Saturday, July 29, 2006

Party with three 2 year olds...

Liam making friends by showing his belly button...

Sean, Sophia, MacKenzie & Liam enjoying their ice cream cones. It's the new generation of 4th of July kids...

Mackenzie Lee


MacKenzie & Sophia comparing rock throws...


We spent our first full weekend at the lake having a party with Liam, MacKenzie, their parents & grandparents... It was so much fun watching them chase eachother around. And around. And around.

Thursday, July 13, 2006


Microsoft team after the hike

Rock face with hikers and carvases at the base

The desired path up, before it visibility when bad

Climbing up the face of the mountain at about 200 feet

Base of Mont Blanc from the Village of Chamonix

Mont Blanc

Who says offsites are about stuffy conference rooms and goofy forced bonding activities. Troy's new team at work decided to turn a business offsite on its ear by taking the whole team to the base of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Western Europe, in hopes of climbing to the summit.

Well we didn't get to the summit thanks to bad weather, but we did just about everything else. I should have known we were in for a wild offsite when we took one step out of the cable car station onto a 5 foot wide ridge with a several hundred feet drop on each side. With our team of four -including the guide - roped together I led off our exposition into the windy, snowy, yet beautiful Mont Blanc.

Over the next two days, we hiked across the glacier to Italy (about five kilometers) through a sea of carvasses. At times we we sank to our hips in the snow. We also hiked several hundred feet up what seemed like a sheer glacier cliff - all with the guidance of our friendly guide Paulo, who was from just over the border in the skiing village of Monterosso. He said it was the smell of pasta leading us to Italy.

With the possible exception of that forced bonding I talked about - we did sleep 17 co-workers side by side in the same room, all of whom had blatter issues in the middle of the night - we had a great time in and around Mont Blanc and the lovely town of Chamonix.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Park St Cloud






Troy & Sophia went to Park St Cloud with 2 other microsoft dads & their kids Stuart and Charlie.
Apparently this is the only time the 3 of them were within 5 feet of each other. Most of the rest of the walk was spent running ahead after one kid, or running back after another.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Fete de l'Afrique









Photos from Sophia's year end party at schoool. She wouldn't sing during the party, but sang all the way home in the stroller. The fun part is, we have video of the songs now & she sings along with them at home. Plus we are able to learn the words.

Thursday, June 15, 2006


Sophia & Ava sharing a seat.