December 12, 1998      Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, The din of a baby crying echoed much to the dismay of the spouse The diapers and baby wipes were placed by the cradle with care, In hopes of avoiding the inevitable mess soon to occur there. Our lives are planned between feedings, changes and interrupted sleep, But this all feels strangely normal for reasons quite deep, A giggle, a smug contented stare, a smile, From your infant somehow makes it all feel worth while.   1998 came in with a bang!  Along with our friend Marty and crew, we started New Years Eve at a pub party in Leavenworth and ended it in our motel's outdoor hot tub with snow falling softly around us.  Leavenworth is a small Bavarian-style tourist town 2 hours east of Seattle nestled in the Cascade mountain range.   We skied the next day at Steven's Pass, about a 15 minute drive from Leavenworth. Great way to start out the new year! Mid-January found us in Niceville, Florida attending my nephew Jeremy's wedding.  We squeezed in a visit with my parental units in Punta Gorda (somewhat nearby) and brother Bruce in Orlando, and then were off to San Juan for a 7-day Caribbean cruise.  Visiting the ports of call, sunning by the pool, attending the shows, gambling and … oh, yeah … "eating" were the main activities.  Just when you thought you were full, they began opening the dining rooms with a big elaborate "midnight" buffet.  Strange having a heaping plate of food at one o'clock in the morning … reminded me of those trips to Denny's after a night of partying, only on a much grander scale. Our friends, Mark and Christy, invited us to stay at their friend John's cabin in Breckenridge in mid-February.  It ended being a wild weekend with 5 other couples, skiing at Breckenridge during the days and occasional group drinking games in the evenings.  Never played "spoons" before so I ended up chugging beer much more often than I was prepared for.  We had met most of the group at Mark and Christy's wedding in Denver the previous October.  Nora and I drove from Breckenridge to Vail and skied a few days there before heading back to Seattle.  Great tree skiing on Vail's back side upper ridge! Nora attended a week-long software class in San Francisco towards the end of March for Universal Avionics.  I flew down on Friday afternoon for a short weekend there together.  In the beginning of May, we found out that that weekend in San Francisco was to change our lives forever.  The E-P-T test showed a solid pink line and we later confirmed the results with Nora's doctor.  An ultrasound let us see the first precious glimpses of our child-to-be and the amnio told us we were having a daughter … the first female offspring in the Steffens male-dominated family tree.   We had been trying for quite some time and had pretty much given up.  I guess the line everyone gave us about "when we stopped trying then we would get pregnant" rang true.  The stereotypical changes soon began.  We sold our small 2-door Nissan 240SX sports car and replaced it with a big Ford Expedition SUV.   We began stocking up on Disney animated classics.  I knew we were in real trouble when we had my 41st birthday bar-b-que in July and I told our friends (for the first time) that it was OK to bring their kids! In late July, my friend Rick and I signed up for a 3-day PSIA Ski Race Camp at Mount Hood in Oregon.  Always a good time skiing in t-shirts in 70° temps on the Palmer Snowfield / Glacier.  Sun Block SPF 30 is mandatory!  I also did this several years back when I was a ski instructor at Steven's Pass.  Rick remains the only true "Ski to Die" member still active, he still teaches.  I gave up instructing in 1996 when I started Digital Vision … there just wasn't enough time after that to devote 4 weekends to ski instructor clinics followed by 8 weekends of teaching. Since we knew we were pregnant and this would probably be our last real vacation for a few years, our friends Mark and Christy talked us into going with them to Kauai, Hawaii in August using up some timeshare points I had stocked up to save us some money.  We had a great time snorkling and watching Nora drink "virgin" drinks at the happy hours.  Mark and I took surfing lessons and spent an exhausting 2 hours trying to hang ten.  For a sport that appears to attract lazy youth, it takes an incredible amount of stamina to position yourself and paddle the 8 foot board around in the surf.  I actually rode one wave in with Mark faring much better than I.  While in Kauai, Nora and I first felt the baby kick. My parental units visited in September on their annual trek to the Pacific Northwest.  Quite a bit of progress was made on the backyard river rock storage shed that my father helped dig the foundation for the summer before.  We made it to one "blues" concert this year (Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang, and Big Head Todd at the Pier) and one classical concert (Midori at Seattle's new Beneroya Hall).  I admit to snoozing through a bit of the last one. The Wednesday before last, Nora and I drove to downtown Seattle after work to attend the big Collins Christmas Party hosted each year for hundreds of Boeing guests and Collins Cedar Rapids management.  I dropped Nora off at the door to use the facilities … something pregnant women do quite often in their final month.   By the time I parked the car and made it into the party, we ended up turning around and driving back across the bridge to the eastside hospital's birthing center.   Nora's water had broken and labor was soon to follow, two and a half weeks early!   At the hospital, once they assessed Nora's condition, I was told that I had time to go home to get our camaras, our overnight gear and the child seat for the car.  We hadn't loaded any of it into the Expedition yet, because we hadn't planned for the early arrival of our daughter.  I drove home at 80 mph in the carpool lane (by myself) and I ran around like a maniac gathering together our baby gear, making it back to the hospital over an hour later to find Nora at 6 cm in hard labor.  The epidural soon followed and after several hours of pushing, Shannon Patricia Steffens made her appearance at 1:22am on Thursday morning.  Weighing in at 8 lbs 1 oz and measuring 20 inches in length, her wailing stopped as soon as she heard my voice.  I guess they can hear prenatally and recognize their parent's voices … pretty wild! Life has changed drastically in the last week and a half, as the poem in the first paragraph was meant to illustrate.  Before children arrive in your life, it's pretty hard to understand why people procreate and put themselves through the torturous first few years of raising a child.   Once you join the ranks, it seems obvious.   Goes to show, no matter how old you are that there is still much to learn. Nora's busy full time with the hungry little diaper filling munchkin … I'm pretty much taking care of everything else at this point.  New Wave is snoozing in the chair next to me while I draft this letter, Shannon is crashed out in the bassinet and Nora is napping on the couch.  Everyone's sleeping but me!  No rest for the weary.  We hope your holidays are filled with family, happiness and several good nights of uninterrupted sleep.  If your travels bring you close to our home, we still have a guest bedroom … it's right next to the nursery.  Stop in and stay a while … good babysitters are hard to find.   Frosty says "stay cool" …         P.S. - I developed a pretty elaborate "personal" web site on the Internet. It has the year in           pictures, vacations, home improvement projects, biographies, family trees, etc.  Took           about 100 hours to pull together … I hope you'll check it out!  Web site development is           something I intend to focus Digital Vision and my talents on.  There are several pictures           of Shannon posted there if you're interested.    Here's how to get to it: