January 8, 2012 - Happy New Year

Hey there, hi there and hello there to one and all. Looks like a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year is due each of you, hope they were wonderful! Caden wanted to say hello to from his custom made Bailey Chair to help ease his mega-esophagus issue:)
The Duck has been pretty awesome the last month or so with some excitement on the team. The whole team went through Six Sigma Green Belt training and after some intense weeks of learning, they all passed their certification ... what a great feeling for the team indeed! We have also added some team members, which has been pretty fun getting some new blood and ideas in with the crew. Our PIC team conducted the annual canned food drive where our division went from raising 700 pounds of food last year, to over 2,000 pounds this year!! Pulling together a ton of food for a local charity was an absolutely amazing feeling, and on top of that, we all went out to volunteer at the local pantry packing boxes of food for those in need ... what a great deed for our team:)
Volunteering front has been going well too with some end of the year festivities picking up here and there. These are my last couple of weeks as chairman of the board of directors for the Literacy Alliance, wow what a ride over the last two years. To have seen this organization grow, become financially stable and make the impact it has on students and adults lives has been a treat indeed. It's fun to see the difference a dedicated group of board members can have on a community. Additionally, I have been elected as the Vice Chair of Membership for the Young Professionals group for 2012. A sleuth of energized people looking at the future to see how we can leave our mark on the community, pretty amazing if you ask me. O yes, and the United Way has been a blast with the start of the Live United Youth Council, a team of 15 high schoolers committed to learning and engaging in the community at such a young age is very inspirational.
Last week was the jump start to my doctoral program at Creighton and let me tell you, this is goin to be a doozy of three years if a week of orientation was that much shtuff! I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Jesuits, the Ignatian Values and Creighton University as a whole. This program is going to be full of reading and reflection about leadership, which I am stoked about. The program truly focuses on self reflection and molding yourself as a leader at work, at home and in the community, which is fantacular!

The holiday season was pretty amazing I must say. We had our family come down for a visit to play some ping pong, clean out the back yard and enjoy some good eats in our nice sunny South. So, Jenny and I were planning on spending some time in Columbus with Caden relaxing for the remainder of the Christmas holidays, until the Friday night before Christmas when Jenny came home and asked, "Hey, what if we just drove to Iowa tonight?" In my head I was thinking about how amazing it would be to relax in 60 degree weather and just chill, but apparently what came out of my mouth was, "Sure." So, we packed for about a half an hour and drove through the night to get home at 9:30 the next morning. Since we brought Caden, we let him in on the surprising by going into the houses first to catch our family off guard. Let's just say that 5 Christmas celebrations in 36 hours was a bit crazy, we're thinking of making the sequel to "4 Christmases" here soon:) It was great to see family and surprise all of them for Christmas, made for a pretty good memory indeed. New Year's with friends down here in Columbus was a good time as well, great time to start 2012!!

Hope you all are able to keep your resolutions for another week and that your 2012 is full of happiness. For more smiles, please enjoy our Klein Wedding Flash Mob:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwnj-1VYmQc

Alwayz,
nate