Happy Holidays!

December 2011

Season’s Greetings! We hope that 2011 has been a great year for you and your loved ones.

For us, 2011 has forever changed our lives. We found out early in the year that we were expecting our first child, due November 12. Then in July, we found out that we were expecting a little girl. The morning of October 11, Phil took Julie to the emergency room because of a pregnancy-related complication, and a few short hours later our daughter was delivered.

Sarah Mae Shilane was born October 11, 2011, at 2:18 p.m. at Lower Bucks Hospital. She was 4 lb 5.7 oz, 17” long, and she had a full head of dark hair. Thankfully, she was very healthy considering how early she was born, and she should not have any long-term health problems. After we had a few brief moments to meet our daughter and to introduce her to Julie’s parents, she was taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where she spent the first 10.5 days of her life. The nurses and doctors there took excellent care of Sarah and taught us how to care for our little preemie.

Each day in the NICU, Sarah made significant progress: breathing without support, regulating her body temperature, and learning to eat consistently without a feeding tube. On the tenth day, we found out that Sarah would be coming home the next day! Like most preemies, she had a tendency to breathe shallowly when in a deep sleep, so she was sent home on an apnea monitor but thankfully never had any episodes. A visiting nurse also came to our house frequently in the beginning to make sure Sarah continued to gain enough weight at home.

Sarah’s now two months old, weighs more than 7 lb, and is doing extremely well. She loves to cuddle, is generally quite happy, and sleeps fairly well during the night. We love every minute of parenthood with our sweet little Sarah!

If you’d like to see more photos of Sarah, you can find links to our online photo albums here.

Besides welcoming Sarah into our lives, we also celebrated several other special occasions this year.

In May, Phil’s sister Amy and Brent Phipps got married just outside of Washington, DC, where they currently live and work. We were both honored to be a part of their bridal party.

In July, in celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary on August 13, we went on a cruise and land tour of Alaska with both sets of our parents. Julie’s parents celebrated their 35th anniversary, and Phil’s parent’s celebrated their 39th.

Sadly, shortly after we returned from our trip, Julie’s grandmother passed away. She had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years. We traveled with Julie’s parents and brother to Lady Lake, Florida, for the memorial service. All of Julie’s aunts, uncles, and cousins attended, including her cousin’s daughter who lives in Mexico and whom we hadn’t met in person before. In memory of Grandma, we taught the youngest generation how to play her favorite card game, Canasta.

For the first time in about 10 years, Phil, his parents, and his siblings got to spend Thanksgiving together. They all visited at our house so they could meet Sarah. Julie’s parents also came for Thanksgiving, and Sarah’s grandparents and aunt and uncles came to her naming ceremony the following Saturday.

We hope your holidays are filled with cheer and that 2012 brings good health, happiness, and many blessings to you and your loved ones.

Happy Holidays!

Phil, Julie, & Sarah Shilane

Holidays with Phil's Family

We were supposed to fly to Missouri the day after Christmas (Sunday) to visit with Phil's family. Unfortunately it snowed Sunday and was really windy on Monday, so our flight got postponed for 3 days until Wednesday. So, our trip was cut short, but we packed a lot into our visit.

Dinner with Phil's family

Shilane family photo:
Front: Mom & Dad
Back: Julie, Phil, Dave, Amy, & Brent

Then we exchanged gifts. Everybody likes to take a photo of the gifts before they are opened. We think it's more interesting to have one of the guys pose in front of the photos. Maybe Phil's Dad will do it next year ;)

Phil

Dave

Brent being a good sport

Mom & Dad opening photo books

Egyptian artwork for Dave and Phil

An engraved cake knife and server for Amy & Brent's wedding

Remote-controlled helicopters for the guys

On New Year's Eve, we got together with Phil's friend, Eric DeGruson, and his family. We played two rounds of laser tag with the kids, and then the adults went out to dinner.

Julie, Carry, Eric, Eli, Wyatt, & Phil

We also got together with Phil's friend Ryan Pierce, and Julie helped throw a bridal shower for Amy and Brent. Photos from the shower will be posted soon.

Holiday's with Julie's Family

Aunt Mary and Bob had us over on Christmas Eve for dinner and to exchange gifts. Thanks, Aunt Mary & Bob!

Kevin

Dad

Julie

Phil

Aunt Mary & Mom

Bob

On Christmas day, Mom, Dad, and we went to Kevin's house. Kevin cooked us yummy pancakes for breakfast, then we exchanged gifts.

More stackable cookie racks for Mom
so that next year's stack of cookies can be even higher!

Dad & Kevin

Phil's excited about his Game Cube

Kevin made gorgeous candle holders for Julie

Happy Holidays from the Joneses!
Phil, Julie, Joyce, Don, & Kevin

Happy Holidays!

December 2010

Dear Friends and Relatives,

Happy holidays to you and your family! In 2010, we were busy with work and traveling to visit family and friends.

In May, we visited Phil’s grandmother and aunt in Ft. Lauderdale. Phil’s siblings, Amy and David, also joined us for the visit. Afterwards, we drove to Key West and spent a few days vacationing. In June, we traveled to Ohio to visit Phil’s other grandparents and attended his cousin’s high school graduation party at a local lake.

