Happy Holidays from China

Happy Holidays from China,
This entry is a joint effort-

It is often said that you never really appreciate the good times without your share of challenging times. It has been that type of year for the Redden's . Some of you might not be aware that we lost our home and two dogs, Zach and Anna to a house fire this past spring. This type event reminds you how most things are just "stuff", and the truly important things are the things you cannot buy. To remind of this, we had incredible support from our family, friends, neighbors, work, Sam and Aly's school, and many others. While we have not adequately thanked all of you for your support, know that we appreciate your thoughts and help more than we can possibly express. With that said, this holiday we want to share our family update, and wish you all the best this holiday season..

As most of you know, Curt is in China for work, and the family has joined him for the holiday. So far we have traveled to Guangzhou, Hong Kong and the outer islands, Shenzhen, and will be visiting Shanghai next week. The attached picture is from the peak in Hong Kong overlooking the city. We are having a fantastic time and you can gain more insight from entries in this blog.

Curt is still enjoying UPS, and is now working to share training and sales "best practices" with the local UPS China team. He is expanding his topics to include an international flavor such as "how to look sophisticated while slinging rice with chopsticks", and avoiding international incidents while starting a session with a communist or government joke... While Curt insists he is now able to catch a fly with his chopsticks, miraculously no one has yet to witness it. Abbey warned him before he left that China was a very difficult culture and that they would probably not appreciate his warped sense of humor.
Curt also sadly reports on the destruction of the "Redden Tiki Bar" in association with the above mentioned house fire. He wants to assure that if you had existing reservations, they should be honored no later than the completion of our new house, which at current pace should be before Spring 2014.

Abbey hasn't done much work this year. She took 2 months off this summer to try to get the Redden's lives back in order after losing everything in the house fire. It's amazing what it takes to get things back on track. While we're not there yet, we're making good progress and taking it one step at a time. Abbey did make partner with her CPA firm in January of this year. Of course that was before she took 2 months off over the summer and then took another 5 weeks off to travel to China. Billable hours are down this year (to say the least). She also had to deal with the ongoing investigation into the house. Although a man was seen running from the roof with a propane torch as he was screaming fire, fire!!!, the roofing company we had hired has other theories. The latest involves Martians from Area 57 who were using laser beams to rid the world of the Redden Tiki Bar-

Aly (do I look cute?) Redden is also enjoying 2nd Grade. Aly continues to be involved in Gymnastics after school. She does cartwheels everywhere, and is absolutely destined for Olympic glory. She enjoys singing, dancing, school, and playing with one of her 1,023 babies (post fire count).

Sam continues to develop into a budding veterinarian. As they are now in 2nd grade, Sam is enjoying working with animals and bugs even more. They have also enjoyed there hiatus from school, even though they came with substantial homework and assignments Sam still seems to have a borderline obsessive compulsive interest growing concerning animals. We plan to continue encouraging this until he forces us to adopt a Chinese Monkey.

Our two new additions this year include Spidey and Angelica, two hermit crabs. They are very social and certainly not typical hermits. The Heise's have been taking good care of our hermit crabs during our Far East travels. Earlier this fall, Spidey gave Sam a painful pinch from Aunt Judi's 10th floor office suite. We had a hard time releasing Spidey from Sam's finger. For a few moments, we thought we might have to spray Spidey with Judi's WD40 to make him release. However, we decided that losing two pets this year for Sam would be too traumatic. So, we were patient, and eventually Spidey released his grip, but took a few layers of skin with him.

Despite the fire, we still went on a Disney cruise that we had planned (and paid for ) before the fire. Although Abbey had a hard time convincing Curt that a Disney cruise was something that we should do as a family with all that was going on at the time. This past year, we also visited Seattle and Vancouver CA, Ohio, and old friends from Charleston & St. Augustine.

Finally, we are sad to report that we also lost Curt's Grandmother Marion this year. She was truly an "Unforgettable" woman who will be missed by all, but she lives on in us.

From our family to yours. Best wishes and Happy Holidays from The Reddens.
Curt, Abbey, Sam and Aly