2009-The Year in Review

Now that 2009 is behind us, I thought I would take a few moments to review the year that just passed.

The year started with us off in Africa visiting Erin and her family in Tunisia. The trip began with us flying out of Philly early in the evening on Christmas Day and touching down in Tunis mid day on the 26th. We ended up staying with the Wisotzki’s through the New Year before heading home on January 5th.

How do I remember that day, you ask? It happened to be my 39th birthday, and a day the five of us will never forget. For those that don’t know the full story, click here. As cool as Paris is known to be, there isn’t much that’s cool about sleeping on the floor of Charles de Gaulle airport. 46+ hour trips home aren’t too much fun either.

February brought us a trip to Clearwater and a weekend in the Florida sun. Highlights included hanging on the Gulf, lounging by the pool, the Clearwater for Youth banquet, as well as a great father son outing at the Phillies game for Jake and I.

The summer memories were once again dominated by spending the summer down at the beach with Grandmom Phil. This year’s house was one to remember, with the house sitting on the second floor right on the beach. The view from the dining area of that beach house can’t be beat.

We were lucky to have Erin, Lucas, Noori, and Isa in the States for an extended stay. They made it for the last few weeks of the beach stay and then were able to get to spend some time in Limerick/Linfield. It was great to see them, although it was a bit of a bummer that Dorsey had to stay behind in Tunisia.

2009 was a year of milestone birthdays in our family.

• February saw the surprise 40th birthday party for Jean at Shearer Elegance.
• May saw Jake enter into the world of teenagers.
• June brought us my brother Casey’s 30th, which was kept very low key.
• July brought us Jean’s brother Jim’s 30th.
• August saw us celebrate my Mom’s 60th (which was July 19th), again at Shearer Elegance.
• Though not a birthday, Jim and Jean celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary on August 6th

Some highlights from the kid’s year:

• Brett Graduated from Kindergarten
• Abby attended her first Junior High Dance
• Jake played his last season of little league baseball
• Both Jake and Abby achieved first honors on their report cards
• Brett lost both his front teeth in the build up to Christmas

Sadly, the year was also dominated by some pretty heavy news. We had some major health scares this year that we’ve had to work through. The word cancer has become one that we’ve started to become numb to as a family.

Around Mother’s Day, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, albeit at a very early stage of the process. Needless to say, it came as a shock to us all. She made the brave decision to have a double mastectomy, with her surgery in June. She came through the surgery remarkably, and as we approach the end of the year it’s amazing how quickly she’s gotten to her full recovery.

In July, Jean’s close friend Sandy passed away at the age of 39 from cancer. Although Sandy had been fighting the disease for a while, her passing came as a shock to all. It was such a sobering feeling to see this young mother of four taken from her family at such an early age.

Our close friend Peggy was diagnosed with breast cancer later in the summer. It was such a shock when we heard the news, but after consulting with my Mom and Jean’s Mom, Peg decided to follow the same route the two of them took and went with radical surgery. As the year winds to a close, Peg is also very far along in her recovery and the cancer has disappeared. We were lucky enough to get to celebrate her 50th Birthday Party with her family in October.

The final scare came this fall when we found out that breast cancer had returned in Jean’s Mom. She first dealt with this when Jake was a baby and we were really upset with the news. She has managed to go through treatment taking radiation, and as the year winds to a close she is doing very well with a great long term prognosis.

To end this note on a positive vibe, 2009 is the year when Jean finished off her teaching certification. She completed her class work portion of her master’s degree back in the summer, and this fall consisted of her student teaching in two different capacities. She worked September and October teaching 1st grade at West Vincent Elementary and then spent the remainder of the semester teaching special ed at Owen J. Roberts Middle School.

It was a 2-1/2 year process from start to finish, and I’m so proud of the way Jean worked her way through it. There were so many sacrifice that she needed to make, but she found a way to get it all done. What an amazing lady I’m married to.

For those of you who made it to the end of this long rambling diatribe, thanks for following and I’ll do my best to try and keep you up to date in 2010.

Happy New Year to all of you out there, and I hope that 2010 brings good times and much happiness!

Jim

Post taken from TheMacShack

The Worst Birthday Ever (Our Trip Home)

Monday, January 5th was my 39th Birthday. It also happened to be the day that we traveled home from Tunisia. We really enjoyed our trip to visit Erin and Dorsey, but we were also excited to get home and get back into our normal routine.

