February 7 - March 5, 2006

It has been quite a busy month after our return from Malaysia/Singapore on February 7th!

We have been dealing with the appliance repair people who caused flooding of our kitchen and family floors, our home insurance adjuster, several contractors getting bid estimates, etc. On top of that both mom and dad are extremely busy with their work! Phew, it has been quite hectic. The status of the home improvement project at this point is that we just sent the contractor the hardwood floor model we liked and that needs to be ordered, meaning we hope to get this ordeal past us by the end of March. Dad intends to report the appliance repair shop Mich-Tech One to the authorities and likely sue them in our local small claims court.

Remember the oxygen mask incident we had in our Northwest Airlines flight from Tokyo to Detroit? A nice letter to Northwest resulted in the crediting of 7,500 Northwest Worldperks frequent flyer miles to each of our four accounts for a grand total of 30,000 as compensation for our difficult two minutes, not bad! All the extra mileage earned on our trip to the Far East totalled about 173,000 and we spent 180,000 for the tickets for the mom and the kids! The mileage earned consisted of the 50,000 miles for compensation for the Tokyo snowstorm debacle, 30,000 for the oxygen mask incident, dad's regular flight miles and Platinum bonues, amenity coupons and for rebooking of the cancelled flights. Thank you Northwest we hope you keep flying us!

We signed up Kostas in the local Recreation basketball league for the first time. Practices twice a week with games on six Saturdays. His team is the Kings. As of now they are 0-3 with losses of 26-22, 25-0 (yes it was ugly) and 14-4. Some teams have bigger kids and the team that beat them 25-0 had two Michael Jordans and Shaq in it! Kostas had trouble adjusting to this team, most kids seem to know each other from prior years and he almost quit the team. But he is sticking it out. The first year coach is not helping much in this whole adventure...so we are sticking it out for three more games:-) We'll try something else for him next time...soccer starts soon!

Some pics from the BB practice and games:











Dad is a member of the Advisory Council at EMU's Accounting & Finance Dept and invited him to a suite at EMU's BB game on February 11.

Kostas continues his Kumon, Tae kwon do, chinese school on Sundays, Greek school on Mondays and now is enrolled in the Math Club at Estabrook.

On February 15 Dad was a guest presenter in the initial CFP course "Principles of Financial Planning" at EMU's Eagle Crest Conference Center. He thoroughly enjoyed the experience and may be teaching this course in the future.

On February 19 we went to the birthday party of Hussien's daughters Chloe and Celine, they held it at the Canton Recreation Center:



















Dad went on his annual business trip to Florida's Naples/Ft. Myers area from February 15-March 1 to see clients. NW upgraded him to First Class on all three legs, no sweat.

Sophia continues her ballet lessons on Saturdays:




Yune's birthday party was on Saturday March 4. Nice gathering at their house representing nationalities diverse as Venezuela, Egypt, Iraq, Japan, Greece, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam...and I know I am forgetting a few.

Maggie is back from Taiwan. We took her and Simon, along with Darren to celebrate his BDay, to Old Country Buffet in Ann Arbor...Last time we were here was in 2002!

The weather has been pretty good lately, we can't wait for spring!