2019 in Review: Happy New Year!

The year began with a fun weekend in New Hampshire with our friends Kevin, Dan, and Amy. We enjoyed some winter activities, played board games, and met Kevin's new cats.

In February, we took our traditional skiing trip in Utah. This time the weather had stayed sufficiently cold that the ice castles were still open and we enjoyed walking and sliding down through the beautifully lit structures (Utah and ice castles album).

In April, we hosted Nicole, an extremely nice and warm exchange student from Spain, for a few weeks. She and her friends LOVED shopping. Giant packs of students (exchange plus host) would go to the mall or other stores. Julia liked spending time with the students, but she'd never done so much shopping in her life!

We also spent a long weekend in New York City, just after Julia's 16th birthday. Karen was pretty excited about this trip as we had never taken the kids as tourists to NYC. We've tried for this trip a few times in the past but wanted to make sure to time it for a time we could get tickets to go up to the Statue of Liberty's crown. This is surprisingly difficult, as you have to buy the tickets many months in advance for the exact day and time and we've never been organized enough to pull it off. However, this time we did it! We saw Times Square and the show "Book of Mormon" on Friday, spent Saturday first going to the 9/11 Memorial, which was very moving, and then to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. On Sunday, we got to see a bit of Central Park and the Museum of Natural History with Leo's cousin Tanya and her family, who live in New York. Greg also took us through China Town so we could get some rolled ice cream (NYC trip album).

Karen's cousin Jimmy and his husband Thomas were having their 5th anniversary on a cruise, so Karen and Leo decided to tag along. We got to see a bit of Montreal the day before and then set off on the cruise. It was a bit chilly a few days, but lots of fun and bridge was had. We really liked the musical "Anne and Gilbert", and it inspired us to reread the Anne of Green Gables books (Canada cousin cruise album).

The biggest event and change for the year is that Gregory graduated from high school and headed off to college! He had fun at the prom and the after graduation party (where he even got lucky and won a TV in the raffle). Julia played flute in the band during graduation (Greg prom and graduation album). He also turned 18 several week before graduation. Karen started wondering whether she can still treat him as her child and give parental advice now that he is officially an adult. Gregory said yes she can, but he can feel free to ignore her advice. Fair enough.

We pulled Julia out of school a few days early for whirlwind tour of national parks in and around Utah. Some highlights were Zion's amazing Angel's Landing hike (which involves some hair raising stretches with sheer drops on both sides), Bryce Canyon with its funky hoodoos (rock columns), the Martian-looking landscapes near Capitol Reef, all the arches at Arches, tubing on Lake Powell, and spectacular (and spectacularly crowded) Antelope Canyon. After all that, we made the drive back to Las Vegas, where Karen's dad and niece, Grace, had to leave early the next morning. Leo, Karen, and the kids were able to enjoy Vegas for two days, taking in the "Love" Cirque du Soleil show, the Mack King comedy show (where Karen was pulled on stage for a trick), the Bodies and Titanic exhibits, and a trip to the Secret Garden. All in all, a wonderful time to spend with the family (National Parks album).

Gregory mostly took it easy this summer, but he did have a nice two week adventure in California with his grandfather, where they did a lot of hiking (including bushwacking, since that's Karen's dad's inimitable style) and biking, explored Lake Tahoe, saw The Taming of the Shrew, and even got to climb half dome at Yosemite. It was also nice because Greg got to know some of the family friends better, like the Dills and Bajoreks.

Meanwhile, Julia spent the summer doing intensive research at UMass Amherst, working in a lab that focuses on using nanotechnology to improve food safety detection methods. Specifically, she was using X-ray Fluorescence and Raman Spectroscopy to quantify the amount of food-grade Titanium Dioxide in food powders and Arsesnic in beverages. She made some amazing friends and learned a lot. Leo and Karen went out to see the final poster sessions and the next day enjoyed some Western Massachusetts attractions including zip lining and a visit to the giant, Christmas-themed Yankee Candle Factory.

Finally it was the time we both anticipated and dreaded: dropping Gregory off at Carnegie Mellon University. We were lucky that Greg's roommate's family had been travelling near our house in Massachusetts several weeks earlier so we had a nice dinner with all of them (they are also UUs!), and that made it feel like we at least knew someone. There were also three other students from Sharon High School going to CMU this year, so that was another connection. The weekend went by fast and then it was time to say goodbye.

Through happenstance, the weekend that we were dropping Greg off at Carnegie Mellon was the same weekend that a memorial gathering was held in Pittsburgh for our dear family friend, Gordon Lilly. Leo and Karen were grateful to be able to pay their respects.

Karen's dad came to visit for a few weeks, and we enjoyed some nice local adventures like visiting Battleship Cove, seeing Lizzie Borden's house (Karen's dad always did love gruesome tales like Lizzie and her axe), enjoying the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, and walking the park at World's End.

The last hurrah for the summer was our annual cousin Labor Day camping trip. This year we went to Bear Brook in New Hampshire. We got in some nice mini-golfing and hiking, as well as the traditional s'mores (Camping album).

