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Late again   - We've now procrastinated writing a Christmas letter long enough to call it a Valentine's letter and send it along with Cambren’s birth announcement.  Our new little boy arrived February 3!  Life as a foursome is a bit more chaotic, but that much more fun at the same time. Jaedin and his new little brother are only fourteen months apart - it won't be long until they look like twins, and we think they'll be great friends.  Jaedin's not quite sure what to think of all of this, but so far they get along great:  Jaedin usually gives him a kiss before trying to push him off the couch.  As far as the standard stats, Cambren weighed in at 8 pounds and bears just a slight resemblance to his brother.  Lindy’s mom was able to make it out in time to watch Jaedin during the delivery, and everything went smoothly.  We were able to bring Cambren home the morning after delivery - it felt like we were doing it all for the first time, since it was a sharp contrast to Jaedin's first few days.  The minute we brought Cambren home, it felt like Jaedin aged a year and doubled his weight.  So we hope the year 2000 is off to a great start for everyone!  As far as 1999, the year was full of changes and challenges here, but we had a good time as well.

Hard-working heart -  We began and ended the year with Jaedin recovering from open-heart surgery.  He was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a serious heart condition that is now treatable through a three-stage series of operations.  He completed the first stage at six days old and recovered very well from that surgery.   About two months later, though, he started getting very congested, and we thought he had caught a bad cold.  The congestion ended up lasting for months and resulted in some precautionary hospital stays.  He had been scheduled for the second stage in June, but when we went in for the pre-op tests as the surgery date approached, we were told they wouldn't be able to proceed until his congestion cleared up.  After the cardiologists reviewed the sonogram of his heart, we got a surprise phone call telling us to get Jaedin in right away - the diagnosis was congestive heart failure (thus the congestion.)  We were very worried when he went in for an emergency bypass surgery the next day, but again, he did great.  The congestion cleared up immediately and he had a great summer. So Stage 2 got postponed while he recovered from this unexpected intermediate surgery.  By the time he was ready for Stage 2, the cold season had started up again, and we ended up having to reschedule a few more times. The week before Christmas we were finally able to proceed, and like the previous year, we were lucky enough to be able to take him home just in time for Christmas. Stage 3 will probably take place Summer of 2001 - if all goes well, no further surgeries are anticipated after that, and Jaedin should be able to lead a pretty normal life.  To think that he already has three open-heart bypass surgeries behind him at one year old - what a fighter!  We are so grateful that his treatment has gone so well.  More details about his surgeries are on his webpage:  wwwjaedin.com.  

La casa nueva - After Cambren's birth and Jaedin's treatment, the next big news for us this year was moving onto the mainland.  We were lucky to find a small house in West Seattle that we really liked.  The neighborhood is very nice, we're only three blocks from church and within reasonable biking distance from downtown Seattle,  and we have an occasional view of the Sound and the Olympic Mountains. We do miss the people on Bainbridge Island, and I miss the commute on the ferries, but it has been far less stressful not having to worry about missing the boat when it came to Jaedin and Lindy's hospital stays. Jaedin loves his new backyard complete with his little pool and swingset, and Dad finally got a garage with real tools.

The out-of-towners - One advantage of living in this area is that we've been able to have a lot of visitors from out of town stay with us.  We had our families here with us a number of times:  Jaedin's Great-Grandma Dory came out from Chicago to stay with us for a few weeks last spring.  Jaedin's Godmother Aunt Kami also came to visit for a month last summer.  We were able to enlist her help with babysitting and also with the move to West Seattle.  In anticipation of a surgery date that ended up getting rescheduled, we had all of the Prices together at Thanksgiving (except my brother Kevin, who is serving an LDS mission in Hungary.)  We spent Christmas and New Years in Eugene with the Dorys. 

