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I know I’m a little late getting this out, but I thought I would put together a “Holiday Letter”/”Year in Review” for my family.

This was big year for the family. Back in May we found out we were going to have another child. In August we found out we were having a boy and at the end of December Jackson was born. Both Noah and Wyatt are loving being big brothers. Noah turned four this year and started preschool. He goes three afternoons a week and he is really loving it. Wyatt is also enjoying every minute of his brother being gone. He turned three this year and is getting very big. Rachel continues to become more involved in the community. Along with her deaconess duties, she has also become a member of the Warren County Child Abuse Prevention Council. This year was my fifteen year high school reunion. Planning was much smoother than the ten year reunion and we had a pretty successful turn out.

Even with the recent layoff announcements by AOL, I am still gainfully employed with them and really enjoying my work. KwiClick development continues to go well and has gotten quite a bit of good press recently. Although Forecastfox has slipped slightly in it’s ranking on Firefox, we were able to rewrite the code from scratch this year and get a version out for Chrome (which has been very warmly received). This new code base should allow us to iterate faster and get versions out for Firefox, Fennec, and others. I started the company Web Tech Studios this year to cover the contract work I do. To celebrate the creation of the company I created the "Near Me" add-on and entered it into the Extend Mobile Firefox contest. It was chosen as one of the winners and I received a Nokia N900 as the prize.

Now with three sons and lots of work to do, 2010 looks like it’s going to be a very exhausting happy year.

Rachel’s mom stopped by for a visit the other day and she left us a disc of photos she has taken over the past couple of years. We ran across this gem of Noah playing and dancing at Andrew and Holly’s wedding.

Last week we had Rachel’s twenty week ultrasound. We found out we are having another boy. We got some cool pictures, I thought I would post.

This time around, we’ve decided to do something kind of fun. We are going to keep the name a suprise

I work full time for AOL, LLC and telecommute to work. Because of this I need to have broadband in my home. We currently live in the smallish town of Indianola, Iowa and we use Mediacom for our broadband access. The current high speed package we have is $50 a month (7MB download, 512KB upload, and no usage cap). I typical average about 300MB up and 2GB down a day. We’ve been in the process of building a new home less than ten miles away, about 5 miles outside of the city limits. I’ve been trying to find out what kind of broadband options are available in the area so I can figure out what carrier we would have for the home office. This has lead me to discover just how abysmal coverage is in rural areas and just how difficult it is to even find out what’s available in my area. Here is what I’ve been able to find out:

• Mediacom is not available in my area.
• Qwest dial-up service is the only thing available.
• Verizon is not available in my area.
• Verizon mobile broadband is available for $59.99 a month with a maximum 5GB per month.
• Iowa Telecom needs a phone number to find out if it’s available.
• Hughes Net costs 7 times as much for a comparable package.
• Wild Blue offers a package for $79.95 that is 1/5th the speed and has a maximum 17GB per month.

View House Locations in a larger map

An interesting side note: I started working on this post over the weekend. OM Malik has two stories today about the state of broadband in the US.

• Broadband Growth Falls Sharply in the U.S.
• What My Daughter’s Broken Leg Taught Me About Broadband
• Update: Another great story about rural broadband.
  Rural broadband = more jobs, better salaries

Originally uploaded by richwklein.

Rachel and I staking out the location of our new house. Now, I’m in the mood to start building. Hopefully, we can get the current house in shape to sell and get it on the market yet this year.

I’m a lefty. Several members of both Rachel and my families are lefties. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of our kids turned out to be left handed. I’m not afraid to swing a hammer or turn a screwdriver, but I’ve always felt slightly awkward doing it. Especially compared to my right handed relatives. Now, as my boys get older, I wonder if this awkwardness has anything to do with being left handed and if my kids will have to deal with it.

With that in mind, I set off to find the answer on google. The only study I found that had information I thought was relevant contradicted my thoughts on the subject. So now I’m asking you the lazy web what you experience is. Are left handed people less dexterous than right handed people? Please leave a comment and let me know.

For Grandpa’s funeral several people shared stories about the things they remember about him. Afterwards I wondered if there was anything I could have shared. I know that I’m the wrong person for this kind of things since specific events don’t tend to stick out in my mind. More like general perceptions and images. So now that we lay you to rest this week, I’m pondering again what things I could share.

To me two images of you come to mind. The first is a vision of you as a retired farm wife always working in your garden. A woman who was a bit stubborn, but had to be. Your children to a fault inherited that stubbornness. The image that sticks out most clearly for me though, is one of you at our family gatherings. Gathering at first in the basement of your house. Then meeting later in churches and halls when the family had grown too big. I can picture you smiling and laughing as we enjoyed a meal. Do you realize all your daughters laugh like you? A funny thing to realize that I can pick out my mom or aunts just by the sound of that laugh and that they all sound just about the same. It’s a picture of you and the rest of the family on Christmas Eve opening presents. You sitting on the right hand side of grandpa. Aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings all in chairs lined against the walls.

This is a scene I’ve missed in recent years and will now forever miss, but it’s also the one I always come back to when I think of our big/giant extended family. This Thursday will be our final chance to say goodbye to you and I’m going to do it in the best way I know how. By helping carry you to your final resting place.

Love,
Rich

About a month ago Noah took his first official bike ride. I thought I would share some photos from that experience.

Here he is just getting started.

This is our first experience with falling. Which he now has a lot of experience with.

Getting the hang of it.