Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Holiday Greetings for 2012

January Desert Moonrise
December, 2012 - Sun City, Arizona

Dear Friends and Family,

2012 has been a year in which we've wondered just how long we'll be able to keep up all the fun and frivolity of retirement travel and entertaining.  It's been a year of adventures, both planned and pleasantly surprising.

January began with the surprise visit of Mary, Eric and Sijo who called early one morning to say they would stop over at Sky Harbor Airport en route back to Anchorage from a family trip to Egypt.  We picked them up that afternoon and took them to the condo for lunch on our sunny patio before returning them to catch their flight to the frozen North.  

Sijo, Eric & Mary


Erin & Russ
That visit was followed mid-month by what has become an annual visit by our Montana Kids, Russ and Erin, who got up early one morning to hike with Karen at Badger Springs Wash.



Enjoying Erin & Russ's homemade pizza




 








Jack then departed for his yearly sojourn in Thailand and Cambodia. There's a bar by his Bangkok hotel, Nana, where, if you sit outside, you may be visited by an elephant begging bananas. He's promised that on his 2013 travels he'll take some photos with our holiday/year-in-review newsletter in mind.  Meanwhile he's selected one of the elephant begging at the seat he usually occupies and of a temple and of the street seller kids outside the temple.


Jack Departs for SE Asia


Elephant visiting bar in Bangkok


Temple in Bangkok









Thai kids outside temple










Karen's month ended with a somewhat spontaneous trip by Karen and her college friend, Sandra, to Kauai, HI.  She wouldn't mind if that also became a yearly tradition! 





Hiking in Dreamy Draw


A nice surprise for Karen was the presence of former fellow Fairbanksan, Leanne, in the Phoenix area for the winter season.  She and Karen hiked at Dreamy Draw Park in Phoenix in January; she and her sister-in-law, Joyce, were Karen's guests at the Arizona-Sonara Desert museum in February.





In February, while Jack continued his stay in SE Asia, Karen accomplished a long hoped for visit to Reno, Nevada to meet one of her dad's four remaining maternal cousins, Lorna Dawn.  The opportunity was made more enticing by the offer of a place to stay in Reno by Karen's high school classmate, Doug, and his wife Sara.  After a stimulating hike in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas guided by Sara, Karen spent an afternoon with Lorna Dawn and an evening of pizza and looking at family photos with her and three of her four daughters.  Only Gail, who lives in Michigan, was missing.
Cousins:  Kathy, Linda, Susan and Lorna Dawn


Hiking with Sara


Lake Tahoe with Sara and Doug














Before the return flight to Phoenix, Doug and Sara took Karen and Sara's friend visiting from Minnesota on a drive to Lake Tahoe for brunch.




After 23 years of friendship with grad school classmate, Randi, Karen finally got to meet two of her three sisters who live in New York.  She joined Randi for dinner with sister Jan and her family in mid-February and later got to meet Sandi as well.










Ari & Grandma met up with Mama after swimming and lunch.

The most fun surprises are those serendipitous events when either Karen or Jack get to spend time with granddaughter, Ari.  Her mommy had a meeting in Phoenix one day in February and brought Ari along to spend a night and then a morning of swimming with Grandma before Ari and Meg flew back to Albuquerque.





AZ-Sonora Desert Museum Hummingbird House


The baby hummingbirds at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum had started hatching out the day before Karen's mid-February visit with Leanne and Joyce.  It was a nice surprise to find this mama still on her nest.






 In March we started putting bread crumbs on our patio wall to lure the birds we'd been unable to photograph well enough for publication.  First came the males who later brought their mates.



Male Curve-billed Thrasher
Male Abert's Towhee





Barb and Karen in Heard Museum courtyard



In early March Sara and her friend Vicki came from Reno to Phoenix and invited Karen to join them and Karen's high school classmate, Barb, for lunch and touring at the Heard Museum.  Karen enjoyed catching up with Barb who, for six years of junior and senior high school had her locker next to Karen's, and who now lives in Scottsdale.






Finally, after years of coaxing, Karen's cousin Dusty -- another of the four remaining maternal cousins of her dad's -- visited us in Sun City, making 2012 a banner year for Karen's getting together with Dad's cousins.  Dusty and Karen visited Aunt Lovie, Dad's sister and another of those five remaining members of that generation, who winters in Sun City.  Jack and Karen enjoyed meeting Harry, Dusty's Macalester college classmate from Hawaii, who joined us for dinner on our patio.
Dusty, Aunt Lovie and Karen




Dusty and Harry





Jack, Robin & Meg
Toward the end of March Robin and Meg flew over from Albuquerque en route to a weekend in Puerto Rico.  They dropped Ari off to spend some time with us.  We planned to drive with Ari back to Albuquerque, taking the southern route and camping along the way.  So Ari's daddy had a new sleeping bag shipped to our house in anticipation of that adventure.