Round round get around - Jaedin scored himself a trip to Disneyland on Dad's "business trip" last fall.   He actually racked up quite a travelogue last year with stops in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Victoria and Vancouver BC.   Highlights of our traveling this year included a Memorial Day trip to Las Vegas and Southern Utah.  My 10-year high school reunion came up in August - with Jaedin's surgery date up in the air, we weren't able to check into any flights in advance.  We ended up putting in a cheap bid for some tickets at priceline.com a few days before and to our surprise, we got automatically booked on a flight.  Little did we know it was an overnight redeye that didn't get us into Chicago until the day of the reunion, but it was fun being able to go back to Michigan and see old friends.  Our next trip was a caravan down to Fresno over Labor Day weekend - it was a lot of driving (especially after we lost our air conditioning) but seeing Grandpa Casteneda walking around with his new great-grandkids made it all worth it.  We also made lots of weekend trips to Eugene to stay with family there.  Jaedin got to have two first birthday parties:  one in Seattle with one set of grandparents and one in Eugene with the other set.  He got enough frosting to last him until his next birthday. 

Down with the dam! - As far as work, this year I've made a gradual shift away from flood control and toward river restoration.  In school we learned how to build dams, but our latest project at work is to actually remove a dam near Olympia.  I must say it's the biggest dam removal project I've worked on (careful how you read that.)  So I'm not using my dam design skills, but now I can consider myself a dam demolition engineer (sorry.)  The civil engineers of Christmas past would probably roll over in their graves seeing us take their dams out, but the finished product should make everyone happy.  We're hoping to begin construction (destruction) this year.  I got licensed in Washington this year, which means that I am now officially employed by salmon. Our office location on Pike Place Market made for an interesting week during the WTO riots, with demonstrations going on right outside my window (our ties to Eugene don’t involve any of the anarchist groups.)

Webgeek.stuff.   My mother’s maiden name is Krey, and a lot of family history work has been done for the Krey line.  I started working on a website to share that information with other Krey family members at www.krey.org.  I also got the domain jumbojet.net and a business license to start hosting some other websites I've been working on.  I started doing this thinking I'd work on things from home in the evenings.  It wasn't long until Jaedin gained enough mobility to make that a hopeless cause, but I'm still having fun with some of the sites. Other things keeping me busy lately have been working with the youth group and Boy Scout troop in our new congregation here and accompanying the church choir.

Should he stay or should he go?   Our dog Santos got a little annoyed last year when he realized that Jaedin was staying.  The second-floor apartment we were in was getting too small for him, and he got angrier by the day as he saw his previous cartel on our attention get broken up by the newcomer.  It got to the point where we had to decide between him and Jaedin.  It was a tough call, but Jaedin beat him out and now Santos is in a happier place with a new family willing and able to devote a lot more time and attention to him than we were.  One trick that still amazes me:  he was able to pull the socks off of Jaedin's feet with his teeth - with Jaedin swinging at full speed in his swing and without biting his toes.  Try to picture that one.  We've found that we really do miss him now - especially when we have to pull out the vacuum to clean out under Jaedin's high chair!

Should we play or watch Elmo?  So we've slowly adapted to our new lifestyle - that means the biggest decision of the week tends to be: do we get a movie for ourselves on Friday night or do we watch Elmo with Jaedin?  Our evenings tend to revolve around new-found activities like diaper baseball and tickle-fest.  My embarrassing moment of the year actually lasted a week, and it may have something to do with making up for a lack of excitement in our routine:  I lost a bet that allowed Lindy to bleach my hair - it went red, and all attempts to correct it failed miserably.  So I dug out my baseball caps and ended up making my first-ever visit to a professional salon, where they actually had to add blue to balance the red into a strange-looking brown.  The moral of the story is don't bet on Uno games.

Who needs toys?  Despite all of the careful toy shopping on Jaedin's behalf, his favorite toys are a collander that doubles as a hat and a big old hairbrush that makes a fun toothbrush, too.  Other favorite activities of his are unloading the dishwasher, flushing the toilet, and riding his trike around the house.  He also loves ejecting the VCR and turning the TV on and off, on and off, on and off....  He thinks it's absolutely hilarious when we give him the serious look and say NO!  So much for discipline…  He has the greatest laugh, but watch out when things are not as they should be.  We couldn't imagine a happier kid (unless he could have Taco Bell Pintos & Cheese every night - then he might be even happier.)  Hopefully we'll have more to report on Cambren soon, but for now he just pretty much lies around the house all day.