With
active gnomes in the area allowing moles and other
earth-dwelling creatures to take over our yard, all my efforts
to repel or eradicate them were fruitless. Kiara (our 12-year
old mouser) left us 6 this year by the upper garden door and
after my 8 – 4-packs of gopher gassers couldn’t end their reign,
I finally gave up the quest. There is always next year!
What does this have to do with Christmas, you ask?
Absolutely nothing, but this letter every year ends up being the
ramblings of my troubled mind, along with some account of our
family’s years adventures. Watch for the tell-tale signs
of gnomes in your yard: beer missing from your garage
refrigerator, piles of dirt around the yard chronicling their
subterranean cavern building activities, tiny “picks” left
half-hazardly against the base of your trees, followed by a
massive mole infestation!
With an unusual horribly mild
winter (no snow in the mountains) we didn’t get in our usual
quota of 10-12 days skiing this season. Nora still managed
to get up to Stevens Pass for about half of Hailey’s ski
lessons, but several of those were in fairly miserable rainy
conditions. Instead, we filled our January with Seattle
Seahawks playoff parties culminating with our February 1st Super
Bowl neighborhood bash where our last second comeback drive/win
hopes were dashed with a 3-yard end zone pass interception by
the ball-deflating Patriots. Painful memories those were …
What
a better way to minimize that mental anguish than a trip to
Vegas! Mid-winter break for the girls in late February
found us in the “desert city that never sleeps” to burn some
timeshare points. We had an awesome time hiking Red Rock
Canyon and the Valley of Fire, touring the Hoover Dam, taking a
gondola in Venice, riding a roller coaster in NYC, mixing in
some magic, having dinner in the Stratosphere, seeing the “Le
Reve” at the Wynn … all with no gambling involved. Reality
set back in late March with my second right shoulder surgery,
but this year’s experience was a completely different one … only
1 day on pain meds and a much quicker recovery this time.
Physical therapy began for me in June and just ended a week ago
with much better results than last year.
April saw
us car shopping, resulting in the purchase of a new Mini Cooper
S (Nora’s main car now) allowing us to give Shannon full reign
of our ‘04 Acura TL. Nora spent several weeks prior to the
purchase cleaning out the third garage bay to make room for all
3 vehicles. Most of what was in the garage is now under
the house.
Following the bland winter, Seattle also had
an extremely mild spring, coming early this year without the
usual rain deluge, and allowing us to get a real head start in
April on our flower beds and gardens with our annual planting of
annuals and perennials, a few foundation plants, and a few dozen
Dahlias this year. Nora’s Dahlia garden was a stunning
array of color which kept fresh cut Dahlias in every color and
variety all over the house and on our deck late spring, all
summer and most of fall.
May had us attending my nephew
Zach’s wedding to his lovely bride Amber in Denver at a
beautiful outdoor venue just outside the city limits. We
experienced every form of precipitation on the 30 minute drive
south of the city to their outdoor wedding scene - misty rain to
start, then an all-out deluge, followed by waves of sleet, and
surprisingly enough sunny skies when arriving at the park.
The weather held long enough for the ceremony and pictures, and
saw a few of us sprinting for our cars afterwards as the dark
clouds appeared overhead and began to wet the pavement there.
That drive and subsequent sunny wedding had us all believing
that Amber has control over the weather in Denver. They
had a very fun reception revealing why Alan rarely dances in
public … Elaine from Seinfeld has some serious competition with
my moves.
Nora
requires several vacations a year, so besides the Vegas trip we
took a short week in June to go to Vancouver biking around the
city there and stopping at Capilano for their unique treetop
trail adventure … miles of rope and wood slat trails hanging up
80+ feet above the ground traversing from tree to tree. In
late August we drove over to the Olympic Peninsula for a visit
to the Sequim Olympic Game Farm, a canoe ride on Lake Crescent,
and stops at the thriving metropolis of Forks, the majestic
“windy” Hurricane Ridge, and the beautiful La Push area on the
coast.
In July I stepped down from my IT Director
position at ATS and worked with HR to transition the high-end Sr
System Admin I hired a year back to be our new IT Manager.
