October 22, 2007

Future pro bikers

This weekend I was out riding bikes with my kids. James learned how to ride over a mulch pile. He fell the first time, but tried again and nailed it. He also started riding with one hand on the handle bars. Emma decided to start riding off curbs on her own, which is pretty funny since she still uses training wheels. I was really proud of them, and glad that none of their stunts ended in tears ... this time. I was also thrilled to have my 2 megapixel iPhone with me, which takes pretty good shots.



Posted by mark at 12:39 PM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2006

2006 Christmas Letter

December 2006

Merry Christmas!


What a year! 2006 will always be the year of "the accident." It would be impossible to talk about our year without stressing the significance of the event and how it has shaped Courtney and our family. Courtney has said a number of times that despite the trauma, doctor visits, permanent health issues, and stress, she doesn't wish it didn't happen; we’re refined through fire. She could truly sense your prayers, and knows that God used your love and support to keep her focused on healing and all there was to be thankful for. I can honestly say that she has had very few days of emotional fatigue and frustration; in fact it has been significantly less that I expected. It has been a long road, but I've been continually amazed at her strength, optimism, and faith through everything. She is definitely my better half.

Courtney’s schedule and activities are 100% back to their pre-accident chaos. She's involved in a couple bible studies with friends, volunteer work at James' school, cooking meals for people at our church, spending time with friends, etc. With the exception of laundry and ironing, she loves every minute of it. I have to assume she doesn't like ironing because I'm not even sure she knows what one looks like.

James is halfway through his first year of kindergarten, and turns 6 on February 9th. We're thrilled that he's able to attend Redeemer Classical School and is doing really well. He struggles with the same thing I did growing up, incessant talking and movement, but he's managing to learn despite these challenges. He learned to ride his bike just before Thanksgiving, so I'm already planning a mountain bike training regime. He loves to play pirates and knights, but hasn't quite figured out the whole chivalry thing when dueling with Emma. He's a bright boy with a great imagination.

We just celebrated Emma's 4th birthday on December 3rd. It's hard to believe that she's only in preschool, and won't be in kindergarten for another 1.5 years. She's in the 95th percentile for height, so it's easy to have the unfair expectation of 5 year old behavior. We have to remind ourselves daily that she's only just 4. She's still as sweet and precocious as ever. Emma loves the color pink, and anything Hello Kitty. In fact, she's asked for a Hello Kitty gun when she grows up. She loves playing with her baby dolls and kitchen, but she can hold her own playing pirate and climbing trees with the big boys.

I'm also doing really well. At work, we just completed the first phase of a project that we've been working on for about a year that culminated in the public launch of a new Amazon website (not related to retail). It still needs some work, but it's been well received and is a fun and challenging project. I still mountain bike regularly and recently joined a gym to keep from turning into a cupcake over the winter. I managed to lose about 10 lbs through exercise, and have started to put some of it back over the holidays.

Once again, thanks for all of your prayers. Please continue to lift up Courtney as there are still a number of doctor's appointments in the near future. It's been a while since I posted a detailed health report on my blog, but I'll try to do that soon. You can look for updates here: http://mark.veerman.com. We hope you have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

Love,

Mark, Courtney, James and Emma

Posted by mark at 7:41 PM

November 21, 2005

Sweet mischievous Emma

It's hard to imagine how this sweet thing can be so dang mischevious and destructive. In the past few weeks, my lovely 2-year old daughter has done the following:

However, it's hard to be mad when she looks at you with her puppy dog eyes, and says, "I'm sorry daddy."

I think I managed to save 8 of the 10 fish by removing them from the tank as soon as I could. For a day or so, some of the fish weren't acting too well: swimming upside-down, and sideways, but somehow I think the remaining 8 have managed to pull through. Of course the fish tank inhabiter's union is sure to be pressing charges.

Posted by mark at 3:46 PM | Comments (2)

September 24, 2005

Discipline

I got pulled over the other day because my annual inspection sticker had expired. I had just dropped off my son James at a birthday party, so it was just me and my 2.5 year old daughter, Emma. After the officer got my license and registration, he then went back to the car. At this point, Emma asked me "What's going on daddy?" I said, "Daddy's getting in trouble, I'll probably get a ticket." Emma then replied, "Can I have a ticket too?" To which I replied, "I don't think you want a ticket." She then said, "Is he going to get the wooden spoon?" I only wish I could have gotten off with a spanking. ;-)

Posted by mark at 7:01 PM | Comments (3)

June 17, 2005

Trust Bounty

So I'm opening up a kitchen cupboard, and my four year old son James points to a roll of paper towels and says, "What's that daddy?" I respond, "A roll of paper towels." He replies, "No it's not, that's Bounty." I look at him quizically, "Yeah, but that's just a particular *brand* of paper towells, it's still paper towels. How did you know that." He points to the word, Bounty written diagonally across the package, and then says "Trust Bounty." I respond, "That's right James it says Bounty." James then says, "Yeah, it does, and they're strong too."

