Happy 2002 Holidays from the Mathews Family!!! 
So, another year behind us! Last year marked the debut of my website and I had great intentions of keeping it up-to-date with pictures throughout the year. Well, that didn’t exactly happen. Actually, I think I made one update to the website during the year. Next thing I knew, the 2002 holidays encroached upon and I was reminded me that I needed to update my website for the entire year.
Ok, you know the routine. Let’s do the Mathews 2002 summary: Let’s start with those cute little guys around our house….although they are not quite so little anymore! I keep telling them to quit growing, like that will keep me younger too…
Michael turned 8 in July and is in the 3rd grade. He still enjoys school. I think his major academic highlight was learning to write in cursive. Now he enjoys correcting his Mom and Dad’s cursive writing abilities! Michael’s favorite sport is still baseball; he played his first year of pitching machine baseball this Spring. Besides baseball, Micheal enjoys basketball, fishing & scouting/hunting with Dad, Gameboy, computer games, Harry Potter, and the dreaded Yu-Gi-Oh. If you don’t have kids or you haven’t heard about Yu-Gi-Oh, consider yourself lucky! It’s the newest card craze and it’s bigger than Pokemon!
Now for the littlest guy around our house: Justin turned 5 in March and is in kindergarten now and takes after his brother: he’s pretty smart! I’m so blessed that I able to work in Justin’s classroom every other week. Justin is learning to read and seems to be strong in math and science as well. On the sports front, Justin likes baseball and microsoccer . He played his first year of t-ball this year with his Daddy as the coach (and me as Team Mom). Like his brother, Justin enjoys fishing and Gameboy (newly discovered love), and Yu-Gi-Oh. Some things never change. Just in case you’ve been keeping tabs, Justin is still stubborn as they get. He hasn’t outgrown that “phase” – we’re still thinking those teenage years might be killers!
Now for those older folks in the house: Jim and I were able to take our belated 10-year Anniversary trip to Alaska. It was certainly a trip of a lifetime! We flew in and out of Anchorage, where our friend, Jennifer Caldwell, lives. The main reason for our trip was a cruise. We took a small ship 4 day/5 night cruise in the Prince William Sound. We cruised with Cruise West aboard the Spirit of Columbia, which only held approximately 70 people. I knew I had paid for a “deluxe” room but as it turned out, we had the nicest room on the ship. We had the front view on the ship and we had a “real” bathroom and a Jacuzzi tub. We spent the first full day cruising College Fiord visiting lots of glaciers. That night we cruised across the Sound to Cordova, where we spent the day and did an awesome hike out to the Copper River Delta, where we had a thrill to see a bald eagle glide right beneath us. The next day we spent the day in Valdez where we took a white river rafting trip. We saw some absolutely awesome scenery on the trip. The weather was pretty typical for Alaska so we didn’t have many bright sunny days but such is life. The small ship cruise experience is awesome. The atmosphere is laid back and casual – no assigned seating at meals and that sort of thing. We met some really fun people too! Before and after the cruise, we spent time with our friend fishing for halibut and king salmon and sightseeing in Denali. We only saw Denali, or Mount McKinley, from a distance (a couple of hours away) where we were fishing for king salmon. On our shuttle bus trip into the park, we learned that Denali or Mount McKinley has only been visible in the month of July over the last five years twice so our experience was normal. The top 5,000 – 6,000 feet (2 miles across) is ice/snow year-round, Denali creates it’s own weather and is in cloud cover much of the tourist season. I guess if you want to be assured to see Denali, you need to go in any season but summer!
The hunting score is straight from Jim this year, “Hunting season came and went – Better luck next year!” Jim was drawn for archery bull elk but no luck. The draught affected the archery elk season in a big way. The elk weren’t doing what they were “supposed to”. Spoken like a true hunter, huh? Unfortunately, My Dad was NOT drawn (he often times supplies the elk when Jim doesn’t) so we have to purchase meat from the grocery store this year!
Jim and I are both still at Northern Arizona University, NAU. Jim works as an Oracle DBA (Database Administrator) and I am still working as a PeopleSoft Developer. Basically, what that means is that Jim works with the data and I develop the applications the functional users to get at the data. We are both very fortunate to have jobs. The State of Arizona is having financial woes and the state funded institutions are taking a hit in a big way. Our department had to lay off eight people in the fall and will probably need to cut even more people next fiscal year (July). I’m going on eleven years with the university but Jim has only been at NAU for a little more than two years so his job is not as secure. Our fingers are crossed that we don’t have to move away from Flagstaff. This is the BIG year for me as we’re finally implementing the new Student Administration system we’ve been working on for years. Most functionality will be “released” at the beginning of March when faculty/staff/students will begin using the new system. There will be smaller implementations for the rest of the functionality during the year. It’s been a long haul and we’re on the final stretch. The next couple of months will be pretty hectic for me, or I should say both of us since Jim picks up a lot of the slack around the house when I have to work long hours and weekends. But…there is light at the end of the tunnel…..or wait, is that a train?
When I’m not working and there is a lull at home (not often), I try to do my scrapbooking and stamping. I’m still participating in a Stamp Club that meets once a month. That’s about how often I stamp anymore. I do spend a little more time than hat working on my scrapbooks. I plan to attend a couple of scrapbook retreat days to try and get 2002’s events completed. We’ll see if I can get caught up this year….
We spent Thanksgiving at my Mom’s in Concho, Arizona this year. We had a nice visit with Mom, Jim, my Aunt Lee, cousin Kim and her family, and my Gramma June. Jim turned 40 this year in December. He didn’t want to do anything big for his birthday so we celebrated with friends down in Phoenix where we threw a Mardi Gras themed birthday party and surprised Jim with a dinner of boiled shrimp, gumbo, and shrimp etouffee followed by a dessert of individual fallen chocolate cakes – YUM! We had a Cajun Christmas again this year and were fortunate to spend about 10 days in Louisiana with Jim’s family. The time flew by! We got home just in time for me to ski free at Snowbowl, our local ski resort that opened on December 27th. We’re still trying to decide where we’re going to spend my 40th next year. Unlike my boring husband, I want to do something kind of big for my 40th. For the past few years, I was thinking that I wanted to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s at a ski in/ski out resort in Colorado or Utah…but after skiing on my birthday (and feeling my age and the cold), I’m thinking a beach sounds kind of nice too. I’ve got the year to decide so I’ll update you next year as to what the decision was.
That about sums up 2002. We hope everyone had a joyous and blessed Holiday Season. And…here’s to a Happy and Healthy 2003!
Leslie, Jim, Michael and Justin Mathews