Hey All!

Hey All!

It was weird to come home one evening to find a message from Robin. It flashed backed many years of memories in about 30 seconds. I had to call to see what she wanted. This is a great idea to have a place to keep in touch and to see how everyone is doing, and where everybody now lives. (Thanks Schmer!) It was great to read over all the blogs you guys posted. I do not know where to start. Well, I guess I will let everyone know what has been going on with me.

First, I have been married to my lovely wife Kristin that I met in college for 9 years this past September 16th. We lived in Wheaton, Illinois where I worked in Oakbrook as a Financial Analyst for about 3 years. The cost of living and the crowds got to us, so we decided to pick up and move somewhere else. What drove me nuts was that I only worked 6 and half miles from work, but some days it would take me as long as 30 to 45 minutes to get home because of traffic. Eventually I had enough, so we picked up and moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Everyone is probably asking themselves why Louisville? We wanted to stay within 4 to 5 hours from our families. So we said we would look at some of the cities around. We went to Louisville first and fell in love with it as soon as we visited and said let’s move here. I sent out resumes and landed an awesome job. I always wanted to get into commodity futures and options trading. I then started working for Eastern Livestock Co. where I was the Risk Manager there trading futures and options hedging the company’s cattle inventory. I traded cattle and grain futures for the company through the Mercantile Exchange and helped the company manage their overall financial risk there for 6 years.

During those six years we started a wonderful family. We are in a great neighborhood here in Louisville called The Highlands. We have 2 great kids. Emrick will be 5 this February and Carley will be 2 in December. As soon as I get a chance to get a picture of them online I will upload it to the blog. I would love if everyone else would post pictures of themselves and their families. Pictures are fun to look at. (I really do not know why I had a tie on in the picture of the gang dinner??) The kids are awesome, I love being a father, and it is one of the greatest blessings in the world. Kristin worked when we first moved down here but after we had kids she now stays home with the kids and is really enjoying being a mom, and she does a great job at it too. We are currently looking at schools for Emrick to start kindergarten next year.

I just moved from my job at Eastern about 6 months ago. I am now employed at Summit Energy Services Inc. as a Risk Manager. Summit is an energy management firm. I now am taking my futures and options experience over the last 6 years as a Risk Manager at Eastern and am now helping Fortune 500 companies put risk strategies together to help them in their energy purchases. The energy markets have been insane lately, and these companies really look to us to help them save money. It is a challenging job, and I love it. The markets are in my blood.

The rest of my family is doing well. My parents are still in the log cabin in LaPorte that they moved to when I was in college. They live really close to John and Robin. My sister Kristy and my brother-in-law Rick are living in Hobart and have two kids Tyler, 12 and Amber, 10.

With most of my time working, being a dad, and a husband, I try to find time to do other things. I am really involved at a church (Southeast Christian) we started attending 5 years ago. I have learned so much over the years, it’s been amazing. My life has changed so much for the good. I am taking Discipleship classes on Tuesday mornings to learn more about the Scriptures, because for about the last year and a half on Thursday nights I have taught at a local prison as a volunteer running a bible study. It is awesome and I am enjoying it a lot. The inmates love for us to come in and help them learn and to listen and help with their problems. Hopefully, they find Christ in their life and become a better person so when they do get back out in society they do not return to prison.

Well, it looks like a lot of you do not get on the blog too often, but I hope to hear from you all soon. Let me know of when the get together is going to happen and I will try my best to get there to see everyone. We need to try to find Lemley, and Schmitty. Has anyone heard from Bencie yet? I look forward to hearing from everyone.

Everybody take care, and if anyone wants to contact me my email address is kbswan1@yahoo.com or bswan@summitenergy.com

Brian