The Spontaneous Pates!!

Those who know us, and know us well know that we are the furthest thing from spontaneous that ever walked the face of the earth. For us, it is a HUGE deal if we go see a movie on the same day we decide to! So Friday night I picked up Michael and we went to the gym and I mentioned that his mom, grandma and uncle were all in Austin with his aunt for his cousins graduation. So, we decided we would go to Austin on Saturday. Then we started drinking wine, and thought, Oh my, what have we done?? haha, so we headed down first thing Saturday morning and stayed for the night and came back on Sunday morning after eating lunch with one of my good friends that lives down there with her two doggies. We were hoping to see a few other people while we were there, but both of those groups were out of town, Oh well! It was pretty last minute so didn't have time to let anyone know we would be there. We came back Sunday and saw Xmen (which for us to say, "wanna go see a movie?" and actually go the same day and not the next weekend is also pretty huge for us!! yes we are lame) I enjoyed it, Michael did to an extent but was pretty upset that they changed a lot of the story from the comic books. So if you didn't read the comics, you'll enjoy the movie, if you know the comic books pretty well....You'll probably be disappointed. :o(

Baby Hagen

Here's the new baby Pate, Hagen!

He is our second cousin.
Despite the A&M hat, he is pretty darn cute, and just imagine how cute he is without it! hahaha...

100,000

Yesterday was a big day for us! Our car turned 100,000 miles! And because we are great big dorks, we had the camera with us to mark the momentous occasion! We bought it at 68,000 and when we left Lubbock we had it up to about 86,000. Its a bit scary that we put on not quite 20,000 miles on it during our 2 years in Lubbock and in 9 months here we put on 14,000 miles already!! That's not a good thing. Oh well moving closer to the train will help a whole lot. Happy 100,000th mile Blazer!! Please don't fall completely apart on us now!

9 Months

Well we have been here 9 months now...with no end in sight! haha.
I can't say that I like it here any more or less then I did a month ago, especially with how much has been going on with deciding to stay and what not. :o)
I'll probably stop doing these monthly updates now that we aren't counting down our time here, but I will say I can't believe 9 months has passed already, its gone by both quickly and dreadfully slowly at the same time. We are both anxious for September to get here so we can move into an apartment and start brand new lives here. I think we found a place we really like right next to our gym at the north branch of TI (michael works still a ways away, but he can take the shuttle from the other TI where we would be next to) So thats that, 9 months down... who knows how long to go! I guess we are Dallasites now.

Japan!

We haven't said much about this, so I'll start now..
Yippee, we are heading to Japan in 3 short weeks.
Michael has a couple days of work then we will just hang out in the GIANT city of Tokyo. Do you know how many people live in the greater Tokyo area??? 30 MILLION PEOPLE!!! I can't even fathom that many people. It is going to be insane. It is the most populated Metro area in the world, not most populated city, but metro area. We are staying in the Shinjuku area which is also where the busiest subway/metro/train station in the world is located. Now, I'm not much for crowds and a bit claustophobic but I am really really looking forward to seeing this with my own eyes.

We don't have a set plan because a while back I promised Michael the next trip we took I wouldn't make any plans and we would play it by ear. If you know me well, you know this is a HUGE challenge for me. I am however getting familiar with the area(s) and the things I would like to see while we are there. It's a good compromise I think! :) PLUS, I have two days from probably 10-5 where I have the whole day to do whatever I want since Michael will be working.
Michaels boss was talking to him a bit back and said his kids are older and out of the house now and his wife is starting to want to go with him to Japan from time to time. He has been telling her she will just be bored and will sit in the hotel all day everyday. Michael laughed and said, "My wife is the kind that will get up and wonder the streets...She's the type to go to Moscow by herself and hitchhike around the city" haha! go me! :o) (The hitchhiking sounds worse then it is, as it is a common transportation method in Russia)

Back to Japan, I am very interested to see how the very traditional areas of Tokyo can exist within the high tech capital of the world with its skyscrapers and other buildings. There are parks with shrines and temples littered throughout this giant city. How does it all keep its balance I wonder? I'm fascinated to see this!! Anyways, here are 3 pictures from Tokyo. The third one is in the middle of the city...Amazing because it doesn't look like it would be.