Here’s how the trip went:

• 6:30 am–Left Erin and Dorsey’s house for the airport
• 7:15 am–Said our goodbyes to Erin and Dorsey and went through the international gate.
• 8:55 am–Plane departed Tunis on time and without incident
• 11:30 am–Plane arrived in Paris.  There was a dusting of snow on the ground and a light snow fall was coming down.  Our flight to Philly was scheduled to leave at 1:30 pm.
• 1:00 pm–Flight delayed until 3:30 pm because of the weather
• 3:00 pm–We are boarded onto the flight, the cabin doors are closed, but we don’t push away from the gate.
• 6:00 pm–The captain announces that the flight has now been canceled.  Total snowfall for the day was less than 2″.  He announces that we will be provided with hotel vouchers and food vouchers once we deplane.
• 6:15 pm–We are taken off the plane and sent towards the baggage area of the terminal.  This takes us into an area of the terminal without any access to food or drinks.
• 6:20 pm–We are placed into a line to get our hotel vouchers as well as rescheduling our flight back home because the flight for Tuesday is already full.
• 8:00 pm–Whispers through the line confirm that all of the local hotels are booked and Air France will be offering no more free rooms for the night.
• 9:00 pm–We are still standing in line, so Jean goes out in search of food with our new friend Mike from Turkey.  Mike was seated next to Jean on the flight, and they had gotten to know each other during the long delay.  I stood in line to hold Mike’s place while the two of them set off to try and score something to eat because the kids hadn’t eaten since 1:30 pm.  I make sure Jean leaves with her boarding pass and passport.
• 10:00 pm–Jean and Mike return, and the trip was a lot more difficult than expected.  They had to leave our terminal and find a way to sneak into another terminal.  It took some assurances from a manager at one of the gates that they would be allowed to re-enter our terminal.  Neither Jean or Mike spoke French, so it was dicey whether the man would let them back in or not.  Once they got to the food, they arrived at closing time, and they grabbed the last four slices of pizza as well as a couple of bottles of water.
• 11:30 pm–Air France finally acknowledges that people are hungry and they bring out an assortment of sandwiches and drinks.  There wasn’t an option to buy anything where we were stationed, so most of the people had gone over 9 hours since they last ate.  People were starting to get really cranky.  Brett and Abby have fallen asleep on the terminal floor, and Jean was nodding in and out of sleep.
• 12:00 am January 6th (midnight)–The official end to a truly crappy birthday.  Sadly it’s nowhere near the end of our ordeal.
• 2:30 am–An Air France manager addresses the crowd.  It’s the first official acknowledgment any of us have had since deplaning at 6:15.  He states simply that Air France is done for the night and they were sending their ticket staff home.  He also said that it appeared that all of the flights for Tuesday were booked, and he wasn’t sure when any of us would get home.  Finally, he stated that we were to move to another terminal where sleeping accommodations had been made for us and that we could resume our ticket re-bookings in the morning.
• 2:45 am–We woke the kids and moved from one terminal to another.  This included the hassle of having to again clear security to enter the new terminal.
• 3:00 am–We look at the accommodations that Air France has arranged for us.  This terminal was carpeted (which was an upgrade from our starting point), and there were approximately 500 blankets to service over 1,000 stranded customers.  Pretty plush, huh?
• 3:15 am–We set the kids up for a night on the floor, and they quickly fall asleep.
• 3:20 am–I hop back in line at the customer service counter and laid down for an hour or so of sleep right in line.  I was tenth in line, which ended up being huge later in the morning.
• 6:30 am–Air France ticketing employees show up and can’t believe the volume of people who are waiting for us.
• 8:00 am–We are finally booked on a flight to Washington DC for 10:30 am.  There were only five single seats on the flight, so all of us are booked apart.  We’re told our bags will also make the trip.  As I leave the line, there are well over 200 people waiting behind me.  Sleeping in line was well worth it.
• 8:15 am–I needed to notify Jean’s dad of our status because he was picking us up in Philly.  I had been buying internet access at €2 for 15 minutes of time to notify people of our updates because we didn’t have a cell phone.  I was sending text updates to his phone through my email.  We needed €2, and we only had €1,90 left.  I didn’t want to change anymore money since we were leaving within hours, so Jake and I proceeded to scour the airport to find the €0,10 somewhere on the floor.  After 5 minutes of looking, Jake found it in a gift shop and we got our messages out.
• 10:00 am–We board our flight, and I am able to convince a lady to switch seats with me so that one of us could sit with Brett for the 9 hour flight.  Jake, Abby, and Jean are seated throughout the plane by themselves.
• 12:30 pm–Our flight finally backs away from the gate, two hours behind schedule.
• 3:30 pm–We arrive in Washington.  We need to get off the plane, grab our bags, clear customs, get our new boarding passes from United, and catch our flight to Philly at 5:15.  Time is just a little bit tight.
• 4:00 pm–We realize our bags aren’t on the plane, so I find out how to handle the baggage claim.  I’m advised that I must file a claim with United in Philadelphia, since they are the final carrier on our trip.
• 4:10 pm–We find the correct line to get our boarding pass for our connecting flight.
• 4:20 pm–We get our boarding passes, and we sprint towards the security gate for our flight.
• 4:30 pm–We are identified as high risk travelers, and pulled aside for additional security screening.  I believe it has to do with the fact that Air France had given us ticket vouchers to buy tickets for our connecting flight.  We were entered into the system buying five one way tickets without checking any luggage, which I’m guessing is a bad thing after 9/11.
• 4:45 pm–We finally clear security.  We were placed in a holding cube (which really smelled bad considering we we’re in the same clothes from Monday) and taken out one by one to be patted down, frisked,  and then had some sort of wand run over us.  Next, they pulled every item out of our carry on bags and they checked each item for some sort of residue.  There was something comical watching them swab down Brett’s coloring books while various suspicious looking individuals were breezing through security.
• 4:55 pm–We sprinted to our gate to find out that our flight had been delayed.  This was a bit of a bummer, but it also gave us the chance to grab a bite to eat, so it wasn’t the end of the world.
• 5:15 pm–We notice our names posted on the board behind the service counter.  I ask the lady why our names are up there, and she says that our tickets were “confirmed” but that the flight was over booked and we didn’t have seats.  I’m told that “confirmed” gets on the flight before “standby”.  At this point, we are contemplating renting a car.
• 5:30 pm–We are told that we now have five seats on the plane, although they are once again separate.  With the flight being less than an hour, this wasn’t a concern.
• 7:15 pm–We are loaded onto the plane and our flight takes off almost immediately.
• 8:00 pm–We touch down in Philly, and we head straight to the baggage claim area to file our missing baggage report.
• 8:30 pm–Jean’s dad pulls up to the curb to pick us up and take us home.
• 9:15 pm–We finally arrive at home.  Everyone is exhausted, but no one’s allowed to climb into bed until they’ve taken a shower.  That’s done rather quickly, and everyone nods off to sleep as soon as their head hits the pillow.  Adding on the 6 hour time difference from Paris, our body clocks are actually feeling that it’s 3:15 am.  Another long day.

