Last year I wrote our
Christmas letter on 12/14, so it’s now been 365 days and time to write another
one. The years go by faster and faster as I get older!
Family –
We have been trying to make a trip to Florida once or twice each year to see
Chris and family. This year we had scheduled to go down in May, but a health emergency
took precedence (see more below) and so we rescheduled until early November.
Florida in the summer is just too warm for us and we want to avoid the holiday
rush (and cost), so fall/spring seem like better times. And of course, since we
see them each summer at Pinebrook in the Poconos, we want a little bit of
separation from that family time as well. We spent most of our five days there
just being with family, spending some quality time with our grandkids, etc. We
also went with them to the Florida Renaissance Fair for a day – it was a great
time, gorgeous weather, and a great place that was heavily treed so that the
sun was not too intense. Aryon is now 13, Tiernan is 11, and Ilyanna is 7 – so they’re
all getting older.
Chris is scheduled to be
deployed to Kuwait next year with the Army Reserves. He’ll be leaving home in
February for six weeks of training in Texas, then will go to Kuwait from there.
It’s been nearly 10 years since his last deployment and this time he will go as
a major instead of as a first lieutenant. The family will miss him and we will
as well – please pray for all of them during 2018.
As I noted last year, we
bought the home across the street in January for Kim and family. They are still
living kind of half here and half there due to a variety of reasons. The most
recent is that the well there began running out of water – one could only take
out about six gallons before the pump began sucking air. Just got a new well
drilled last week (down over 600’!) and the flow is not the greatest, but will
be sufficient as long as everyone doesn’t try to take showers on the same day.
Pump just got put in this morning and they’ll hook it up to electricity
tomorrow, so we’ll finally be able to use the washer and dryer again. Still
have a few more things before they’ll be over there full time, but we expect
that will happen shortly.
We still have full-time childcare
duties. Ethan and Isaiah are in 2nd and kindergarten respectively at
Seven Generations Charter School. Caleb will start next fall and Asher a few years
after that. So now our duties include daily homework checking at one end and
the final potty training at the other end of the group. We’ve calculated that
we work about a 60-hour week taking care of the four boys!
Travels
– Since we are tied down a bit with caring for grandchildren we don’t get in
much traveling right now. However,
besides our week in Orlando in November and our usual week at Pinebrook in the
Poconos with the entire family, we did a little bit this year.
In June we went to Michigan
for five days – taking Ethan and Isaiah with us. The “excuse” for the occasion
was the wedding of our nephew Matthew VanDeCar to his fiancée’ Stephanie. We
also discovered that she is a granddaughter in the Robinson family, which Donna
has known for over 50 years. It was a great several days, visiting with
relatives as well as the wonderful wedding ceremony where Christ was honored.
We also visited with “Aunt” Katy [Kilwin] Varga, who was Donna’s second mom
when she left home after graduating from high school. Katy was 92 and had moved
into a nursing home earlier this year.
In September, it became
obvious that Katy was failing. Donna had been calling her weekly and you could
tell from Katy’s voice. So we scheduled an emergency visit for Donna to go to
Michigan to spend a few days with Katy while she was still with us. Because of
the quick nature of the decision, it was far cheaper for her to go out by bus
instead of making flight arrangements, even though the bus ride, with a couple of
bus changes included, was 26 hours! But it was a good trip and Katy appreciated
it. Katy passed away several days after Donna returned home. We will miss her!
The only other trip was a day
trip to Connecticut for the annual Pierpont Family Association reunion on
Father’s Day weekend. I’ve been doing a lot of genealogy research about the
Pierpont family and had the privilege of being elected as the co-historian,
joining my cousin Bob Kraft in that position.
Genealogy
– I had a couple of interesting lines of research this past year. One was putting
together a family tree for a 4th cousin who had no connections to
his Pierpont family ancestors (you can read about it here - http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/05/genealogy-story-filling-hole-in-your.html).
The other was helping a distant cousin find his birth mother (and family) as he
was adopted (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/07/genealogy-story-finding-birth-mother.html).
As I noted last year, I blog
on a regular basis on a number of topics, including genealogy as well as the
history of the town of Wolcott, CT where I grew up (and where most of the
families from the town’s history are related to me in one fashion or another).
Check out ramblinrussells.blogspot.com if you’re interested.
Miscellaneous – Getting older also seems
to involve additional medical challenges. At the beginning of May I had my
first colonoscopy. Unfortunately, it appears that in removing one of the
polyps, a blood vessel was compromised and a few days later I had to go to the
hospital with severe sepsis (blood infection). I ended up spending several days
in the ICU and then had continued IV antibiotics and nurse visits at home for
the next several days. Not something I want to repeat (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/05/scenes-from-my-hospital-bed.html
for more details).
In addition, I’ve been
getting weekly treatment to repair a hole in the bottom of my foot that is
caused by distortion at the ball of my big toe due to arthritis and the
additional pressure that walking puts on that area of my foot. I’m currently
getting weekly grafts of placenta tissue and it looks like the hole may be
finally closed up in the next few weeks. Not being able to do any extended
walking or anything else that puts pressure on my feet means that I’ve had to
curtail my exercise program this year. So I’ve not made much progress on my weight
loss goals and I’ve only taken off a couple of pounds. But I’m monitoring my
sugar levels daily and managing to keep everything in control otherwise.
Hoping that all of you are
doing well. Here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
.Alan & Donna
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