Awesome New Sleeping Bag


























The big surprise this time was not so good.  It was the camping trip from hell.  With winds up to 40 mph while we camped the first night and predictions of up to 60 mph for the second night of our campsite reservation, we aborted that adventure and drove to Albuquerque where we spent two nights in a hotel and a day in internet cafes awaiting Robin and Meg's return.  The only person with a key to Robin and Meg's house happened to be in the hospital giving birth!

At night the tent walls bounced off our heads!
Nonetheless, Ari and Grandma got in some southern New Mexico hiking and a couple of good photos before we abandoned the camping adventure.  
Enjoying desert wildflowers
Desert Sunrise



When we arrive in Arizona in the fall, Butter is a mess from her summer trips to the Tozi, but she gets monthly grooming in Sun City and by April she's looking like a Wheaten again.  She may be looking a little sad in this photo because we were about to leave her to spend the week between Easter and Ari's birthday party in Albuquerque.



              



Robin found the Easter basket Karen had decorated and taken to Albuquerque two years earlier when she went there to help out with Ari while Robin and Meg looked for a house to buy.  En route from Sun City to ABQ, Grandpa and Grandma ran into the Easter Bunny at Walmart.  Knowing Ari is allergic to eggs and that she shouldn't have too much candy, E. Bunny sent along some more appropriate goodies with which to fill that basket.  After Ari'd gone to bed on Easter Eve, Grandpa laid out a jelly bean trail for Ari to follow to find her basket in the guest room closet.





 Robin and Frank, Ari's friend Cecelia's daddy, set up an Easter Egg Hunt in the community park for the afternoon.







We're happy to see Ari and her daddy sharing some of the interests and skills Robin developed growing up on the Tozi.


Last year we wrote about Robin's fall from a climbing wall that resulted in a nasty break in his lower right leg.  We're happy to see him back to enjoying his many physical activities, including riding his bike to work at his new job, started in February of 2012 as a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories.  Riding his bike to work takes a little longer than the commute by car of 20 minutes.  That's a big improvement over the 100 miles one way commute he had to his previous job at Los Alamos National Labs.




One of the most pleasurable activities Grandma and Grandpa enjoy when visiting Albuquerque is walking Ari to her Montessori School and picking her up at 3pm for an afternoon of inter-generational play.




Walking to school from Ari's home shown on the right


Fearless and Determined



 We visited Ari's gymnastic and dance classes and also went to the climbing gym with Ari and her dad.  (Yes, Robin is climbing again both in the gym and on Colorado's fourteeners -- always remembering to hook up, to go with a partner and to climb without headphones!) Of those three activities, climbing is clearly Ari's forte. 


Birthday Gecko
We celebrated Ari's birthday two days early on a Sunday with a party of her friends at the gym in the afternoon.  Not every princess begins her birthday with a visit from the birthday gecko!




April, 2012 - Pam's Farewell Photo by Celinda Peterson




While April is a special and happy month for us with Ari's birthday on the 17th, it  demonstrated it's capacity for being "the cruelest month" with the death from cancer of Karen's best Fairbanks friend, Pam Worley, on the 14th. 




Pam's family:  Jay, Mike, Silas, Aaron and Erin Juliet


Three decades of friendship between the Worleys and the Blume/Kohouts -- sharing holidays and the high and low points of our lives on an almost daily basis -- have left us all feeling keenly our loss of her.  We returned to Fairbanks 18 April to join the Worleys and Pam's countless friends in grief as well as in the joy of having had her in our lives for many years.

  

Among the passions we shared with Pam and Jay was watching birds at Creamer's Field.  In April or May of 2013 we will join her family and other friends in dedicating a bench in her memory at Creamer's Field.



Fairbanks, April - We always enjoy visits from robins.
We departed the Tozi for Fairbanks 6 June.



As always, we returned to Alaska accompanied by the original snow birds that flock in spring to Creamer's Field in Fairbanks and to breeding grounds north, including the Tozi.   

