December 23, 2002
Merry Christmas!
We hope you are having a great holiday season. Noah just turned five months old and has been a great joy with all of his smiling and giggling. He truly is a very good-natured boy. He has his dad’s blue eyes, blond hair, and fair skin but fortunately has his mom’s good looks (so says Tim). He does resemble his mother’s baby photos. For Halloween this year, Michelle made him a cute bee costume. We have taken tons of pictures of Noah with our digital camera; many of these pictures are posted on dotphoto.com, username ‘tkirksey’ and password ‘noahdavid’. This is the shortest route to a baby album these days, but it has the widest distribution and keeps the grandparents happy as well.
Tim started a new job in May at UNC Chapel Hill working as Proteomics Coordinator/Programmer for the Center for Bioinformatics. He is glad to finally have a job where he uses his biochemistry background along with the IT/programming experience he picked up while at Worldcom. He was fortunate to leave Worldcom prior to all the accounting scandals, which have resulted in major layoffs. In his new job, he is in charge of setting up a laboratory information management system (LIMS) to coordinate data exchange between the proteomics core facility and researchers on and off campus.
In mid-July, Michelle started her six months of maternity leave with tentative plans to return to the lab. In mid-September, Syngenta offered her (and the rest of her group) generous severance packages. She was the happiest recipient of all and suggested they cut hers as a big “Publisher’s Clearing House” style check. Since Noah was born, she has made some new mom friends and has enjoyed socializing with them since she can’t socialize at work anymore. Her new job as Mom/Domestic Engineer keeps her too busy to think about a job outside of the home for now.
For the Thanksgiving holiday, Noah’s Grandma Kirksey came for a visit with her new grandson; they enjoyed playing together and getting acquainted. For Christmas this year, we have a full house: Noah’s Grandma and Grandpa Cloyd and Uncle David (and his girlfriend Tetyana) are all spending the week with us. They, along with our good friends Tom and Stacy Chamberlin, were all present when Noah was baptized on Sunday December 22nd.
Best wishes for a happy new year!
Tim, Michelle and Noah