Happy Holidays 2014

Bill & Randi framed by Chihuli sculpture

2014 Holiday Greetings Friends and Family!

Once again, we're bringing an end to a busy year in which we enjoyed moving between our three homes in vastly different settings -- Fairbanks, Alaska, Tozitna River, Alaska, and Sun City, Arizona -- and visiting with as many of our friends and family we could squeeze into our 2014 calendar.  Piling on the years, we still manage to keep up the pace despite relatively minor health issues and noticeably lower energy levels.

January

We welcomed the new year as we have the past few years with Karen's grad school friend, Randi, and her partner, Bill.  After a sumptuous dinner at L’Amore and visiting the Desert Botanical Gardens, we saw the old year out with champagne toasts and chocolate at their place.  

Nancy, Tom & their Mazda Miata

Later in the month Karen discovered on Facebook that our long-time friends from Kenai, AK, Tom and Nancy, were in the Phoenix area.  We got together once before Jack left for his annual trip to SE Asia; they joined Karen for dinner on the patio before they continued towing their Mazda Miata in a trailer behind their RV.  

Cousins - Irene and Karen

After Jack left for SE Asia, Karen drove to Albuquerque to spend time with Ari and then hustled back to AZ to have lunch with her cousin Irene and her friend at a cool restaurant with a historic past dating back to 1935, Lon's at the Hermosa.  Cowboy artist Alonzo "Lon" Megargee supplemented his artist earnings by developing accommodations on his six acres. It's now an upscale resort on the national historic register.  

Jack's travels in January and February took him to Vietnam as well as to Cambodia and Thailand.  He continues to nurture friendships with a number of ex-pats from various countries including Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Iraq, Australia, England, the U.S, . . . and to reassure himself that he's quite capable of traveling and taking care of himself without Karen's organizational skills. 

 

February

 

View from Sandra's front door

Meanwhile, Karen exercised some of those organizational skills in taking herself to the Washington DC area where she visited cousin Dusty and Augsburg friend, Sandra, and reassured herself that she could still handle a snow shovel!

Karen & Dusty

Sandra & Karen

 

 

March

Jack made it back from SE Asia just in time to join Karen, Robin and Ari for two weeks in Colorado.  Robin had a conference in Denver the first week and another in Aspen the second week.  We got to spend a lot of time with Ari while her Daddy attended his conferences; and we managed to pack in some visiting of friends.  One of Jack's Thailand friends owns a brewery in Colorado and we got the royal tour.  En route from Denver to Aspen we spent a night with Karen's high school friend, Bobbi, and her husband, Tom, near Beaver Creek.

Touring the brewery was not a highlight of Ari's Colorado adventure.

Tom and Robin

Jack and Bobbi

Photo by Robin

The highlight of Ari's Colorado trip was undoubtedly getting to go skiing with her daddy on two afternoons at Aspen.

April 

Before flying home to Fairbanks, we caught some sun.  We upgraded our phone-only cell to Samsung Smart phones. We have yet to get either of them to wash the dishes, but used a phone's camera to record our last day at one of the Sun City Rec Center pools. 

A hotspot on the roof creates this stalactite.

That same sun had been busy warming things up in Alaska and 8 April found us at home just in time to witness the winter's snow load slide off the roof onto the deck

Snow pack starting to slide off the roof

It's not quite time for dining on the deck!

Several years ago, we replaced a gravel & tar roof with a rubber roof, not anticipating the entire snow pack sliding off the roof at once each spring!  Jack now fortifies the deck each fall so it sustains damage short of having to be completely replaced.  This spring he replaced four vertical supports and a main beam. 

Broken vertical support

We had a little over a month to enjoy spring in Fairbanks before our departure for the Tozi in May. One of our major enjoyments is seeing the wildlife returning or becoming more active.  You don't usually come across this scene while driving University Ave!

Jack stopped to let this moose cross the road; it slipped and went "sprong!"

But all's well that ends well.

Among our enjoyments in whichever of our three locations we find ourselves are cooking and baking.  Jack wanted to try making gyoza (pot-stickers) in Fairbanks.  In Arizona we find it frozen at Trader Joe"s.  We spent the better part of a day on this project and ended up with several freezer bags of one of our favorite Asian foods.
 

The final product

Trevor & Roxy

Roxy & Deanna

Another source of enjoyment wherever we are is catching
up on our social life.  We always try to get together with Trevor, Deanna and Roxy. 