New Baby Pate

(Not ours) :o)

Yesterday Michaels cousin Derrick and wife Leigha had their baby. He is a month early but is doing well. He was 4 pounds 7 ounces I believe and I think 17 inches long. He's a little dude. His name is Hagen Clay. I talked to the new daddy yesterday and they were all doing well. We have been wanting to make a trip to Lubbock but have been waiting till Hagen arrived so now, we can start finding a time to go!! Yea for new baby Pate!!!

No Baby Here!

oop, as it appears we have made a decent number of people think we were having a baby by just saying, "Check out our blog, we have news"!! We did not anticipate that, so sorry for that! I guess we have been married long enough that is what everyone is expecting everytime we say we have news. But I will say right here, right now, for the record, WE PROMISE, that when we do have a baby, it will not be told to anyone in the form of, "Check out our blog."

Also we wanted to say thanks for everyones very sweet emails/comments we have gotten about staying here in Dallas. Like was mentioned before, we have some wonderful family and friends! :o)

"Life is what happens when your making other plans"

We are writing this to inform all of you of a major decision that was recently made by the two of us. Before we get into the decision let’s set the stage:

Two months ago Michael’s group got transferred at TI, shortly after the plans for the kind of work being done in Denmark changed. Originally Michael was sent here to Dallas to train as a High-Power designer for a year then take that knowledge to Denmark where he would help start a high-power design center. Due to the change in focus of the Copenhagen department this was no longer possible. They now will no longer be doing High-Power designs, they will instead focus on low-power digital specific designs. This presented a huge problem as Michael has become very good at high-power design, and his boss here in Dallas did not want to lose him. After much discussion between many people at TI it was decided our future was up to us. We could either go to Denmark and Michael could change his career path or we could stay and continue working on what he has been doing up till now. If this were it, it would have been a simple choice to leave but in order to make Dallas an attractive option (they learned how much we dislike it here) they made some concessions that appealed to both of us. They made it a special point to address Nichole’s concerns and dislikes as they realized that she was equally affected by the change. This presented us with the problem of having two very attractive options, both with many benefits and having to pick one knowing we would be sad to let the other go. At least we were in a win-win situation.

We spent about one and a half months talking and discussing our future with each other to figure out what would be best for us, not only now, but in both the near and far future. We both agreed that Dallas is not our top choice of cities to be living in at this moment. We also both agreed that we loved Denmark and really want to go back. It was obvious to us that we both would rather move back to Copenhagen than stay here, so it is very odd that we came to a very difficult and 100% sure agreement that staying in Dallas was our very best option. You read right, we are NOT moving back to Denmark. We will still be going to Denmark, but instead of being there for a couple years, we will only be there for about a month. This will give us the time to do the things we wanted to do when we got back and finish doing the things we didn’t get to do when we left. We will be traveling around a little during our prolonged stay and will be spending considerable amounts of time out of the city. Specifics are to be determined, however in about a month (June 11^th) we will be traveling to Tokyo, Japan for a week on business, which we are very much looking forward to.

We have had to think of ways to make our time here a bit easier as we need to make the best out of living here. We also have decided that our home here in Allen, which we absolutely love as it is gorgeous and perfect for us, is just too far away from everything we do on a day to day basis and so we will be moving sometime after August. The only 2 reasons we originally moved to this house, are now gone. 1. A backyard for Hendrix and 2. We wanted to live in a big house before we had to live in a closet in Denmark. Getting a new place will also help give us a fresh start here. We are not sure yet where we will be moving to but we have some ideas about what areas we like. One of the hardest things we will have to do is set our lives back up to stay as there was a lot we had done already to prepare ourselves and our whole lives for the move.

This has been a very difficult decision for us and both of our options had numerous pros and cons. While we are both very disappointed that we will not get to move back to Denmark, we are looking forward to future endeavors that we have planned and are optimistic that everything will work out better for us this way.

I am sure everyone will have many questions that we have not answered but we have done the best we can for now. Please don’t feel bad or sorry for us, as this was our decision and ours alone.

Thank you for all of your support while we were planning to move overseas and we know it was hard for some of you to be excited about us leaving again. We have some wonderful family and friends. We also know everyone will support our new decision and we thank you for that.