the "fab aunties"

Forgive me... being a new "auntie" has now come with taking a whole camera-full of pictures. We had so much fun last night. It was just like old times...well except that one of us is a mommy!!! We hadn't met little Lizzy since she was born almost 7 weeks ago, so needless to say we were really excited to see her! I kept thinking it was so surreal because I remember seeing pictures of me as a newborn being carried by my mom's close friends, and now that's going to be US in Elizabeth's pictures! Just puts things in perspective...we're growing up, and that's strange but wonderful!

The Machens were kind enough to invite us girls (me, Steph, Allie) over for dinner so we could sit around and chat, and obviously stare at the baby :) I got to spend a lot of time holding her, feeding her, burping her--being a good auntie--and everyone said I looked like a natural doing it! It was amazing to me that when a baby is that young, you pretty much have to take care of it's every want and need no matter what. I don't know how Jen does it!! But she is an AWESOME mom, and I'm SO PROUD of her. Seems like just yesterday we were running around in GA's and wearing Veggie Tale shirts together :)

Okay enough talking... here are only the BEST pictures. I swear, I took a ton... But I'll spare everyone this time. :)

when I got there, she had just gotten finished with her bottle, so I got to be the burp girl!

Auntie Steph enjoying some baby Bush

after Steph fed her, she conked out for a while...and I fell in love.
then we all sat down for dinner, while she slept even more!
and then she woke up... :)






















momma Bush and her little shrub.

grandma (DiDi) and her precious little grandbaby

Allie got some time with her too...
(sorry...minor interjection... just thought this was cute) Love you baby!
COOL girls...with our own little punctuation mark!
best friends
this picture made me feel all grown up...
three generations of beautiful Machen girls (well, now Bushes)
the Machen clan, minus brother Ryan
look at those sweet cheeks!!!Allie's husband Aaron was a little rocky at first, but he got the hang of it :)






















All night, I just kept taking it all in, and I was completely overwhelmed with how blessed I am to have such incredible lifelong friends. And now, we have a little shrub to add to the mix :) Times are changing...and I'm TOTALLY loving every minute.

look who i got to see!

Miss Elizabeth Joy Bush. More to come tomorrow... it was a great night :)

2007 GaAs Device Manufacturers Rankings - not much surprise here

Last week the GaAs device manufacturer rankings report came out from Strategic Analytics for 2007. RFMD, Skyworks and Triquint were the top 3 and represent 50% of the $3.6 billion market. I was surprised that the market grew by 17% year on year. North American companies, also including Avago and M/A-COM, accounted for 7 out of the top 10. The largest Japanese manufacturer was Mitsubishi Electric joined by Eudyna in the top ten and the largest European manufacturer was UMS at #12. Taiwan manufacturer Win semiconductor's revenue grew by over 50% year on year as they entered the top 10.

The top 3 are no surprise but the growth of Win is pretty impressive while the lack of more European manufacturers is disappointing for the industry there. We will see how the increase of LDMOS and GaN in the markets affects the GaAs manufacturers in the future.