A typical scene after Greg left for college was us inviting Leo's mom over to be our fourth person to eat one of our Blue Apron meals. And of course, the cats were happy to help fill the gap as well. Greg has exceeded all (admittedly low) expectations in terms of communicating with us about life in college. We have a weekly video call with him and once a month he sends a detailed email to the broader family about what he's been up to.

Karen and Leo managed to dull the pain of Gregory's departure by distracting themselves with a wonderful cruise from Amsterdam to Barcelona with their friends Matt and Sarah. Karen's favorite port was Normandy, seeing the D-Day beaches, and Leo really enjoyed walking around Lisbon (Europe cruise album). Julia was very responsible back at home as a single cat mother, with Baba swinging by regularly with her delicious meals.

We made it to the Topsfield Fair, a giant county fair, for a fun day of farm animals, horticulture, good food, and bees.

In mid-October, Leo and Karen headed back to CMU for Family Weekend. Once they were there they wished they had brought Julia, since now they had their Gregory but were missing their Julia! It was a fun weekend nevertheless and we had a chance to play disc golf at the 18 hole course at the huge park next to campus.

For Thanksgiving we had Greg back for 5 days and managed to spend some fun time with both sides of the family.

We've been able to do a lot of fun gaming this year, and got some more sessions in at the end of the year, as well as some Hanukkah latkes.

Over Christmas/Hanukkah week, a bunch of us headed to the Mexican island of Isla Mujeres to enjoy swimming, hiking, exploring the Mexican-style cemetery, snorkeling, the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, and various board games. One of our favorite cross-generational games is called "Smarty Party", a trivia game with little rubber "smarty pants" that passes to the person with the last correct answer (Isla Mujeres album).

Isla Mujeres! Note Bepa's gorgeous cat shirt, a birthday present from a bunch of us

Leo loves working on Game of Thrones: Conquest at WB Games Boston. In his spare time, he continues to play bridge, MTG (Magic the Gathering), and many mobile games. He is very proud of having reached the "Mythic" rank in Constructed in MTG Arena. Leo was super excited to get to play bridge with Greg at the Newton Bridge Club several times during the summer and then again when Greg was visiting home. Another highlight of the year were the many Legacy board games that we played, particularly "Betrayal Legacy". He enjoys fiddling with the Rubik's Cubes, now mostly the 6x6 and 7x7 varieties.

Playing Betrayal Legacy with Thomas, Jimmy, and Julia

Karen is still enjoying working for herself as a technology consultant for nonprofits. She has such a great boss, ha ha! Some organizations she's worked with this year include Outward Bound (outdoor trips for all, including low or no cost trips for Veterans, grieving teens, and inner city youth), Keshet (LGBTQ advocacy in the Jewish community), UUSC (Unitarian Universality Service Committee which does refugee advocacy), Board on Track (software to support charter school boards), and Boston Afterschool and Beyond (helping Boston area's low income youth thrive). She also loves participating in the local Boston Nonprofit User Group for Salesforce (Salesforce is the primary software product she works with). At church, she finished her work on the Ministerial Search Committee and is thrilled with Reverend Jolie, the minister that was called to the church. She also still loves her cardio hip hop exercise class (which she attended over 100 times this year), and she's managed to stay in touch with a core group of her Pega friends, which is great since most days she's working at home with just the cats for company.

Karen with some friends from Pega (Fawzi, Dave, Karen, Chris, Laura, Sam)

Gregory is thriving in this year of transition. He greatly enjoyed a trip to Quebec in January with his French class, despite the record low temperatures, and the general fun with his high school friends before graduation. At Carnegie Mellon, everything is going well. He has joined the Badminton team and also started fencing. He prefers the schedule of college, with more freedom and time between classes, and he's made some good friends.

Five high school best friends (Michael, Tyler, Derick, Marc, and Greg), and Gregory (on the right) fencing at a tournament

Julia is now a junior and has taken leadership roles this year in many of the clubs at her school, including being the Co-President of the Science Olympiad team and the Tournament Director of the Sharon Math and Science Tournament. She also continues to be a part of her school's math team and tennis team. Highlights from this year include hosting Nicole (her Spanish exchange student), her tennis team making it to the MA South Division 1 finals, getting her driver's license, and being an intern for the Engineering and Design class at her high school. Working with 3D printers a lot in her engineering class, she was also really excited to get a 3D printer (a Creality Ender 3) at the end of this year. She was even able to use her 3D printer help out her Science Olympiad team by desiging and printing different propellers to use for an engineering event.

Julia was given editorial control of her photos, and she insisted that the photos in her section be of her cutie cats. So, here we have Bliss, Rosie, and Momo.

Our cats are so cute that Katya had mugs made for each of them! We allowed Greg to take the Blissy mug with him to college.

Our adorable cat mugs!

We're very grateful to have had such a wonderful 2019 and we're wishing all our friends and family a happy and healthy 2020!

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