 

This flaming April sunset was photographed from our deck.

 

 

May

4 May 2014

 

Spring was more or less on time in Alaska this year.  Karen started off the month attending the annual Girl Scout luncheon at which three outstanding women contributors to the community are honored.  (To be honest, one of the few downsides of retirement for Karen is that she misses a chance to dress up!) One of this year's honorees was our book group member, Jane.  Several of us were able to attend the luncheon on 1 May.

Book Group Members:  Connie, Karen, Jane, Nanne, Joan, and Jean.

Seth getting debriefed at Brewster's

Early in the month we welcomed back to Alaska one of our "adopted" kids, Seth,
who spends part of the year as the naturalist at Toolik research station on the North Slope of Alaska and another part in Costa Rica.  This spring he'd completed the shell of his long-desired Costa Rica house and we were eager for a report of his building adventures on the property we visited last year.

Seth's Costa Rica House

We'd planned our departure for our Spring Tozi-time for later than usual in May so we could attend Sijo's high school graduation in Anchorage on 15 May.

Sijo, Valedictorian/Presidential Scholar

Mary, Sijo, Matt and Eric

Older brother, Matt and Sijo's Aunt Chris rounded out the family rooting section.    During our two-day stay we packed in celebratory meals, a barbeque, some outdoors excursions and a recital at which Sijo performed on her violin and sang. 

Sijo & fans went for a hike before graduation

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Tozi-time

Having scheduled our charter flight to the Tozi for the 19th, we flew back to Fairbanks on the 17th.  Neighbor Tom took advantage of our having two shuttles from Tanana to fly out with a couple of his dogs.  He was a big help in getting all our freight over to the house, including a new 250 watt solar panel Jack and Robin hoped to install on the roof in July.

Two and a half plane loads of freight -- not counting passengers

Jack and Tom figuring how to transport the solar panel.

 

Motoring up Dag Creek in early June

Our album for Spring Tozi-time can be viewed if you copy/paste this URL: 

https://picasaweb.google.com/108347193693937021447/1405190617Tozi?authkey=Gv1sRgCNGKw931-OXowgE

June - July

22 June at Pikes for Sunday Brunch (Photo by Jay)

Arriving back in Fairbanks in mid-June, we took advantage of good summer weather to entertain on our deck and to catch up on our local social life.  We went to Pikes for brunch with Jay who takes such good care of things in Fairbanks while we are on the Tozi in addition to taking good photos of us.








Jack enjoyed being back with his grill on the deck.  We both enjoyed having a stove with an oven after a month on the Tozi where we were limited in our baking.

Grilling steaks on the deck

Jack's pineapple upside down cake

Karen's pizza

Looking forward to our fall Tozi time this summer was made more interesting by the prospect of Tozi neighbors, Russ and BJ and Tom, being out there in September.  We had them over for dinner on the deck in early July.

Tom

BJ

Russ

 

 

John and Sarah arrived from Scotland

Unable to plan his Alaska physics conference to coincide with either our spring or our fall Tozi-time, Robin scheduled it for mid-July.  His colleague Sarah and her husband, John, arrived a day early from Scotland for the conference and gave us a chance to reciprocate hospitality.  We had stayed at their house in Waterloo, Ontario at Christmas time in 2008 in order to spend Ari's first Christmas with her and her parents.








Robin and Ari arrived 12 July.  Robin and Sarah headed for the week-long conference at Chena Hot Springs the following day while John did some touring before joining them.  Ari stayed with us.

Robin (Photo by Ari)

Robin and Meg continue to live and work in Albuquerque. New Mexico. Robin works on quantum information and quantum computing at Sandia National Labs. A year ago Meg established an LLC for doing economics research.
The website for Meg's business is:  http://www.mbkanalytics.com/







On 20 July Robin, his colleague Pete, Ari, Jack, and Karen flew to the Tozi.  Ari and Grandma flew the charter directly to Tozi while the guys flew commercial to Tanana where a number of friends gathered at the airport to visit before they were shuttled to Tozi.  Robin still basks in the glow of having been the "helicopter baby" born on the Tozi and "raised by wolves" (to quote Best Man Matt at Robin's and Meg's wedding reception).

Welcome, Pete!

Homecoming 2014

Ari tests her mosquito repellant while waiting with Grandma for the guys to arrive.

It was a grizzly year on the Tozi.  We had a resident bear who showed up nearly every day of our two weeks' stay to fish the slough in front of our property. 

