Season’s greetings from The Browns!

Probably the biggest change for us in 2009 was that Susan Jane was back in Portland with "the boys."  After two great years with Congressman DeFazio (D-OR - pictured to the right) in Washington, DC, Susan Jane returned to Oregon and environmental litigation.  She studied non-stop from Christmas until late February and successfully passed the Oregon Bar Exam (she previously passed the Washington Bar Exam in 2000) - this was a huge accomplishment and definitely warranted some celebrating!  Shortly thereafter, she started working for the Western Environmental Law Center (www.westernlaw.org).  The Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) is a non-profit public interest law firm that works to protect and restore western wildlands and advocates for healthy environments on behalf of communities throughout the West.  With WELC, SJ will be working on the same types of issues she was working on before going to DC: protecting endangered species and their habitats, public forests, and other public lands issues.  She is also working to encourage better planning to protect animals on the nation's roadways and collaborating with rural communities.  This work has taken her to all parts of the Northwest, as well as several return trips to her old stomping grounds in Washington, DC. 

Paul is still with the same group at Intel, working on the Larrabee project, which was demonstrated twice this year . In February, he was able to return to Purdue University to teach a class to some Computer Science students - this was a real highlight to the work year and he plans to go back again next February.  The team he manages went through some changes this year, expanding in Guadalajara and picking up teams in Bangalore, India and Gdansk, Poland.  He traveled to Taipei in December, Guadalajara and Bangalore twice this year, and was able to go to Poland for the first time.  Gdansk is a really nice city and Intel has a great team of about 400 people there.  Paul was also able to attend an executive training course for a week in Virginia - it was a great class and a beautiful place to be in late Summer.  Paul will be eligible for his second sabbatical with Intel in June, but our plans for it have gotten so big we need an extra year just to save up for it - we're currently planning to take it in Summer 2011.

This year marked our 10th wedding anniversary.  As luck would have it, SJ's cousin got married just after our anniversary in the beautiful San Juan Islands in northwestern Washington.  For those of you not familiar with this area, it is really breathtaking.  While there, we were able to visit with SJ's family for several days, and then we stayed in the area for several days after the wedding to celebrate our anniversary - hiking, biking, and kayaking.  It was a very "outdoorsy" week and we really enjoyed the wildlife and scenery.  It was very refreshing.

Paul was concerned that a few extra days in the San Juan's would not be enough to sufficiently recognize such a momentous occasion, so he worked covertly with our travel agent to arrange an additional big trip this year and surprised SJ with it on their anniversary.  In early September, we took a 9 day trip to southern Ireland.  In order to be extra romantic, Paul decided to make it a car tour - staying in a different bed and breakfast every night.  This ended up being much more work than either of us planned!  We scheduled a very full agenda - seeing as many as 5 different sites each day.  Southern Ireland is not very large, and we drove over 1000 miles in 6 days.  It was a great experience and we are already planning our next trip back, but we needed another vacation once we got home. :)  

Having SJ home for the whole year has been fantastic!  First and foremost, she turned into quite a chef in the three years since we lived in the same town, making soups, curries, marinades, and vegetable dishes that even Paul will eat! :)  We've also been working on improving our social calendar, hosting several parties this year featuring the very fun video game "Rock Band" (you play along with popular songs on somewhat realistic plastic instruments - like karaoke, but you don't have to sing).  In fact, around Halloween we decided to put in a raised platform in the back of our media room to better accommodate more people (and the drum set) - at times we've had more than 20 people all squeezed into the back 1/3 of the room.  The latest additions to our parties include a music synchronized smoke machine, strobe light, and color LED's! We plan to have many more parties in 2010, so if you're in the Portland area and want to rock out some weekend, sign up below. 

We did a few other things this year as well.  In February, Paul got braces.  He's been doing ok with them and is down to complaining only a few times a week. :) We also saw a few concerts, including Poison, Def Leppard, and Pearl Jam - considering we haven't seen any live music in a while, it was fun to see bands we both liked when we were in high school.  Finally, we participated in the 14th Portland Bridge Pedal (along with 18,000 other people).  This is where Portland shuts all of its bridges to car traffic so that people can ride bicycles across as many as possible.  We crossed a total of 8 bridges (24 miles) in about 2.5 hours.  It's not setup as a race, but as a great way to see more of Portland than you normally would in a car and we really enjoyed it.  You can see from the pictures that there were tons of people who came out for it. 

The year wouldn't be complete without a major home improvement project.  With SJ home now, we're having more houseguests and parties, so we decided to add a full second bathroom to the basement.  We finished the basement when we first moved into the house in 2004, but our budget didn't allow us to put in a bathroom at that time.  It was no small project, as you can see in the pictures - it required a fair amount of concrete work as part of the plumbing, plus demo and reconstruction of the room and all the tile work for the shower.  Luckily for us, we were able to reconnect with the builder who did all the work the first time and he does excellent work!  In fact, now we come up with excuses to use the "new shower" whenever we can.  Next year our big project will be repainting the outside of the house - something we've also wanted to do since we moved in. 

We did not do any major work outside the house, but all of the landscaping work we did last year continues to develop in new and interesting ways.  It does require constant vigilance against weeds, and we put in an irrigation system in the spring (it cost less for Paul to put in a flexible hose system then we spent on new hoses and sprinklers last year!) - but we're extremely happy with the results.  It seems like every month a different group of plants is blooming and bringing out colors we've never seen before.  We're spending much more time enjoying our front porch and constantly searching for the perfect yard furniture.  Spending time in the yard is a nice break from the day to day - and we love having such a unique yard. 

The dogs are holding up well considering that Luca turned 10 this year and Lorax turned 9, it's like living with two "old men"!  Luca has been good all year, a nice change after the scare with his hips last fall - he finds the strength to climb onto the water bed every night and goes up and down the stairs a few times each day.  On the other hand, Lorax has thrown us a curve this year: in August, he was diagnosed with canine diabetes.  Much like human diabetes, Lorax’s disease requires regular insulin shots twice a day.  Despite all of that, the dogs are happy pups, and still enjoy barking at the mailman, going for a ride in the car, and napping in late afternoon sunbeams.  Here is an adorable video of Luca playing with a small toy that completely flustered him.