November 28 ~ December 9, 2021
Dear Family and Friends,
Happy Christmas and Merry Everything!
Do we have any meaningful scale to evaluate a year anymore? “Not 2020” sets a low bar, but we want to remember 2021 as more than just the one last year bled into. I think I’ll remember the heel-clicks I did yesterday in Walmart’s pharmacy, when I got Wes’s vaccination card back after his second shot. World, here we come! … she wrote exactly two days before the omicron variant was first reported. Sigh.
2020 is still haunting us. We have no quarrels with the new normal of masks and vaccines, but our travel plans are taunting spirits. Our trip to the Amazon and Galapagos in Ecuador is because we had to use our travel credits in South America or lose them at the end of this year. And unless policies change drastically, we have only one year to use our African safari and travel credits. What’s more, if we don’t use Dwayne’s sabbatical this spring, we won’t be able to take that much time away again until the kids are grown. As always, I look forward to reading 2022’s Christmas letter so I know how all our travel plans resolved themselves!
Dwayne is just weeks away from 25 years at Microsoft, with the last two of them working from home. He solves real problems involving virtual computers and clouds, but I think he spends most of his time helping my dad with his technical issues. Dwayne is a Master Planner and surprised me with a 5-day birthday trip, taking a scenic train from Moab, UT to Denver sheerly for the pleasure of it. For our 19th anniversary, we went glamping and did our very last real mountain biking. Was it ever fun to bike uphill over tree roots, or did it just hurt less in our twenties? Falling for a social media stunt, Dwayne took the challenge to do one hundred push-ups a day. He’s up to 250 and got somewhat bored, so he’s trying to figure out what ridiculous feat to master next. In the “they may not listen but they are watching” category, Wes is working on his handstand pushup. I find chocolate is the right snack to eat while watching them both.
Wes wrapped up “our” elementary career when he graduated to middle school this year. Mostly this means a very early start to our days, but Wes has impressed me, getting himself and Piper up each morning, and then making sure I’m up to get them to the bus on time. He loves going out in the motorhome and anything all-wheels-no-hands. However, what I will probably remember most about his childhood is him playing Minecraft, or screaming while playing Minecraft, so that’s…rewarding. I think he has tried no new foods this year, so if he doesn’t get lost while we’re overseas, he will starve to death. He wants you to know that he wears the same clothes. Every. Day. (Minecraft sweatshirt, red shirt, and gray sweats, if you were wondering.) He and I have different views on how impressive that is.
Piper has truly enjoyed less people and more yarn in her life. I’m currently writing this while Piper is making a slipper model out of my foot using plastic wrap and duct tape. Crafting in the age of YouTube and TikTok is certainly its own entertainment. Thirteen-year-old Piper is a full-blown crochet-master and creates many of her own patterns. Siblings, friends, and cousins have all been recipients of her creations. She’s also proven to be a henna artist—summer meant intricate patterns over her hands and feet. Advanced art is her favorite class in 8th grade, and she frequently reminds the family how much more she likes her cat than any of us. But at least she bakes us many, many yummy treats, particularly when Dwayne and I are trying to cut back on sweets.
Kyla is well in her first year of high school, and we have the Homecoming photos to prove it. In addition to Spanish and her first AP class, Kyla is finishing up driver’s ed. I am responsible for 99% of the bumps, scrapes, and scratches on my car, but I really love having the “Caution: Student Driver” sticker on the minivan so that others don’t assume I’ve inflicted the damage myself. Kyla is still fifteen-going-on-college. I wonder how much further Dwayne and I would have gotten in life if we had been more like her at that age. (This letter might be signed Doctor Denise or Madame President.) She also has a real job after school, assisting a neighbor’s successful thread-dying business. To balance her uber-responsible side, she embraces adventures. She and Dwayne flew down to California last August to join her uncle and cousin on a two-night backpacking trip. Afterward, she did a five-day survival camp that she wants to continue doing each year. Kyla is still the only human I know who can make reading and watching movies into an aerobic exercise, and if Seattle ever has an earthquake, Dwayne and I will just assume Kyla’s found a new favorite book—or Rothfuss finally completed his trilogy.
I used to measure each day by how many things I did, but Covid and older kids changed that. I take a few substitute jobs, tutor some, manage the Airbnb, and try to represent Special Education families on our local PTSA, but none of that adds up to a week’s worth of labor. I LOVE it. My brain is pretty happy, and I’m on track for reading about 180 books this year, fifty more than last year. (Here’s a link to my reading highlights this year.) However, I am parenting three very, very dissimilar persons–different from each other and myself–and this mother-board frequently glitches and relies on therapy. Unrelated, after jumping into the frigid January waters in a bikini, I found that dressing up as a witch and paddleboarding on Halloween is far more pleasant. Yep, all that there book-learnin’ gonna make me intelligenter.
Dwayne and I will fondly remember this as the year our Covid Project was finally completed. Thirteen months was approximately four times longer than we anticipated, but I’ve had heaps of fun planting the rain garden and creating a burbling fountain extravaganza. I discovered that spending money on plants is too slow a strategy to go broke; instead, one really needs to start collecting garden art to make real headway toward bankruptcy. (Garden statues Cricket and Ernie wish you Merry Christmas, by the way.)
A friend recently gifted me with a “One cat short of crazy” mug—but she’s wrong. I am 2.9 cats over the advised pee and vomit limit. Timmy and Rosie have owned Piper and Kyla for eight years, but Covid made Wes yearn for his own pet, too. S’more the Hamster made it about a week before she was found, beheaded and smeared across Piper’s carpet. We ended up adopting Calico Catniss, feeling better about her head staying attached but somehow we are now a household of three kids and an equal number of cats. Wes is the class of 2028, so the cats have seven years to use their nine lives. My motto will be “Footloose and Furry-free, Hey-ho the Drinks are on Me!“
I’ve reread this nonsense and can solidly say it’s better than at least 10 books I read this year. And if you are keeping track of your book reading, I think the length of this allows you to add another notch to your wall.
To all of those reading this, you add depth to our world by allowing us to be, even a little bit, part of yours.
Love, love, love,
Denise, for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper & Wes
Needopedia 