We got a new dog – Cooper. Cooper was a 5 year old Golden Retriever who was turned in to the Great Lakes Golden Retriever Rescue (GLGRR) by his owner. He’s a big dog (100 pounds and the biggest dog that we’ve ever had) and hadn’t been well trained. A lot of his behavior is like a puppy’s – a bouncy 100 pound puppy. He had no leash manners and would constantly strain at the leash. Pam managed to get him to walk properly and he sometimes even does what he’s told.

June:

This was a busy month. We went to visit Scott, Liz and Amber in Bloomington for a couple of days to help celebrate Scott’s 50th birthday. Then we dashed off to visit Morgan, Beth and Becky over in Evansville.

We were back less than a week when we were woken up at 6:00AM on Thursday morning by a phone call. The Lee County sheriff’s department in Florida let us know that Pam’s mom had died in her sleep.

We drove down to Florida to help Fred with the aftermath. Pam and Steve first drove to Evansville to meet up with Scott who had driven over from Bloomington. The 3 of us then drove non-stop to Florida to meet with Fred and the funeral director Friday afternoon.
Corwin, Morgan, Beth, Liz and Amber caught up with us by Monday.
The services for Pam’s mom were on Tuesday.

August:

Pam, Steve and Corwin visited Toronto for a few days, hanging out mostly in Pickering with Al and Sig but also squeezing in a visit to Alex and Camille’s new house.

On Monday, the 15th, Steve was minding his own business, washing his hands after powdering his nose when his cell phone rang. The caller-id showed that it was Jim Redd, his boss, calling. Jim was calling to let Steve know that the I.T. department was being reorganized and that Steve was no longer working for I.T. Security but was now working for Application Infrastructure instead.
Steve had been working for I.T. Security for about 5 or so years. While he liked working with the application support side of security, he found that he was spending less time doing that and more time working with policy enforcement and risk assessments. And Steve didn’t like working with policy enforcement and risk assessments.
In his new job, Steve would be spending all of his time working with application support. Steve has mentioned that he really likes his new job on numerous occasions to Pam and anyone else who’ll listen. And to those who didn’t want to listen.

Throughout most of the year:

Corwin got a part-time job with Recovery Academy. One aspect of the job is to keep Recovery Academy’s computers running. Another is to teach basic computer skills.
Later in the year, Corwin also got a job as a part-time on-call peer support specialist.
Corwin has been pretty excited to be doing both these jobs.

December:

Beth is expecting. Morgan and Beth are choosing to wait until the baby’s born to find out its gender. we’re told that the names will be Hazel for a girl and Cooper for a boy.

Just before thanksgiving, the ultrasound showed that the baby weighed about 7 pounds, 11 ounces. The math says that that the baby will arrive weighing almost 10 pounds. Since then, we’ve been calling it Giant baby or G.B. for short.


At time of writing, Beth is scheduled to have a c-section on 12/14/11. We’ll finally find out if we have a granddaughter or grandson.

So much for schedules.
Pam got a call on the afternoon of 12/10/11, while she was shopping. Beth’s water broke and the doctor was going to get the baby at 5:00PM.
Steve was minding his own business walking Lulu when Pam called him to let him know that they were driving down to Evansville to meet the baby.

Hazel Porter Squire was born at 17:19, CST, 12/10/11.
8 pounds, 13 ounces.
19.5 inches.
Good set of lungs.
Beautiful.

The c-section went fine. Hazel, Beth and Morgan are all doing well.