Christmas 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from Miami, where it doesn’t feel much like Christmas, even with all the strings of twinkling lights wrapped around the palm trees. Nan, Scout and I have been here for over a year now, long enough to experience all the seasons, and there isn’t much of a difference from one to the next. We’re enjoying the cooler, drier "winter" weather right now but dreading the heat and humidity just a few short months away. Maybe we need a trip to Colorado or Wisconsin to regain our perspective.

It has been a transitional year. Nan’s mother, Mary Claire Mullins, passed away at the end of May at the age of ninety-one. She lived a fully engaged life, dedicated to her family, her church and her many causes. It was her wish to live out her days in the home she and her husband Jim shared with their twelve children in Manitowoc, and she was able to do so with the love and support of her family.

John has continued as a software engineer for CareCloud, an up-and-coming healthcare information company located here in Miami, and Nan has volunteered her time and talent at Baptist Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables. Scout still gets plenty of attention, with morning and afternoon walks through shaded neighborhoods to the bayfront and the local dog park.

Our sailboat, Whispering Jesse, has been moored at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club since late May, after an uneventful six-day sail up from Isla Mujeres, Mexico with friends Mike, Kevin and Paul. Newly added improvements make the forty-foot boat more easily sailable by a small crew, and we have been taking advantage on weekends, exploring Biscayne Bay and trying to give Scout his sea legs. A few weeks ago, we boarded Scout and sailed to no-dogs Boca Chita State Park for an overnight, but all the tie-up spots were already taken, so we sailed farther south and anchored off Elliott Key. It was such an enjoyable experience that we’re going back on Christmas Day for a two-night stay, and taking Scout this time.

June 2 marked our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We celebrated in September with a trip to Ireland for sightseeing in Dublin, followed by a week-long Wayfarers walking tour of the Ring of Kerry. With her Irish heritage, the Emerald Isle was a place Nan had always wanted to visit. Her sister Monica and Monica’s partner Vicky shared the adventure with us and chronicled it in photos. Many are in a slideshow on our blog at whisperingjesse.com.

We’re off to Isla Mujeres again in a few weeks to celebrate Nan’s milestone birthday. Not to say, but you can guess which one this is. It was her choice to return to Mexico, and she already has her big day entirely planned out, if we can squeeze it all in. It will be fun to visit in January after learning about Mexican summers during our three-month sojourn there last year.

These are interesting times, and it is easy to lose sight of what really matters. We wish you peace, prosperity, and the time to reflect during this holiday season.

Love,

John, Nan and Scout

Happy Holidays!

Christmas 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from Miami! Nan, Scout and I are settled here now in a tiny Coconut Grove apartment after a whirlwind year. Our adventure started in April, when we quit our jobs, put our belongings in storage, listed our Grand Junction house for rent, and started driving east through a spring snowstorm. We dropped Scout off with Nan’s sister Monica in Arkansas and continued on to Savannah to see my folks and our sailboat, Whispering Jesse. We had three weeks to get the boat ready before our crew members, Nan’s brother Jim, Jim’s friend Jack, and our friend Mike, flew out to meet us for a big sail south. The five of us made landfalls in St. Augustine, Fort Pierce, and Key West before saying good-bye to Nan, sailing the final four-day leg to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, and limping into a slip at El Milagro Marina just before Memorial Day.

Our plan was to stay in Isla Mujeres indefinitely, sharpening our sailing and Spanish skills, and we went so far as to secure temporary residency status, but we soon realized that there were factors not in our favor. We miscalculated the heat of the Mexican summer and were unable to fly Scout down due to the airlines’ eighty-degree flight restriction for pets. The heat—and the biting insects—were unrelenting. The boat’s meager air conditioning could not keep up, and we jumped ship for a small, nicely air-conditioned studio at the marina. Nan went home to visit her mother in Manitowoc, and I attended a family gathering in San Diego to celebrate my father’s eightieth birthday, both trips complicated by our status as temporary residents of Mexico.

I had expected to earn some income doing remote project work, but it didn’t pan out, and we realized by the end of June that we would need to make other plans. I posted my resume online and started working with recruiters. Eventually, I was offered a software engineering position in Miami, but not before the end of August, when we had already left our boat and our island friends, flown to Miami for interviews, driven to Arkansas to get Scout, and then headed up to Wisconsin to see family and attend weddings. Congratulations to Claire and John, and to Debbie and Gene!

