Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Great New Year 2009
Christmas puddings are cooking;
fluffy snow is falling; the house is buttoned up for winter; cards have arrived
from England: so it must be time to write our Christmas letter!
Trips In
the depths of last winter, we fled to Mexico for the sun, history and culture
of the St Miguel Allende area. John’s
part time work continues and made possible a business trip, with Frances, to
California, Oregon and Washington. The fun part started with Michael and Barbara
in San Francisco. We continued by road to Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake, Spokane, Mt.
Rainier and ended in Seattle. Another
business trip for John (this time alone) included six days in Honolulu. While
John was swimming at Waikiki beach, Paul was on a mission for the US Government
to the South Pole. We are sure that the
visit provided useful information for his work, but he sent us an amusing
postcard which informed us that Antarctica
is very cold: it has a lot of ice and he saw some penguins!
Clare
and Lucy and their families did not get to the South Pole, but they all got to
see Mickey Mouse
at
Disney World, in Florida. Our summer vacation started on Cape Cod with Lucy and
family to celebrate John’s brother Charles’ birthday and then continued, with Charles
and Ania, in Colorado, where we enjoyed the wonderful mountain scenery and some
great hotels and restaurants.
What we do,
Frances, now retired, can help with grandchild care, which was useful when Lucy
ruptured her Achilles tendon playing soccer with the boys. Lucy will be off crutches soon. Frances
is
a little too busy with traditional church activities and even busier with Voice
of the Faithful,
a
group working to reorganize the church.
She remains the “Web Weaver” for the Winchester League of Women Voters
and now publishes an on-line newspaper “The Bulletin” which can be found by
Googling, “LWV Winchester” or directly at www.lwvwinchester.org/ John continues to play chess “way, way too
much” and also plays a little poker, mostly Texas Hold’em. Some of his chess photos can be found at the
chess page on his web site www.shawx.com/ - you can also link to the ever growing
archive of Frank Runacres paintings, of which quite a few were added in 2008.
While most of what happened in the family in 2008 was good,
towards the end of the year we were shaken and saddened by the death of our
nephew, Ben McCaffry, in a motorway accident.
Clare and Frances went to England for the funeral
Grandkids: We are proud of our five grandchildren and
impressed by the job their parents are doing in helping them to grow and mature
nicely.
Here are the famous five:
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Annika, age 13 |
Sarah, age 10 |
Ean, age 9 Max, age 6 |
Oliver, age 6 |
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63 Mystic Valley Parkway,
Winchester from John and Frances
Happy Christmas
Living room, 63 MVP on November 30,
2008. Photograph by Mike Nosal
The family
at 63 MVP on November 30th 2008