Update to end all updates!

Wow - this got away from me a bit! I haven't had a good update since February....2008! A lot has happened over the last year and some has been pretty significant.

In April of last year we were living in Malvern with Chia and Meaghan. On April fools day - of all days - we hear yelling outside the apt, but figure it was just the usual loud kids that come through there. Then a girl comes up on our porch yelling that there's a fire in our building and to get out. Heather gets up and looks out and sees flames coming from the 3rd story window and freaks out. She runs off to find the cat who can be any number of places and bangs on Meaghan's door to get her out. I poke my head out the window, kind of confused and not really convinced of what is going on (keep in mind it was April Fools Day and things were happening much faster than I am describing them). Then I saw the window above my head blow out and the flames shooting out. That was convincing. Heather got the cat out and we put her in one of the cars then tried to get the rest of the people out of our building. There was no master alarm for the whole building so most people had no clue what was going on. Over the next couple of hours we watched as our apartment building burn. The fire fighters did a great job as soon as they got there and contained the fire to our half of the building. The 3rd floor was lost, but the 2nd had mostly water and smoke damage and our floor was only water damage. LOTS of water, but we still got really lucky. After the fire, we moved into my parent's for a couple of weeks and then moved into our new apartment in Exton where we currently reside.

In May we got married! May 24th was a pretty sweet day! Not a whole lot to describe, but the ceremony and reception were at Downingtown Country Club in Downingtown, PA. We had an outdoor ceremony, which was amazing and presided(?) over by Heather's family's pastor Rev. Iski. It was really cool to have someone who knew us and our family so well perform the ceremony and make it so personal. It was a great day with family and friends followed by a crazy night of drinking and dancing and Heather's grandfather drinking a bottle of Jack. Somehow his being ill later on was blamed on the spinach salad... suspect at best... After the wedding it was off to Ft Meyers, Florida for the week. That was awesome! A week of hanging on the beach sipping cold drinks and enjoying doing absolutely nothing.

On the marching band front - Ruch retired at the end of the school year and was succeeded by Lorraine Huddy, an East alumni and former classmate! This season was very different for all of us not having him around to guide us through, but it was a good experience. The kids responded really well to Huddy and her ideas and approach. We quickly put together a show that we felt would be competitive and headed into the season. I got the opportunity to write the show for us this year which was a lot of fun. Despite it being my first competitive show, I think it ended up going well. We finished in 6th place at finals out of the 18ish bands in our division. It was just nice not to finish last and top 6 is always respectable. Now we're just getting going on indoor percussion/guard season and have our first show tomorrow at Archbishop Wood. Robart decided that it was time for him to focus on other things and we brought in Pierson from Kingsway to help us out with the indoor season. So far so good and its been great to work with him finally!

Work is going well. I am still with Music and Arts and still in NJ. Still hating the commute every day, but what can you do? It's a job and in this economy its hard to complain about that.

Back on the political front - Barack Obama became President of the United States! If you've read this before, you know that I was a supporter of Obama and am excited/optimistic about his plans for the country. You never know how it will shake out (and if you ask my Dad we're heading into the fires of Hell) but good luck to all of us over the next couple of years. We're not out of the woods yet.

OH! And the Phillies won the WORLD SERIES!!! It was one of the most memorable events of the year (after the wedding of course Heather) and has only gotten more exciting as time has gone on. A group of us went into Philly for the parade and ceremony on the Friday after they won and had a great time with a million or two of our closest friends.

I think that's about it for this year. If I forgot something , you'll have to let me know. Hopefully I'll blog more often. I really do enjoy it. We'll see.

The Phillies are STILL world champions!