It was also a year for momentous birthdays. We celebrated Julie’s dad’s milestone birthday in Florida while visiting his mother, who shares a birthday with him in August. We also got to visit with Julie’s aunts, uncle, and cousins while there. In October, we celebrated Julie’s half-milestone birthday with a home party that included about 30 local relatives and friends.

Phil’s friends from Stanford, Adam and Nidhi, married over Labor Day weekend, and Phil was a groomsman in the wedding in the Stanford Memorial Church. We traveled to the Stanford area the week before and had time to visit with Julie’s cousins Sandi and David Steich and their family as well as Susan Walton. We also visited with Phil’s brother and numerous college friends who live in the area and went to a jazz show in San Francisco. Julie got to try In-N-Out Burger for the first time.

We returned to Stanford in late October for Phil’s 10^th college reunion. There were numerous events, including a reunion for his freshman dorm, a computer science majors reunion, tailgating, football game (Stanford is having a great season!), and an evening party for everyone from the class of 2000.

Several of our relatives and friends had children this year. Julie was busy making gifts for a number of the babies.

This was our second year hosting Thanksgiving. We had the same six guests as last year: Phil’s sister and her fiancé, Julie’s parents, and her aunt and uncle. We went with a larger turkey breast and three drumsticks, so there were more leftovers than last year. Everyone brought side dishes, and we had an enjoyable dinner.

Phil continues to work for EMC in a research and development office in Princeton. His projects included improving compression for long term data storage and collecting data sets for future experiments, and he recently had a paper accepted on clustered storage.

Julie continues to work for Light Management Consulting and a division devoted to health care websites. She manages a few dozen intern writers and attended medical conferences in Chicago and Orlando to cover recent clinical trial results. Phil went along to the Chicago conference and got to see the Art Institute and aquarium while Julie was busy working. We had time to try multiple deep-dish pizza restaurants for dinner. Before the start of the conference in Orlando, Julie got to visit with her grandmother and aunt and uncle again this year.

We hope you had a healthy and happy 2010, and we look forward to talking with you soon.

Love,

Julie and Phil

Holidays with Phil's Family

We spent the week between Christmas and New Year's visiting Phil's family in Joplin, Missouri. Unfortunately due to a couple of hospitalizations, we weren't all in the same room at the same time. So, it was a bit of an unusual visit. Luckily, everyone is doing fine now.

The Shilane Chanukkah gift exchange would not be complete without a bit of humor.

Dave with all of the unopened gifts


Phil's Mom


Phil's Mom with a marionette that we bought in Prague during the summer


Phil & Julie


Phil's Dad got a Snuggie!

A few traditions have been started in the last few years. The first is that Dave and Phil continue to exchange the same Dave Chappelle DVDs over and over again.

Surprise, Phil!

The second tradition is the exchange of mystery gifts. At this point, the only rules of mystery gifts seem to be that the rules are still unknown. The point is just to give silly gifts not necessarily to the person they are intended for and then have fun or swap.

This year, Amy gave Nerf guns to the guys so that they could have a war.

Dave and his mystery gun

Phil and Brent with their guns and the aftermath of the gift exchange. Phil appears to be plotting his next move against Brent.

More of the mystery gift exchange. Amy got Canasta cards, which were meant for Brent.

While we were in Joplin, we were able to get together with a couple of Phil's good friends from high school: Ryan Pierce, who was a groomsman in our wedding, and Eric, Carry, Eli, and Wyatt DeGruson. We spent New Year's Eve with Eric and his family, but unfortunately, we didn't take any photos.

Phil, Julie, & Ryan

Happy Holidays from the Shilanes!

Holidays with Julie's Family

Aunt Mary & Bob had us over on Christmas Eve for dinner and to exchange a few gifts. Thanks, Aunt Mary & Bob!

Kevin and a George Foreman grill for his new house

Bob & Dad

Dad

Aunt Mary and an embroidered doily that we bought in Germany this summer

Phil and a 12 in 1 game set

On Christmas day, Mom, Dad, and Kevin came over to exchange gifts and for dinner.

Before the unwrapping began

Kevin bought a house this fall about 10 minutes away from us in Morrisville, PA. Julie designed and cross stitched a gift for Kevin's house.

Kevin & his Home Sweet Home cross stitch

Tissue box cover Kevin made for Julie

Happy Holidays from the Joneses!
Phil, Julie, Joyce, Don, & Kevin

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

Cookie Baking & Candy Making

The holidays wouldn't be complete without homemade cookies and candy! It's Jones family tradition to bake dozens of cookies and make several batches of fudge to give away to family and friends. This year, we also made peanut butter and chocolate truffles.

Of course, on the day that we made plans to bake cookies with Julie's Mom and brother Kevin, it ended up snowing quite heavily. But Mom made the drive down to our place anyway.

Yummy Truffles!

Julie and Batch 1 of the cookies. We made 4 batches all together.

Our snow-covered back patio

Thanksgiving

This year was our first year hosting and cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Julie's parents, Aunt Mary, Uncle Bob, and Phil's sister Amy and her boyfriend Brent spent Thanksgiving with us.

We baked a turkey breast, which turned out to not be so difficult to do. We and our guests also made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, muffins, pumpkin pie, and coffee cake. Quite a feast!

Amy, Brent, Bob, Aunt Mary, Julie's Dad, Julie's Mom, Julie