Welcome to the Chapman-Rienstra Web site!
Thanks for stopping by! Please take a look around!
This is where we post a monthly synopsis of what´s going on in our world. For more regular updates, please read our blog.
Apr 2007 — Gabriel has started Little League baseball, and had his first T-ball game on April 21st. G-man went 2-for-4 (in a losing effort), scoring two runs and driving in another. Not bad for his first official game! A stellar career is in the making! Oh, and Google announced they had agreed to buy John´s company, DoubleClick.
Feb 2007 — Gabriel lost his first tooth this month – a bottom front tooth – and then a second one a few weeks later. The Tooth Fairy planned on making an appearance, but Gabriel stated quite firmly he does not believe the Tooth Fairy is real. Thanks a lot, older cousins...
Jan 2007 — Happy New Year!
July 2006 — We went to our annual Chapman Cousin Camp Weekend up in Michigan, and Michelle resigned from her job at Cartus to stay home with the kids and be a full-time mom. « read more »
July 2006 — The month started off with our annual Chapman Cousin Camp Weekend up in Michigan, but the Really Big News is: Michelle celebrated her 39th birthday by taking the momentous step of resigning from her job at Cartus (f.k.a. Cendant Mobility), where she has been for the past 9 years. She does not have another job lined up yet, so the plan is now just for her to stay home with the kids and enjoy being a full-time mom.
June 2006 — Gabriel celebrated his 5th birthday; Gabriel and Danielle are no longer in daycare, and are now going to "summer camp"... « read more »
June 2006 — Michelle took a business trip out to Connecticut (and John took refuge in Michigan with the kids); Gabriel celebrated his 5th birthday; but the Big News is that we took Gabriel and Danielle out of the daycare center where they've been since they were each 13 weeks old; they subsequently started going to "summer camp" at the River Forest Community Center.
May 2006 — Samuel can now pull himself up to a standing position! And John´s other sister, Janelle, is appearing this summer at Steppenwolf Theatre!!!« read more »
May 2006 — Samuel can now not only sit up, but can pull himself up to a standing position! Daniella is as precocious as ever, and Gabriel is starting to pose all kinds of deep spiritual and philosophical questions. –Oh, and John´s other sister, Janelle, is appearing this summer at Steppenwolf Theatre here in Chicago in a play titled, “Spare Change”. AWESOME!!!
Apr. 2006 — Samuel can now sit up by himself; Daniella is a gymnastics star; Gabriel is becoming more independent; and we took a family vacation to Mammoth Cave, KY... –Oh, and John´s youngest sister, Rachel, is starring in a new show, “Ms. Adventure”, on Animal Planet this fall! WOO-HOO!!!« read more »
Apr. 2006 — Samuel started to sit up by himself, and continues to be the center of attention (especially from the ladies) everywhere he goes – thanks to his dimples! Daniella is learning to write all the alphabet, and is a little gymnastics superstar! Gabriel is starting to show some more independence, going over to friends´ houses without us having to be there, too. (*whew!*) And, we went on a family vacation to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, with Jim & Lizzie & family at the end of the month. –Oh, and John´s youngest sister, Rachel, is now officially “Ms. Adventure” and will be starring in a new show of same name on Animal Planet this fall! WOO-HOO!!!
Mar. 2006 — Samuel reached several milestones this month: discovering his feet and learning to roll over back to front (and vice versa). Daniella has also reached a remarkable milestone this month: she can now tie her own shoelaces – all by herself – before even reaching age 3½!!!
Feb. 2006 — John started in his new position as Senior Technical Escalation Analyst (a.k.a. "Crisis Guy"), and, wow, has the new role been a challenge! Meanwhile, Samuel got his first teeth, and Gabriel continued recovering from the broken nose he got sledding.
Jan. 2006 — Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. We finished mailing out our annual newsletter the first week of '06. John started in a new position at his company on the 17th as, um, "Crisis Guy". Oh, and on the 22nd, Gabriel gave us a real scare when he broke his nose sledding into a tree.