That allowed me to ease into semi-retirement as their part-time
IT Project Manager. For me that means working every other
week for the next few years with no management responsibilities,
working on and managing many of their major IT Infrastructure
projects … which has always been my specialty anyway.
Along with part-time status unfortunately comes half the pay, no
benefits, and no sick leave or vacation, but having 26 weeks off
is way worth it!
Using some of that newly found time off,
my brothers, their wives and I met in Appleton in mid-June to
clear out our Mother’s duplex. We organized a dual
Steffens and Hooyman Family Reunion while there, what fun it was
to sync up with all my relatives from both sides of the family!
I also attended my 40th High School Reunion at the end of July
and my impromptu Thursday night “pre-reunion” party I Facebook
posted an invite to a few days ahead of time resulted in 35 of
my classmates showing up to kick off the reunion weekend of
drinking and sharing memories. The “real” reunion events
were very well planned and had over a 100 alumni (of 300)
attending. We had/have a very tight, high-spirited senior
class who still know how to have fun. I also snuck in
several visits with old friends and wandered around my old
Wright State University campus. While attending college
there 35 years ago, they had just 5 buildings, now there are
more than 20, many of them new.
After
years of wearing me down, Nora and the girls finally talked me
into letting them get a dog. So entered Chloe into our
lives this summer … a playful, loving, remarkably well-behaved
Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy. Tripping over baby
gates, bagging up poop, a few accidents here and there, along
with complete disruption of our lives at home ensued. We
are within a few months of extracting the gates and opening up
the house to her at this point. On a sad note, our 12-year
old big, lovable Kovu boy kitty developed some issues shortly
after Chloe’s arrival, quickly took a turn for the worse, and
passed away a few weeks later. His gentle, loving demeanor
and great personality made his loss especially devastating to us
and we miss him terribly. It has been a slow adjustment
for Kiara (his sister) to him being gone and having Chloe now in
the house.
Outdoor
concerts and music continue to play a big part in our lives.
In June we saw Smashmouth, Tonic and Toad the Wet Sprocket with
friends at the winery, and on a beautiful evening in July we saw
Train, The Fray and Matt Nathanson at the Gorge (a beautiful
outdoor amphitheatre nestled along the Columbia River basin in
eastern WA) with Shannon. In August Nora, Hailey, a ton of
neighbor kids and their Moms took a limo to CenturyLink Field to
see Taylor Swift rock the stadium there. We ended our
music venues this year with Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits
guitarist extraordinaire along with his solo stuff) at the
winery again with several of our friends in September.
Their 14-minute acoustically perfect rendition of “Telegraph
Road” from the Love Over Gold album was especially memorable.
Nora is in her 28th year at Universal Avionics as their IT
Manager, assisting Shannon with her advanced Math, taking care
of both girls and Chloe, keeping us entertained, and planning
all our vacations. She has maintained her friendships from
elementary school through college (some more than 40 years)
getting together with them when time and opportunity permits,
and we have a lot of fun every year with our Monte Vista
neighborhood friends and families. Shannon is now 17 in
11th grade at Woodinville High School on their Honor Society,
had a great time at Homecoming this year, and continues to read
a stack of books every month. Hailey is 11 in 6th grade
attending her third elementary school in 6 years (we won’t go
into the waiver issues in her school district), but she’s
adjusted incredibly well making many new friends and doing very
well in school with a great base teacher this year. She
spends much of her free time on Facetime with her friends,
having sleepovers, building grandiose structures in Minecraft
and in the process she’s become quite the budding architect.
We’ll be jetting to Orlando in a few weeks on our every
other year trip to celebrate Christmas with my brothers (both
live there) and their families. Dave and Nan will have a
full house this year (18 of us at last count) with the entire
Steffens family all together for the first time in 16 years …
really looking forward to that! May those pesky gnomes in
life avoid your yard in their global travels, may your gardens
be mole free, and it is our sincerest hope that you have a Merry
Christmas 2015 and a healthy and Happy New Year!
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Love …
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P.S.
– The website update of the Year in Pictures,
Vacations, Projects and Family Tree sections
is a work in progress. |
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 Hopefully
I've finished the changes by the time you
get this. Check it all out at http://www.digital-vision.com/alan |
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