August 2009

Where to start?!

Before the holidays in December we discovered that Christine was pregnant; due in early August. The news made our trip to Arizona even more exciting. Christine and Alex made the trip to the rim of the Grand Canyon with the rest of the Brown and Nagy families and left Todd and Uncle John to "go down" as Alex put it. Three days and nights in the canyon were exciting, tiring, and unforgettable.

The spring was fairly uneventful--work, work, work and daycare with various visits from Ama, Pop, Aunt Laurie and Uncle Dave sprinkled in. When the CMU and Pittsburgh Opera years reached the end we were able to make a trip to San Diego to see friends and spend time with Grandma. Aunt Bethel and cousin Grace came for the last few days. It was great to see Alex and Grace interacting more comfortably as they get to see each other more often. They enjoyed fun times at the playground and a trip to the beach, complete with sand castles, moats, and sand pies.

In June Christine and her sister and brother managed to throw a surprise 40th anniversary party for their parents. It was a great success; surprise being achieved even with 90 guests and a giant tent involved at a house just minutes from their house. We were back in Baltimore two weeks later for another surprise--this time a shower for Christine. She was suspicious, but still some modicum of surprise existed. Another shower in Pittsburgh followed shortly after, and good thing, because Elisabeth Lynn got here a bit early, being born on July 23rd, a bit before her August 4th due date. Mother and daughter made it through the delivery process with flying colors and we have all been home making adjustments since the 25th. Grandma Brown was already on-site when the birth occurred and stayed for a full two weeks to give us some much-needed help (and a chance to celebrate our anniversary, albeit three weeks late) and Ama and Pop Schott came for an extended weekend to welcome the newcomer.

We spent quite a bit of time and energy looking for a new house for our soon-to-be expanded family during the late spring and early summer. What we discovered is that we love our house. So we decided to make our house fit our new needs rather than start from scratch. We are now in the midst of an expansion project that started just 4 days before Elisabeth's birth. It will add a bedroom, a bathroom and a playroom for the kids as well as an unfortunately complicated upgrade of our basement bathroom. We are making sure that there is still plenty of room for visitors (hint, hint).

We love to stay up to date on all of our friends' activities, so be sure to drop us a line when you have a chance. And if you're ever in the Pittsburgh area, please call so we can get together or even host your stay here!!

December 2008

Well, here we are, another year gone. For us, much of this year has been about Alex growing up from a baby into a real little boy. It’s been such fun to watch him learn to walk and run, play with other little ones, start to talk and grow like a weed. Right now our favorite thing is when we ask him to say “Thank you”. It comes out of him as “Dubby” because that’s his word for double-u and, of course, “Thank you” and “double-u” end the same way. Maybe you have to be there.

We ended 2007 with Christmas at our house in Pittsburgh, intending to have the full complement of Schotts, Browns and Nagys with us. Unfortunately the Browns were unable to come as Dad had been in and out of the hospital since just after Thanksgiving and was advised by doctors not to make the trip. This set the stage for a difficult winter, as Todd’s father transitioned from the hospital to home care and finally to a hospice before passing away in mid-March. Several visits to San Diego for us during this time ended with the trip for the memorial service at the end of March. A service was also arranged for family and friends in Ohio, so we took a trip to Columbus as well.

On the other side of the coin, during February we traveled to New Jersey to see two new babies – Charlotte Alexander and Cora Einhorn. What a fun trip that was; plenty of parent-talk and cute little babies. We spent Memorial Day in Baltimore eating crabs and hanging out with even more little ones. Alex had quite a few cousins at the crab feast, though this year they were all a bit too young to play together. June brought a business trip to Las Vegas for Todd with a detour to Arizona to do a bit of hiking – preparation for the Grand Canyon hike he has planned at the beginning of January 2009.

The summer was filled with lots of trips to the playground for Christine and Alex – he really enjoys the slide and anything treacherous to climb on. We had a few falls, but he just dusted himself off and tried again. Alex put his swimming lessons to use in our wading pool and the neighbors’ full-size version.

In July we had one more memorial duty as requested by Todd’s dad. We took a trip to Portland, Oregon for some reminiscing and to scatter Neil’s ashes. It was a lovely trip, with some good cousin bonding for Alex and Grace, though the Pacific Northwest doesn’t seem to Christine like it has real beaches – way too cold even in July!! Labor day brought the traditional CMU lighting grad students’ picnic in the NYC area, though our family and the hosts were the only CMUers to show up. We did get to spend some quality time with Jen, Neil, Lauren, and Charlotte Alexander and there were a few other kids at the picnic that Alex had fun playing with.

