Friday, December 24, 2010

Niska's 2010 Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas!

As you can tell, this blog had good intentions, but we haven't updated it since September of last year. Please feel free to look around, there are some links to photo albums and some other random information, but know that our hope is to actually update this more in the future.

To catch you up to speed in a few short bullet points (read posts below for more detail):

April 2009: Harry began a job with Ross & Orenstein, a firm in Minneapolis, working by home office from Illinois
June 2009: We moved from Aurora, IL to Ramsey, MN
August 2009: Harry was appointed to Ramsey City Charter Commission
September 5, 2009: Nathanael turned 3!
September 2009: Jen joined the staff of the Tom Emmer for Governor campaign.

Since September of 2009, we have proven to be very busy. Beginning in 2009, we have had the chance to meet a number of people through local politics and were elected delegates to the 2010 Republican State Convention. Some community members encouraged Harry to run for Ramsey City Council, and after some consideration, in May of this year he decided to file for office, spending countless evenings knocking on doors, introducing himself to voters, listening to their concerns and explaining his views.

Meanwhile, Jen was extremely busy on the Emmer campaign, first serving as the office director and then the scheduler. It was an incredible experience as the campaign evolved from a long-shot grass-roots effort for the Republican endorsement into a full state-wide general election campaign.

In the end, we experienced two tough losses at the ballot box. Harry ended up with 48.94% of the votes in his city council race, but his opponent (a two-term incumbent) ended up with 44 more votes. Meanwhile, the Emmer campaign, after a statewide recount, lost by less than half of a percent of all votes statewide. Obviously, neither of these results are as we had hoped, but like all disappointments in life, we learn and move on to fight another day.

In November, Jen's job with the campaign came to and end, and she recently accepted a job with the Minnesota House of Representatives as a Committee Legislative Assistant. She begins on January 3rd and is quite excited about this new career adventure.

We have the joy, daily, to watch Nathanael grow and learn. He is a constant source of entertainment and loves telling jokes and making people laugh. His newest discoveries include learning his right from left, and mastering many of the games on our phones.

We are so grateful for all the opportunities we have been blessed with over the past year and a half to two years.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Harry and Jen (with Nathanael).

1 comment:

The Hitchcocks said...

I thought Nathaniel was born in 2007, the same as Z?

Christina