Merry Christmas from our (growing) family!

So this year has been full of lots of stuff...read our Christmas letter below (minus a few pictures)......



Merry Christmas from the Madrid family! 2006 has been very eventful for us. We have been blessed with many travels, good health and lots of much anticipation for next year.

In January we took a week long trip to San Francisco. Bethany was there on work but Gabriel enjoyed exploring the city and planning side trips. Chinatown was amazing and Alcatraz was a definite must. Not to mention Little Italy and Fisherman’s Wharf! We ventured to Pleasanton and Livermore, a small vineyard community similar to Napa Valley. What a relaxing trip!

In March we enjoyed a week in sunny Chapala, Mexico. We were there with Gabe’s extended family and enjoyed lots of margaritas and authentic Mexican food. Of course we had to do shopping in Guadalajara and took a day trip to Tequila, Mexico to tour several tequila distilleries. Towards the end of the trip we took Gabe’s cousins for a few days at the beach in Manzanillo. Unfortunately the morning we were leaving Gabriel’s aunt, Velia, had a dangerous fall down a series of cement steps at 5am. She went through a long surgery that day but we are happy to report she is now almost fully recovered! We continued to Manzanillo and enjoyed relaxing by the beach with lots of seafood. We also brought home a new addition to our family. An adorable Schnauzer mix home….a blue eyed “Gringo” pup named Bailey (Besito is his Spanish name).

We celebrated our 1st anniversary June 11th with a quick trip to the Mexico border – Brownsville, Texas. We ended up spending the whole time hanging out on Boca Chica beach and playing with the dogs.

In July we realized Bethany needed reconstruction surgery for her ankle. After traveling on business for several months it soon became apparent that surgery was the only answer. She had twisted her ankle last Christmas Day and unfortunately it did not heal well. After staying off her feet for several weeks she underwent surgery in early July and remained working from home for several months. Fortunately the surgery was completed successful and after physical therapy she is back to normal!

We spent the end of August in Nacogdoches at a country bed and breakfast with Gabriel’s family. The weekend was full of celebrations and a church dedication for Gabriel’s youngest nephew, Brandon Madrid. A week later we took a quick Labor Day trip to Corpus Christi. We had a blast touring the city, taking a sunset cruise and taking the dogs to collect sand dollars on the beach. Our dogs are definitely beach bums!

At the end of September we received some exciting news…we are expecting a baby! Our doctors were in shock after having given us a 2% chance of having children naturally. We were definitely shocked too! The pregnancy has been going great and we found out this week we are expecting a bouncing baby boy. Our days are now filled with getting the house organized, preparing a nursery and searching for a good Nanny! This will be Gabriel’s parents’ seventh grandchild and the first for Bethany’s parents.

During the summer Gabriel changed from shift work at the Exxon Mobil Command Center to the Tape Operations department. He has enjoyed the challenge of learning more about mainframe, JCL (Job Control Language) and has been challenged with trying to automate more of their tape system. This fall he participated in two disaster recovery (DR) sessions in Gaithersburg, Maryland. While there he explored Washington, DC and enjoyed spending time with old friends from Exxon Mobil - Dallas. Bethany recently celebrated her one year anniversary as a CRM Administrator with BMC Software. Throughout the year she has traveled all over the west coast and Midwest. She has enjoyed time in San Francisco, Pleasanton, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit. She recently received a promotion and will begin a new position in January as Partner Content Manager for BMC’s worldwide partner program.

As we wind up this year with anticipation for next, don’t forget to remember that He is the reason for the season. May this holiday season bring you and your family joy, happiness and many loving memories.

With Love, Gabriel, Bethany and “baby” Madrid
(and of course Bentley, Bailey, Ana, Epoh, Romeo & Chappy)

It's a boy!

Well the last 24 hours has been quite eventful for us. After spending 4 hours in radiology and with the OB we found out we were having a little boy! Gabe wanted to make sure they knew for sure...and there was definitely no question about it. Gabe has been guessing boy all along...I wasn't so sure.

So that was yesterday, then today I got a job offer from BMC for a position as a BMC Partner Content Manager....yippee! The extra $$$ will definitely help and it seems like a great group. I start January 1st, 2007!

Crazy stuff huh! I'm thinking about playing the lottery for a change since our luck is so good this week :)

Take care,
Bethany

Is it a boy or a girl????

So today we go to find out if we are having a boy or a girl. Gabe thinks it's a boy but I have a tendency to think it's a girl since there are mainly girls in Gabe's family. We DEFINITELY outnumber the boys :) We are both nervous about finding out what the sex of the baby is, but we are mainly praying that it is a healthy baby! Still hard to believe we're going to be parents!

