I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas or whichever holiday you chose to celebrate this past week. We had a wonderful time ourselves.

Santa managed to find our house here in the Netherlands despite the fact that this is really the territory of his cousin Sinter Klaus who comes early in the month. The boys got several Wii games including Mario and Sonic go to the Olympics. They spent a little while playing that in the days just after Christmas, but now they've moved back to playing Guitar Hero. They've created a band called Ruby Cracker and characters who look like brothers. With the Younger on bass and the Older on drums, they've been rocking out cooperatively, slapping hands and cheering each other on. I told M it will all be fine until one of them gets a girlfriend.

M and I got Zelda: Twilight Princess and we've been playing it in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed. It's a beautiful game and we're enjoying the story so far, but I think it's ironic that the main way to make money is by chopping down grass. I guess there weren't any paper routes in Hyrule. The boys just started playing it today. It's amusing watching the Older flail with the Wii remote around as he tries to fight baddies.

It is amazing to me how dark things are here this time of year. We lived pretty far north in the US, but we're almost 5 degrees further north and that means that on the shortest day of the year, we get almost an hour less of sunlight this year. On the 21st, official sunrise was at 8:47 and sunset was at 4:28, giving us only 8:41 of daylight. Fortunately for us, the weather has been cold and clear, so we are getting that much sunlight. If it was rainy and overcast, like it sometimes can be, then I don't know how we'd manage.

I'm taking time during this break to do some reorganizing around the house and for work. I replaced the toilet paper rolls in both bathrooms. The ones that were there were cheap plastic and broke less than a week after we moved in. I've also talked to M about setting up music in the house and possibly rearranging our living room/dining room/computer area. I suspect we'll end up leaving a lot as it is, but it doesn't hurt to re-evaluate things.

Well, it's time to move onto other chores. I'll try to blog again on our around the 1st and give a bit of a reflection on our first year here in Holland. Overall, I think we're pretty happy, even though that may not show all the time in this blog.

Work continues to be strange. Turns out the idea we've proposed that would involve my new job has been set aside for a while. Instead, we'll end up with something more complex for the next while with the assumption that it will not work (eventually) and then we'll switch to the better structure we've already proposed. Not sure I understand the ins and outs, but I'm ok with it for now. In many ways it lets me off the hook.

The other annoying thing that happened at work this week was that one of my suppliers (internal to our company) demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of customer service. Now I need to be a bit blunt with them about why I'm not going to give them as much work for next year as they'd hoped. It's a lesson for me in saying no, but it won't be pleasant. I expect them to throw a little fit and try to pull some political nonsense, so I need to have my story straight and factual. *sigh* Sometimes I think I'm too nice for this job.

At home, the boys had their last day of school for the year on Thursday and they've been playing Mario Kart nearly non-stop since. They went with me on a short shopping trip yesterday. They are good companions when we shop as they now tag along without constant guidance and they have opinions to offer when we shop for their mom. I also managed to have them pick something out for each other and bought it without them really knowing what we got. We also bought groceries and let M nap and have time to herself in the middle of the day, so it was nice all around.

I hope to use this next two weeks to catch up on plans, both at work and at home. There's lots to do in both places, and I want to make sure we're well lined up to do what we want to do in the new year.

In the meantime, I'm unlikely to blog until after Christmas, so I wish anyone reading this a wonderful couple of weeks, however you choose to celebrate them.

Just a quick update to note that M and the kids are home and safe. I missed them a bunch, and it was great to have them all back, sleepy though they may be.

M and I spoke briefly about the possible changes at work, and she supports me in going for the additional responsibility, so I need to put my story together properly. I meet with my boss tomorrow and she and I will start discussing it then. I'd like to get this resolved in short order, and M and I want to start making solid plans for how to spend our remaining time here better. It's down to less than two years now (at least according to plan) and we still need to see most of Europe (including going back to Paris for a week.) I have plenty of time off to make it happen, but if we don't plan for it, then we'll end up going home without having left our house.

Well, off to bed. Tomorrow morning comes much too early, as I'd like to be at work before 8, since I have an all day meeting starting at 8:30.

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. I'll try to cover as much as I can.

M and the kids flew back to the US for her grandmother's memorial service. She passed away last weekend and M and the kids have been gone since a week ago Friday. I miss them all a lot. They'll be back tomorrow and I expect them to need a few days to recover from the time difference. The kid's have four more days of school before the Christmas break. I'm taking the time off between Christmas and New Years, so we'll have some time to be together and recharge.

There are some potential changes come up for me at work. I need to figure out how I want things to go. I suspect I'll be asked to take on some significant additional responsibilities, including having direct reports. I can probably write my own script if I do it properly, as several people around me have said they will back me in getting things to go my way.

There are two potential drawbacks to this. One is that I will probably need to spend more time in the North. I'm not sure how that will possibly work, since I don't want to move the family again just after we've gotten a bit settled. The second is that they may ask me to commit to some additional time here in the NL. We simply can't do that right now, as M is certain beyond certain that doesn't want to spend any extra time here. Since she's been away, we haven't had a change to talk about it, so nothing's decided at all yet. More on this as it develops.

There's a lot more to write about, but I'm going to stop now. I've found myself highly unmotivated lately, and I think that's because of these changes taking up my brain power. In any case, I have 2-3 big things to still finish this weekend, so I'd better get to it. I'll try to blog more at the end of tomorrow after M and the kids have had a chance to nap and we've had some time to discuss things a bit.