Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Neergaards
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Notes from
Dick and Lois The spirit for
travel and adventure was as always willing, but alas dampened by the
flesh in 2006... choppy waters on the physical front.
We did however make our annual Fall and Winter snowbird
pilgrimages to Hilton Head. Thanksgiving
was a particularly warming time, as sons Arthur and Peter, with his son
Steven, were able to join us there. During
the rest of the year, Cincinnati's estimable opera and theater season
provided a quite sparkling backdrop to the pleasant social fabric, and
we kept the blood moving in our veins by playing (at) tennis. The Big
Deal of the year for us was the fortuitous settling of the van der
Werffs in Cincinnati (see below). Pleading
decrepitude and senility (heh-heh-heh) (just
kidding... I think), I again recruited the more
interesting and certainly more energetic members of our family to
compose their own sections to this letter. Accordingly: |
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Notes From Daughter Sue, & Jan Willem
(& G'kids Willem and Nick)
Last year we
proudly
announced that we did not change jobs or houses, did not add pets and
did not
get involved in any major home improvement projects.
Well, this year we made up for it, doing all of the above in
2006. We changed jobs and houses,
added pets, and have the plaster dust dancing in the sunlight even as
we
write. Here's how the game went
for us in the year past:
In the summer we
decided it was
time to change not only jobs, but companies as well.
After more than 14 years of making plastics for GE, the
prospect of inventing and selling plastic as head of R&D and New
Market
Development for Lanxess, a spin-off of Bayer, was very appealing. So the change was made. This change
brought two ancillary advantages.
The first was that we had some very good family time in between
jobs,
time that was spent on two great vacations. First
we went on an educational trip to New York City,
Baltimore and Washington DC. Sons
Willem and Nick learned everything about the Empire State building,
Wall Street
and Ground Zero. Then at Fort Mc
Henry, they learned how the national anthem came to life
(recognizing
contemporary ethnic sensitivity, "José can you see...").
Then in DC our (now former)
congressman, of Indiana's 8th district, gave us a personal tour of the
Capitol.
After the Big City
tour we spent
almost a month in Europe: 10 days
in Holland with friends and family, then almost 20 days in Italy where
the Van
der Werff brothers rented a medieval villa in Umbria, topped off with
two days
in Rome. It was a well-rested family that returned to the US, primed to
get
very busy with our new lives.
The second advantage
of the job
change is its serendipitous location in Cincinnati. This of course
meant moving
houses, and we can proudly announce that versus our previous move to
Evansville, the weight of our household shrunk from 37,000 lbs to a
mere 31,000
lbs. In the meantime we've settled
into our new residence and now call ourselves West-Siders.
And quite frankly, we don't understand
what them snobby East-Siders are talking about. Why
in Evansville, the entire city was West Side.
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Willem
and Nick are now at St Ignatius' school. Nick is a second grader, and
has truly excelled in his first year playing football.
Willem is in 4th grade and is, along with his brother,
going out for chess and wrestling. That
leaves one further change item to account for: the
added pet, a kitten, which Uncle Art found and kindly gave to us. He'd named her Margaret, aka Meg, but her
loony behavior soon earned her her current name: Nutmeg. |
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Notes From Son Arthur
I continue to work at
P&G,
doing research & development on their growing
device
business [editor's interjection: In MY day
....harrumpf...
P&G dealt with good, honest chemicals... none of this gadget stuff].
This work includes travel, and
sometimes I hit a trip right, eg my last supplier qualification, for
which I "had to" spend 6 days in Venice (and not
the one in California!). On the
home front, my cat collection grows as it went from three to nine this
past
summer when I picked up an injured stray mother cat and five kittens. My apartment was hectic [a
zoo? - ed] for a while, but has
settled
down since I found homes for all the kittens, the last of which went to
my
sister [see
above brother-in-law's wry characterization – ed] where it now dominates the two Labradors, and
specializes
in climbing Christmas trees.
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I continue to
pursue my passion for target shooting and now sit on the board of
directors for one of the shooting clubs in Cincinnati.
I've also started a small business selling specialty
lenses for gun sights. The lens company
remains a hobby though; I won't be
quitting my day job at P&G anytime soon.
[editor: while admiring his modesty in not mentioning
it, it is nevertheless appropriate to report that Arthur's
annual classic blowout for Riverfest was as delightfully raucous this
year as ever]. |
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Notes
from
Son Richard, and Ishraq (and g'kids Samer and Lila)
International
School of Istanbul, and to great public acclaim, has set up her dance
classes at the country club here. Other highlights
of the year: summer at our villa on the
Red Sea; Samer and I swimming with
dolphins; a Greek Island cruise; and a weekend in Deauville with our friend
Tarek Sherif, hosted by his dad Omar. (see http://www.neergaard.org/Omar/Evening.html Give it a couple of
minutes to load fully!) |
Poster describing Ishraq's dance lessons |
Notes
from
Son Peter
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My job at lBM- designing, then giving training sessions in the use of WebSphere (IBM's business system coordinating software) for the company's clients globally, now thankfully has me traveling less and in Pittsburgh more. Seeing the world was terrific, but staying put a bit more has given me a better a chance to "have a life". "Life" in this instance means being with my son Steven as much as possible, rollerblading and playing tennis. Steven is now in kindergarten; he too very much enjoys playing tennis... and t-ball, and soccer, and basketball. He roller blades and ice skates as well, and this year will be starting skiing and karate. In his spare time, that is. |
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Editor:
And they'll all be with us for
Christmas again this year– bless them!
Most cordially,
