Season’s Greetings everyone!
It’s December. Late December. A lot of my friends and family got a card it the mail but there are a few important people for whom I am missing correct addresses. Hopefully they are keeping tabs on this page via RSS. I’m going to paste the Christmas letter that was written by Laurie this year. I won’t bother with a PDF version
I may put up a new years post that included the Links I Like section. The Christmas edition will just include the letter since it’s so close to Christmas. If I wait any longer it won’t get done at all.
OK, OK, I give. Tom and company have been after me for years to write this darn letter, so I guess it’s my turn…
So here’s the problem, most of this year has been a blur, so the first half is going to get very little real estate on the page. As long as we’re all OK with that we’ll get along just fine. Let’s face it, winter sucks (unless you ask Kiersten, who for some CRAZY reason likes snow), so I’ll start the narrative in the spring as it’s vaguely fresh in my memory. Lets’ see, skating carnival, G finishes year 1 of university, garage re-shingled (Laurie was very little help, seems to have developed a fear of heights in her 40th year) and the sun came back. Yay!!
As the days got longer, Gracia found summer employment working outside, and had high hopes of a tan for the first time in her life. How’s your shoe-tan Gracia? My poor albino child with brown feet. Kiersten returned to Camp Chief Hector but was disappointed when she didn’t get a first-hand introduction to the grizzly bear who wandered into camp. One of the little sheep who populate the camp’s petting zoo did get a one-on-one with Mr. Grizzly, but unfortunately ended up in his belly. Well, the bear’s gotta eat! Not sure if I could resist either if I was a bear.
For summer vacation we headed west to the Island. Tom and Kiersten stopped in Vancouver to see some friends while I continued to Victoria solo. Kiersten used her considerable powers of persuasion to convince Tom that she simply could not live without taking part in the “Turtle Encounter” at the Vancouver aquarium. She had a grand time feeding slimy squid to a Sea Turtle. She also volunteered to get sprayed by a Beluga whale. That’s our girl! I meanwhile met up with my best buddy and we tore up Victoria for our 40th birthday celebration. Poshed it up at the Empress, hit every tourist trap available, and ate and drank ourselves under the table (well, Suny did anyway; I behaved like a perfect lady!). Tom and Kiersten rescued us from our excess after a couple of days, then Suny headed home and the 3 of us headed up the coast for some more rugged enjoyment. We saw the most awesome tidepools at Botanical Beach, and had a wonderful chin-wag with a local native man who ran a BBQ stand in his front yard. Best home fries ever! We finally wandered up to Comox to see Auntie Deb and Uncle Dave. They showed us the local sights and introduced us to Oysters Rockafeller. That feller sure knew his oysters! Eric joined us at our campsite for overnights. He’s a natural Hepburn, didn’t seem to mind the crude amenities that camping out of a Toyota Matrix dictates. What a trooper!
We returned home to find our poor working girl more than ready to head back to school, and the prospect of further distancing herself from any and all future minimum wage jobs. She dove into year 2 with ferocity, assisting with the 2011 Newbie Move-In at residence, and volunteering her time at the Peer Counseling Centre. This wasn’t quite enough to keep her away from the parties however, so my angel also took on a part-time job. Am I gushing? Pardon me, I’ll stop. Gracia’s biggest hurdle this semester is an English Prof who it just “Out There”. Well my dear, we all have to deal with at least one of those!
As for Tom and I, we are, as Tom likes to put it, “doing our best to stay out of jail.” Tom’s busy bringing home the bacon, literally. He’s done work in exchange for beef, pork, fencing, and tailoring. Wonder if Atco will take a rump roast for this month’s electric bill? He’s had lots of return clients, so no cops knocking on the door lately. I got a swanky new office due to my stellar performance at work! OK, they booted me out of my old one, but the new one’s way better, more sunshine!
OK – spring, summer, covered the children, a couple of token sentences about the adults, am I done yet? This Christmas letter gig is tougher than it looks! Round it out with some current news and some Christmas cheer, right! We’re all into our winter routines, skating, shoveling, slipping, shivering, and shopping. We have a winter adventure planned to get our Christmas tree, we’re trooping out to a tree farm to have a Rockwellian experience whilst hacking down a conifer. Gracia’s hoping to meet us there and we’ll have hot chocolate and cookies and so much fun, and the tree will be too big and it won’t fit on the Toyota and Gracia will get frostbite and Tom will cut himself with the axe, pass out and… never mind. It’ll be great!
Hope everyone has a very special Christmas, surrounded by loved ones and good cheer. A once a year letter simply can’t contain the love and affection we hold for each and every person in our circle, but here’s hoping that a little bit shines through. Happy Christmas!
Love to all,
The Hepburns