We drove out to Grand Junction in late September to pack up some belongings, put our house up for sale, and rent a U-Haul truck and trailer. We stayed a week there with our good friends Rich and Diane, whose hospitality carried us east again on the five-day drive to Miami.

So here we are, almost three months later, and it’s not feeling much like Christmas. We have watched the snowy weather pass to the north, while enjoying warm, humid days and occasional rain. There are lights and decorations, but they look out of place against the green grass and palm trees. We will miss skiing this year, but we are looking forward to a trip to Isla Mujeres in a few weeks to see how the boat is doing. If all goes well, we will sail her up in May and moor her at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, just a quick mile away. Instead of exploring the western Caribbean, we will be sailing to the Keys and the Bahamas, and looking ahead to another big adventure in a few years.

If your travels bring you this way, please look us up. We would be happy to show you around our adopted home and take you out for a sail. Wishing you peace and joy this holiday season!

Love,

Christmas Letter 2012

Christmas 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Last year at this time, we were facing the prospect of a non-white Christmas, and winter continued mostly snowless, for one of the worst ski seasons in memory. This year looks to be more promising: we have had two pretty good snowfalls already. As a neighbor said to Nan and me as we walked Scout past his house this morning following last night’s accumulation, “It’s good to see the wet.”

After the season’s first snowfall last weekend, Nan and I ventured up icy roads to the Colorado National Monument for this year’s card photo. Scout couldn’t join us because dogs are not allowed, so we dressed him up in antlers for the letter photo instead. Yes, that is a cane in Nan’s right hand. She underwent bilateral hip replacement surgery on October 26 and has been making a remarkable recovery. Osteoarthritis and thirty-five years of running had used up all her cartilage, leaving her in constant pain. She should not run anymore, but she may now look forward to a future of other activities, like swimming and cycling, free of hip pain. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nan’s sister Monica for her tireless, hands-on assistance in the weeks following Nan’s surgery.

The year started for us in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, where we celebrated New Year’s Eve with local friends at the island’s all-night fiesta. We have vacationed there almost a dozen times now, but this was our first winter trip. It was chilly and windy, definitely not beach weather, and we were happy to have brought our fleece jackets. We went back again in September for a week of perfect weather, lazing on the beach, finding new things to see and do, and checking out the island’s many marinas for a future sailing trip from Savannah. Our friends Mike and Erika from Aspen joined us for a day from their vacation in Playa del Carmen, and we saw all the sights from a rented golf cart.

In April, my family held a reunion of sorts in Savannah. Mom and Dad hosted sister Jane, her husband Josh, their twins Max and Ben, sister Susan, Nan and me for golf, downtown tours, Tybee Island beach time and long, memorable dinners. Missing were Susan’s husband John, their kids Kirsten and Peter, and brother Stuart and his girlfriend Mayumi. Stuart has not visited the mainland from Hawaii for at least five years, but we’re all hoping to visit him there sometime, maybe for Dad’s eightieth birthday in June.

Nan enjoyed a few quick trips home to Manitowoc this year for family time with her mother, her sister Amy, and other members of the Mullins clan. In May, she helped celebrate her mother’s eighty-ninth birthday and sister Monica’s fiftieth.

Summer in Grand Junction was the hottest on record, with many days above a hundred degrees. Even with his cool “puppy cut,” Scout refused his afternoon walks after scorching his paws on the hot asphalt. Nan and I braved the heat most weekends for bad golf at our local public courses, and I finally hit a hole in one after fifty years of trying, witnessed officially by Nan and our friends Kevin and Lesley.

After many years of writing these Christmas letters, I regret to tell you that this is the last one we will be printing and mailing. Like Newsweek magazine, we are going completely digital in the New Year. If we have your email address, we will send you an electronic version at this time next year. If not, please look for the letter on my blog at whisperingjesse.blogspot.com. In case you don’t already have them, our email addresses are johnallenlichty@gmail.com and nanlichty@hotmail.com.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful, wet holiday season and a peaceful, prosperous New Year!