From start to finish, it took us 45 hours to complete our journey.  I’ve got to say, the kids were absolute troopers.  Brett melted down once in Paris on day two because I bought the wrong kind of Pringles, and Abby melted down once in DC, but other than that they were fantastic.

As of this morning, January 14th, our bags have still not arrived.  Air France claims that 25,000 bags were stranded there last week, the number as of yesterday was down to 11,000.  Hopefully we will see them at some point in the next week.

Tunisia-Day 9

The last day of our trip began with a soccer match in Tunis. Jake and Abby both had wanted to take in a soccer game, and we were looking at doing it the second day of our trip, but we got a little bit of cold feet because we didn’t know exactly what we would be getting into.

Dorsey spent the balance of the trip asking anyone who would listen to him all sorts of questions about what we could expect by going to a game. We wanted to know how rough the fans were, how out of hand the violence would get, and most importantly, was it an event you could take a 10 year old girl to.

Tunisians pride themselves on how tolerant they are compared to other Muslim countries. Women are not covered in Tunisia, and most work just like their husbands. Tunisian women are able to hold places in the government as well as the most desirable professions (such as doctors and lawyers). However, to say they are thought of as equals to men would be a bit of a stretch.

Once it was established that Abby wouldn’t be too out of place at the game, our only other obstacle to overcome was the nature of the crowd. Once we learned that we wouldn’t need to worry about violence, we were set. We were also warned about the abusive language of the crowds, but since neither the kids or I spoke a word of either French or Arabic, we figured that was a non-factor.

We got to the game about an hour early, and the amazing part about the whole event was the energy of the crowd. The home team was Club Africain, who are noted to be the most passionate set of supporters in Tunisia.  They were playing Étoile Sportive du Sahel, who sat one spot above them in second place in the Tunisian game.  The supporters were singing as we walked into the stadium and they did not stop until the game ended almost three hours later.  The noise was deafening at times, and it was a great environment to take in.

Club Africain scored a goal deep into injury to tie the game, and the noise when the ball hit the back of the net was one of the most memorable things from the trip.  To see grown men around me in tears over a regular season game was really something to behold.

After the game, we picked up the rest of the family at the house and headed out for a bite to eat at an Italian restaurant just around the corner called D’Angelo’s.  Once dinner was over, we headed back to the house to celebrate my birthday a day early, since we were leaving to come back home early the following morning.  After stuffing ourselves full of cake, it was time to finish up packing our bags for the trip home.

