1999: Our Christmas Letter

Vacations

In January, we met Ron, Kathy, Curt, and Dotti for a long weekend in Las Vegas. We had a great time playing tour guides and planning the entertainment (time in the casino, a Vegas impersonator show, time in the casino, touring the new hotels, time in the casino, arguing with Dad, time in the casino...). Jen and Kathy had two goals for the vacation: search out lounge lizard acts and embarrass Dad at every opportunity (they succeeded at both). However, Kathy managed to embarrass everyone by carrying a box fan through the casino! (There's a logical story behind it, but it's not as funny as the idea of Kathy carrying a box fan through the casino!) Anyway, we look forward to more family vacations like this in the future. A special award goes to Dotti for what she had to put up with on the trip!

In July, we met Jim and April Jordan in Palm Springs for a quick weekend getaway. The purpose was to go to a wedding (Kim Gibson's, one of Jen and April's college roommates). We spent most of the weekend looking for air-conditioned restaurants and other places to hang out. Even the pools weren't refreshing, since it was so unbelievably hot there. Thanks to Jim and April for doing all the planning on that trip! (Oh, and the wedding was beautiful and air-conditioned.)

For Jen's birthday in September, we spent four days in San Francisco, which has become one of our favorite vacation destinations. The weather was mostly nice, and we got to do some sightseeing we'd missed on previous trips there. We finally saw "Beach Blanket Babylon," a San Francisco musical revue, which was incredibly fun!

Jen also took some trips to Chicago (for work), Seattle (for work again), and Boise (to visit Deanna and Debi). Throughout the year we made some visits to the Seattle area and Walla Walla, too.

Other Stuff

Victor is still playing x-ray tech at Adventist Medical Center (going on nine years!), and Jennifer's in her fourth year as a software instructor at IBM-Catapult.

Our friends Sherrice Neil and Lonnie Croft were married in May in Walla Walla. It was a beautiful wedding, as you can see in the web site Jen designed to commemorate their special day.

We moved into our house over two years ago, but just recently we finally got a deck and fence built! It was finished in late summer, so we didn't have a lot of opportunity to use it before the weather started getting cool, but it feels great to have it done! We look forward to spending a lot of time outside this next spring and summer. Scout loves having room to run free!

After three years we made the break from America Online to a new Internet Service Provider (JPS). This may not be big news for most people, but Jen is relieved to be getting less grief from her nerdy co-workers to finally have a "real" ISP. However, we've found that JPS stands for JustPlainSucks ... the price is right, but we've been getting slow connection speeds and terrible service! As much as we hate to change our e-mail address again, you may be getting a new one for us in the coming months. A reliable e-mail address where you can always reach us: jmanullangDELETETHIS@yahoo.com.

This year we hosted Christmas Day festivities at our house for Jen's family (Grandma, Mom, Len, his daughters and their kids).