Love,

Christmas Letter 2011

Christmas 2011

Dear Family and Friends,

Where we live now, on the high plateau just to the west of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, autumn sometimes extends all the way to Christmas, or at least that’s how it feels. Sure, it gets cold at night and the leaves are off the trees, but the days are sunny, warm and dry. What’s missing from our early winters here is the snow. Our card photo, taken on December 10, would have looked pretty much the same, except for the jackets, if it had been taken back in September. It shows the three of us standing at the top of a hill in the Tabeguache area, about a mile from our home. In the background are downtown Grand Junction, Mt. Garfield, Chalk Mountain and the Grand Mesa—but no snow!

Nan and I are fully settled in Grand Junction now, both living and working. I started a new job in January as a programmer analyst with Quality Health Network, and Nan started in the spring as a pharmacy technician at St. Mary’s Hospital. It’s good to know that in our recessed economy, there is always demand in healthcare. Scout has settled into a new routine of his own, spending Tuesdays and Thursdays at doggie daycare, where he romps all day with his dog buddies.

With the new jobs, we didn’t get to travel as much this year. We spent a quick week at the end of April in what is becoming our home away from home, Isla Mujeres, Mexico, where we hung out with our local friends, tried new restaurants, and read novels on the beach. We also checked out the accommodations at the local marinas, with the idea of sailing Whispering Jesse down there in a couple of years.

The refit project on our sailboat took several months longer than expected. I flew out to Solomons, Maryland to check on it in May, and then Nan and I both flew out there in July for Nan’s first-ever look at the boat. The photo above shows her climbing a ladder to the boat while it was out of the water.

By September the boat was almost ready to go. Two friends from Aspen, Mike and Kurt, flew out with me to help make final preparations to move the boat to Savannah, Georgia. We departed a week later, three days later than planned, sailing overnight on Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, Virginia. Then it was three days of motoring through the Intracoastal Waterway, emerging into the Atlantic Ocean at Morehead City, North Carolina. We sailed continuously to make up lost time, but we were overrun by a terrible storm on the second morning and pulled up short in Charleston, North Carolina. Mike and I flew out a month later to finish the move, sailing overnight to Savannah, where Whispering Jesse is now slipped at a marina near my folks’ vacation home on Skidaway Island. Plans are now in the works for a Lichty family rendez-vous there next spring, featuring day sails and bad golf.

Nan made a few trips home to Manitowoc, Wisconsin during the year to visit family and friends, most recently in October, when she attended the wedding of her niece. Congratulations to Laura and Chris! The next day, she and her friend Gail ventured to Lambeau Field to watch the Packers add to their undefeated streak with a victory over the Denver Broncos.

Until a few days ago, we were reconciled to a brown Christmas. But then there was an overnight dusting. And last night there were a few fresh inches. Now it seems we’re on course for a real white Christmas, our annual wish come true. Here’s hoping all your wishes come true this holiday season and in the coming year.

Love,

Christmas in Aspen

For the holidays this year, Nan and I are house and dog sitting for our friends, the Vaughns, in Aspen. They are in Costa Rica with family and we are looking after things back home. Their dog Hannah and our dog Scout get along well, romping in the snow together and competing for our affection, so the Vaughns are happy to have us stay here instead of having to board her.

Normally, one would expect to pay top dollar to spend the holidays in Aspen, so it was an unexpected surprise to receive this generous invitation. We have made the most of it, dining at a favorite restaurant on Christmas Eve and skiing on Christmas Day. It has been surprisingly quiet wherever we go. The restaurant had several open tables and there were no significant lift lines at the ski areas. During the years when we lived here, the holidays were always extremely busy, with "a head on every pillow in town," as we used to say. The poor national economy and the local emphasis on real estate profits over quality tourist experiences seem to have taken their toll.

The four of us spent Christmas Day with our friends, the Andersons, who live at the base of Aspen Highlands. The guys skied most of the day over at Buttermilk so the kids could play around in the terrain park on the Red's Rover trail. The photo of Jon is from the West Buttermilk chairlift's halfway point loading area, where we waited in the only lift line of the day.