Dec. 2005 — MERRY CHRISTMAS! There was a lot going on in our world this Yuletide season: John was on paternity leave the entire month, so he started working on the (long-overdue) revision of this site, doing some home improvement projects (re-papering the kids´ bedroom), and helping Michelle put the finishing touches on Samuel´s (long-overdue) birth announcement and our annual Christmas letter.
Nov. 2005 — Daniella turned three, with much fanfare. She had no fewer than three birthday celebrations, culminating in a special "girls night out" to go see the Rockettes´ Radio City Christmas Spectacular with her mommy Michelle, cousin Katharine, Aunt Lizzie and Aunt Janelle.
We also started uploading all our personal photo albums – including lots of Samuel and the other kids– to Webshots, rather than try to keep adding photo albums to this site, which is time-consuming – and we hardly have free time to do that anymore. E-mail invites to view all the online photos have been sent out to many family and friends, but if you have not gotten one yet, please e-mail John or Michelle (or both of us) and we'll send you an invite ASAP!
Oct. 2005 — After much procrastination and several false starts (beginning three years ago!), John finally got our weblog up and running. Check out our blog for the full story of Samuel´s birth, our life in general, and other musings political, social and parental (i.e., comical).
This is the personal website of John & Michelle Chapman-Rienstra.
- John is currently the Senior Technical Escalation Analyst (a.k.a. "Crisis Guy") at DoubleClick Inc. in Chicago. He was previously the Web Dev Team Lead and Sr. Web Developer at Performics for 5 ½ years. He also does freelance web design work, and has expertise in XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript, CSS and AJAX. He also knows Mason and a bit of Perl, as well.
- Michelle is currently enjoying being a stay-at-home mom after a stellar nine-year career with Cartus (f.k.a. Cendant Mobility Services), most recently as a Global Project Manager working on an in-house web-application development project.
This site is best viewed using a modern browser that is Web standards compliant, such as IE 6 (*gack*), Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ (my personal favorite), Netscape version 6 or later, Safari 1.2+, or Opera v8 – now ad free! If this page is not displaying properly, please upgrade to a standards compliant browser so you can view the site as we intended. (And the best part is, IT´S FREE!)
If you´re interested in how John built this site... « read more »
John built this site using the XHTML 1.0 standard, which means the content is completely stylesheet driven – i.e., it does not rely on traditional HTML formatting using tables, <font> tags, etc., for the look and feel. For more info, go to John´s Web design work page.
Site security — All galleries that contain photos of children – ours or anyone else´s – are password protected. « read more »
These galleries are marked with a padlock icon (
) in the navigation menu, above. So you´ll need a username and password to access these photos.
We know this is an inconvenience but, unfortunately, given the depravity of some people surfing the Web, we feel this extra security is necessary for the protection of our kids.
If you don´t have the username and password (which we´ve sent out in past newsletters), please e-mail us and we´ll send you the info right away. –Or, if you just can´t wait, call us!
— Christmas Eve, 2007 —
To view some recent photos of our children, click on the photo above or on any of the individual thumbnails below. Need the username and password? Email us!
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Gabriel Gabriel (6½) is a very deep-thinking child. He enjoys playing and watching sports, and is on a wrestling club now, though he still prefers baseball and soccer. He is now in 1st grade, and has taken an interest in the natural sciences already, doing a school science fair project on volcanoes last spring! |
Daniella Daniella (5) is a very intelligent, observant girl. Her hobbies include doing puzzles, playing games, and – most of all – socializing. Our most web-savvy child (uh-oh), she's also very athletic: she is taking gymnastics, swimming, and is learning to ski very well! |
Samuel Almost 2½, Samuel is a funny, happy-go-lucky boy; our family ham. He is very curious, and loves to open drawers, take things out of them, bang on pots and pans (hence his new nickname, "Bam-Bam"), and generally dismantle everything he lays his hands on. |
For even more photos, go to each child´s section on this site (listed under "Our Kids" in the navigation menu, above left) or visit our galleries at Webshots.com.
If you´d like to see photos of the kids here or at Webshots.com and you have not gotten an e-mail invitation from us, please e-mail us and we´ll send you one. We´ll send you monthly invitations to view newly-added photos, too!