On another note...Gabe leaves for Exxon Mobil Disaster Recovery (DR) in Maryland Friday morning. He'll be gone until Tuesday...and we leave for our Christmas road trip on Thursday evening. So I'm sure I'll be resting and packing and doing laundry ALL WEEKEND! The exciting life of adults! I do have two Christmas parties and a cooking class Saturday so I'm sure I'll stay busy!

I'm supposed to hear about the new job with BMC sometime before Friday. We're hoping something will be finalized before Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed!

Take care,
Bethany

Making Lemons into Lemonade

Last Saturday I went to spend the day working on fused glass art with my friend Joyce Dwight. She owns a gallery in downtown Houston, Fusion on Nance, so I decided just to go there and stay out of Gabe's way. First we ran to get some last minute Christmas gifts and of course some breakfast so Gabe was so grouchy :) When we got home I started loaded my glass stuff...one LARGE piece of dichroic glass (which is mucho expensive) and several tools and a kiln. Since there was nothing in the far back of the Range Rover I layed the large piece of glass down flat so it wouldn't break.

Well out comes Gabe with two empty cat litter buckets....first he opened the back door and started to put them in the backseat. I mentioned "be careful there is a large sheet of glass in back". I think that must be when his "selective hearing" kicked in because 5 seconds later we heard a huge SHATTER. Apparantly he had decided to just toss the buckets in the far back..right on top of my precious glass! Of course he's like...why did you put that there???? So I left upset with tons of shattered glass.

When I got to the gallery Joyce and I unloaded the glass to assess the damage. Oddly enough the piece was shattered in almost a perfect spider-web formation...which is very rare for glass. He had evidently hit it right smack in the middle. Very similar to the picture on the left but even more symmetrical. I was just planning on cutting into little scrap pieces but the more Joyce looked at it the more she thought we should make something out of it.


So after a few more hours work on Saturday it is now ready to be fired and made into a clock. Joyce said it could be a constant reminder of his mistakes...but we won't tell him that. It will just be his piece of art :) Hope he likes it! And FYI he never reads this so he'll have no clue.

Adios - Bethany

Is it Christmas yet?

So since Thanksgiving and my last post things are been pretty crazy. We had MORE car trouble...and found out the dealership in Dallas pretty much screwed us over. So now we are having to replace the whole EAS (electronic air suspension) system and convert it to regular springs. Funny thing, that's what we wanted in the first place but the Dallas dealership said they weren't leaking and fine. But yet only a week later 3 out of 4 are so warn out the trucks undrivable? PLEASE. We are NEVER going back to the dealership in Dallas. What a scam! Unfortunately this may hider our plans to travel to Dallas, Tulsa and Little Rock for Christmas...so we'll see.

On another note things are looking good for my new position with BMC. I had a final interview Monday afternoon with the director. Turns out he used to be a sales manager for BMC, and his LARGEST (and he noted favorite) customer was my father-in-law Tino! Small world huh! So needless to say we spent 30 minutes on Tino's life, retirement, career, etc. Things seem to have gone very well though. I received a call from the would-be new manager and I'm meeting with her this afternoon to discuss combining two roles they have available into one. So I'd say that's a good thing!

Still no news on the baby. It's in there but that's about all I can say!

Take care and keep us in your prayers!
Bethany

Baby it's cold outside!

YIKES! Apparantly it wasn't supposed to get cold until last night....but when I first got to work at 7am it was 75 degrees...by 9pm (two hours later!!!) it had dropped to 35 degrees with rain. Yuck! This morning it was 32 when I left the house...such a strange thing for Houston! Even our dogs don't want to go outside and Chappy, our 12 week old lovebird, is cuddled up in her coconut to stay warm. Poor thing. I know the picture of downtown Houston looks clear but it's BITTER COLD outside!

PREGNANCY UPDATE: I pretty much never get hungry but ever since they were running Red Lobster adds over Thanksgiving I have been craving snow crab! Of course Gabe hates the work involved with crab so he had leftovers last night and I had 2 pounds of crab! Weird craving huh. Other then that I have to force myself to eat.

So on a different note....I passed my first 4 interviews for a new position with BMC. It would be "Content Manager", basically running two major web portals....the external BMC partner portal and the internal partner portal. Since BMC partners do 1/3 of our business this would be a great opportunity for me! Plus, this is a new position so they are looking for someone to do the content management and strategic side of things. If you know me...you know I love metric and would love this type of challenge. AND we can always use a little extra money with the baby coming in a few months! So keep your fingers crossed and say a few extra prayers for me. I am sheduled to interview with the department director next week.

Love ya guys!
Bethany