Wow! James knows his alphabet and can even recognize certain words, but he can't read yet. I don't think it even said the word trust on the package. I can only assume that at some point, he saw a Bounty commercial, and remembered that the slogan was "Trust Bounty", and that they were purported to be stronger than *other* paper towels. The only TV we let him watch is typically PBS stuff without standard commercials.

It freaks me out when I realize the power of a child's mind, and that it's *MY* responsiblity to help expose them to meaningfull stuff. :-)

Posted by mark at 3:08 PM

March 8, 2005

Fish

Since my kids aren't old enough to walk a dog, I decided that fish might make perfect pets. So, a couple weekends ago, while Courtney was out of town, we purchased a 10 gallon tank, two Tetra's, and a small catfish. It all went really well and thankfully they're still alive and seem to be doing well. For some odd reason James had no inclination to name them despite much prodding. Emma (2 years old) just wanted to give them milk and change their diaper. So, our nameless fish remained as such until this morning when out of the blue (pardon the pun) James announced that their names were Broccoli, Doodle (Tetras), and Bang (Catfish). I'm thinking that his least favorite might be Broccoli...

Posted by mark at 2:26 PM | Comments (2)

I'm getting old

A couple weeks back, my 1989 Jeep Cherokee experienced catastrophic engine failure. This, a stinking week after paying $1000 in repairs. I had a friend who knew a guy (I know, it sounds pretty shady) who had a line on some good used cars. He did, and I ended up with this cool 1984 Volvo DL for cheap. It's only got 147,000 miles on it which is pretty low for a Volvo and everything works great. I owned a 1982 Volvo DL when I was in college and really loved it. Oddly enough, driving around in this 20 year old relic has made me feel young again. Until ...

This morning, I was taking my 4 year old son to pre-school in his inaugural ride in my "new" car. As he was climbing into his car seat, he stopped and looked at the window crank (or whatever you call the fossils that open and close your car windows), and said, "What's that for daddy?" When I told him he promptly had to raise and lower the window several times. I then reminded him that daddy's car was really old, and that it was entirely possible that the support for the entire window could break and send the window shattering into the door. He stopped playing with it, and we were on our way.

It got me thinking, how many other things will James just take for granted ... cell phones, remote controls, TIVO. It reminds me of the line from Shawshank Redemption when the older prisoner with the pet crow gets released after a lifetime of imprisonment, and says something along the lines of, "the world up and got itself in a big hurry (horrendous paraphrase)." While this may seem like an odd quote - and a bit off point, it seems that for every generation there are certain status quos/standards that are just assumed. Expectations that place us at a fixed point in history and from which we we derive our identity. And the fact that someday, in the vein of "When I was a boy we walked to school in the snow, barefoot, uphill, etc," I'll say to James, "When I was a boy we rolled up our car windows MANUALLY," makes me laugh.

I've got a few more years to polish my story and make it sound tougher.

Posted by mark at 1:54 PM

January 5, 2005

2004 Christmas Letter

Here is the Christmas letter that I just sent out yesterday -- 10 days AFTER Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Veermans!

2004 has been an eventful year. We moved (again), I've learned two new tricks to save one's marriage, and I've had three different jobs. As I'm writing this missive, Courtney is driving our mini-van to Orlando for Christmas, rigged with a 13" TV/DVD player. Who needs those tiny, flip-down, flat-screen DVD's in the "fancy" mini-vans when you can have THIRTEEN inches of high-quality video.

Courtney driving is the first marriage saving tip. As a passenger, I'm much more flexible. I can sleep, read, work on my computer, and talk to the kids. When I'm driving, Courtney only knows how to do one thing: tell ME how to drive. The obvious solution: let HER drive. The second marriage saving tip relates to our new home purchase. Almost every square inch of wall was covered in wallpaper, some dating back to 1967 when the home was built. For $1,000 we paid to have it all removed. That was the best money I ever spent. Only eight more good ideas and I should probably write a book.

As I alluded to in my opening, I've had three jobs. I started the year still working for James Madison University. In April I was hired by a good friend, Andy Harbick, to start a software development company named Eudokia. After a few months of technical research and prototyping for a potential product, Andy's employer, Amazon, offered him something he couldn't refuse. Andy is now the director of the newest Amazon Remote Development Center in Harrisonburg, VA. Thankfully, I'm the first employee. Our team will continue the work that Andy was previously working on; developing tools to help facilitate better organization, better management and faster innovation.

