Christmas Cards

I have recieved a number of Christmas cards. And I would like to share a couple of the pictures that I have recieved along with the cards. Here is my cousin Heidi with her husband Craig, and daughters, Anna and Abby along with her son, Alex at Craig's Navy Retirement. For those that are regular readers, it was Craig and Heidi's house that I toilet papered earlier this fall. Remember, do not mess with me.

These are Clark and Linda Beier's grandkids, Layla, Laura, Josh and Odin. Clark was my soccer coach growing up. And I played soccer and knew his son, Matt, throughout my childhood.Here are Nathan and Lindsey. They are Don and Julie Melnikoff's kids. Julie and I worked together at Merge. One of my favorite stories from working with Julie happened early on in my employment there. Our manager, Anton, worked out of our European office and would come to Milwaukee 3 or 4 times a year. Anton had a habit of coming into your cubicle and would ramble on and on and on. Most of what Anton said wasn't all that relevent. Anyhow Julie and I had this little trick that we would do, whenever Anton walked into either of our cubicles we would call each other as we shared a cubicle wall. And we would tell Anton we couldn't talk and had to take the call. While this was a little funny in reality it was very helpful and only helped us to being more productive.

Here is Brady, Andy (Truz) and Julie's son. Truz used to be my roommate. I once offered him $500 not to get married and he turned it down. I wonder how he feels about that offer now. They now live down in Clearwater, Florida.

Here is Ryan, Jen and Kaia. I used to play kickball with Ryan and Jen. Ryan also likes to jump into the bushes in front of my house when he drinks too much.Here are Mark, Suzanne and Elise. Mark was my roommate in college back at UWM. There was a time when Mark and Suzanne were dating when Suzanne didn't like me too much. I used to give her a bit of a hard time whenever she came over to our place. In fact on a number of occasions she would call Mark to see if I was at the house, and if I was, she wouldn't come over. But since then I have won Suzanne over with my charm. Mark and Suzanne live in Appleton now, so I get together with them at least once every week or two. On a side, note I do like this picture a lot. Black and white really captures the moment.Here is Kaitlyn, Tree and Heather's daughter. What can I really say about Tree? Actually nothing positive, other than he has an adorable daughter. How that is possible is beyond me.

Here are Matt and Seth. Tony and Cammy's sons. Tony is my sister in law Julie's brother. A funny story about Tony. In high school Tony and I were on the same club soccer team. I joined the team late and as it turned out Tony and I had the same jersey number. We were both somewhat tall and blonde. From the sidelines it was a little difficult to tell us apart. Tony was a better player than I was. Over the course of the game, if one of us had a good play, no matter which one it was, you could hear "Nice job Tony." And if one of us screwed up, even if it was Tony, you could hear "Rickie, What are you doing?!?"

Here is Browny and his wife, Doreen. Friends of mine from Minneapolis.