We flew to the Tozi 13 May, Mothers' Day.  Our 3.5 weeks there are documented in the album 

https://picasaweb.google.com/tozikaren/1205130606Tozi?authkey=Gv1sRgCM7Qqv-is93jTA






Karen documented one of our more exciting and surprising Tozi adventures in the story posted on this blog 14 June, "Beer, Bear and Biscuits on the Tozi."
On 8 June, we hopped into our car and drove down the Parks Highway to rendezvous with our Montana kids, Russ and Erin, at a vacation rental on Willow Creek near Willow.  We packed as much adventure as we could into the two days allotted between their arrival in Anchorage and their drive to Homer to visit relatives and to fish. 


Erin and Russ - Our Montana Kids
 





 










13 June Sunny Hills Book Group gathered at Alaska Coffee Roasting House as guests of Sonja to discuss The Snow Child by Alaska author, Eowyn Ivey.  The group has met since 1994.  Pam Worley was a founding member; she and Karen had first met in another book group in the early '80s.  At their May, 2012 meeting, the Sunny Hills group had agreed to honor Pam's membership with a ceramic book spine in the vestibule of Noel Wien Library.


I
Sunny Hills Book Group L to R:  Jane, Karen, Joan, Nancy, Kendall, Mike, Connie, Jean, Nanne, Sonja and Helen.  



It's the purple one on the right.
Also in June we celebrated our 16/46 anniversary/funniversary with dinner at the Vallata and a drive out Chena Hot Springs Road where we were surprised to learn how a moose deals with an itchy nose.

Dinner at the Vallata
"Darn mosquitoes!"


July brought a wonderful surprise -- a long hoped for visit to Fairbanks by Karen's grad school friend, Randi, who lives and works for Hospice of the Valley in Phoenix.  We packed as much tourist adventure as possible into a little over a week -- University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum and Botanical Gardens, Creamers Field, Golden Heart Park, Morris Thompson Cultural Center, Hot Licks Homeade Ice Cream, a quilt show at Pioneer Park Civic Center, a photo by The Alaska Pipeline, lunch on the deck at Pike's Landing and soaking at Chena Hot Springs.



Under the Antler Arch at Golden Heart Park


UAF Museum


Creamer's Field


Quilt Show


Meeting the pig in the pipe
Lunch on the deck at Pike's Landing



Randi was eager to participate in the informal activities of our daily lives.  She got to dump trash in the dumpster at the transfer site and fetch water with Karen's friend, Barb, at Fox Springs the day we went blueberry picking and found we were a week early.  She met several of our friends and neighbors as we got rhubarb and enjoyed meals with out of town friends on our deck. She was a big help in the kitchen.  Besides bringing with her a ton of food from Phoenix, she inspired Jack to learn how to make a mojito which provided an opportunity to visit every grocery store in Fairbanks hunting for mint, which we finally found at Walmart. 

Dumping trash at the transfer site


Getting rhubarb from neighbor Jim.


Getting water at Fox Spring


Breading halibut


Dinner on our deck: Pam, Jay, Seth, Jack and Randi


The highlight of the trip for us had to be showing Randi not one, not two . . . but five moose at a time in a pond off of Chena Hot Springs Road en route back from our soak at the springs.  Unfortunately, Karen hasn't been able to upload a video to her blog, so we'll just show you the biggest and closest moose photographed that day.


Karen at Fairbanks International en route to meet Ari & Robin in Paris
The highlight of the whole year for Karen had to be her three-week au pair adventure with Ari and Robin in Europe from July to mid-August.  It was a grandma's dream of a trip that took us to France, Germany and Austria.  Robin had two weeks of business in Austria which allowed Ari and Karen to use their Eurail passes to visit friends in Germany after an initial visit with Robin to the Montpelier Whitworths (Ari's maternal great uncle and aunt) in France.  We visited Karen's Book Group friend, Pam, in Schweinfurt, Germany as well as Sylke and Christian in Dusseldorf and Lehman, Germany. We spent intervening weekends with Robin in Paris, Vienna and Innsbruck.

FRANCE - Our time there was too short.


Ari & G'ma w/ Cousin Tristan, Uncle Charles, Cousin Dmitri & Aunt Bets at dinner in Montpelier (Photo by Robin)




Ari's 15 min. at the Mediterrnean
Most fun amusement at Tuileries Garden


Post-Tuileries Amusement















AUSTRIA - The best thing about it is The Alps.


Royalty at Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna




















Hiking in the Tyrolean Alps at Innsbruck































Germany
Germany - The best thing about it were awesome public playgrounds and water parks associated with beer gardens where supervising adults can relax while kids play.