Back when I left to work for Eudokia, Courtney and I both agreed that country living, coupled with home-restoration and child rearing was not exactly a match made in heaven, so we moved. We're now living in Harrisonburg, VA, 25 minutes from our old house. For the most part, the house only needs some aesthetic improvements - a task at which Courtney excels. We're now living in a neighborhood, and have great neighbors with children. Just prior to moving, we found a great church that we recently joined, and look forward to getting involved now that the kids' schedules are a bit more flexible. In looking back over the events that led to the starting of Eudokia, the move to our new home, and the eventual hiring by Amazon, it's easy to see God's providence in the outcome.

James will turn four this February, and goes to pre-school two days a week. He's extremely bright, and makes us laugh every day. The other day while getting a slice of pizza, a woman in line asked James what he was drinking. In his rapid fire speech James replied, "Cranberry juice." Not understanding, she asked him to repeat it. In a sardonic tone, James said, "CRAN" ... "BERRY" ... "JUICE" -- as if saying, didn't you hear me the first time. It was pretty funny. Of course, he still loves to play with trains and never tires of having books read to him. James is now completely potty trained. If I had a nickel for every diaper James ISN'T using -- oh wait, I do, he's saving us a ton of money.

Emma just turned two and is all girl in that she loves to put her baby dolls to sleep and give them milk to drink. She absolutely loves shoes (a troubling sign), and prefers to wear dresses over everything else. However, despite these innate girlish instincts, she is also quite precocious and stubborn. In that respect she is all woman -- I'm probably going to get in trouble for that. Emma is showing Houdini-like talents. More than once we've come into her room to find her clothes and diaper completely removed. Also, when she wants, she can escape from both a pack-n-play and her crib in seconds. Like me, she just loves to climb, our only wish is that she would develop a bit of discretion in what she chooses to climb and how high.

Courtney continues to be a great mom. I'm still amazed at the persistence of her sanity day after day of caring for two children who don't ever stop moving or talking. Channeling their energy is a full-time task. She's striving to enjoy these times and to stay focused on their development, despite the daily challenges and exhausting routine. Courtney truly finds satisfaction in her role as a mother, and wouldn't want to do anything else. There are a lot of mothers in the area that she is good friends with and she is involved with a supportive playgroup.

Between Santa Claus and all the presents, it's been fun to teach Emma and James the true meaning of Christmas. We plan to continue the holiday tradition of making a birthday cake and singing happy birthday to Jesus. That is, if we can find Him -- Emma enjoys our nativity set, and likes to keep him in her pocket.

If you're ever in the Virginia/Washington DC area, we'd love to see you and have a spare bedroom if you need a place to stay. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love,
Mark, Courtney, James and Emma

Posted by mark at 3:11 PM

January 25, 2004

2003 Christmas Letter

Here was the Christmas letter we sent out for Christmas 2003

It's realMerry Christmas!

It's hard to believe that two years ago today, Courtney, James and I were preparing to move for the second time since getting married! A lot has happened since then. We added another tricycle motor (Emma) to the family, and have made great strides in the restoration of our early 1900's farmhouse in Elkton, Virginia.

Amazingly enough, James is about to turn 3! He has a fascination with Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and Legos. He spends much of his time putting them through catastrophic scenarios. If his toys were to ever come to life, there might be a revolt. James still loves to read and has a great vocabulary that is surprisingly easy to understand. While celebrating an early Christmas with family, he opened up a gift and exclaimed, "It's beauootiful!" He is sleeping in a "big-boy" twin bed, and made quick progress in potty training. I think he has a bigger bladder than me. James is also quite an adventurous eater who often prefers fruits and vegetables over other better tasting foods (my opinion). I'm certain that he inherited this attribute from Courtney. While I'm sure there are some legitimate war-stories, the "terrible twos" have thankfully not lived up to their name.

On December 3rd, we celebrated Emma's first birthday. She is growing really fast, and is quite tall for her age. Like her mother, she is displaying unparalleled stubbornness. She is much more squirmy and feisty than James. In fact, we have yet to finish reading a single book (much less a page) to her because she won't sit still long enough. Most often, I have to brace my forearm across her chest with my fingers locked tightly to the dresser in order to keep her from flipping over when I'm changing her diaper. Man, is she ever strong! However, when I'm not having to restrain her she has a very cheerful disposition, and is almost always smiling. James is really good at getting Emma to laugh. They play really well together, just so long as James isn't trying to build anything.