Later, Jon and I caught the shuttle bus back to Aspen Highlands and met Nan, who had earlier taken Scout and Hannah for a cross-country ski up Maroon Creek Road, for an end-of-day top-to-bottom ski run. I wanted to get a good ski photo of Nan and me, and Jon suggested the new Ski Patrol hut at the top of the mountain for its amazing views. The sun was low in the sky and directly behind us, but Jon's photo turned out nicely, with the sun's flare coming from between Pyramid Peak and the Maroon Bells in the distant background.

The three of us skied the leg-burning thirty-six hundred vertical feet back to the base and then hobbled over to Jon's house for après-ski. When Jon's wife Lori, their kids and assorted guests finally returned from skiing, we all toasted the holidays and sat down to a wonderful Christmas Dinner.

Christmas Letter 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been another busy year for us, full of activity and travel. Nan and I have just returned from a Caribbean cruise with a group from The Nation, a progressive magazine we started subscribing to during the contentious 2008 Presidential Election. Days at sea were spent in panel discussions on health care, the economy and what to make of Sarah Palin. Guest speakers included 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, author E.L. Doctorow, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the magazine’s publisher. It was encouraging to meet and talk with people who believe in the same principles we do: personal freedom, fairness, peace and social justice. Despite President Obama’s policy compromises and the loss of the public option, there was optimism on every front but global warming, which many believe is hastening human extinction.

Back in April, we were sailing again with our friend John Kretschmer on his 47-foot sailboat, this time in the Spanish Virgin Islands between St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. Joining us were author Dallas Murphy and his partner and editor Genie Leftwich. John is also an author, so we spent many hours discussing book ideas and the writing profession. All were enthusiastic about the prospects for the book I was writing about Charlie, our beloved golden retriever who died of cancer the previous April.

The manuscript of Raising Charlie: The Lessons of a Perfect Dog was completed in time for our road trip home to Wisconsin at the end of June with our new golden retriever Scout. Nan stayed in Wauwatosa long enough to wish my father a happy 76th birthday and then continued on to Manitowoc to spend time with her family. Between museum trips, Brewers games and bad golf, I worked with my sister Jane, who is a freelance editor, to put Raising Charlie into final form.

The book was published at the end of August, just before Nan, Scout and I flew to Isla Mujeres, Mexico for a month. The trip was partly a vacation and partly an experiment to see if we could live in a foreign country with our dog. I worked part time using our rented apartment’s Internet connection, and Nan volunteered at an English school run by expatriates. We both spent three days a week with a tutor to improve our Spanish. And we started on book number two, in conjunction with our friend Juan and his family: a combination island photo guide and cookbook of authentic Yucatan recipes in both English and Spanish. Except for the unseasonably hot and humid conditions, which limited mid-day activity with Scout, it all worked out better than expected.

Thanksgiving this year was the first one we have spent apart since we were married twenty years ago. Nan wanted to be with her family in Wisconsin, so I traveled to my parents’ vacation home in Savannah to be with them. As my mother pointed out, it was the first time she and my father had had me all to themselves since my brother Stuart was born a year after I was. We toured the town, ate great seafood, played golf, and visited my friends Paul and Honey Caouette down the coast in St. Marys, where they were preparing their sailboat for an island-hopping trip to Trinidad.

This year’s Christmas card features a photo from the first Raising Charlie book signing, at our local Borders bookstore, in mid-November. They allowed Scout inside the store, and we tried to get him to pose with us, but only the back of his head is visible in the lower left corner. If you’re interested in the book, an information card with details is enclosed.

During the holidays, Nan and I remind one another to be thankful for our good jobs, good health and good friends. And we pause to remember the loved ones who are no longer with us. We hope the holidays provide you with your own occasions for reflection. Wishing you and yours all the best in the coming year.

Love,

Christmas Letter 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been an eventful year for us. It started out with the worst possible news when our dog Charlie was diagnosed with cancer. He had a tumor in his upper jaw that turned out to be osteosarcoma. We decided not to put him through surgery, which would have been painful and disfiguring, and instead began a course of chemotherapy to slow the metastasis. Even with treatment, it was apparent by the date of his tenth birthday, March 29, that we needed to end his suffering. Charlie passed away peacefully on Sunday, April 6, as we sat on the floor comforting him. He was a wonderful companion and we will miss him always.

