2004      Note:  Many of the links in this letter may no longer be valid.
                                                   Things change fast on the Web.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year from Sue Anne and Bruce!

A lot has happened this year.  On a sad note, Bruce’s mother Sis passed away in June at age 92, after a ten-year struggle with Alzheimer’s.  We were all prepared for this, and we are sustained by memories of a wonderful person and of wonderful times together in the past.  Her ashes were buried on a beautiful day in August at the cemetery in North Andover, Mass., near to her parents and a number of her brothers and sisters.  

Bruce’s Dad Jim (or Milf within the family) is doing well, living nearby in a very pleasant retirement community.  We see each other often.  He joined us at our house in New Hampshire this summer, and then we all went to the 100th anniversary celebration at the camp in the Adirondacks where he worked from 1946 to 1953 and where we lived as a family.  He made quite a name for himself there, and it was really a wonderful reunion with lots of very special friends.

Bruce retired from his job with a defense contractor at the end of April.  Together with retirement from his government job and from the Army Reserve, this makes him a triple-dipper!  He is enjoying the freedom of schedule that retirement provides, but the days still don’t seem long enough to accomplish everything that needs to be done.

Sue Anne’s art interests have moved in the direction of hooked rugs—the kind that you hang on the wall to admire, not the kind you step on with dirty shoes.  With Karin’s assistance she is setting up a Web site, www.artists-eye.com, to showcase this work.  Work on the site hadn’t progressed too far before she realized that it could also serve to illustrate the work of a number of other talented members of our extended family, so you will soon find other family artists represented there, and a variety of media.  Check it out!  Sue Anne also continues her work as a docent at a nearby historical site, the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, a pioneering 19th Century girls’ school.

We have been extremely mobile this year.  The last tenant left our house in New Hampshire at the end of June, and now it’s ours for real.  We spend as much time as we can there, working on the minor and major chores necessary to get it ready to become our fulltime home.  Intermixed with that we spend as much time as we can at our house in Maryland, sorting out the stuff that one accumulates from over thirty years in residence and getting the house ready to sell.  We hope to have our move completely behind us by next summer.  

And we also spend a lot of time with Sarah and her family in Edmonton, Alberta.  We all got together at Dan’s parents’ house in British Columbia in April to celebrate Noelle’s first birthday, where we got to witness Noelle taking her first steps.  And now she never seems to stop moving!  Dan’s parents live in a beautiful resort area called the Okanagan valley, which is known for long, beautiful lakes, orchards, and vineyards, along with a very temperate climate.  We are all looking forward to the birth of Sarah and Dan’s second child next spring.
Karin has done extremely well in establishing her Web design company, exceeding her self-imposed 2004 billing target by the end of November.  We’re really proud of how well she has done.  You can see a lot of her work at her Web site, www.karintracy.com.  Dan (Both our sons-in-law are named Dan!) continues his work as a rehabber of Baltimore rowhouses and put those skills to good use in working with Bruce on some summer projects at the New Hampshire house.

While on the subject of New Hampshire, now’s a good time to give you our address and phone number, because that’s where we will be at this time next year.  Our mailing address will be PO Box 66, Elkins, NH 03233-0066, though our actual street address is 617 Sugar House Road, New London, NH 03257.  Elkins is a part of New London with its own little Post Office, and it’s more convenient to our house than the main Post Office in town.  We could even get to Elkins by kayak!  Our phone number is 603 526-2496, and our e-mail address remains bbb@acm.org, which will follow us wherever we might be.

We’ve enjoyed our 34 years in Maryland.  We’ve made a lot of wonderful friends, done a lot of interesting things, had rewarding careers, raised a wonderful family.  We’ll miss all of this, but we are excited about coming back home to New England in the New Year.  We hope it will be a wonderful year for you all.