Happy Holidays!

December 2009

Dear Friends and Relatives,

Happy holidays to you and your family! In 2009, we settled into our home and traveled quite a bit.

Our big vacation for the year (and the last few years) was a two week tour through central Europe. We visited a graduate school friend in Belgium for a few days and then joined a bus tour that started in Germany and covered the major sites in six countries. Our favorite places included Krakow, Poland and Budapest, Hungary because of the history, architecture, shopping, and beauty of the cities. We posted photos and a summary of our trip on our blog.

Wedding season was busy this year. We attended the wedding of Phil’s cousin Beth Shilane and Daniel Kotkin in Old Bridge, NJ, where we visited many of Phil’s relatives. We also attended weddings for college and graduate school friends in Cambridge, MA, Bethlehem, PA, and Toronto, ON. We extended the trip to Toronto by stopping at Niagara Falls on the way and enjoyed the waterfalls surrounded by the beautifully changing leaves on the trees as well as the Maid of the Mist boat tour.

This was our first year hosting Thanksgiving. We had six guests including Phil’s sister and her boyfriend, as well as Julie’s parents and aunt and uncle. Cooking the turkey was not as difficult as we had feared, and everyone brought delicious dishes for dinner. Our table was able to seat all eight of us, but some of the side dishes did not fit.

2009 has been an active year for our companies as well.

Phil’s company, Data Domain, was purchased by a much larger computer storage company, EMC. His work remains the same, research and development to improve the company’s products, and the larger company should be more stable in the long run. Patent and paper submissions are currently in progress about his work.

Julie has worked on a couple of pharmaceutical consulting projects this year at Light Management Consulting, but she has also played an important role in expanding a sister company, Light Knowledge Resources. Since October 2008, Light has launched four Web sites that each specialize in a terminal or chronic disease. Julie is managing a team of student interns who write about news and research related to each disease.

We also went to Santa Fe, NM with Julie’s colleagues and their spouses. We did quite a bit of hiking during the long weekend, including hiking the upper part of an 11,000 ft mountain.

We hope you had a healthy and happy 2009, and we look forward to talking with you soon.

Love,

Julie and Phil