The Simons Family 2009 Report

Hi All,

This is going to be interesting, writing my trademark l-o-n-g Christmas letter in a blog. We'll see how it goes. You should have gotten a postcard or an e-mail (or both) telling you that we've moved and giving our new physical address and this blog address. So here goes . . .

The Big Move

We've been talking for at least a decade about moving to Denver, with the original goal's being to get here by the time Gideon started kindergarten. A shakeup at Jim's company made a move during the summer of 1999 seem problematic, so we didn't push for it then. Life moved on. Suddenly Gideon was a freshman in high school, and we had said we wouldn't plan to move during his high school years unless, as I put it, Jim was offered his dream job out here. One evening late in October 2008 Jim and I decided to take a look at his company's website just to see if there were any job postings. We should have known better--after all, we bought our house when we were looking just for fun. There had never been anything that fit Jim's seniority or area of expertise when we'd looked at other times, but here was a posting for a job in Aurora, CO. We had always assumed that we'd probably be living in Colorado Springs if we ever moved, since all job listings in the past had been at that location in connection with Peterson Air Force Base. And now here was this job, seemingly a very good fit, just sitting there beckoning to us. It had seemed more and more to Jim and me (but not to Gideon, as will be noted below) that the time had come to leave Virginia. Jim's and my ministries at our church had come to an end. Jim's job was going well but a contract renegotiation was looming in the near future. Gideon's youth group was wonderful, but with the departure of several graduating seniors it had really shrunk. I was beginning to think that it would be a great idea for him to go to a Christian school. So Jim stayed up late a couple of nights, polished up his resume, and sent it in. And heard . . . nothing. No, they said when he checked, they hadn't gotten it in the HR department. Could he resend? We had thought that perhaps he could have an interview during our 2008 Christmas trip to Denver. At that point they had barely acknowledged receipt of his resume! If I were to list all of the ins and outs of the next eight months this letter would be even more longwinded than it usually is. Finally, near the end of July, after a four-month wait which was supposed to be two weeks, Jim told them that he had to have an answer by the next week or he wouldn't be interested in the job, as we needed to get out here in time to register Gideon for school. And he got the offer right away. Honestly! I guess we should have done more foot-stomping earlier. Time would fail me to tell in detail about the move itself, with one sale of our Virginia house falling through, our leaving it furnished and coming out here so Jim could start work and Gideon start school on August 24, the house selling for more than the first offer, our having to rent an apartment in order for Gideon to enroll in Cherry Creek Schools since our offer on our dream house wasn't accepted for almost three months, our having to put our possessions in storage (with most of them still there as I type this), and our finally closing on the new house November 20. Our family picture was taken in front of the fireplace in the family room. We went from camping out in an apartment with borrowed furniture to camping out in our new house with about the same borrowed things (thanks to Jan and Lowell, Jan's mother, and my brother and sister-in-law). In the midst of all this my dear father, who would have been 90 this past December, died in a nursing home down in southern Colorado. I had gotten to see him several times this year and was so glad to be on the spot to help with the funeral arrangements, as my brother had been taking care of all Daddy's affairs since 2006. It was a sad time but also a blessing to look back on his life. I was really touched by the number of people who came to the service.

Gardening

No gardening to speak of this year! This spring we were looking to put our house on the market soon (ha!) and so I decided to cut off the tulip leaves right away before they had a chance to die back. They hadn't made all that great of a show anyway, and I didn't want to deal with the dead foliage later. Then we didn't actually put the house up for sale until July, so I sacrificed 2010's tulips for nothing. I did very little this summer beyond some deadheading and weeding, as my motivation was completely gone. Now that we're in the new house, though, I'm very much back in business. Our house is in a covenant-controlled community and all landscaping has to be approved by the HOA. At first I was a bit taken aback by all this formality--even a backyard vegetable garden has to be approved. The more I thought about it, though, the more I actually liked the idea. I tend toward impulsivity in gardening (Jim would say, "tend?"), and these requirements will force me to think things through. Having lived for 15 years in a non-covenant neighborhood I know how difficult it is to get neighbors to clean up their yards, so even though I foresee a certain amount of frustration involved I think it's a good thing. We're planning on an asparagus bed, a strawberry patch, and a row of raspberry bushes. We have a huge back yard (our lot is about 14,000 square feet, nothing compared to my brother's ten acres, but still!), so we have great plans. We'll have to lay it out well to get it approved, so that will be fun. There's an enormous deck off the back of the house, so I'll have great swathes of railing on which to put pots. It's going to be great! Watch for pictures throughout the year on this blog. (Another "ha!" is probably appropriate here.)