Our grizzly samples salmon in our slough.

A week after we'd left, our downriver neighbors, Dale and his son, Landon, spent a weekend at their place and reported seeing 14 bears in that time.

Photo by Dale is of Landon and hovercraft in our slough while Dale checks on our house.

Pete and Robin cut boards and installed floor in shed.

Major accomplishments this trip were installation of a floor in Robin's shed, 12 volt LED lighting in the house and exchanging the 80 watt solar panel with the much larger 250 watt panel.  Karen documented the latter process with 67 photos, one of which is included here.

Solar panel made it to the roof at the end of a long day's planning.

In addition to the above, Jack, on the advice of neighbor Russ, got metal cleats to put on the roof to catch the snow-pack come spring and Robin put them up.  This was a major improvement as it made it unnecessary (we hope!) to move the HEAVY wood heating stove with oven in the addition the stove pipe of which has been pushed off the roof by the snow-pack twice in the past.

Solar panel mounted and ready to soak up sun-power, cleats on the roof, and  stove pipe in place so we can use the wood stove with oven in the addition

Ari made place mats for Grandma & Grandpa.

 
Ari kept busy helping out with building, cooking, etc., playing in her sandbox and in the always replenished sawdust pile, playing games or watching shows on her iPad, reading books from her daddy's childhood collection, engaging the adults in games, drawing, designing placemats . . . . She's a curious and active young lady who seems to enjoy being on the Tozi.

August

Pete had to leave the Tozi after five days, but Robin, Ari, Jack and Karen stayed until 2 August when Robin and Ari caught the red-eye to return to Albuquerque with ten days to spare before Ari started first grade in public school.  She had graduated from Montessori One in May.

Jim, Wendy, Brian, Jay, Kim and Phil

Our mid-summer Tozi-time had been scheduled far in advance and unfortunately precluded our attending the marriage of Jack's older son, Jay, to new daughter-in-law, Wendy, on 2 August.

We received this and other photos of the event from Wendy by email on Karen's smart phone as we were sheltering from "fair weather" (i. e. rain)  Tanana Valley Fair.

Chocolate covered bacon is no substitute for cream puffs.

We had sufficient sunshine at the fair to consume favorite fair foods, but were disappointed the huge gooey cream puffs we've come to associate with the fair were not there this year.  Some changes just shouldn't be allowed!

Rain ponchos were a big seller at the fair.

Some time during the year a friend asked Karen to choose which of our three homes is her favorite.  Any place in Alaska beats out any place "outside," but she'd have to say "Fairbanks."

There's no place like home.

Being in Fairbanks for the whole month of August gave us a chance to unpack and to stay a while to enjoy visiting friends and to explore new venues.  One of our new Fairbanks venues is the relatively recently established HooDoo brewery where we stopped in August with Jay.

Jack likes to sample and compare.

Karen seems to get a little blurry on just one beer.

 Among other things that kept us busy in August were:


 

Dinner on the deck with Joyce & Julian up from Anchorage

Celebrating Connie & John's 50th anniversary

Finally having that long talked of yard sale

Checking out the new recreation area at Tanana Lakes on Karen's birthday - The rainbow was a nice gift!

September

Fall Tozi-time

Our decision to spend the whole month of September on the Tozi rather than go from Karen's birthday in late August to Jack's in mid September was rewarded with great weather and the neighborly companionship of Russ and BJ.  We were surprised to discover things to still be quite green when we arrived.  Fall colors (mostly yellow) came out mid-month and the first snow of the season fell the day we left.

View from the Outhouse 4 September 2014

View from the Outhouse 29 September 2014

 

 

Aside from the weather, highlights of our time there included having Russ and BJ available to help celebrate Jack's birthday (the one that means he no longer has to take his shoes off for TSA), visitors in a hovercraft and another in a red helicopter, getting the wood heating stove in the addition operating after many years of having to do without the oven built into it and being able to pull the boat from the water with no problems.

Russ & BJ came for Jack's birthday dinner and stayed for breakfast.

Downriver neighbor Dale made a quick trip up.

Wildlife Trooper Mike stopped by for a friendly visit.

The boat is safely secured on land for the winter.

Beloved stove is back in operation.

Let the baking begin!

Buttoned up for Winter

Our Autumn Tozi-time album can be viewed by copy/pasting this URL:


https://picasaweb.google.com/108347193693937021447/September2014?authkey=Gv1sRgCOvLx5-1usCNpAE

October

4 October 2014

Fairbanks' first snow wasn't far behind the Tozi, but we've heard there wasn't much more snow through December in either Fairbanks or on the Tozi.  

