2009 Year In Review

If you read this blog all year long, you'll find nothing new here, but just in case you haven't caught all of them this year, here's the very condensed 2009 King Year In Review!

Happy Holidays to our Family & Friends!

2009 was another busy year for us!  Our year started and ended in North Dakota where Nathan continues winter work with Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  In between, we visited a combined eighteen states plus the District of Columbia.

Amber continues working for IBM, where she leads teams in the U.S. and China.  She completed her Project Management Professional (PMP) training in May and filed her first patent the same month.  Amber is taking her office on the road and is working remotely full-time as of November.

Nathan worked at Pipestone National Monument over the summer.  The work was both challenging and enlightening.  The site is used today as it was in generations past, for the collection of a sacred stone used for making smoking pipes.  You can learn more about Pipestone and its significance on the web at www.nps.gov/pipe.

Amber spent a long 4th of July weekend in Colorado with her friend Sara, where they visited Rocky Mountain NP, Garden of the Gods, and saw the famous Greeley Stampede rodeo.  Yee haw!

The most fun we had this year was going to the Eastern U.S. to attend Amber’s sister Samantha’s wedding in North Carolina in October.  Along the way, we visited Chicago for a live taping of Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me and got to meet the cast, then headed to Gettysburg NMP, Washington D.C., Shenandoah NP, Blue Ridge Parkway, Appomattox Court House NHS, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP, Moores Creek NB, Great Smoky Mountains NP, and Mammoth Cave NP.  We hiked to the top of the two tallest mountains in Shenandoah, down into the longest cave in the world, and walked the hallowed grounds of Civil War battlefields.  Our favorite hike was to Ramsey Cascades in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In July, Nathan’s mom passed away from complications of multiple myeloma.  She was 53.  Nathan misses her every day and thinks of her often.  We are grateful for the continuing love and support of our friends and families.

Next year, we will be moving to Kansas for at least half of the year.  Nathan was hired for a permanent status job at Fort Larned National Historic Site, a well-preserved fort along the Santa Fe Trail.  We plan to sell our house in Minnesota in 2010.

We wish everyone a happy holiday season and a great 2010.

Amber and Nathan at Ramsey Cascades

Jennifer

Sometimes life isn't fair.

Jennifer King (1956-2009)

Nathan's mom, Jennifer, died last Sunday at 1:35am from complications of Multiple Myeloma - a disease she'd survived for almost 3.5 years prior to this week. While we had subconsciously been preparing for this all the while, knowing that she's gone is still surreal to me in many ways. I think it's safe to say that I finally grew up this week.

While we weren't surprised that it happened, what did surprise me is what happened afterwards. I have a renewed respect and admiration for Nathan's entire family, especially his dad. I have never seen a group of people pull together like they did in the few days afterwards.


Monday was when a plan started to be put in motion. After having proposed their ideas for the celebration of life and what to do with Jennifer's cremains in an episode that will forever be rightly-described as 'shock and awe', Nathan, Justin, Allan, and myself went off to Krause Funeral Home to take care of the manifestation of their glorious plan. Based on what happened in this meeting, I know the three boys are going to be ok without mom. All I can say is that the answer to the director's first question, "So, what happened?" lasted 20 minutes and thereafter the three of them proceeded to crack me up the entire meeting - whether they meant to or not. It is their way of dealing with the loss, but it's also just plain their style. In fact, it was fun to be around them and the entire family all week. That's right, I'll admit it, I was having fun this week. Not to say we all weren't really sad, but the silver lining really is that we all got to hang out as a family and it turns out that is fun no matter what the circumstances.

One of the services the funeral home had for us was to put together a nice DVD montage of around 50 pictures of Jennifer - but we had to find the pictures. Man, they really know what they're doing over there. What we came home thinking was an assignment, was possibly the most therapeutic activity of the week. Pictures came out from high school, middle school, college, wedding, kids' births & graduations, vacations, and everywhere in between. We learned things about everyone in the room we never knew and it dawned on me that Jennifer had a pretty fantastic life, with a lot of people who cared very much about her!

Jennifer & Allan's first date - Homecoming circa 1971

Jennifer & Nathan in a picture that appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette

Allan on their wedding day - I told you we heard some good stories!

Tuesday was a family visitation - some much-needed closure was had and Wednesday was the celebration of life and public visitation. Nathan and Justin gave incredible eulogies (read Nathan's here). These were the highlight of the week for sure.

The next day was Justin's 24th birthday and he was determined to do something fun. In honor of Jennifer, we started the day at Kohler-Andrae State Park, a place she had always really enjoyed (and so had the rest of the family). Next, we drove to West Bend for some go-karting (Justin re-living his childhood through pictures this week probably had something to do with this). We ended the day with a much-needed drink at the Highland House.

Kohler-Andrae State Park

Sibling Rivalry

Birthday Margarita!!

Like I said, this family will be just fine. The strength and love I experienced in all of them is proof of that and also proof that Jennifer helped build an incredible family. She doesn't really seem to be gone when I look at them.

Death is no longer a scary mystery to me, but rather an unstoppable event that places all of us in an incredible, unbelievable, but very real string of events that started billions of years ago and will continue for billions more after we're gone. We're lucky to have the short time that we do here - the odds are against us and yet we're here. That's a beautiful thing.

We'll miss you, Jennifer!