Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!
Hello and Welcome to our Xmas 1998 newsletter. We normally do this in printed form in all our Christmas and Hanukkah cards, but left things way too late and so decided to use a web page, where we can use the week between mailing the cards and people receiving them to put together the newsletter. In case you wonder what we look like, here’s a picture,
Simons’s Dad top left, Alice, Matthew, Simon’s Mum, Billie and then Heather. This was taken in London in August, when we all went down for a long weekend and stopped in at China Town for a meal.
(larger version)
Here is a photo of us all outside a Chinese restaurant in London in August 1998. From top left clockwise, Simon’s Dad Peter, Alice, Matthew, Simon’s Mum Carol, Heather then Billie in bottom left. This was the same trip that we walked the girls all over London looking at the sites, with the occasional tube ride to rest their feet.
Matthew is growing in spurts, he eats breakfast about 5 times in a typical morning, and I think would quite happily sit and live in his high chair if given the chance. When out of the highchair he is a typical toddler, running around screeching and pulling the cats tail to see what kind of reaction he can get.
Here are photos of Matthew, Heather and Billie at a recent school disco. Heather and Billie attend Tranmere Park Primary School which is about 5 minutes walk from the house, 10 minutes if the girls are also getting dressed, doing their hair and checking out their lunchboxes on the run down! Matthew goes along in his pushchair and normally has a run around the schoolyard before the whistle is blown.
Here’s Billie :
Merry chistmas and a happy new year here I am
Here’s Heather :
Its christmas time i like it at christmas
Methinks I better call Harvard and reserve some slots in their 2010 English Lit. Intake… not! Here are some pictures by the twins,
I'm not too sure why they're doing Garden of Eden stuff, but they seem very proud of it! Heather's is on the left, Billie's on the right. We are keeping the twins busy with activities; they're week goes like this,
|
Monday |
Gymnastics at the Sports Center |
|
Tuesday |
Musical Jumps, voice and piano etc |
|
Wednesday |
French Club followed by Swimming |
|
Thursday |
Rainbows (precursor to Brownies) |
Friday night they are off, and it's also a rest for Moms taxi! Saturday and Sunday they occasionally go to Sunday School at temple in Leeds and Bradford.
Simon has started a new job (what's new you all groan) this time as a self-employed contractor at the environment agency,
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk. It’s a government body charged (like the EPA in the States) with cleaning up air, sea and land. It's 3 agencies rolled into 1, so there's a lot of chaos right now sorting everything out. Simon was at Equifax, but left after some layoffs came a little close for comfort, the writing was on the wall! I still keep in touch and more people have left after me, but the company is going strong. Being self-employed is fascinating, as you create your own limited company, and trade through that. So there are two sets of books, one for you the company (called SQLnest Ltd), and one for you as a person. Alice and my mum have both been made Directors of the company, and Alice does the paperwork and keeps things straight. Alice has just figured out how to do payroll with assorted deductions, and next she tackles Corporation Tax, and then VAT (Sales Tax). She also gets paid for all this, so now has some income coming in. We also pay out dividends on a regular basis, since this a way of minimising tax when compared to payroll. Complicated stuff! So far we’re not in jail for tax evasion, so we must be getting something right! Simon is still doing database work, keeping Rdb and Oracle databases working on VMS, UNIX and NT. There is still a lot of demand for this work, with no end in site, so rates per hour are high right now. There's also some overtime which is very welcome.We are coming to the States in January to unveil Alice's Mom's headstone with Alice's sisters. That will be a gathering of the family and hopefully fond reminisces of the past. We will also go to Alice's sisters Robin's house in Philadelphia for a few days, and spend time at Carol's in Brooklyn. We are travelling on Icelandair from London to Kennedy via Reyklavik. On the return journey we stop off for 2 days to see the sights. We will have to be quick, there are only 4 hours of daylight each day in January! Better pack the 5000ASA film eh?
We are still decorating the house, actually we're being very slow and not very radical. The dining room is turning into a pub slowly, we got a steal on furniture when a local hotel closed, and we are painting the walls and changing the lights around. We have tiled the kitchen floor on a terracotta blue with flowe interludes, and it does look jazzy if I say so myself! Alice has started painting the girls room in readiness for Christmas, which was the date she promised back in July.
Alice had her birthday party the other day, and the usual challenge was faced, what to buy the girl that has everything? A party! So Simon paid for Alice and 8 of her girlfriends to go off to a nightclub, and just like a Chuckie-Cheese type thing paid for a package that included dinner and dancing. They didn't get grab bags though, and didn't get a stripper either! Last night was Simon's work do, and we must have gone 5 pubs in 3 hours! I must be getting old, the thought of a headache and feeling woozy didn’t appeal and I had Perrier most of the evening! Alice on the other hand Odd on Gin and Tonics and whisky!
Well, I think I had better put this edition of the Maufe's news, and squirt it up to the Internet for your viewing pleasure. Everybody except Simon is off to Temple in Bradford for a Hanakkuh party, which the Lord Mayor is attending, ooh err! This afternoon they sang Christmas Carol at the local electronics store as part of their Rainbow troupe. All in all a multi-cultural kind of day! Perhaps we'll try and put on a sound clip of the girls singing Christmas carols, better hope Santa brings me a PC microphone!
Merry Xmas and the best of the season!
Simon
December 20th 1998