10 October - Jack "chilling" in the pre-op room before eye surgery

Jack was finally able, after two years, to schedule prescribed surgery to open his tear ducts.  Matching our schedules with that of the two doctors who perform the procedure was quite the ordeal, but he was able to get it done with several weeks for recovery before we departed for Arizona in early November.












Yay!  Another month for catching up on our Fairbanks social life.  Early in the month we enjoyed another Fairbanks visit from Tozi-neighbor Tom.  Later in the month we finally got to meet Zandra, significant other of Mike, whom we first met some years ago through Seth.  We enjoyed dinner with them and Jay at our house to celebrate Jay's and Jack's month-apart-but same year birthdays. 

Zandra

Mike

Jay and Jack got gifts of potatoes from Zandra & Mike's garden.

Grace, Leanna and Jack

Leaving our Fairbanks house empty for the months we are in Arizona is not a good idea.  Toward the end of every summer, we begin a search for a responsible person to house sit for us.  This winter, Leanna, and her two children, Jack and Grace, are looking after things for us.









On Jay's actual birthday we went to Bhan Thai and McCafferty's Coffee House with him, Aaron, Erin Juliet, and Silas.  We were joined at the latter venue by Alex who was in from Tanana and brought us some welcome moose meat.  

Aaron, Erin Juliet and Silas at McCafferty's

Silas occupies full attention of his Jay-pops and Jack

Alex

November

There may be no better send-off for Alaska snowbirds than to have a moose stop by to wish us well; and no better welcome to Arizona than to be greeted by a pair of one of the many bird species that visit our patio there.

1 November 2014

 

Gambrel Quail

We transitioned from Fairbanks to Sun City on 3 November.  On the 6th Jack flew to Albuquerque to help out with Ari while Robin trekked in Nepal.  Karen got things settled in Sun City and joined Jack, Meg, and Ari in Albuquerque for a few days, driving together back to Sun City on the 12th.  

Between then and the 25th, we prepared to host Robin, Meg and Ari for Thanksgiving.  

Meg and Ari flew to Phoenix from their long weekend at Disneyland; Robin drove from Albuquerque, bringing the turkey


 

Thanksgiving pies:  apple, pecan, pumpkin and coconut cream

A special Thanksgiving treat was a visit from Fairbanksans Don and Carolyn Gray who popped in for a couple of hours on Saturday and helped us deal with Thanksgiving leftovers. 

Robin, Meg and Ari, Carolyn, Don and Jack

 

December

With Robin, Meg and Ari scheduled to spend Christmas Eve at home in Albuquerque and then to hop a flight to Hawaii, returning to spend the New Year's holiday with us, we expected to have a laid back month with no travel and plenty of time to relax and enjoy stress-free holiday preparations. 

Lunch at Pueblo Viejo

"Best laid plans of mice and men . . .!  We made three round-trip day drives between Sun City and Algodones, Mexico for Jack's dentistry.  That culminated in what Jack optimistically tried to view as a weight loss strategy for the holidays -- oral surgery on 15 December!  We did manage to find, after years of travel to Algodones, a decent place there for lunch -- Pueblo Viejo.

Chief Decorator

Still using tree skirt made by Karen's mom

We got the tree up and baked/ decorated several dozen cookies.

How much further down can it go?

Perhaps the best Christmas gift of the season was Karen's filling our car's gas tank with $1.99/gallon gas.  She was so excited about this, she put her Sam's Club card in the receipt slot requiring the attendant to fish it out with his pocket knife!  The downside of tumbling gas/oil prices is realizing the impact on Alaska's economy.

Happy Cookie Decorator

All. The. Cookies.

Mixing in the egg whites

We spent Christmas Day stuffing ourselves with Mexican entrees and playing Bridge with Karen's college classmate, Deanne and her husband John.  Jack's heart attack eggnog contributed deliciously to the "stuffing."

John & Deanne

We'll spend the week between Christmas and New Year's anticipating bringing in 2015 with Robin, Meg and Ari.  They are scheduled to stop over with us en route from Hawaii to home for New Year's Eve and Day.  We'll also be looking forward to another year of Keebler/Beaver adventures.  Meanwhile, we are sending our best wishes for 

Peace, Joy and Love in the New Year!

Thanks to Don Gray for getting us a 2014 holiday family photo!