The fall has gone quickly – Christine opted not to work on either of the two fall productions at the Pittsburgh Opera so she could spend some quality time with Alex (and Todd). Todd has been pretty busy, but we’ve still had some really great fun time as a family. Thanksgiving was spent in Baltimore with an abbreviated version of the Roberson/Schott clan. Alex and his cousin Nate were able to make a connection in the short time that they had together, making us hopeful that they can know each other well as they grow up.

We are looking forward to being joined by Christine’s family for a Christmas at home before traveling to Phoenix for another with Todd’s. Alex appears to be ready to open presents this year, so it will likely be a fun one for all of us.

December 2007

Well, as usual, though we have the best intentions, we haven’t updated anything here since last year.  But we have a good excuse this year!  Babies take up LOTS of time…..

Anyway, our 2007 started off similarly to other years, with Todd back at CMU after winter break and Christine working as Production Manager for the CMU School of Music’s opera.  Of course, this year Christine couldn’t really participate in any of the physical work, being as she was humongously pregnant.  Also, pregnancy kept her from doing the one show in Milwaukee that she’d been doing every February for several years. 

Then, on February 27, our world changed pretty significantly.  After about 14 hours of being in labor but not really knowing, we decided maybe that’s what was going on and went to the hospital.  We got there at 3am and Alex was born at 9:20am.  In hindsight, it was a pretty easy delivery, but while it was going on there was a lot of kicking and screaming (some of it quite literal) for not requesting any drugs.

The parade of visitors started shortly thereafter.  In the hospital, Christine’s opera co-workers came to visit Alex when he was 1 day old.  Christine’s parents came up just 2 days after we all left the hospital and stayed for 5 days or so.  Then came our friends from New Jersey, the Alexanders.  Then Uncle Dave, Aunt Laurie, and Gamma and Pop (Schott) again.  In the middle there was a visit to Baltimore on Easter and Alex’s first baseball game, the Pirates’ opening day on April 8 in 44 degree weather.  His daddy is making sure to raise a die-hard baseball fan!  At the end of April, Todd’s parents came for a few weeks to watch Alex while Christine went back to work part-time for a few weeks.

The summer brought a trip to San Diego, some work at CMU for both of us, two Quantum theatre shows for Todd, and an excellent vacation to Beaches resort in Turks and Caicos.  Alex did very well on the airplanes and seemed to be just fine with traveling.  We also drove up to Cooperstown, NY in late July to see the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn.  I’m not sure we’re ever interested in sitting on a field with 75,000 other people again, but it was definitely one not to miss.

In September, Todd was back at CMU and Christine went back to work at the Opera full time, so Alex got to start in day care.  He’s doing quite well with the other kids and seems to have adapted to some time away from Mommy and Daddy. 

In early November, Todd had the great opportunity to go to Madrid, Spain with Quantum Theatre and the production of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid that they had produced in the spring.  He returned from that and almost immediately went to the LDI convention in Orlando.  Since his travel fell during one of Christine’s long hour tech weeks, Christine’s poor mother had to come spend a whole week with Alex – life sure is hard for grandmothers!

And now we’re back again to the holidays.  Time sure flies – it’s hard to believe our little guy will be a whole year old in just a few short months!  Keep checking back for more photos of him.  We do pretty well with keeping the photos up to date, even if we don’t actually write anything here in the updates section.

We’d love to hear from everyone and are always open to having visitors.  Just let us know when you’ll be in the Pittsburgh area and we’ll be sure to have space for you.

November, 2006

Okay, so it appears that we are incapable of updating our website very often. Has it really been a full year? I'm sure that lots of things have happened in the time since we last wrote, I hope that my old brain can remember at least some of it to pass along...

The holidays were terrific, as we were able to see all of our immediate family and spend some quality time with Grace in Phoenix. Returning home, we got back to work, Christine with Pittsburgh Opera, Florentine Opera and the Carnegie Mellon School of Music and Todd with the School of Drama as well as designs for Quantum Theatre, City Theatre and The Jewish Theatre of Pittsburgh.