Courtney has really made a number of great friends here in the Shenandoah Valley. Most of her friends also have kids (or are currently pregnant), and every week, when the kids haven't managed to pick up some bug in church ... uh, make that once a month ... Courtney and her friends get together for play group. Speaking of pregnant ... we aren't, but it's really funny how many of our friends are. I would guess that of the 12 or so couples that we are friends with, 8 of them are expecting. Courtney has also continued to display a great talent at decorating. We are slowly working through the rooms in our house, and when I'm done with the "rough" stuff, Courtney comes through and makes the room look great! Courtney also loves her job as a mom, and has done a fantastic job at carving order out of easily chaotic circumstances. When I get the pleasure of watching the kids for the day, I'm in awe of how she manages to keep her sanity and to do so gracefully. Despite the overwhelming tasks of rearing children, Courtney has also kept up her love of cooking. Sometimes, I don't know how to pronounce what we're eating, but dang, it's gooood.

I'm still working at James Madison University (JMU), doing Information Technology stuff. I'm also moonlighting as a webmaster for a few Christian ministries. I have spent a ton of time over the past two years working on our house. If that ain't enough, I would also like to get a Masters degree in Computer Science, but I have to get a number of undergraduate prerequisites out of the way first. Computer Science programs have little use for English Lit. So, I have been slowly working through those classes at JMU. On the hobby front, I haven't had too much time for biking and climbing, but I have found some time to go caving. I've been helping out a team of cave-surveyors on two fairly significant caves in Virginia and West Virginia. Needless to say, the last two years have been really busy, and I'm not really sure how I was able to juggle everything. I really love living here in Virginia, and I love being a dad. I'm looking forward to another year - and thankfully, most of the really daunting home improvement projects have been surpassed. I hope you all have a great Christmas, and a great New Year!

Posted by mark at 1:10 AM

January 13, 2004

Kitchen updates

I was able to install a new exterior French door in our kitchen and also hung some new wallpaper. The door is a tremendous improvement from the padded cell door with patient viewing window that it replaced. It looks pretty good! Thanks to everyone who gave us Lowe's gift cards and wallpaper! If a marriage doesn't come unglued during a wallpaper hanging it can survive anything.

The door project posed some interesting challenges. Not the least of which was my inexperience. The first issue was the fact that the rough opening, after removing the old door, was 6" shorter than a standard new door opening. I had to re-frame the opening, and rebuild the header to fit the taller door. Secondly, after a perfectly successfull installation I realized that I hadn't left enough floor clearance for something as simple as a rug. Rather than be reminded of this mistake 10x a day, I decided to get a good nights sleep and re-hang the door, higher this time. If a marriage doesn't come unhinged during the installation of a square door in a not-so-square rough opening it can survive anything.

I should note that it's rather interesting that both wallpaper and doors can be hung (hanged?).

Posted by mark at 7:28 PM

January 12, 2004

Potty training

When we started to encourage James to use the toilet, we didn't envision that it would someday give him a black eye black eye. It was the night before we were planning to leave for Columbia, SC to be with Courtney's parents for Christmas. James had just had a rather unusual accident in his pants of the number 2 variety. Courtney took him into the bathroom to clean up and also get him ready for bed. After taking his clothes off and cleaning him up, Courthey turned off the light and they both proceeded to go upstairs to get his PJs on. James, being the independent one, decided that HE needed to be the one to turn off the light (that he can't reach btw). So, he RAN, naked, back into a dark bathroom, saying, "James do it, James do it." Anyway, I'm sure you can guess the rest. He promptly tripped over his bathroom-stool and dove head-first into the rim of a porcelain toilet. The point of impact was on his left eyebrow just above his temple.

Of course, with my propensity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I had decided to get a movie and some Chinese food for later. I was two miles down the road, just getting back into my car when Courtney calls my cell phone, "Mark, [sob] James had an accident, I think he broke a blood vessel, [sob], I think I need to call someone [click]. She hung up on me! At this point, I'm picturing spurts of blood coming out of James' head. I immediately thought that I should call 911, but decided that Courtney was already doing that, and would of course have more details. Instead, I drove 80 miles an hour down the road. About half-way home I managed to get Courtney back on the phone and was trying to explain that she needed to apply pressure, "very important". She said, "It's too bumpy to apply pressure." "Huh?" I was thinking that the slice was so big, that the flaps of skin were too bumpy. Anyway, when I walked in the door, there was James, naked, with a lump the size of a golf ball on the side of his head. Breathing a sigh of relief that my son wasn't about to bleed out in a few minutes, I calmly went to the freezer to get some ice. Then considering the fact that ice and nakedness make strange bedfellows, went upstairs to get James dressed.