Two weeks later we flew to Athens for a trip we had been planning for over a year, to re-create the Odyssey with four other people by sailing a 47-foot sailboat from Troy in Turkey to Ithaca, an island off the west coast of Greece. The combination of starting in Greece and unfavorable sailing weather turned our adventure into more of a direct trip to Turkey and back than the grand tour of the Aegean and Adriatic Seas that Ulysses had undertaken, but he took ten years and we only had two weeks. We did get to see some sights along the way though that were in keeping with the spirit of Ulysses: the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, Kusadasi and the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey, and the Cave of the Nymphs on Ithaca. We ended the trip in Corfu, where it took a few days to get our land legs back. If you’re interested, there’s a fun slideshow of the trip, complete with an authentic Greek soundtrack, on John’s blog at http://whisperingjesse.blogspot.com/2008/05/odyssey-slideshow.html.

A week after returning home, John flew out to Washington, DC for an Internet development conference that allowed him to stay with Curt and Meg Haensel and their kids in nearby Falls Church. The last time we got together, Meg was pregnant with Ada, who is now ten years old and has a little brother, Peter, so it had been way too long. It was fun to spend a few days with everybody, getting reacquainted with Curt and Meg, learning about nautiluses from Ada, and trying to keep up with Peter on Guitar Hero. We hope to have them come out to Colorado for skiing or golf sometime soon.

Speaking of golf, we finally got Nan some new clubs and played together quite a bit at Redlands Mesa, the course right up the road. John established his first handicap since junior golf, but it’s not a number he’s proud of. Bad golf lives!

For John’s fiftieth birthday in June, Nan gave him a golden retriever puppy to help ease the sorrow of losing Charlie. Raising young Scout has been a challenge. He is willful and tough-minded, with a cocked-head, what’s-in-it-for-me look in response to most commands. But he is also lovable and affectionate, and a terrific hiking companion, so he has endeared himself to us completely.

Scout was a real trouper when we drove home to Wisconsin in late July. For safety, we kept him in his travel crate, which we dubbed “the space capsule,” for two days of driving in each direction with very little complaint. In addition to spending time with family and friends, Nan in Manitowoc and me in Wauwatosa, highlights of the time at home included a Brewers/Cubs game, the State Fair, Lollapalooza in Chicago, and more bad golf.

In October we returned to Isla Mujeres, Mexico for the fifth time in ten years. It rained every day but then the sun would come out and turn the puddles to steam, so it was hot and humid but otherwise pleasant. We rented an apartment for ten days that was high enough to catch a cool breeze and provide beautiful views of the beach, palm trees and the blue Caribbean. We visited with our friend Juan and his family, and toured the new house he is building. It should be finished by the time we return next September, when we will be renting the same apartment for a month, taking Scout with us, and enrolling in an intensive Spanish class. The laptop and decent Internet access will keep us in touch with family, friends and work. ¡Debe ser una aventura!

A few weeks after our return, Nan went back to Manitowoc again, this time for the wedding of her niece Molly to Brandon and to spend time with her mother and siblings. John stayed home to look after Scout and to follow all the news leading up to the election. We don’t know about you, but we were pleased with the results. It feels like the country is back on track to make progress on issues that are long overdue, like improving the economy and ending the war in Iraq.

Here’s to peaceful, more prosperous days in the coming year for you and yours.

Love,

Charlie's birthday

Charlie turned ten years old today. Three months ago, when he was first diagnosed with cancer, we weren't sure if he would still be alive for his birthday, but his condition has stabilized somewhat in the past few weeks and it now seems that he will surpass our most optimistic expectations. We certainly hope so, because in exactly three weeks, we leave for our Odyssey sailing trip and we'll be gone for three full weeks. If he's not doing well before we go, we're afraid he might die before we return.

Everyone we know is aware of Charlie's condition, so our regular network of dog sitters has not been forthcoming and we can't blame them. Nobody would want to have a friend's dog die while they were looking after him. Family is sometimes more sympathetic. My sister Jane has volunteered to take care of him while we're away. The only problem is that she lives in Seattle, more than a thousand miles away. Charlie has never flown and we're afraid it would be overly stressful on him, so I'm going to drive him up there and then fly back to start the trip, then fly to Seattle when we get back and drive him home. The things we do for our pets!

