Another year has flown by, without a single addition to our blog...

I'm considering only posting on even years, that way every other year I have a guaranteed new year's resolution. Actually, Richard, who is in charge of the yearly Christmas letter was feeling a distinct lack of creative energy for the task, and so it never materialized. Thus, the task has fallen upon me to fill in the details of the last year - our 2009. I think the main problem with writing about the past year, is that it implies writing about things that happened before September - and there has been so much change in our lives since then, it's hard to believe that there were a full 8 months of the year before that. So, I'm doing two installments of 2009. here it goes!

January - August aka the part of the year where everything went along nicely.

Life was going well. We had settled into Tri-cities living, and into our jobs at Lutheran Community Services - Richard working in suicide prevention, and Kim working in hospitalization alternatives (keeping kids in their homes with intensive intervention instead of shipping them off to residential care). It was great for both of us to be working in the same building, but with different co-workers, as it meant that we each always had a lunch buddy, and someone to talk to if work got slow.
Richard's sister got married in February, so we spent a lovely Valentine's day helping with and participating in that event. In our spare time, Richard took to loving board games, and has become a collector of sorts (ask him about boards and bits if you dare), while Kim started, and actually finished multiple craft items - special shout out to craft club that lasted one meeting, but was still very fun! Richard was part of music club with the guys, while Kim spent craft night talking, shopping and doing anything but crafts. Craft club died, but music club turned into something greater - the Seaworthies reunion.

March brought on the much anticipated first show of the Seaworthies reunion - with Richard on the keys. Although much acclaimed, a few months later they performed their second and last show, leaving Richard wanting to perform more. Thus lead to the beginning of the Powelson family folk band:



While the Powelson family folk band has yet to perform, we have high hopes for summer 2010. Watch out free family events in the park!

In April - needing to refresh ourselves and shake off winter - we took a long weekend, and had a fabulous time in New York and Connecticut. That should have been a separate blog all in itself, but here's a few of the best pics:

The greatest grocery store of all time.
Easter Sunday at Yale, at the oldest campus church in the U.S.

Finally got to have a street vendor New York hot dog. Truthfully, the gyros were more amazing. But the hotdog experience was still good. All the food in New York was good.

Times Square

Richard and Al Roker.



When summer came around, we also took some time off to head to the coast with Richard's family.
At a little light house we visited.

A sporty shot of Richard on the beach

Yoga on the beach


Aside from work, summer also included going to Kim's 10-year high school reunion (why is it always so hard to believe that it's been 10 years since high school?), as well as a
best friend's weddings (and a guest appearance by DJ honeysauce).


We also floating down the river, watching the neighbor's fireworks on the 4th of July from Richard's parent's rooftop, and saw America at the county fair. It was all going so nicely, until that one fateful day in September when we got a crazy idea...but that's for the next post :)