Life updates

This last year has been an interesting year to say the least. The engineering firm I work for was added to the collection of companies owned by the Fives Group, a French conglomerate. And for those of you wondering, it is NOT pronounced "5s" It is FEEvs. If that makes phonetic sense, cause it's, ya know, French. They (we) have been in business for over 200 years, so that's a pretty long time I guess. And it seems like they have business interests in just about every sector (automotive, aerospace, aluminum, cement, sugar, composites, heavy machinery, manufacturing... etc). Anyway, their network of suppliers has been a big boon to me personally, it has opened doors into the manufacturing world that I might never have seen, working with the limited resources of a smaller company. There are some pretty crazy parts that I am looking at trying to get built right now, and if it wasn't for the Fives manufacturing contacts, I would be struggling (even more than I am) with finding vendors who would be willing to take the work.  It has also been good, because part of our integration into the Fives family of companies means better name recognition, access to new markets, and the ability to sell our services in new and more competitive ways.  I am working on a project right now worth several million dollars that I am pretty sure we only got because of our association with Fives. So now we are no longer Lund Engineering, we have become Fives Lund LLC. Pretty exciting.
Another development: I was finally able to finish paying off my debt. Now the only debt I have is my house and property, and I plan on keeping it that way. No more watching interest rates, or making sure I am on time with my monthly payment or trying to figure out how to make the money stretch to cover the payments. We can finally start saving again, I have started putting away for retirement again (though I never should have stopped) and we can save for fun things that we actually want. It feels pretty good. My job at Lund has been really good for me.
Also, Rachel has been working there as well. She started in June of this last year, and has been working the front desk with another girl. It has been nice to wander up front and see her. And it has been nice to have her home more often, and not have to drive into downtown Seattle. She gets to put the kids on the bus in the mornings, and I get to come home and get them off the bus in the afternoon. That has been a real blessing. She also isn't stressed out all the time about work, because it is truly a job that we both can just leave at work.
Christmas this year was nice, all my family came to town at some point, even Danny and Makay were able to get away from their wildly successful online business (http://www.simpleaddiction.com) and spend some time with all of us. They don't get to do that very often, so it was good to see them. I don't make it down to Utah very often, and the times I have in recent years, have not given me the opportunity to stop by and say hi. We got to go to the Supermall this year with everyone and do our Christmas tradition of drawing a name from a hat, and buying a $10 gift within an hour. We have been doing this for years, and this is the first time that everyone has been all in one spot. Actually I think we were missing Ben. But he works at the hospital and doesn't get normal days off.
I'd like to talk about a few other things, but I don't know if I'm ready to start putting that down on paper.