Happy New Year!  We hope this annual email finds you and yours doing well.  As is our New Year tradition, we're sending out this newsletter to all our friends with our latest news.  

Where We Are...

Kathia and I continue to live, work, and play in Atlanta, Georgia, where we have a home near Grant Park, Turner Stadium, Downtown, and the Atlanta Zoo. 

Mom and Dad continue to enjoy their retirement and divide their time between Crested Butte, Colorado and  Boise, Idaho, plus where ever the airline sales take them.  My sister Courtney lives in Boise, and Ellen lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Kathia's family are in Brazil in São Paulo, São José dos Campos, & Paraná.  In the U.S., she has cousins and Aunts in Florida, Detroit, San Francisco, San Diego, and Atlanta. 

What We are Doing...

I spent the last year working for Attributor, an Internet company that Turner was invested in.  They sold my section of the business just before the holidays and I started this week at BayTSP.  BayTSP is a company that has been providing copyright enforcement services to major media companies since 1999 and is a leading brand in the business. 

Kathia joined the Grady Perinatal Center in late 2007 as an OB sonographer.  She has fantastic co-workers who all take care of her and provide a great collegial environment.  She's been working with them since she moved to Atlanta in 2004, as a visiting professor initially, and a researcher for two years. 

For those who humor all our dog stories, Hobbes, our Labrador Retriever, is all grown up and a master of his world.  He can sit, lay down, and stay (in Portuguese and English).  He is the master of playing hide and seek with toys and small children.  For security, he has learned how to trigger all the motion sensor lights around our house and when to bark (possums or strange people out back) and when not (postman dropping off Netflix).  We've decide his new hobby is cooking because he watches Kathia cook obsessively from the kitchen floor and samples everything that falls his way.  (Kathia is waiting for the day when we'll come home, and he'll have dinner ready for us.)

Milestones this Year...

This year, Kathia's cousin, Agda, and husband Marcelo moved to town.  With all her family half-way around the world, it has been great having relatives here so close, and especially when we have so much in common. 

We had several visits from family this year: 

Aunt Martha and Uncle Doug, along with Lisa Sorensen visited, and we tracked down the original home in Decatur where my Dad, Uncle Gyp, and Martha grew up.

Kathia's parents Martha and Kazumi visited in July, and we went to Asheville to celebrate the 4th of July the old American way with bluegrass music and fireworks.   

Kathia's brother Ivan and his wife Kaori visited us in September, and we went to Crested Butte, Colorado to visit Mom & Dad.  We had a great time with Ivan and Kaori.

Just before Thanksgiving, Kathia's youngest brother added another baby to the family.  Vítor arrived on November 4 to proud parents Ivo and Marina and has been spoiled by all the attention ever since. 

We spent Thanksgiving and the holidays right here at home with Mom, Dad, Ellen and Ron and the Howard clan up in Marietta. 

Our New Addition to the Family

This fall, Kathia and I were blessed with the best news of all:  We are expecting a baby boy in April 2010 (exact EDC 04/15/2010... tax day!).  After helping so many women go through this process, Kathia couldn't be happier to be experiencing it herself.   He looks just like us!

We're both excited to be starting a family.  We're taking suggestions on NAMES (the harder to pronounce the better).  We'll send out a birth announcement when the little guy arrives. 

Stay in Touch!

We've posted pictures from all our adventures this year.  We're also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and (occasionally) Orkut. 

Life continues to be good in the Reynolds household.  We hope that all is well with you and yours and hope to hear news from you soon! 

All the best,

Um abraço,

Saludos,

Tanti auguri,

Ross & Kathia Reynolds

Hey, Almost a year has gone by and no news!  Kathia and I are working on an end of year newsletter with big news for everyone.

For those of you who haven't already, friend us on Facebook!

Ross & Kathia

Hey everyone!

Ironically, it was our Aunt Mimi who first let us know that a tornado had passed by our neighborhood a couple of blocks to the north of us. Kathia and I were at home safe watching a movie. Hobbes, our usual early warning system for all things out of ordinary, was agitated, but we thought he was just mad we were watching a movie and distracted him easily with a chew toy. There was hail and hard rain around 9:30. The tornado passed by at 9:45. We wrapped up the movie at 11:00 and would have gone to bed not knowing any better if Mimi hadn’t called to check in on us.

The Tornado that passed through Atlanta was an “F2”, which according to Wikipedia, can cause “Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars overturned; large trees snapped or uprooted; light-object missiles generated.” Not growing up in Florida or the Midwest, “light object missiles” is a new phrase for my vocabulary. This is the first tornado to ever pass through downtown Atlanta. Lightening strikes more often.

I got up this morning and ran through Grant Park, which is as beautiful and intact as ever, aside from some twigs on the ground and a few earlier bloomers that lost their flowers. The Atlanta Zoo security tells me they lost power but no animals were hurt. The local T-League had a morning game and decided to play on.

Cabbage Town and the Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts were not so lucky. CNN Center, Centennial Park, and the Downtown buildings all suffered a lot of damage. Fortunately, even with all the March Madness fans in town, no one was hurt. To date, there have been NO FATALITIES from the downtown tornado.  A couple in Polk county was hit directly by another twister.  Our heart goes out to their families.

The front of CNN Center lost several windows. My side of the building was not too damaged. My own office is a ways back from the windows anyway. I now get to kid all my senior colleagues who have one of the few window offices at CNN Center.

To see the aftermath, check out these pictures on iReport.com:

Cabbage Town Damage:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-3748

Downtown / Centennial Park Damage

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-3847

Lots of love, Abraços, e tudo de bom!

Ross, Kathia & Hobbes

Happy New Year!  We hope this annual email finds you and yours doing well.

Where we are...

Kathia and I continue to live, work, and play in Atlanta, Georgia, where we have a home near Grant Park.

What we are doing...

I continue to work with the Platform R&D team at Turner Broadcasting.  Kathia was working with Emory as a researcher at the Center for Prenatal Assessment & Human Development.  This fall, she took a new job with Grady Memorial Hospital as an OB sonographer with the Perinatal Center team. 

Milestones this Year...

This year, we had a couple of big milestones. 

Dad turned 70, and we celebrated with a big party in Crested Butte, Colorado. 

Kathia defended her thesis and earned a PhD from the University of São Paulo in April.  We now call her "Dr., Dr. Sakamoto". 

Kathia's brother, Ivan, got married in April. 

In the summer, we took a trip to San Francisco together.

In the fall, we adopted a puppy, and named him Hobbes. 

Happy Holidays from Ross, Kathia, Kazumi, Martha, and IvoAnd for the holidays, we had the greatest gift of all with a visit from Kathia's parents and brother Ivo.   (pictures here)

Live continues to be good in the Reynolds household.  We hope that all is well with you and yours and hope to hear news from you soon! 

All the best,

Um abraço,

Saludos,

Tanti auguri,

Ross & Kathia Reynolds

Okay, more than half way through the year and time for another update...  Summer was pretty leisurely for us but a lot has happened. 

In August we went to San Francisco...

Kathia and I on the San Francisco Bay

The trip was great and gave us some much needed R&R just for Kathia and me.  

Highlights of the trip included a day hike in Muir woods and Sausalito and hike around China and Japan town. 

Pictures here

Introducing Hobbes!

In September we celebrated my Birthday with the best gift a guy can get... a baby chocolate Labrador. 

We found Hobbes with a breeder out in Stone Mountain.  He was one of the last three of his litter.  He likes sleeping on grates, chewing ice, digging up weed stopper, and stealing dirty socks and underwear from the laundry.  We've posted pictures of him here. 

More news to come! 

-Ross & Kathia