When upstairs, I noticed a flashlight shining up at James' window, so I looked outside and there were three officers trying to get my attention. I yelled that I would be right down. While going downstairs, I was thinking that they had seen me going 80 down my street (25 MPH speedlimit), and came to arrest me. However, it seems that in her panic, Courtney started to dial 911, but then decided that she could first call her nurse friend. Well, the call still registered with the dispatcher, and fearing domestic abuse or something sinister like that sent out a posse.

Thankfully, at this point I had already gotten James dressed, so the officers asked what had happened, and shined a light on James' wound to make sure that it looked survivable. Apparently, a bump is a good sign. A cracked skull allows the blood to make it's way into your skull and wreak all sorts of havoc. The police officers, no doubt, also sized up Courtney and I to make sure that we *looked* like good people, could be trusted and then left.

Thankfully, this little event hasn't had any negative impact on James' relationship with the toilet. He still uses it effectively for the most part.

The picture above is about 2 weeks after the incident. My "new" camera had flash issues and had to be returned to kodak for repair.

Posted by mark at 4:58 PM

October 24, 2003

Every man needs a bucket truck

This past weekend I painted my house. Gone is the cursed turquoise green color, painted by the wacko previous owner. We still have some remnant purple trim, but that will be gone soon as well! If you don't count the prep work, I painted two-coats on my house in 9 hours. About a year ago, I had started to paint the house with the help of my dad and Lynne. After 3 days of brush and roller painting, we had only completed 1 wall. I sort of gave up when winter set in.

My brother-in-law, Dan, and I purchased a $400 paint sprayer from Lowes. We then rented a bucket truck for one week - only $375. Every man needs a bucket truck! It was the coolest thing I've done in a while. It had controls in the bucket: in-out, left-right, up-down. It made things so easy, we didn't have to tremble at the top of poorly supported ladders, or spend hours setting up scaffolding.

About the only thing the turquoise painters did right was prep work. Thankfully, I didn't have too much prep work to do for the turquoise. On the back wall of our house, we still had 100 year old paint that was chipping and peeling. I purchased an angle grinder from Lowes, and a wire-brush attachment. Since it was most likely Lead Based paint, I got some NIOSH approved dust masks and started grinding. It was nasty work, and after 3 days of grinding, I had done a passable job. However, it was far from perfect. I don't really know how the painters had prepped the turqoise walls. I also covered every window and door in plastic sheeting so that I could avoid the tedius task of scraping paint off windows. When the painting was done, I took my Shop-Vac and actually vacuumed the dirt on the back side of our house. I was afraid that the lead dust would pollute the soil around our house and just sit there as a silent hazard.

Dan helped me with the first coat, which we had applied in 4 hours. The sprayer puts paint on thicker, and it also did a better job at spraying the underside of each lap. The second coat took me 5 hours, but I had to mix the paint, move the truck and go up and down in the bucket without any assistance, so it took longer. To give you an idea of the speed of spraying, I painted my 1000 gallon oil tank in less than 5 minutes.

Overall, the painting went a lot smoother and faster than expected, which is a nice change of pace. James has aspirations to drive a bucket truck someday.

Posted by mark at 6:30 PM

Shenville Creamery

We recently visited the Shenville Creamery with our friends Jason and Leslie McCall and their two sons, Isaac and ??. It was a blast. We started out at some two large homemade slides propped up against a large stack of hay bales. After helping James onto the slide a few times, he was confident enough to try it on his own. We then walked through a pumpkin lined trail to see some farm animals. James got to ride what I think was a Clydesdale across the field. He looked like a regular cowboy. It was amazing to watch how calm James was when I sat him on the horse. I sort of expected him to get scared and ask to be taken down, but he just grabbed tightly onto the two brass knobs and smiled ... somewhat nervously. Later we took a tracter-pulled hay ride to a pumpkin patch where we cut a few pumpkins off the vine. James wanted his own pumpkin, so we found him a tiny green one that he could carry. We also made the aquaintance of a pig named curly, and an emu with an attitude (at least I think it was an emu - it could have been an ostritch). All in all, it was a great fall outing that made me appreciate living in the Shenandoah Valley.

Posted by mark at 12:16 AM

September 16, 2003

Beginnings

I've been talking about building a family website for a couple years now. I guess I'll settle for a family blog. Well, here it is. Now we'll have to see just how much I post to it.

Posted by mark at 10:26 PM