When Charlie was still a puppy, Jane gave us a paw print kit as a Christmas present. We set it aside for several years and then misplaced it during our move from Aspen to Grand Junction. Nan spent some time rummaging through the garage last week and finally found it. If we were ever going to take Charlie's paw prints, what better time could there be than his birthday? He was fairly cooperative and, as you can see, it turned out just fine for a project that involved working with wet cement. Note the missing nail on the left paw. He lost it tripping on a sidewalk while chasing a tennis ball last fall and it never grew back.

I'm sure this plaque will become for us what a child's plaster hand print is for mom and dad, something we'll cherish forever.

Christmas Letter 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Time passes so quickly these days, our Christmas letters are starting to read like chapters in a serialized novel. By the time the last one has been mailed, it’s time to start thinking about the next. What to do for a cliffhanger though?

This year was a big one for us. We made up for all the travel and experiences we didn’t get to do last year while we were going through our home ownership transition. Much of that travel was the back-and-forth shuffle between our jobs at Aspen Valley Hospital and our home in Grand Junction. We shared a house down the road from Aspen in Basalt during the work week and drove home every weekend, partly to water the plants and check the mail, partly because it was home and it felt right to be there. But as of November 1st, when Nan ended her nineteen-year career at AVH, we are now full-time Grand Junctionites. Nan just started a new job here as Surgery Coordinator for Community Hospital, and I am telecommuting now to my job as the Database/Internet Administrator for AVH. It’s working out well so far, and our dog Charlie seems less confused.

The fun travel started last January. I was looking to expand my sailing horizons so I joined sailor/writer John Kretschmer and a group sailing John’s 47-foot cutter from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas and back. It was rough crossing the Gulf Stream overnight while beating into the wind, but we enjoyed the Settlement on Grand Bahama and the quick surf back. It was smooth enough on the return to practice using sextants to determine our latitude, confirming our position with the ship’s GPS.

To build her sailing confidence in anticipation of our upcoming May sailing trip to the British Virgin Islands, Nan took the American Sailing Association basic keelboat class in St. Petersburg, Florida in April. She surprised herself by passing both the written and practical exams. Our Christmas picture this year shows Nan happily putting her new knowledge to work at the helm of the boat we chartered in the BVI.

The May sailing trip was a dream, especially compared to our 2004 misadventure. Chartering a larger, safer boat and having Nan’s sister Monica and her friend Vicky along made all the difference. It was a first-time experience for both of them, but after they got over the feeling that the boat was going to tip over when it heeled, they pitched in on all the sailing duties. Good weather, smooth seas, excellent snorkeling and plenty of conch fritters kept everybody happy.

In August we visited family, Nan hers and me mine. Nan went home to Manitowoc to celebrate two milestone birthdays, sister Sue’s 60th and sister Amy’s 50th. Sister Sarah, the ninth and final Mullins daughter, and her husband Ian hosted the festivities at their home in Green Bay, complete with a This Is Your Life-style trivia contest.

I drove to Washington State with Charlie for a week-long Lichty family reunion celebration of Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary at sister Jane and her husband Josh’s homes on Whidbey Island and in Seattle. We toured the island, we hiked the beaches, and Charlie experienced sea water for the first time, prompting him to puke in the back of Jane’s van. Back in Seattle, we visited the art museum and aquarium, and celebrated Jane and Josh’s twins Max and Ben’s 10th birthdays.

In September we traveled to Italy for the first time. We wandered around Florence for a few days, reliving the Renaissance through the architecture of the Duomo and the artwork at the Ufizzi gallery, all the while partaking of the great food and wine. Then we took the train to the coast to meet up with The Wayfarers for a week-long package walking tour of the Cinque Terre and Italian Riviera with a terrific group of fellow Americans. The coastal views of the Mediterranean and the compact, pastel-colored towns were spectacular. At a walking pace, putting in about ten miles a day, we had plenty of time to appreciate them. If you’d like to see for yourself and you have a high-speed Internet connection, there are slideshows with captions on my blog at http://whisperingjesse.blogspot.com. After the hike ended, we stopped in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower on our way back to Florence, where we spent another day that included a visit to the Academia museum to see Michelangelo’s David.

