12-15-08 Week in Reveiw

I'm not sure if I can really talk about last week yet...let's just say it was rather traumatic. Besides the trauma, I visited Canada and my parents came down and we attended Creative Christmas.

That's all I have to say about that.

12/8/08 Week in Review

What a week. This week was our big internal audit at work. I'd been leading a team for the past two years to prepare for this and I'm happy to report that my area was ranked the highest in the company. It's quite an achievement and it really made me excited. It's nice to see when all your hard work pays off.

Other than that, I spent about 8 hours this weekend rehearsing with Park Lane. We're sounding pretty good and the new material is coming along nicely. Saturday we saw Trans Siberian Orchestra. I'll post a few pics later on.

Christmas Letter part 2

At home there were more changes. First there was the bathroom re-do, then Jodi got a new car, and lastly we finished our hot tub area. Apparently the hot tub was so relaxing we just couldn’t get motivated to complete this project over the last four years!

We made a decision this year to attend a new church as we continually seek to deepen our relationship with Christ. While we will miss all of our friends and the band at our old church, we are very excited about our new church home, Heritage Wesleyan Church. http://www.heritageqc.com/

Musically we had another successful year. This summer was Ardor’s fifth outdoor concert. The tradition continued and it was even better than before with more than 100 people in attendance.

Brian also joined a new band called Park Lane. They play Christian hard rock music and you can check them out at http://www.parklanerocks.com/. Finally, Brian auditioned for and is playing in the praise bands at the Heritage Church Rock Island and Bettendorf campuses.

We look forward to hearing from each of you and hope that you are doing well. Although times may seem tough right now, may you know that God loves you each and every day! Merry Christmas and we wish you the very best in 2009!

Brian & Jodi

Christmas Letter part 1

Hello friends and family and welcome to Brian and Jodi’s 2008 Christmas letter! Here’s what’s been going on in our lives over the past year…

Brian continues as the Manager of Supply Chain Integration at the John Deere Seeding Group. Besides his normal work which included hiring lots of new employees, he participated in a special project that took him all the way to the Ukraine!

Additionally, Brian was awarded the Agricultural division’s ‘President’s Award of Excellence’ for his work on an internal quality program, resulting in the Seeding Group receiving the highest score in all of John Deere. As part of the recognition he attended a reception with senior leadership in Atlanta and received a crystal award which can be viewed on his blog

Jodi accepted a new position as a business analyst for John Deere’s SAP (business software) group. In her new position she translates business requirements into programming specifications and supports the accounts receivable process. Jodi looks forward to being in her new position full-time after a long 5-month transition!

As opposed to Brian’s work travel which consists primarily of less desirable excursions like Saskatchewan in December, Jodi’s job took her to several interesting cities. We extended three of these trips into enjoyable long weekend getaways. In February, a trip to Las Vegas provided great fun and Brian brought home $1.75 of the $2 he gambled!

Jodi headed to Tampa in March and Brian flew down to meet her for some time at Universal Studios where Mardi Gras was still in full swing.

Finally, September brought a trip to Philadelphia where we saw some historic sites, Hershey, and met some of Brian’s family for the first time.

to be continued...

12/1/08 Week in Review

Hello again!

Well we got snow and cold weather this week. I'm so excited...not!

I must be getting old because I'm having a hard time remember all the way back to Monday. I do know that I went to Des Monies on Thursday and that before that it snowed on Wednesday evening because rehearsal was canceled.

I played in Rock Island at Heritage again this weekend and it was another great experience. It was a little never wreaking because we didn't have rehearsal but I think I caught on. I couldn't tell if they hated it or liked it. I do think my playing may be a bit different that everyone is used to. I have received lots of nice compliments about my playing...actually I think the compliments are maybe more about how I play than what I play. Words like, passionate, energizing and charismatic. I took my double pedal along and I didn't know if I'd get kicked off the stage or what but it seems like several people really liked that sort of thing. It's interesting to see how evangelism runs through the veins of this Church. It's a much different sort of thing for me. The expectations are very high as well and while challenging, it's something I enjoyed.

I was able to grab a photo of the kit I played. It's the smallest kit I've every performed on so I'm having to learn how to do that. I added several cymbals and the double kick so that helps me feel a lot more comfortable.

Sprint did not disappoint

When we got our iPhones in July, I told everyone I expected to have my Sprint bill wrapped up in December...6 months afterwards. This was expectation was based on the 8 years of experience I had in dealing with Sprint billing.

I'm happy to report that Sprint did not disappoint. Today, December 1st, we finally received our refund. It only took about 5 phone calls and probably around 4 more hours of my life.

I'd like to report that 6 months in, or 25% of the way through my contract, I have had no billing errors or discrepancies with AT&T. Additionally, Apple continues to update their iPhone software (with major upgrades coming fast and furious...outpacing anything I've ever seen from Microsoft) making it an even better device. A couple of weeks ago we got 3G service at home so all is good...with the exception of my previously listed complaints.

11-24-08 Week in Review

What a week. I can't remember much of what happened early in the week...must not have been too exciting. On Wednesday I took the corporate jet up to our plant in Valley City. That's the way to travel...no waiting, no checking, nice comfy seat and an open bar on the way home to open up the holiday weekend. That evening I got a start on re-finishing the basement before we headed down to Jodi's parents. Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was a rather enjoyable time hanging out with her family. After dinner we headed out for a walk...evidence posted below.

Friday was our annual shopping day. We got a really early start this year @ 5 AM! It started off well enough. By 6:30 we'd been through 4 stores and had gotten everything we were looking for (like this snazzy keyboard I'm typing on). After that things slowed down but we still had success. The only thing we missed on was $30 of iTunes cards for $25 but that was admittedly a low priority. We got a start on setting up Christmas decorations as well since the weather was nice.

Saturday Kristy and Sean stopped by and there was a Park Lane rehearsal and Sunday we threw a few things up on eBay since the weather headed south and we got our first snow (yuck).