This has been quite a year for our family.  I’m not sure whether to say Wow! or Phew!  I’ll say Phow.

In January, Sarah became engaged to her boyfriend Dan Mason.  They wed in Annapolis on July 20 on a very hot but joyous occasion.  The ceremony and the reception were in the Chart House, right on the Annapolis Harbor.  We so enjoyed meeting Dan’s family, friends, and colleagues who traveled long distances from British Columbia.  Sarah finished her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Maryland in May.  We were very proud to see her cross the stage to collect her diploma.  Her fiancé Dan, at the time an assistant professor at the University, was seated on the stage so he got the best vantage point.

Sarah and Dan are now living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where Dan has a new job as associate professor at the University of Alberta.  They moved into their new house in mid-December.  And one other project of theirs: they are expecting a baby at the end of May.  Bruce and Sue Anne visited them in Alberta in September.  Edmonton is quite a striking city, cut in two by the very green Saskatchewan River.  One day we drove four hours west of Edmonton (like a ten minute drive for Canadians) to see the Canadian Rockies.  We stayed in the little village of Jasper inside of Jasper National Park.  Absolutely breathtaking, both the mountains and the wild animals, and we’ve booked ourselves into a B&B again next June.

Karin is still finding a lot of work to do as Web designer.  She and her husband Dan (the original son-in-law named Dan) bought an old rowhouse in Baltimore, after selling their house in Columbia.  Their new old house is about 100 years old on the outside and six months old on the inside.  They bought it already renovated.  The interesting wrinkle is that Dan then quit his office job with the bad commute to learn to rehab Baltimore rowhouses.  So he has been in training since April, and the first house he worked on sold in two weeks.  Soon his boss will buy another house and they will start over.  And to round out their busy life, they bought a 100 pound dog, a Doberman named Fredo.  He is like a small horse.  Large but friendly.

As for Bruce, he still works at L-3 Communications and plans to retire again in about a year.  Last February he became one of the many people to have heart by-pass surgery at the Washington Hospital Center in DC.  He stayed home from work for 6 weeks and now feels totally back to normal.

It was a grand year for heading up to our house in New Hampshire.  We took the 9 hour drive in March, June, July, September, October, and November.  We spent Independence Day in a small town, doing small town things.  During this visit, Karin and Sarah came up to visit and we all enjoyed the kayaks that we rented for a week.

Sue Anne still works nearby at a mansion built in 1811.  It is a sort of event planning job, and she enjoys meeting and helping recently engaged couples make wedding decisions.  Her latest art explorations are tapestries–yarns pulled through linen with a little hook.  A very old art form that she is exploring and updating of course.

You can see pictures of some of these happenings on our Web site, bbottomley.tripod.com.  And our e-mail address is bbb@acm.org.