The New House

It's been a couple of months now, and we're finally getting a little settled in the new digs. Still a lot of work to do, but it's getting there. If we stop to thing about where we started, the transformation is pretty remarkable.

We're very happy here, and it's such a great place for Natalie to grow up. The yard is filled with her toys, and she's got friends coming over all the time.

Here's a little tour:

Been a while...

Yes, it's been quite a long time since we paused long enough to post an update...This'll be quick. We just wanted to share a little clip of our wonderful little one. We had some caterpillars that we watched as they became chrysalises, morphed into butterflies and finally as we let them go and they flew away.

This is a clip of us letting them go.

The adventure of a lifetime

I am just now beginning to fully recover from my La Carrera Panamericana hangover - and not the kind of hangover one might expect to have after spending 10 days in Mexico. The fact of the matter is that we had almost no time to do anything but compete and find a few hours of sleep each night. Nevertheless, it was truly the adventure of a lifetime.

I wish I had the time to tell the full story here, but I could never top what Gary has over on our La Carrera Blog, so I suggest you head over there and get a little of the full flavor of our accomplishment.

The bottom line is that after some 5000 total miles (if you include the tow down to Oaxaca and the road trip back), 7 days of pretty intense competition in an event we had zero experience in (open-road rallies are a whole different thing than sprint or endurance racing on a track, and being a passenger/navigator was a totally new experience for me), we finished 9th overall and 3rd in our very competitive class out of just over 90 teams, a stunning accomplishment for a rookie team, and one that far exceeded our expectations.

We shot in excess of 14 hours of beautiful HD video footage during the event (thanks to our embedded filmmaker Steffan Schulz of Strange Media) and about 8 hours of in-car footage. We'll be releasing some of the clips soon, and will be producing a documentary on our adventure for release to PBS, and other broadcast outlets, in addition to a release on DVD, shortly after the new year. If you are interested in getting on the list to purchase one of the DVD's, send me a note at jon.emerson@gmail.com, and let me know. I'll be sure to let you know when we're done.

Without the unwavering support and encouragement of my beautiful wife Jana, and her willingness to not only humor me with my crazy hobbies, but to step up and be the sole caregiver for our little girl for 10 days in my absence (all the while battling a cold), this would have remained but a fantasy for me. I cannot thank her, Natalie, and those loved ones around us that stepped up to offer her assistance enough for enabling me to have this experience. The memories will be with me for a lifetime.

As one of Jana's good friends said to her when I was gone "He's gone for how long? To where?!? And you let him do this?? Boy, you are a good wife!" Yes sugar, you are a very good wife, a great partner, and I love you and our little girl with all my heart. Thanks for letting me go and play with cars. I'm a very lucky man indeed.

Adios for now...

Hola!

Hi there!

As we speak, Jon and his friend Gary are in Mexico racing (something like) 2000 miles from Oaxaca to Nuevo Laredo in the La Carrera Panamericana 2007! A ten day road race/rally that is a historical race dating back 20 years or so. They start off in Oaxaca and move up towards border of Mexico and Texas stopping off in a different town/city each evening ...blah blah blah. Actually its very interesting stuff, but I don't really feel like explaining it all right here, so you can always look it up if you want to learn more.

Jon and Gary are doing well so far and I believe have made it 4th in their class and 16th overall (On the 3rd day). They are apparently being treated like celebrities and of course loving all the attention that the locals are giving them. Signing autographs, posing for photos, fans screaming and fawning over them etc. etc. Good for the ego strength.

You can keep up with their adventures at http://lacarrera2007.blogspot.com/.

Meanwhile, here at home Natalie and I are fighting colds! Fun stuff. As shown in the picture she has her morning cup of Starbucks. Don't worry...nothing in the cup but it makes a cute picture. The photo is actually a couple of months old and since she changes FAST she looks different now. I'll post more pictures later.

I would definitely say that Nats a pretty easy going kid....chatty and social and full of energy. On Halloween we plan on going to her cousins house in Palo Alto to trick or treat. We'll see how that pans out since last year she screamed her head off when she saw the Halloween display (Four skeletons sitting around a table playing "clue") my brother put out. Thanks Uncie E!

She'll be wearing a pumpkin costume...hopefully. I may have to chase her down to get it on her.

