Merry Christmas and Happy New Years

Sharon and I wish that we could have the opportunity to personally visit with each of you as we close this chapter on yet another year in the book of our lives.  However impossible that is, we want you to know we feel fortunate to count you among our friends and family, that we are thinking of you and that we send you our Best Wishes for the Holidays.

This indeed has been a remarkable year for Sharon and myself:

We purchased a second (retirement) home in Grand Junction, Colorado;
I was accepted to dig at the Fossil Quarry in Wyoming;
Our son and his family moved yet once again;
After a long hiatus, we re-established contact with some cousins that we had lost touch with just after college.
Sharon purchased a new industrial sized Quilting machine;
Our daughter and her husband relocated to Seattle;
I survived a major re-organization within our corporation, a reduction in force which put the finishing touches on bringing our division down from about 120 souls just a couple of years ago to just 37 now.  
I added a new toy to my hiking/camping paraphernalia – a camper nearly, but not quite, as old as my son;

Permit me to digress a bit – My tent trailer, that venerable relic of a by-gone era, has been dubiously named “The Creep-mobile II” - an undeserved epitaph if ever there was one.  It seems that a member of our camping group awoke one frigid morning in a cold tent and commenced to amuse herself with a running dialog while video-taping the campsite – panning over another camper she commented to the effect, “there’s our friends’ warm trailer – the Creeps!”  Then continuing to pan she spotted my trailer and added, “and there’s Roger’s trailer – another Creep too”.  Perhaps we will sew her tent tightly shut some night!

Several highlights standout as we look back at the year – far too many to include all:  We are indebted to the friends and family that “put us up” (or perhaps, simply put up with us) as we traveled to Colorado and California.  Their patience made the family get-togethers possible as well as the purchase of the second home and Sharon’s training for the quilting machine.  We were fortunate to be able to make several trips to visit with our grandchildren, to be able to visit with my two brothers and their families in California, to be able to spend an afternoon at the beach with a long lost cousin and his family and to have received support, help and encouragement in the modest production of the family tree web-site.  The many contributors to that modest effort are very special people.  Through these contributions we have learned a great deal more about my frontier roots on the prairies of Eastern Colorado. 

And I have found that I have fallen hopelessly behind and lost the race to retirement – on the other hand, I am fortunate to be able to work with a youthful, exuberant and vital crew, which I am humbly proud to lead.

We continue to be blessed with excellent health, as have our children and grand children.  Mori and Natalie (Muki too) have embarked upon a new adventure to Seattle where he has taken a position with Washington Mutual Bank.  Daryl and Julie are back within the city limits of Boulder where he continues to work with the software company BEA Systems.  Alex has embarked upon the beginnings of formal education within the Montessori system.  Preschool, and day-care for Ethan, provide some much needed respite for their parents. 

Another short digression:  One evening while visiting our grand children, I was passing the time watching the kids and leafing through a National Geographic.   Alex was amusing himself by twirling in circles and throwing some of his Toys into the air.  Sure enough, one of the misguided objects struck me on the point of the chin.  The instant the missile ricocheted off my best feature Alex headed for his time-out chair – making it three quarters of the way to the chair before the errant shot fell to the floor and before his father could react.   His inaccuracy and speed proving beyond a doubt that he surely is related to both my brothers.

 Though the celebration of life revels in a pause to reflect upon the past, it is the future which excites and inspires us.  This coming year carries many promises.  Ideas for remodeling the new home flit about demanding attention; Sharon travels to Ireland with our daughter Natalie; some 10 or so friends and family will join me in exploring some of the most exotic and scenic environs of the Arizona/Utah border; another, larger, family reunion is being formulated for either this summer or next and of course, that siren’s song beckons to me from the Fossil quarry.

This coming year also carries many challenges.  The sector of Motorola which my company contracts with will be spun off this spring, compounding the challenges associated with our own reorganization – leaving us to plot a course through uncharted waters.   Finding time and ways for renewing acquaintances with distant friends and “long lost” cousins; finding time for camping with the group and finding time to camp with our brothers’ families, all compete for my limited vacation resources.  And always there is never enough time for the grandkids.  Through it all we will be engaged in nurturing Sharon’s fledgling quilting enterprise and trying to keep the family tree current, as a prolific group of relatives seemingly conspire to keep me behind.  We had at some new additions to the “tree” this year and I need pictures!!! 

So you can see that we will have plenty to do this coming year and we look forward to being joined by as many of you as possible!  In the meantime, we hope the coming year richly rewards each of you with the joy, peace, happiness, good health, and prosperity as last year did for us.

Love From Phoenix, (2003)
                         Sharon and Roger