Dan & Nancy's Blog: Christmas greetings 2014!

Dear friends and family,

We had a very good 2014, and we hope you did as well.

The first part of our year was occupied with finishing our move to the Portland, Oregon area. We commuted between Washington and Oregon in January and February, and then made the final big move of all our belongings in March.

Our new home, in the west suburbs of Portland, Oregon

Unpacking in our new home (ugh!)

The back of our new home borders a protected green space. The green space has provided a very interesting wildlife show during the year, albeit very different from the wildlife with which we shared our Washington neighborhood. The main event was watching a litter of five coyote pups grow up!

Some of the coyote pups with their mom

The move has made Dan’s job at Intel much easier, as he doesn’t have to travel weekly between Washington and Oregon. One of his platforms, the Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v3 family, launched in 2014. Dan is now focusing on a platform utilizing the next enterprise system-on-a-chip based on the Intel Atom architecture. Dan has had relatively little work travel this year, which is fine with him at this point. He did spend a week in Taiwan, with several short trips to Ft. Collins, Colorado and to the Phoenix, Arizona area.

Longshan Temple in Taipei, Taiwan

Nancy spent most of the first half of the year getting us settled into our new home. With more time now, she has recently started to volunteer with Women of Vision, an affiliate of World Vision.

Nancy (right) volunteering with Women of Vision

Given the timing of our move, we were unable to make our annual winter trip to Park City Utah. But our timeshare points weren’t wasted, as we made trips to Hilton Head in South Carolina, the Newport Coast in Southern California, Boston, and Las Vegas.

An alligator and an egret in Hilton Head, South Carolina

Mission San Juan Capistrano in Southern California

Dolphins off Newport Beach in Southern Californi

Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts

As we found time after our move, we made a point of exploring our new home state of Oregon as much as possible.

Skyline of Portland, Oregon with Mt. Hood in the background

Cannon Beach, on the Oregon coast

Hiking on Mt. Hood

The Pacific Crest Trail passes near Timberline on Mt. Hood

Multnomah Falls, in the Columbia River Gorge

Shepperd's Dell Falls in the Columbia River Gorge

The Portland Japanese Garden

Wonder where all that water comes from? :-)

Dan has continued to run, and he completed the Portland (Half-)Marathon in October. He plans to run the half-marathon of the 2015 Pittsburgh Marathon in May, and both he and Nancy have signed up for the 2015 Portland (Half-)Marathon.