When the spring semester and the Opera season ended we embarked on a western adventure, touring the interior of the country in a borrowed (thank you Christine's parents) RV. A trip that started as an idea about how we could see Mount Rushmore without leaving the cats at home became an 18-day odyssey encompassing Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota; Devil's Tower in Wyoming; two days at Yellowstone; Grand Tetons National Park; Timpanogos Caverns in Utah; Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyons; Four Corners; Canyonlands, Arches and Natural Bridges National Parks; a Colorado Rockies game in Denver; the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and, of course, Mt. Rushmore. Despite some small mechanical problems and large gas station bills we had a wonderful time and hope to repeat the experience in the near future. With two digital cameras in our hands we arrived home with over 2000 photos, some of which we have posted on the website.

If that wasn't enough of an adventure, we both taught in the CMU pre-college program over the summer. Todd designed two more shows for Quantum, one outdoors and one in the newly (half) renovated Carnegie Music Hall in Braddock. In between things we took trips to San Diego for a balloon ride with Todd's mother and New York/New Jersey to visit with friends and be tourists.

Towards the end of the summer we discovered that our family is getting larger--Christine is due with our first child (a boy we see from the ultra-sound) in early March of 2007. As we have moved through the autumn she has progressed well and everything seems to be going fine with the pregnancy. We are both very excited (and nervous) as we await this major addition to our lives.

The holidays again have us traveling the country, with plans for stops in San Diego with the Brown/Nagy families and Florida to meet up with the Schotts.

December, 2005

Well, since the last update was in August, this one will be relatively short.

Christine finished out the summer at Glimmerglass Opera, which was a really great experience, but we sure wish it were closer to Pittsburgh. Christine is planning to take next summer off so that she can be at home with the husband, cats, house, and garden.

Following the final performance of the Glimmerglass season, we drove the 7 1/2 hours home to Pittsburgh in anticipation of leaving for the Bahamas a day and a half later. We packed up all of our scuba gear, got on the plane and landed in Freeport, Grand Bahama. We got in the cab and the driver said "This is the last good weather you're likely to see for a few days - we have a tropical depression moving in." We got to the hotel, checked in, dropped our bags in our room, and went to the scuba center to check on our dive package and schedule our dives. The woman in the scuba center said that the boat probably wouldn't be going out much while we were there because the weather was supposed to get bad. So she asked us if we wanted to go out on the 1:00 dive (about 1/2 hour later). We went up to the hotel room, got our gear, and headed down to the boat. They held the trip about 30 minutes for us, which was really nice of them, since that night Tropical Storm Katrina hit Grand Bahama and we had no more diving on our diving trip.

Since we got home from that non-vacation, it's been little but work, work, work for both of us. We did have the opportunity to go to LDI, the lighting convention that Todd attends each year, in Orlando at the beginning of November. As a bonus, we were able to get together with some friends who live there and now work at Disney World and who got us into the Animal Kingdom for free. Neither of us had been to Animal Kingdom before and we found it to be a wonderful park and an ambitious new responsibility for Disney. All of those beautiful animals take a lot of extra time and dedication.

We're looking forward to some Christmas visiting in Los Angeles, San Diego, and best of all, Phoenix, where we get to finally meet our new niece, Grace Marya Nagy.

August, 2005

Wow, it has been way too long since we updated our site. We will try to get better, so if you have been checking please continue the practice. Now, let's see if I can remember what has happened in the last ten months...

Before resuming work we took an amazing trip to Paris. A few of the over 600 photos that we shot are on this site. We were there for 8 days and exhausted ourselves on every one. We were able to see most of the big tourist sights, some of them twice. We arrived on New Year's Eve and saw fireworks (and a couple of good fights) at the Eiffel Tower. Later in the week we went to the top of the tower and picked out all of the places that we, by then, knew fairly well. Three days of museums, a day of Pere Lachaise cemetery and two trips to Versailles are only some of the things that we spent time doing and seeing. The food was incredible, highlighted (for Todd at least) by the high quality house wine available at most restaurants. Although there were some things that we missed out on because of the season (water in fountains, for example) which made us think that we need to return some spring or summer, we both felt like we experienced enough of the city to make the trip well worth it.

