Merry Christmas

Greetings Family & Friends!

Here it is December already! I’m late Christmas shopping and getting out cards, writing this letter and decorating my home. Next week will most likely involve a mad dash to town, a dozen or more cookies baked and a flurry of tape entangled wrapping paper. But for now, the goal is to deliver these greetings to all of you before the New Year begins.

This year Tad & I focused on making this new house of ours a comfortable home. We planted a large garden, did some canning, re-created the fish pond, built a greenhouse, bought a gazebo, built a brick walkway and installed a mole fence topped off with laying 7000 pounds of sod. We enjoyed a few community events and took some classes together on gardening and soap making.

Somehow in the middle of all that domestication, Tad managed to train (hiking nearly 300 miles during the summer just to get in shape!) and then complete a hike around the circumference of Mount Rainier. He joined three other gents on the Wonderland Trail, Tad was the senior member. It took them 10 days to do 97 miles climbing a total elevation gain & loss of about 45,000 feet!

Lindsay moved home with us in January. She jumped right into Rochester High School and joined drama club, performing in the spring musical and attending Prom. She began her senior year in fall doing AP classes at the high school and also two classes at Centralia Community College through the Running Start program. She is working part time at McDonalds. She turned 18 and just received her advanced white belt in Taekwondo.

Cody has been super busy as a full time student at The Evergreen State College. He applied for and was accepted into the Student Originated Software program in September. SOS is a collaborative, project based program in that teaches not only computer programming, but software design, teamwork, and project management. He also works for the college at the media loan office. He is majoring in Computer Science.

We didn’t travel much this year. However, we did manage a quick trip to Houston where we visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center and got a behind the scenes tour. Now our goal is to attend a space shuttle launch next year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May 2010 be exciting, adventurous and full of happy memories for all of you!

**~** Love Tad, Tina, Lindsay & Cody **~**