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 19^th 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 8^th 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

Now Mama loves Christmas, the whole Christmas season. 

Please don’t ask why, we all know the reason.

It could be that she has almost enough lights

It could be, perhaps, she loves all the sights.

But I think the most likely reason of all,

Is that that sparkly tree is three sizes not small.

Cricket and Ernie are as excited as I am about the season!

Kyla and Wes enjoyed the decorations at church with me.

But no one was more excited than Piper after she and I looted the Trader Joe’s seasonal cookies aisle. We understand the true meaning of Calories Christmas!

Our tree was up, the decorations strung, and the clean-up half done. Time to have Wes fly a drone into my hair. He laughed once he apologized profusely and saw I was giggling. It was quite tickly until I tried to comb out that tangle!

Even while we were celebrating his in September, Dwayne was already planning my November birthday. Somehow, I had to figure out how and when to leave our world for 4-5 days, including the kids. I knew that whatever he was planning was going to be worth it, but that did nothing to mitigate the intense planning to leave my beloveds during a school week with all their schedules, work, and chores. And that’s to say nothing about the cats, one who has recently doubled down on his “behavior disorder” by peeing all over the house, which began … wait for it … when we were gone for a weekend.

But, again, Dwayne doesn’t bluff about his surprises. I wrote up 15 pages of sub plans for the entire team, and followed him out to the car on my birthday morning, after making sure kids all got to the bus on time.

It wasn’t until the pilot came on the intercom that I found out we were flying into Salt Lake City.

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When we got to Moab and checked into our hotel, we were directed to the lobby to check into….

….our Rocky Mountaineering scenic train ride to Denver! Finally, the surprise was revealed, and it unfolded with perfect timing over the next few days.

Moab is a charming, very walkable town that we could have spent more time exploring. We had dinner, bought me meds and a deck of cards, and dashed over to Arches National Park in the morning before catching the train Thursday afternoon.

The train was refurbished specifically for going over the Rockies, with windows going up high. We had access to a lounge car, as well, and drinks were inclusive. Such beautiful scenery! I wanted to read my (new Sherry Thomas) novel, stare out the window, and chat with fellow travelers/non-abstainers simultaneously, which obviously, is not actually possible, and the only disappointing thing about this trip.

Thursday night put us in Glenwood Springs, CO, a charming town with world’s largest hot spring swimming pool, which was slightly chilly after first dipping into the 104 degree, ahem, health spa. Ooh, Mama like. We’d love to return someday to enjoy the gondola rides and other attractions with the kids.

The next morning, we had breakfast back on board the train before a full day of climbing up and through the Rockies. I had always wanted to visit Colorado, and this more than whetted my appetite! I finally got to see a herd of tall, skinny cows to satisfy my 2020 bucket list, and there were plenty of regal bald eagles. The sky was blue, blue, blue, and Dwayne’s wariness about November weather on a scenic trip waned.

Moab about 400 miles behind us, we stepped into Denver Friday evening. Dwayne had booked the hotel for two nights, so we could explore this new-to-us city all day Saturday. First, we found an open urgent care clinic, and finally got inhalers and antibiotics so I could fight my November-allergies-cum-bronchitis.

I woke up feeling great on Saturday, and we set off with money, water, our deck of cards, and fully juiced phones, ready for adventure! Denver is very walkable, and we meandered from Rally Hotel, to the capitol, on to the Unsinkable Molly Brown’s house and museum. That was quite a distance, so we downloaded the Lime app, and took scooters around for a look at the museum and capitol hill district. We walked further away from downtown to another park and finally got ourselves into Denver Botanical Gardens.

February is probably the only worse month to visit gardens than November, but we both still loved it. The “bones” (or hardscapes and design) of the gardens were attractive on their own. We were coming off a mid-60’s day with clear blue skies, and the Christmas lights were already adding to the festivities. I also downloaded the garden’s augmented reality app, so we had some extra visual interest. Some year, I I would love to visit in December to see the Christkindlmarkt in action and revisit the Botanical Gardens bedecked and bedazzled.

