By far, the most important area of my life is my loving family.  I am married to a wonderful and gorgeous woman named Sabrina.  We met several years ago while attending the same fellowship group.  I proposed to her in April of 1999 in the Blue Bayou restaurant at Disneyland where we were vacationing. She will be enrolling in the nursing program at Broward Community College in the spring. She has a real love for animals, so I acquired two dogs, a cat, a parrot, and a horse when we moved in together.  Things have changed somewhat, and we now have the two dogs, five cats, no parrot, and are currently trying to sell the horse. Sabrina is also a full time mother to our charming son, Kevin Alexander.  In her free time she enjoys horseback riding and reading. Click here to see pictures of our honeymoon to Maui!

Our son, Kevin Alexander, was born on July 2, 1999 at the Sutter birthing center in Santa Cruz, California.  Kevin just couldn't wait to join us, so he ended up being born on the first day of his ninth month in the cooker.  I started working for WebCom in May, so I spent some of my time designing a website for Kevin.  You can see many more pictures of him by visiting www.bearbear.org, named after my teddy bear (which I do not sleep with anymore).  Parenthood certainly has its ups and downs, but Kevin is the greatest gift I have ever been blessed with in my life.  Kevin has turned two with a vengeance and is currently entranced by tractors, sing-along movies, and jumping of anything and everything he can climb up on before we catch him.

My parents, Toni and Richard, have been wonderfully supportive of us during the recent transition to parenthood. They, in turn, are adapting to the role of being grandparents with flawless grace and ease.  My mother, Toni is now a full time grandmother after working as a nurse for thirty years or so.  She believes that she has finally found her calling in life.  My father, Richard, is currently the Database Development Director for Verio and has recently co-authored a book on data warehousing for the web.  The book, The Data Webhouse Toolkit, was published in January of 2000, and has been a hot seller on Amazon.  You can visit www.richardmerz.com for more information about Richard's work and data webhousing in general.

My older brother, Alexey (seen here being ridden by Kevin), has finally finished his doctorate and obtained his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Oregon Health Sciences University.  Alexey has now relocated to the New Hampshire area to take up a post doc position at Dartmouth College.  This move brought him back to living with his long time sig other and maybe wife, Steph, who is finishing up her doctorate work in Marine Biology at Friday Harbor in Maine.  Alex and Steph enjoy mountain climbing, scuba diving, and shooting poor defenseless animals in their spare time.  To find out more about my wacky brother, visit webcom.com/alexey (also known as Alexey's Web Hovel).