Bye for now.

Hello from the Emersons!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007




Our little dumpling is now 16 months old (8/14). We can hardly believe how fast time has gone. She is very chatty with lots of things to say and interested in exploring things that she should be avoiding (ie. the paper shredder, our moody cat "George" etc.). She loves books, and learning new words...and putting sand in her mouth when we go to the park....and eating the cats food.

This spring life changed dramatically. May May (Jana's mom and friend) died of cancer on May 23, 2007 which is 6 years following the death of Jana's dad Thor (March 23, 2001). We miss them dearly, and have a long road of recovery ahead....May May and Thor were incredible, kind and generous people and we can only take what we learned from them about life and use it for our own future and teach Natalie the same. They will be loved always.
Here is a picture just 6 months before we lost MayMay...Kaitlin, Natalie, May May and Jess on Halloween.




Jana also finished school and has a Masters of science in Marraige and Family Therapy and Art Therapy! Thank god thats over with! Now only about 2000 more hours of work until she can sit for the exam...



In October Jon will go race in Mexico's la Carrera Panamericana. Good luck with that!!!

Greetings from Emersonland!

It's been a while, much longer then we intended, but then again, we're new to this adventure and can rarely predict with any accuracy how much we'll accomplish. Alas, external communication is often the victim of our lack of time. Hopefully this will get everyone up to speed on the adventures of Natalie.

First and formost, things are great. Natalie continues to remind us everyday that we are blessed with a truly wonderful child. She's happy virtualy all of the time, complianing only for short periods when either hungry or tired. Easy to handle that sort of clear communication. Even when in a less-then-perfect mood, she's easy to bring to a chuckle, which is terribly contagious and results in all of us laughing.


We've found a fantastic nanny who covers the two days a week that Jana has to work at her internship at Bubb Elementary school and CHAC - the community counseling center where she's working on getting more and more hours toward her MFT. Paola comes from Peru, and is a truly dedicated care giver. She's even taught us a thing or two, and really helped is a lot.


From a developmental standpoint she's now eating "solid" food (pureed veggies) on a regular basis. So far she seems to like everything, and really took to the spoon - as shown. Crawling can only be a matter of weeks (days) away, as she is clearly figuring out what the mechanics of human propulsion are. She's nearly rolled herself over a few times, and will surely succeed very soon. Drawer locks and doorway gates are only a short time away.

Thanks for checking in!

JJ&N

Old Fast Cars...Still Good...

Spent last Sunday at the Monterey Historic Auto Races, an annual high class event at Laguna Seca paired with the Pebble Beach Concours. I elected to just go to Laguna as race cars are my passion. Sitting still they don't do a lot for me. I gotta tell you, these rich guys really do flog their priceless machines around that track. Lots of fun to watch.
Missed out on the 60's-70's Trans-Am cars, the real american muscle cars, as well as the vintage F1 cars (they all ran on Saturday, I could only make Sunday) but did manage to see a number of nice vintage FIA-GT cars, some amazing sports racers (open cockpit, closed wheel), and Mini's for days. Cooper was the featured Marque of the event, and they had too many minis rto count, both on the track and off. There had to be 200 late model mini's like mine attending the event. It was a good time.

Also got to see the Toyota F1 car do some hot laps with Ricardo Zonta driving. He's the test driver for Toyota, and managed to shatter the existing track record by more then 2 seconds at 1:06.4 seconds. To give some context, in my old E-Production RX7, which was a very fast car, I could manage a 1:50 on a really good day. In other words he was FLYING!

4 months already...

We passed the 4 month threshold last monday, and although we didn't have a big party to celebrate, we did acknowledge that time is flying by. Seems like just a week or two ago we brought Natalie home with us for good. What a ride.
She's really starting to blossom these days. She's become a lot more vocal, and seems to really enjoy hearing herself make sound. We sure love it. She smiles very easily and even gets into a good chuckle if you get her worked up enough. Too funny.
She's keeping us on our toes, but we're loving the experience. Life continues to be good.
For those that want to keep up, We've created a new photo gallery with a good selection of Natalie pictures, as well as some of Jon's racing photography. You can see the links to the new galleries on the left side menu of this blog.

Until next time...Love JJ&N