October saw us witnessing Brett Favre’s bomb to Greg Jennings to beat the Denver Broncos in overtime. It does the heart good to see an athlete past his prime having probably his best season ever. Maybe Brett will have one more chance at a Super Bowl before he retires. Maybe he’ll play another season. Either way, go, Pack, go!

After that whirlwind of travel and the job and living adjustments, we’re happy now to be spending time settling into new routines and finally unpacking the last of the boxes from our move more than two years ago. There’s snow on the high desert, making for a rare white Christmas and good skiing at Powderhorn. We’ll be here enjoying both this holiday season. Here’s hoping for plenty of snow and the best this season has to offer for you and yours, now and in the New Year.

Love,

John and Nan and Charlie

Christmas Letter 2006

Dear Family and Friends,

Every time I sit down to write our annual Christmas letter, I reflect on life's changes. A year ago at this time, the business I had started in Grand Junction, Colorado was shutting down and I was looking for a real job, Nan was working at Aspen Valley Hospital and coming home to the house we had bought in GJ on weekends, and we were both wondering what to do next. Job opportunities in GJ were few and paid poorly, but as luck would have it, after posting my résumé on Monster.com, I received an email message that my old job at AVH was available again. It had been almost two years since I was laid off and I wasn't sure if I should apply, but Nan insisted. They hired me back without even an interview, not as Network Administrator but rather in the newly created position of Database/Internet Administrator. I started in late February, leaving behind my interim employment as a ski instructor at Powderhorn Resort, a great little ski mountain just outside of GJ. My half of the photo shows me in uniform but free skiing on Powderhorn's best powder day of the season, March 12, after it snowed four feet in two days.

Nan and I agreed that it didn't make sense to move back into our Aspen house, which was being rented at the time. The move to GJ had been an ordeal and we weren't eager to repeat the experience. And besides, we had grown fond of our living situation in GJ--the friendly climate, the good shopping and restaurants, the beauty of the high desert. We just couldn't afford both mortgages. So we found a house to rent downvalley and put the Aspen house up for sale in May as the lease ran out. We thought we could save on commissions by trying to sell it on our own, but the negotiating process was too draining, so we listed it with an old friend who had a firm offer in less than a week. We closed at the end of August. Now I guess we're former Aspenites even though we both still work there and live, during the work week anyway, just down the road.

These transitions didn't leave us much opportunity for travel this year. We carried through on reservations we had made almost a year in advance to spend a June week in Las Vegas, originally to attend the annual eBay convention, but my struggling business had eliminated any enthusiasm for that pursuit. Instead we walked all over the Strip, read novels by the pool at the Paris hotel, gambled a little and saw two great Cirque du Soleil shows, the Beatles' "Love" show and "O".

Nan and I both made it home to Wisconsin on separate trips for family time. My sister Susan organized a small family reunion that brought the Chicago contingent to Milwaukee for a day of food, fun, reminiscence and music. The rest of the week was a blur of spotty golf, a concert with sister Jane in Chicago and a visit to the Wisconsin State Fair. Nan's visit home brought together almost all of her eleven siblings. In between visiting around the dinner table at 846, Nan attended the Fall Festival at Camp Sinawa, where her father was so involved, and made day trips to see sister Sarah's family in Green Bay and old friends in Door County.

Most of our weekends were spent in GJ working on our new house, but we also managed a few weekends elsewhere, like in Moab, Utah a few weeks ago, where Nan ran in the Winter Sun 10K. As you can see in her half of the photo, Santa was there to record her finish time, which was good enough for third place in her age group.

We'll be making up for the lack of travel in a big way next year, including a repeat of our 2004 sailing adventure in the British Virgin Islands, this time on a bigger boat with Nan's sister Monica and friend Vicky as crew. Hopefully, it will go more smoothly than our ill-fated "Where's the dinghy?" experience.

Things definitely appear to be looking up, not just for us but also for our country. The November election proved that most people, at least the ones who vote, are paying attention and want a return to peace and sanity. We're hoping the momentum carries through to 2008, when we expect to see the election of our first African-American president. Go Barack!

Best wishes to you and yours this holiday season!

Love, John and Nan