2011 Holiday Letter

Well, it has been a very busy year and we are keeping this year's letter really brief (since December is just as busy).

January: Drew did an awesome job at his first marathon- Phoenix Rock 'n Roll


February: Visit to Kauai with Krista's parents- a week's escape from Minnesota's winter




March: I think we mentally blocked this long winter month!



April: Kellogg Alumni weekend was a blast catching up with a ton of friends in Evanston- can it really have been 5 years already?


May: We began to thaw out and life got really busy- including the Allina Hospice Benefit.



June: Summer kept us busy. Drew transitioned to a new job, he's now working for Wells Fargo here in Minneapolis. In between his last day at Deloitte and his new job starting we spent a few days in Dallas with the Hensels. Later in the month, we had a great weekend in Paducah, Kentucky celebrating Krista's cousin Bryan's wedding to Lexie.



July: The house project for the year this year was rebuilding our backyard deck. Drew also rehabbed the basketball goal on the garage.


August: We flew to Virginia for Krista's cousin Steven's wedding to Whitney. We had a great time at the wedding and enjoyed getting to see a new part of the country.


September: We waited a bit too late in the season, but we got our annual camping trip in- it was a bit chilly- in the 30s overnight. We were one of two tents in the campground.



October: Drew ran the monster dash as a sock monkey this year!


November: Mom and Dad Brinly joined us in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. We had a warm front, but they still claimed to be freezing. :)



December: We are getting ready to welcome the Hensels to Minneapolis for a White Christmas celebration. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

2010 Holiday Letter

Well here we are with another year gone by. It’s hard to believe it is already time to recap the whirlwind that was 2010. But here we go…

First Quarter

Drew lucked out with his being in Phoenix and escaped the Minnesota winter each week. In February we celebrated Krista's birthday with her parents in Sedona, AZ. Krista stayed for the entire week and saw much of Sedona and the surrounding area with her parents, while Drew left at the start of the week to rejoin his project team back in the Phoenix area. Drew and Krista did make it up to the Grand Canyon together during their Sedona trip, which was fantastic.

Drew's colleagues in Phoenix attended a Spring Training game together in Scottsdale and played a round of golf in celebration of completing the first phase of their project. While Drew was working hard in Phoenix, Krista was taking part in UnitedHealth Group’s Executive Development Program.

Second Quarter

Krista was nominated and selected as recipient for the UnitedHealth Group (UHG) Living the Mission Award for her work with the Allina Hospice Foundation where she's served as a Board Member for the past two years. The Living the Mission Award is a quarterly award, and resulted in the Allina Hospice Foundation receiving a $2,000 donation from UHG.

Work took Krista back to Phoenix for a week in May, and since Drew’s client work was still in Phoenix, we spent a week together back in Arizona! Outside of work, awards, and traveling for work the Spring was pretty quiet for us. We also attended the Allina Hospice Benefit and celebrated surviving another Minnesota winter.

Third Quarter

We loved this summer! We both got back into running and Libby (the Lab) loved getting runs with us in the mornings before work. I wrapped up my Executive Development Program in late June; while I miss the daily interactions with my project teammates, it sure was nice to regain free time just in time for summer. Summer also brought a change at work as I took on a new position as VP Sales Optimization for the UnitedHealthcare Medicare and Retirement team.

In early July, we attended a fantastic family reunion in Louisville where we celebrated Krista's grandmother's 90th birthday.

We then went on vacation and celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary with a wonderful trip to St. Lucia. We went to an amazing resort called the Body Holiday- their motto is “Give us your body for a week and we’ll give you back your mind”. It was fantastic. The resort included all kinds of fitness classes including yoga, meditation, tai chi and even fencing lessons. The best treat of all was the daily hour massage treatment. Quite the dream vacation! And can you believe we found it on a trip to Costco?

We also made a weekend trip to Southern California in August for friends' Phil and Diana Stetz wedding and got to spend time with our good friend Tamara Icenogle who lives out in L.A. now and continues to love her work in fashion and retail. While it was a quick trip, it was great to take some long walks on the beach and catch up with friends in SoCal.

Labor Day weekend Krista’s parents came to visit us in Minneapolis, and unfortunately so did our first bout of cold weather (the temp dropped to ~50 degrees Fahrenheit for the weekend!).

We celebrated Drew's promotion to Manager with Deloitte and his completing another two years with Deloitte since starting back in 2008 after taking a couple years off to get his MBA. We went to the Minnesota State Fair to see a live performance of Prairie Home Companion and while the show was great, we were all a little chilly. I don’t think either set of parents now will plan to visit Minnesota except in June, July and August. We can’t blame them, as we write this in mid-December 2010 we’re expecting seventeen inches of snow and our expected high tomorrow is three degrees Fahrenheit.

Fourth Quarter

Drew finally wrapped up his project in Phoenix and started heading to the East Coast to Hartford, Connecticut for his next project. As a new Manager with Deloitte this has been his first official project to be the day-to-day Manager on, and will be completed before the holidays. The project has been a great opportunity for Drew and helped him to further expand his network. For Thanksgiving this year we decided to drive to Dallas as Drew's parents asked him to pick up some of the things we had left in Dallas before our wedding (did I mention we just celebrated our 6th anniversary?). Drew's parents are selling their home in Plano and downsizing since they're finally convinced that Drew and his brother John won't be moving back anytime soon. We had a wonderful time in Dallas and with the road trip! We went through Oklahoma City where Drew grew up and so that we could spend time with Drew's brother John and sister-in-law Shanda, who live in OKC now and are both doing great. We had a great visit in Oklahoma and Texas and wish we could bottle that 80 degree weather for some of the cold winter days ahead. We’re looking forward to spending time with Krista's family this holiday season and hope that you have the opportunity to do the same.