Tunisia-Day 8

We spent our second to last day in Africa driving over to the Cape that sits directly across from Tunis. We ended up going with Erin and Dorsey’s friend Cheryl, who we’ve mentioned in the previous entries. It took quite some time for us to reach our destination, but some of the views we saw along the way were quite breath taking.

Our first destination was the city of Hammamat, which is a port city that is a destination point for many European tourists. It sits right on the coast with acres of fabulous beaches, although it was only 55 degrees and very windy when we got there, so the beach really wasn’t an option. It was cold.

Of course, what would a stop in any town be without a visit to the souk? We spent a little over an hour walking around the souk and bartering for even more Tunisian crap. The neat part about this souk is that it is located just behind the walls of the Fort which overlooks the city. It really was quite a scenic spot.

From there, we headed north up the coast to a town which I believe was called Kelibia? We ended up having a nice lunch at a restaurant that sits right on the Mediterranean. In fact, when the weather is nicer, they actually have tables that are set up right in the surf of the Sea.  You eat with your feet immersed in the surf of the Mediterranean.  Pretty cool, huh?

After lunch, we took a very scenic drive along the western coast of the cape, which had scenery that reminded you of here at home, very green an plush, which looks out of place in Tunisia.

Once we returned home, we washed up quickly and then jumped in a cab to go to dinner right in the heart of the Casbah in downtown Tunis at a restaurant called “Dar El Jeld” with Erin, Dorsey, and Katie.  It was grown ups only, and we hung out until a little after midnight enjoying each other’s company over a bottle or two of Tunisia’s finest red wine.

Tunisia-Day 7

We headed over to visit the ancient city of Carthage to check out the ancient ruins.  Carthage is a beautiful town located right on the Mediterranean.  Many of the views of the city are simply breath taking.

Legend had it that Carthage was founded around 800 BC and became a major city and trading center along the Mediterranean.  The city was desired by quite a few civiliations before being destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC.  The Romans eventually rebuilt the city and it became a vital part of the Roman empire up until it was destroyed a second time in 698 AD.

The first site we visited in the city was used prior to the arrival of the Romans.  The first site we visited was a burial ground for infants and children.  It’s suggested that the site was also used as a sacrificial site of these children, but it’s unknown if that is a fact or just propoganda that the Romans used as the took over the city.  It was very cool to see these ruins that dated from somewhere around 400 BC.

We then grabbed a quick bite to eat and then we headed over to the remains of a Roman bath house that was built around 100 BC.  This site sites right on the edge of the Mediterrean and the views of the sea are fantastic.  As we got down to the sea side, the remains of the bath house were impressive.

The site gave an artistic rendition of what the site would have looked like, and to see what the Romans were able to accomplish without any machinery was awesome.  To think that all of it was made with just human labor is really hard to comprehend.

After that, we finished off with a tour of a Roman amphitheater, which is still being used today.  It’s was excavated around 1900 and touched up a bit, but the site now includes a modern stage and sits right in front of a huge mosque that oversees the entire town.

Brett stayed behind for the day with Lucas and Noor, but I was thinking that Jake and Abby wouldn’t really enjoy the ruins.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  They were completely impressed with what they saw, and it’s been one of the first things they’ve mentioned about their trip to anyone who asks them.

Tunisia-Day 6

After the somewhat lazy New Year’s Eve from the night before, we took it somewhat easy on New Year’s Day. My mom, Jean, and I headed over to the local town to catch a mass at the Catholic church. It was really a neat experience, watching a mass given by a Polish priest, with an American decon (Nancy Kippas father, Nick), in front of a mostly black African congregation (who were most likely employees of the local bank). Most of the mass was done with singing, which made it quite different from our masses here at home.

After that we headed back home in time for a huge lunch of baked eggs and pork roll. We lounged around the house until early in the afternoon before heading over to Sidi Bou Said for another couple of hours of shopping in the souk.

The kids had experienced enough of what was involved with the souk, and they were up for the challange. They also had a list of gifts that they were hoping to pick up for their friends as well as some items for themselves. Brett was hoping to pick up a stuffed camel as well as a drum (these were items that caught his fancy during his previous visit). We were able to grab both, with the camel being the more impressive item because it happens to play a very obnoxious Arabic song each time you press it.

We came home to enjoy a pork loin dinner that my mom had thrown in the oven before we left for the souk. It was a nice way to finish off the day before sitting back for a lazy evening in front of the TV, sadly culminating with Penn State getting whipped in the Rose Bowl.