Our host Pam in Schweinfurt waded with Ari at a Playmobile Park




Our Dusseldorf-Lehman hosts at Beer Garden next to water park at Koblenz
Once Karen returned to Fairbanks, we had nine days to prepare for our autumn Tozi trip. Our album of photos for this trip is at 

https://picasaweb.google.com/tozikaren/1208230918Tozi?authkey=Gv1sRgCIyGlsf55ryoGg#5824918705294340450
  
Earlier in the summer Karen had learned that two of her Wuollet cousins, Jim and Dan, and their wives would be in Fairbanks at the end of an Alaska cruise.  So we flew home on 18 September with a 10 lb live pike in a cooler so we could treat them to Jack's famous fried pike the next evening.  We missed Darlene, Jim's wife who was ill, but the rest of us enjoyed the company and, it seemed, the meal.  It was a special treat for Karen to have them visit.  Of her 39 Wuollet cousins, none has visited us in Fairbanks in the 41 years we've lived in Alaska until this visit!


Marilee & Dan, Karen and Jim


 
Roxy:  "You're going where?"
With 6-7 weeks before our departure for Arizona, Karen resolved to sleep in her own bed in Fairbanks every night until it was time to fly south.  Our Autumn Fairbanks time is time get out and about to local events like First Fridays and to catch up on our extended family life with the folks we'll miss most during our snow bird time.  By the time we see them again in the spring Trevor and Deanna's Roxy will be a year old and Silas Worley will be three and a half.  Having these youngsters in our life gives us a hold on the future.



In October we got together with the Worleys as well as Trevor, Deanna and Roxy. Our Tozi neighbor, Tom, who comes into town from Tanana each autumn came and spent a night as did another old friend from the years we lived on the Tozi, Charlie, whose photo we neglected to get so intent were we on catching up on him and his family.
Erin Juliet and Aaron Worley enjoy sharing Silas with his grandpa.
Silas and Jay-pops












Happy girl Roxy and her daddy, Trevor


Mama Deanna and Roxy, future cheerleader/homecoming queen














Tozi neighbor Tom


Other October visitors -- A cow and her calf snuggle down in fresh October snow in our back yard 10/29/12




Anna McCarthy
Our house sitter, Anna
In November we focused on getting a house sitter and getting ready for our departures for Arizona.  Due to Karen's unexpected European trip in the summer, she couldn't leave Alaska until 13 November without jeopardizing her Permanent Fund Dividend for 2012.  She prevailed on Jack to remain in Alaska until after the election so she wouldn't have to watch the returns on 6 November alone.  He departed on the 7th which gave Karen time to orient Anna to the house and the neighborhood, but apparently not time enough get a photo of her, so we lifted her Facebook profile photo.  (Thanks, Anna!)

We had six days in Sun City before we headed to Albuquerque to spend Thanksgiving week with Robin, Meg and Ari.  We were joined for Thanksgiving dinner by Ari's friend Cecelia and her parents.  On Saturday after Thanksgiving, Robin flew off to Australia on a 10-day business trip. On the following Monday we drove back to Sun City with Ari, driving through Petrified Forest National Park just before sunset.

Cecelia and Ari share Thanksgiving dinner


Daddy's off to Australia





























Sunset at Petrified Forest National Park


"I think this goes here."














We finished off the month of November with daily dips in the swimming pool where Ari gained the confidence to dispense with her water wings and executed cannon balls and cartwheels into the pool.  Ari helped Grandma put up and decorate the Christmas tree.






Ari does cartwheels into the water, still depending on one water wing.
More December days than anticipated had us driving 400 miles round trip between Sun City and Algodones, Mexico for Jack's dental work.  It put a dent in our holiday preparations.  So this season we're sending out Karen's cookies, Jack's candy and some goodies from Mexico for New Year's presents instead of Christmas gifts.  



Awesomely uncrowded border crossing at Algodones
Jack making traditional candy












For their holidays Robin and Meg planned a 7-day cruise out of New Orleans followed by another week away from the intensity of their work lives during which they'll attend the wedding of one of Meg's cousins. Meg is half way through her pre-tenure time as assistant professor in economics at University of New Mexico.  Robin is almost a year into his job as senior scientist at Sandia.  They both travel a lot which gives us a good amount of time caring for Ari during our five months of snowbird time.

So, it was a quiet Christmas highlighted by our opportunity to prepare a Christmas Eve dinner for Aunt Lovie and her son and daughter-in-law, Mark and Janet.


Aunt Lovie enjoys Jack's margaritas


Mark and Janet





















Having vowed to complete this 2012 year in review by Christmas, Karen completed it in time to send it out on Christmas Day, allowing us to wish all who choose to view it 


A Very Merry Christmas 
and 
A Happy, Prosperous
and 
Peaceful New Year 
from 
Karen, Jack and Butter