Then it was home and back to work. Christine spent the winter and spring working in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee on three operas. Todd resumed the school year at Carnegie Mellon and, in February and March, designed the world premiere of the English-language version of the show Dogface, adapted from The Changeling by Dan Jemmett and formerly only performed in French. As the school year waned he designed the US premiere of the play I.D.. A selection of photos from these shows are in the on-line album. In family news, we lost Christine's maternal grandmother, Martha Roberson, who passed away unexpectedly on January 30th. We miss her. Todd's parents spent several months volunteering their time and talents in central New York and were able to visit Todd in Pittsburgh as well as seeing Christine at her summer job in Coopertown, NY (more about that to follow) several times.

Summer has been busy for both of us, but the similarities after that are few. Christine left in May for Cooperstown, where she is working at the Glimmerglass Opera, stage managing Così fan tutte. Glimmerglass performs four operas in rep, which means that, after a (fairly long) rehearsal period when she was working six days a week, she started into "performance mode" when she has breaks between shows, some as long as ten days. In the two longest breaks she traveled to Pittsburgh and on shorter breaks she has been to Baltimore and the New York area. She continues at Glimmerglass until the last week of August. Meanwhile, Todd has remained based in Pittsburgh, with a few trips out of town. The summer started badly for him with a semi-emergency appendectomy which postponed a planned trip to the west for a week. When the recovery was far enough along, he managed to make it to Phoenix to see his sister, who was seven months pregnant at the time, and her husband and then head on to San Diego to visit friends, including the Stewart family, John, Joanne (also pregnant) and two-year-old Elijah. Todd had a lot of fun with Eli and hopefully took some pressure off of Mom for a few days. Back in Pittsburgh, Todd taught in the CMU Pre-college program, teaching lighting to ten high-schoolers. In between things at CMU he designed a production of Stand By Your Man for the West Virginia Public Theatre and an outdoor production of Dark of the Moon for Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh.

As the summer winds down we look forward to being in the same place for a while. Todd will be in Cooperstown for Christine's last week there and then we will be in the Bahamas for four days of diving and relaxation. Then it's back to Pittsburgh to our respective primary employers, Carnegie Mellon and the Pittsburgh Opera.

December, 2004

This has been a busy and exciting year for us, not to mention a quick one. It seems like only yesterday that we were putting together our 2003 Holiday letter and winterizing the house. That pesky change of seasons seems to be coming faster every year. Last year at this time we were making our plans for the holidays and tying up loose ends from the year about to end. We spent the end of the year away from home, celebrating Christmas with Todd's family in San Diego and then embarking on our honeymoon in Hawaii. Todd got Christine an underwater camera for Christmas and, despite a few glitches, we got some pretty good underwater shots of the fishies. Those photos are in the Hawaii photo album.

Christine spent her summer holed up in the Benedum Center, the biggest Pittsburgh theatre. She was working as an Assistant Stage Manager for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. The name is deceiving, as there is no opera involved, just 5 large musicals. She worked on 1776, The Music Man, Hello, Dolly!, Me and My Girl, and Dreamgirls. It was a grueling summer and not one that she is likely to repeat. Her colleagues were wonderful, but working 10am to 11pm every day with no days off for 10 weeks is no one's idea of fun. We did manage to get out of the theatres a few times, and with Todd's parents in Louisville for the summer some family moments were possible. Todd also took a long weekend in Columbus to attend his 20th high school reunion and catch up with old friends.

The end of the summer brought a welcome and much-needed vacation to Roatan for a week of diving. Although there was more trauma with the underwater camera, including the fact that we lost the one that had been bought for the Hawaii vacation, it was a great week. The weather was great, the divemaster was excellent, and we decided to get our Advanced Open Water dive certifications. We got to choose 5 specialties to work on over the course of the week. We were required to take Deep Diving and Navigation Diving and we also chose Buoyancy Control, Underwater Photography, and Fish Identification. We got much better at spotting creatures that hide and/or camouflage themselves and at spotting the rarer creatures. We saw an octopus during the day, a variety of crabs and shrimp, some hard-to-spot fish, and two seahorses. Okay, so the seahorses were spotted by the divemasters and pointed out to us, but it was still an exciting find. The problems with the camera meant that we didn't get many underwater shots, but there are a few along with some photos of the resort in the Roatan photo album.

September brought us both back to work, Todd at CMU and Christine at the Pittsburgh Opera. We had a fun Thanksgiving in Baltimore with Christine's family and are looking forward to hosting Todd's family for after-Christmas fun. We're also excited to have a trip to Paris planned over New Year's.