on my knee for the past 3 weeks now and have seen major improvements. After 2 months of being on Crutches I am finally walking on my own this week. If I'm on my feet for a long period of time I still need to grab one of the crutches to help take weight but for the most part I'm done with them. I hope not to pick up another crutch for a long, long time after the end of this week. The crazy thing is that my right leg has almost no muscle left so I'm re learning to walk if you can believe that. It's a challenge but I'm excited about it. Also I'm exploring other work opportunities outside of Ball Aerospace where I've been working for almost 10 years. We'll see if anything comes of this exploration and if not I'll be happy to stay here as there are a lot of great things here.

Over the Christmas Holiday we had a lot of fun with family and friends. My sister Joanna and her family came from Minneapolis and stayed with us for a couple of nights which was a blast for all of us. Their 5 kids and our 2 kids had a lot of fun playing us adults had a lot of fun staying up until 2-3am each night talking and catching up. One day while they were visiting Pete (Joanna's husband) wanted to take the kids up to the mountains so we all loaded up and took a nice drive up to lookout mountain where it was freezing cold. Oh ya have I mentioned that I've been wearing shorts all winter due to my knee brace? Some days are worse than others with that whole shorts thing.


We also had a big COLEMAN family get together for Christmas and everyone of my 9 brothers and sisters were able to make it. We got the great news over the holidays also that between both of our families there are 3 new babies on the way! Dana Jenny's sister is expecting as well as my Sisters Michelle and Jenny Duncan. That was an awesome Christmas gift for everyone! Exciting!! So back to the Coleman get together we had 36 people at my Moms house including a few friends who came by to help celebrate Jesus birthday with us. Below is a few pictures of my entire family from that day.
We also got the chance to spend a day with Jenny's sister Kerri and some other members of the Peech family. We had a good time celebrating Christmas with them and learning some new Christmas traditions (South African) that we weren't familiar with. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them that day. No pictures of that one, sorry...

On December 30th we gathered many friends and family for the much anticipated Vikings game here in Denver. With our friends the Max's we drove down to the stadium and got there about 5 hours before kickoff. We hooked up the direct TV dish on the roof of the car fired up the TV cooked some brats and enjoyed the atmosphere. It was nice during the day but got pretty cold during the game. It was awesome to expose Jenny to the madness that is VIKINGS football and she had a good time. Unfortunately the Vikings lost to end their season at 8-8 but we had a great time before during and after the game. Oh ya and this was the first time being a handicap paid off for me, we got awesome parking and we ended up with great seats due to my situation. 50 yard line 21 rows up.



For New Years we went with the Max's to the Palm restaurant and had dinner and then hung around the downtown Westin playing card games and watching the fireworks out the window of our room and stuff. It was a nice relaxing new years celebration with great friends.

2007, came and went and it was an amazing year! We got married, traveled, got closer, got surgeries, spent time with friends and family and had a blast along the way.
We are so excited for what God has in store for us in 2008 I'm sure it will be an adventure for team-Coleman. Happy belated NEW YEAR to all of you!