Merry Christmas to all, and all best wishes for 2010!

When we left you last year we were in Baltimore, deeply engaged in rehabbing our rental properties there.  We had hoped to be back home in New Hampshire for Christmas, but it just didn’t happen.  The scope of the Baltimore job exceeded our greatest fears.  We ended up staying through mid-February, interrupted only by Bruce’s trip north to assess the situation after the paralyzing ice storm here.  We made out OK, except for an unforeseen place where water froze in the dishwasher, causing a leak when we turned it back on.  No permanent damage.
 
But things did get better in Baltimore.  Much better.  We rented the smaller apartment for a couple of months to a doctor who was visiting Johns Hopkins Hospital from India.  We had registered with Hopkins ever since our most rewarding rental to a leukemia patient, now totally cured and moving on with her life, who refers to us (and others) as “her angels.”  And in the course of our various times there we became introduced to the neighborhood pub, The Laughing Pint.  We told Shannon the publican of the availability of our two apartments, and within days she had lined up great tenants for both of them.  The Pint has now become a regular stop for us.

With life returning to “normal,” we traveled out to Edmonton in early Spring for the combined birthdays of our three grandkids, Noelle 6, Roxy 4, and Wyatt 1.  It’s always fun to visit there, and we see such changes in the grandkids every time we go.

A fun event in springtime was a public service activity sponsored by an MIT alumni club in Boston.  The public service part was that we spent a couple of hours cleaning up winter debris from the beaches of Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor.  The fun part was that we got there on a cruise boat with breakfast and lunch onboard, had a narration by a National Park Ranger of the many islands we passed along the way, and learned lots about the history of the place.

The big event of Summer was the marriage of Sue Anne’s brother Ted to Christine McNally onboard a replica steamship on nearby Lake Sunapee.  Weather was perfect, ceremony was beautiful, the reception was here at our house, and we were happy to welcome Christine and her daughter Kaylie into the family.  Ted’s two daughters Carolyn and Hayley stayed with us during the honeymoon, and we had a number of fun excursions together.

Sue Anne’s mother is now in an assisted living facility in Leominster, Mass.  We feel so many of the same emotions that we encountered during Bruce’s mother’s decline.  We’re glad she could join us all for the wedding.

Other summertime events included the loss to heart failure of Simon, our wonderful cat of 17 years, and the acquisition of our dog Hank, who was rescued and nursed back to health by Karin and Dan after being abandoned in Baltimore and literally turning up at their doorstep.

Once the wedding festivities wound up, we took off for a week in Toronto.  Our two wonderful kids had gotten together and gave us a 40th wedding anniversary present of a great family reunion there.  And it was great!  We lived in a rented house in a very interesting part of the city and just had a wonderful time being together, doing stuff, and also meeting some of Dan Mason’s nice relatives who live in the area.

Other summer news involves the garden.  Mixed results here.  Bruce had always enjoyed his vegetable garden at every place we have lived.  The one in Maryland was dormant for the last year or so due to the dynamics of our life situation, so this year was the opportunity to get back in the groove.  But everything ran late.  There had been no gardens here in the past, so everything had to be built from scratch with 3 yards of dirt and many trips to Home Depot to secure landscaping blocks to build the raised beds.  Spring and early summer were extremely cold and wet, seeds got started late, and the tomato blight hit really, really hard.  We managed to eke out a little bit, and it all tasted really great.  We have high hopes for next year.  (Farmers are always like that.)   As for the house in Maryland, we are very happy with the tenants we have living there and see this as a stable situation, waiting till the market finally turns around.

On to Fall, and another annual foreign adventure.  Together with Sue Anne’s sister Aimée and husband Steve (our traveling companions in England and Scotland last year), we flew out to Edmonton in September, visited Sarah and Dan and the kids in their new house (near the previous one and better configured for a three-kid family), and then went off for a week in the Canadian Rockies.  The greater part of the time was spent in our favorite spot, the village of Jasper.  From the top of the mountain you can see six mountain ranges.  It’s like Switzerland but they speak English!  We’ve been there four times already and can’t wait to get back.  Then we headed down the Icefields Parkway, through Lake Louise and Banff, to Canmore.  We spent a couple of days there, hiked up into the hills, and watched moose come out to feed at twilight.

Then it was back to New Hampshire, though briefly.  Foliage was super beautiful this year.  Wicked beautiful in NE-speak!  Maryland’s was up to New Hampshire standards, and New Hampshire’s really rocked!  Then back to MD in late October for the wedding of one of Karin’s childhood friends.  Since we’re eligible for various types of support from the military through Bruce’s Army Reserve retirement, we decided to try out the guest accommodations at Aberdeen Proving Ground, north of Baltimore.  It worked out great, and we enjoyed a day of sightseeing in an area which we never got to know during our time in Maryland.  The French would not approve of the local pronunciation of Havre de Grace (named by Lafayette, but now pronounced Havver dee Grass), but it was really a nice town to visit.  And good eats!  Then we moved down closer to Baltimore, staying with Dan Tracy’s mother Cathy.  We like extended family!

November: A moving Veterans Day observance here in New London.  Small town New England at its best!  We had a nice Thanksgiving with Ted and Christine in Connecticut.  And we did more touristing and reacquainting ourselves with Boston when friends and family were in town.

Then it was time for an early holiday celebration in Edmonton.  Bruce stayed for a bit over a week (Big thanks to Alona from United Airlines for fixing up my ticket!), and Sue Anne will be staying on for a few more weeks to help Sarah get settled in their new house.

That takes us through the year.  One other thing to report is Sue Anne’s new art blog, sueannebottomley.blogspot.com.  She is creating a wonderful series of visual impressions of the interesting things that surround us in our travels and daily lives, and posting them there every month.  And learn more about our doings at our family Web site www.bottomleyweb.us.

Have a great 2010!  That’s what we plan to do.  And all best wishes from the two of us!