By the time the gardens closed, it was dark and Dwayne and I went scooter hunting, happy to find an alternative to walking another 5 miles back the Brazilian restaurant we had our eye on. But later even stuffed cheesebreads and fried bananas, we felt pretty good about the ten miles we logged on foot that day. As Dwayne said, I’m not sure we could have done a Dwayne and Denise Day in Denver any better, even with a real plan!

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Home again, I feel like I’ve entered my 48th year properly. I really have to up my game for Dwayne’s birthdays!

First of all, I am so excited to find a coven with “witch” to properly celebrate Halloween. With weather in the 60s, blue skies, and an algae-green cauldron lake to paddle about it, this was a lovely Sunday afternoon. Can’t wait until New Years when the witches transform into polar bears!

(I’m on the pink SUP, demonstrating proper use of a witch’s oar!)

The evening was even better. Wes and Piper both invited a few friends over, and Kyla and her BFF took the boys trick-or-treating in the ‘hood, neighbors forewarned. Dwayne and I set up a fire and outdoor furniture on our street, and prepped the roasting station for guests and neighbors. Piper’s group played video games and ate candy, and Dwayne and I relaxed around the fire, chatting with new and old neighbors. I started liking Halloween when I had kids, but I only loved Halloween when it became a community celebration!

And the best part? Right before the evening began, Piper and I realized that Ernie didn’t have a costume. She quickly made a hat so he could be a grumpy strawberry. He clearly loves his costume!

The last time we packed up the motorhome for camping, we made about a mile before we realized that we couldn’t make it out of zipcode, let alone out of state, like we were planning. But several weeks and dollars later, we have a working motorhome, and we finally had a weekend we could get away.

So we set off for our one of our favorite spots over the mountain, Leavenworth. It was the last weekend that Icicle River RV Resort was open, and we snagged one of the few open spots. The weather forecast was good, so I have no excuses for why I was surprised when Leavenworth was warm and *packed* with tourists…like us. In fact, the only moderately-convenient RV parking lot was so filled with cars that we barely found a spot to squeeze our 31-footer into. But we did, which meant we got to walk through my favorite park at its autumn best, and eat lunch (and gelato) outside.

These are some of the views from the campground. I reveled in the autumn colors!

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Our campsite didn’t have a fire pit, but there was a community one by the river. Dwayne and I had it to ourselves (because even our kids preferred to stay mostly in the camper), and it was a perfect, moonlit evening. I love romantic evenings with my husband of 19 years. We had had a tough parenting week, and I have been subbing too many days a week, so this really felt like a true getaway. Thanks, Yeti the Motorhome, for being on your feet again!

The kids all wanted to hang out with friends, so we ended up with four extra friends, a bonfire, and cookies on a perfect Friday night.

Dwayne seriously made these out of giant carrots. The talents this man has….

Piper made this, and there’s a tiny bit of hot apple cider somewhere in that cup.

All the kids roasted sausages outside, and the girls each decorated cookies kits. Wes and his friend had a very complicated game involving nerf guns, snowballs, and hoverboards, and even dessert was an imposition.

Wes has such a strong, wiry, athletic body that jumping bar to bar and doing flips is something he’d do anywhere, but I prefer him at the gym. 😉

What Dwayne really likes for his birthday is a dinner out, with friends, his treat. We sort of alternate between the island and home, but we did something new this year. Friends who still have a too-little one would not be able to make it for a night out, so we hired a personal chef to cook for nine of us at the cabin. We brought Costco food for the kids, to be eaten at our friends’ house, while we splurged on a home-cooked-by-someone-else meal. Unfortunately, weather sent our picnic table inside, but it was still a perfect evening. Jon brought the bucket of homegrown veggies that Chef Raina turned into part of our scrumptious dinner.

Now, Dwayne is fully celebrated and ready to be 47!

Dwayne always likes to scout out a new year for us so I don’t have to go first. He’s 47 today, and between flan and family, pretty much has everything he needs.

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