The Hand Herald2001 brought some interesting and nice changes for us, including a new house and a new job. As the result of current and impending construction near our place in northern Durham, NC, and to get better schools for the kids in coming years, we moved down to Chapel Hill, NC. Debbie had called a realtor in February for a consultation, and before we knew it our house was under contract, after only a week on the market. Before closing, we looked all over the western part of the Triangle to see what caught our fancy, and settled on Chapel Hill. We found a nice ranch in an old, neighborly subdivision. It is about the same square footage, and Joey's commute is about the same, but we do now have a large, two-car garage and are living in the best school district in NC. Our new house is also on a court with two babysitters and across the street from the neighborhood pool, which Debbie and the kids enjoyed the second half of the summer. There was a six-week gap between closing on the sale of our old house and the purchase of the new one, so we got to move twice. We resided in the two-room half of a Durham duplex during that time, which built lots of character for everyone.
Debbie has had a busy, busy year keeping house. She orchestrated the sale of the old house, both moves, and a host of redecorating projects in the new home. Debbie has overseen putting in a new countertop bar between the kitchen and den; painted the kitchen walls, Katie Rose's room (pink, of course), the trim in Katie Rose's room and the hallway; and hung new wallpaper in the hallway. She also painted the rooms of the interim duplex we lived in between houses in order to get a six-week lease. In her spare (or sparse?) time, Debbie is an officer in the Durham Mother's Club and continues to enjoy ringing handbells at Trinity UMC of Durham
Katie Rose continued to enjoy preschool at Beth El Synagogue in Durham. In April, she and Joey flew down to meet Grandma & Grandpa Hand for a few days at Disney World. Needless to say, she was enchanted, and everyone had a great time. Over the summer and after the move, she loved going to the pool. With the move to Orange County, she began four-year-old preschool at Orange United Methodist Church in September, Sunday school at Evergreen UMC, and ballet at Dancentre. She was surprised that Orange UMC was not orange and that Evergreen was actually brown. At Evergreen on a later Sunday in November, during a children's sermon about the last roses of the season and how all the flowers were gone until the spring, Katie Rose--already enthralled by the sermon's visual aid--blew the pastor's point by telling her that camellias bloomed in the winter when it was cold.
Pete officially entered the 'terrible twos' on November 30th, 2001, although Debbie says he has been there a few months already, being the precocious child that he is. However, he can be very polite with his "thank you's", "sorry's", and cleaning up after himself. Pete also has continued to define himself as a boy by playing with cars and trucks and having a book called Bugs, Bugs, Bugs read to him 3-10 times a day. The first time he saw a NASCAR race on TV last spring, he jumped and screamed with joy and continues to be engrossed when we happen to catch one now. Pete started walking late last year, and runs all over the place now--usually with a parent chasing him to everyone's amusement.
Joey continues to work in IBM's accounting center in RTP. 2Q01 was a busy quarter for Joey: sold one house, moved to an apartment, bought another house, got a promotion along with a new position at work, and taught a course at UNC, broken up with the trip to Disney World with Katie Rose. The new position at work is team lead for the nine-member group that runs the systems that assemble IBM's general ledgers for the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. Primarily, his team controls the inputs to the ledgers, runs the systems that posts the input, and answers questions--countless questions--about the systems from the accountants and sometimes from the programmers if any data brings the system down. The position is very challenging but offers broad exposure to IBM's finance community. For about ten weeks in mid-March through May, he taught the information systems course in the Master of Accounting Program at Kenan-Flagler Business School of UNC-Chapel Hill. It came right on the heels of taking the accounting systems position, so that new insights from work could be used readily in the classroom, and vice versa.
In family news, Joey's brother Scotty and his wife Veridee had a daughter, Abigail, in February, 2001. Joey's sister, Margie, and her husband Doug are expecting a boy in February, 2002, bringing the niece-&-nephew count between our two families to five.