XMas 16

And so another year passes… Last letter, Cathy was thinking about retiring completely from teaching, and, by gosh, she actually did! She had to because she was needed elsewhere this year. First, to Missouri for a couple weeks to help our cousin Rita after surgery. Then in June to Florida to see her foster father in hospice. On the way home, she swung through Oklahoma where she picked up our son Eric and brought him back here for a visit (he’s doing great, BTW). In September she went to Hawaii to look after our granddaughter while Greg and Rebekah were deployed. And now she’s going back over Christmas for phase 2, so a total of 4 essential trips this year! When she was home, she spent the summer in her pool, doing needlepoint, staying glued to the election coverage! If you ever need someone to tell you the whole story, Cathy’s your best choice!

The rest of the family continues to do pretty well too. Our youngest son Greg and his wife Rebekah are still based at Hickam in Hawaii, and both now work in PACAF HQ. Greg is in charge of the Command’s new emphasis on process improvement, and Bek seems to be on tap for trips to the desert – she’s spending 9 months there now, filling an Army billet (!?) in Kabul. Our granddaughter, Kirstin, is 11 now, and has decided that she wants to be a life-long, professional volley ball player, and belongs to 3 teams and practices or plays 7 days a week.

Chris & his family are still at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. Janna is working in the schools while finishing up her teaching degree. Geoff is a Freshman in high school, joined Naval JROTC, and had a role in his first school play. Connor is chugging along in 7^th grade. They all really seem to enjoy living in Japan, but the distance does make it difficult to visit.

Mom and Dad still live at the assisted care complex and of course there have been “challenges”. Dad fell and cracked some ribs and while X-Raying those, the medicos discovered a lymphoma in his abdomen. Half-way through infusion treatments for that, he fell and broke both legs – at the same time! So he had to put off the cancer treatments for 4 months while his legs healed, but is now back on schedule. Mom was in pretty bad shape for a while, “feeling bad”. Fortunately, the visiting NP switched her meds around properly, and the difference was like night and day! We had them over for Thanksgiving, the first time they’ve been able to get in a car since April. It was fun, and we’ll have them over again after Cathy gets back after Christmas.

As for the menagerie, we now have 4 dogs, having adopted Dad’s dog since he can no longer walk him. It can be exciting when they all get into a fur ball at your feet! All the other animals and birds are fine. We did have some Pack Rats chew a hole in the windshield washer system for Cathy’s car and so I had to trap all 13 of their extended family (with a live trap, of course) and liberate them in the desert, far, far from here!

Other than that, things were pretty slow. I am amazed to now be on Medicare (when I was 21 in pilot training, I didn’t think I’d make it to 30)! I enjoyed the Summer Olympics, even found my old water polo ball to cheer on the team with. But, what to do now? I did buy a new scanner to scan and store every old picture, certificate and letter ever produced by Cathy & my families. That should take about 30 years, so maybe I’ve finally found my niche! Haha.