Gideon

As mentioned above, Gideon has not been thrilled about our move. I had picked out a Christian school here in the area that I thought would be good, but when he visited the school in April he didn't feel that it was a good fit for him, and I had to agree. He really wanted to get his International Baccalaureate diploma, a program he had started in Fairfax County, so he is now attending Smoky Hill High School, a highly-rated public school about 1 1/2 miles from us. It's kind of tough to start a new high school. His computer teacher is a Christian, though, his chemistry teacher likes to tell bad jokes, and he'll be taking a really cool class next semester in computer animation and graphics. (That class had a waiting list, but somehow his Grandma Jan got him in--we're not sure exactly what she did, but it's extremely hard to say no to her!) Our new church, Parker Hills Bible Fellowship, has a very active youth group, with a regular Wednesday night meeting that pulls in a number of non-church teenagers and a good roster of activities. He and Jim have found a Tae Kwon Do school very close to us, taught by someone who knows their great teacher back in Virginia. (Both he and Jim got their black belts right before we left, a notable accomplishment indeed.) And he is enjoying getting to spend lots of time with both sides of the family, with great buckets of time being spent obsessively playing a game called "Bohnanza" which we all love, even me. (It's great for him to have an uncle who manages a game store.) He also enjoys watching the Broncos lose. Good thing, huh?

Jim

Jim went from being the manager in charge of a group of about a dozen people, having a cubicle, and running around with his hair on fire most days, to having an office with a view of the mountains and not many people around and spending his days doing more writing than computer-wrestling. He's excited about the project he's involved in, though, and has climbed quite a ways up the learning curve. He's stayed in touch with his former colleagues, and all the news he's heard has made him more and more grateful that he's not there any more, what with layoffs and furloughs and general upheavals. Jim's friend who replaced him always says, "I hate you!" when they talk. As we settle into our new church he will doubtless get involved with the men's bi-monthly Bible studies and something called "theology breakfast" (which was also a feature of our former church) involving theology but no breakfast and a very early start to Monday mornings. We managed to plan things so that he has a fairly short commute. He has recently spent a number of hours working on the plans for our basement remodeling. The permit has been issued, but we're going to have to enlarge the egress window so that it's another foot out from the house. That's a lot of dirt! At least we don't have to rip out any concrete. He and Gideon will get to do some digging when the weather warms up.

Pets

Well, in the 2006 letter I told the story of how we got Smoggy after years of my saying that we would not be getting any cats because I hated cats and was allergic to them. Note the past tenses. When we were discussing our possible move I told Gideon that if we moved to Colorado he could have another cat. A shameless bribe, indeed. We couldn’t have our current pets with us in the apartment (they stayed with the longsuffering in-laws), but once we finally got into the house I decided we’d better go ahead and do this second cat thing. When we went in to the Denver Dumb Friends League at the end of November it took less than five minutes for us to zero in on two little ginger tabbies, littermates, who had the color I wanted (they match the woodwork) and were having such a good time playing together that I just couldn’t split them up. So now we have El Sando the Great (or Sandie) and El Doro the Magnificent (or Dorrie). I won’t bore you too much about how we came up with those names—something to do with the fact that they’re sort of golden, and French for “golden” is “d’or,” plus we live on Dorado Avenue, and they're also kind of sandy-colored . . . well, you get the picture. Smoggy has adjusted surprisingly well to them after some initial hissing. I hate to say it, but she’s kind of cowardly. Lupita now has three cats to bark at, which gives her a renewed interest in life. For some reason the kittens think that her water is tastier than theirs, so we often have a scene with a kitten calmly lapping away at Lupita’s water while she barks hysterically. Lupita is now on three heart medications and can’t make it up stairs, but for a fifteen-year-old dog she’s not doing badly at all. She may make it to Gideon’s high school graduation after all. We hope so.

So that’s about it for now. I’ve been looking for teaching jobs and have about decided that I should at least investigate getting certified to teach in Colorado. The first thing I was told when I went online to do this was that I needed to have a “fingerprint card” sent to me and that it would do me no good to submit my application without it. The application itself is 11 pages long. That should keep me busy for awhile. I won’t get anything regular this year but may try my hand at substitute teaching, a truly thankless job but one which would give me some much-needed current experience. Our church is getting itself actively involved in some outreach ministries in Parker, which is just down the road from us, and we plan to attend the meeting about those opportunities later on this month. And there’s still plenty to do on the house. We are so thankful for God’s leading in our lives! Let us hear from you.

Jim, Debi, Gideon, Lupita, Smoggy, El Sando the Great and El Doro the Magnificent