The kids are all off to school during the year so it sure is great to have them home. Anna turned 22 this year and is a Graduate Student at University College of London.  We celebrated her birthday while on another of our epic road trips during August.

This time we stayed "local" by going to Canada.  We rented a big SUV and headed north to Montréal.  We then turned east to Quebec and then south through Maine.

It was great to have the kids all together for a week or so.  We strapped the camping gear onto the roof and spent a day or so at campsites in NY, Canada, Maine and Massachusetts.

It is hard to believe that such European cities are so close.  Montréal and Quebec do not resemble American cities much.  We really recommend that you visit if you can.
It isn't a far drive at all.

In March we went a bit further out of the way to see European style cities.  We took a week or so to visit Anna in London.

It's cold and a bit rainy all the time, but it is a beautiful city with all kinds of great things to see and do.  Like any big city, there is so much that you can't possibly see it all, always leaving a reason to go back.

We put most of our exploits up on Facebook, so stop by and have a look at the pictures if you are interested. Here's Album 1 and Album 2.

Eva is in her second year at TCNJ in Ewing, NJ.  She's majoring in Graphic Design and also producing all of the posters for campus events. Maria is a Freshman at SUNY Purchase also studying Graphic Design.  It's great that they are so close.  They both are home every once and awhile and usually friends come along or are not far behind.  A house full of college students makes up for the nights when Monika and I have the place to ourselves.

Here's Monika hard at work on the wreath for the front door.  She is always making the house nicer and I try to help by "screwing things up".  This defines my ability to put the bigger things on the wall or close to their intended installation point. She then follows behind me to do the finishing work that makes the  improvements look good.  This work will never end.

For me It's hard to believe that the first decade of the millennium is almost over.  It seems like yesterday that the world was anxiously awaiting the dreaded Y2K bug.  Hardly anyone remembers this now that we have so many new challenges to face.  Our kids are just beginning to have vivid memories of things that happened 10 years ago.  This year was the 25th anniversary of my graduation from college.  It doesn't seem long ago but in reality it is a lifetime.

Last night we all sat down for dinner and had a great time opening British Christmas Crackers (which is where the paper crowns come from). Then we sat around the fire and opened presents.
We are incredibly lucky to have a warm place to live, good food to eat and the love of each other this holiday.

We hope that you and your family will have a wonderful holiday season too.

If you missed any of our previous letters, they are linked below.  Some are in PDF format.

| 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 |

The PDF reader is free, and you really should install it.  It lets people send you documents in their native format without having to own the program they created it with.

Click Here to get the Reader