2011 Preview...

First Quarter

On January 16th Drew will run his first marathon, the Rock 'n Roll Marathon in Phoenix. Drew has been training since early September for his first marathon by completing a couple 5Ks and a 25K in addition to a weekly running scheduled in preparation for the race. Drew hopes to complete his first marathon under 4:15 and appreciates any motivation you can provide between now and race day on the 16th!

2009 Annual Holiday Letter

As you can tell from the date of our last posting, we haven’t figured out how to get into a blogging routine. However, it does seem to be an efficient and environmentally friendly way to communicate our annual holiday newsletter. For those of you on Facebook, we do try to be a little more active with our Facebook postings.

So here we go with a Hensel Family year in review

First Quarter

After an eventful end of 2008, we finally made the decision to add a master bathroom as we rebuilt the upstairs. It was incredibly nerve racking the first day of construction as they cut a hole in our roof to begin construction, but we love the finished product. We did spend countless weekends picking out tile, plumbing fixtures, paint & carpet, so it kept us pretty busy. The construction was a nice distraction from another Minnesota winter. We were also fortunate that Drew ended up with an in-town client during the first part of the year and we enjoyed lots of time together.


Libby's annual Easter Egg Hunt


Second Quarter

After moving back upstairs, we entered a season of celebrations. Krista’s hard work as co-chair of The Allina Hospice Foundation Benefit paid off as the event was a huge success and Krista was relieved to be able to finally take a break. Soon after the event we went to California to attend Krista’s cousin Thomas’ wedding. The wedding was just south of San Francisco. We had a great time seeing family and seeing the sights. We made a vacation out of it, heading out earlier in the week for a tour of California Wine country. We spent the mornings hiking and the afternoons touring the vineyards and of course tasting.

Hiking amongst the Redwoods

Getting ready to taste at the vineyard
Third Quarter

We love summer in Minnesota and took advantage of our most beautiful season by taking a couple of camping trips. Drew completed a 150 mile bike ride benefiting the Multiple Sclerosis Society (MS 150)- riding from Duluth south to the Twin Cities over the course of a weekend. That Saturday night Krista and Libby drove up to Hinckley, MN, to join in the overnight camping. It was amazing to watch a tent city of cyclists pop up in a couple of hours. After surviving that first camping adventure, we decided to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary by camping at St. Croix State Park in Northeast Minnesota. We enjoyed making S’mores, hiking, and climbing a fire tower that provided an eagle’s view of the state park.

We also spent 4th of July in Friendswood with family, where Jacob enjoyed the parade that the whole town turned out for. It definitely reminded us how much we missed being close to family, and at the same time how hot Texas gets in the summer…its all relative though given how cold Minnesota gets in the winter!

We wrapped up the summer with a weekend in Las Vegas with Krista’s parents. We hadn’t been in years and it was fun to see the new sights. We had some amazing dinners, and visited most of the major casinos and resorts. The highlight of the trip was seeing the new Cirque Du Soleil show- Love featuring music from The Beatles. It was awesome! If you ever have the opportunity to see it, we highly recommend it.

Getting ready to set out on day 2 of biking

Taking a nap after a hard day of biking Jacob & Uncle Drew enjoying a cold popsicle on a hot Texas day.

Drew Playing Elvis in Vegas

Gondola ride in Vegas
Fourth Quarter

In early November we spent a weekend in Denver. Drew got to see the Aggies play CU in football and we enjoyed getting to spend time with the Lynch family and meeting their baby boy. We also began bracing ourselves for another Minnesota winter. People have told us for years that taking up an outdoor winter hobby is essential. After attempts at ice fishing, snow shoeing, winter hiking, etc., we’ve determined that outdoor hobbies might not be the answer, at least for Krista. So this year Krista’s taken up sewing. After buying a sewing machine and taking a sewing 101 class new drapes, pillows and blankets have appeared around the house. Drew’s stayed really busy with an out of town client which has required a lot of travel. In early November we got some fantastic news. Krista’s dad’s oncologist declared that his brain cancer is officially in remission. We had a ton to be thankful for at Thanksgiving. Drew’s parents drove up from Dallas to visit for Thanksgiving, and we all enjoyed the very mild temperatures without any rain or snow. We loved having them here and hope that we have more of our family come visit. We visited some local museums and enjoyed spending time together. This Christmas we’re looking forward to spending time with Krista’s family in Friendswood.

I wonder why the dogs are so close to Drew?

Waiting for the feast to begin

The table is set for a feast!

We hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year

It's starting to look more like a home!

Bathroom with cutouts for recessed medicine cabinets. They got the first coat of paint on this week!

It's hard to believe this is where lightening struck last August! Since it is our reading nook we've added in built-in bookshelves off to the right.

Picking carpet should be more fun that it turned out to be. I sure hope that a whole floor looks alright since we made the selection off of this smal 4 inch x 4 inch carpet sample.

The Progress Continues!

Sorry for the brief hiatus. We got caught by the flu bug of 2009- not a fun January/February surprise. But the progress does continue on the big house project! And we're all healthy again too! We did get a few days of warm weather (for MN in Jan/Feb) & the crew was able to get the siding up!

Looking up the stairs to the new owner's suite space.

Looking down the new hallway- the new bathroom is on the right.

We have a roof!

It's not even a week into our big project and we have a roof! After months of things not changing, it is refreshing to move from architectural plans to real life changes. We've got about 3 more months of lot's of activity and then hopefully we'll be able to move into our new master suite and return to a more "normal" schedule.

Even at the shortest ceiling height hubby is able to stand up fully straight!

Just pretend I'm standing in front of a vanity and washing my hands- this is where our new bathroom will be!