2024 in Review: Happy New Year!

We had our usual Utah skiing fun in the first full week of January. One of Julia's college friends, Naomi, happened to be also staying with at Snowbird so we got to meet up with her and her dad a few times.

For Leo's cousin's 10th birthday we got to go on a fun special access tour at the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum in Chestnut Hill. I was going to include a bunch of amazing facts from the tour here, but then I realized that I don't actually remember the amazing facts that I learned, even though I remember that they were amazing! You can read the museum's website if you want the amazing facts, or better yet, go visit the museum and see them for yourself. Maybe you will remember them! I do recall embarrassing myself slightly by being underwhelmed by the speed of some wheel that spun. Our tour guide proudly announced that when fully operational, the wheel would spin 100 rotations per minute. And I asked dubiously, you mean per second? And she said disappointedly, no, per minute. And then there was a debate within my family about whether that was fast or not. Some googling ensued. More facts that I now forget were brought forth. I just re-googled and modern machines spin fly wheels at speeds of up to 60,000 per minute so you can see why I wasn't impressed with 100. But this was an old machine so I guess I should have been impressed. But anyway trust me, it was neat.

At the end of February, Karen and Leo went to an all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic for a tropical getaway. It was very idyllic, and we had a great time. We hired a private local guide for a half-day of sightseeing. The Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia Cathedral was surprisingly pretty inside (the outside is modern concrete architecture so my expectations were pretty low). We also got to see how cigars are made! I really shouldn't have an exclamation point on that last sentence considering how much I despise cigars and their smell. And the cancer and all that. They gave us free cigars to take at the end of the tour and when we were leaving for the airport we just threw them in the trash. At first, I was trying to think if we had any friends that liked cigars but then I was like, no I shouldn't give any of my friends cigars because that would be trying to kill them. We need to think of enemies that liked cigars. But we couldn't think of any. Punta Cana album

In March, Karen got to see her goddaughter Sydney Tran for the afternoon. Sydney lives in California, so we don't get many chances to visit. It was really nice to spend time with her!

We also continued our tradition of seeing the Sitkoff family to make hamentashen for Purim (a Jewish holiday). We had foster kittens at the time, so the kids really enjoyed meeting them.

April was pretty exciting because Karen's sister 50th birthday coincided with the total solar eclipse coming to New England. After being amazed by the eclipse in Oregon back in 2017 we all wanted to do it again, so two years ago Karen booked a beautiful Airbnb house in Stowe, Vermont for the long weekend and we invited some family to join us. It snowed shortly before we arrived and there was a perfect sledding hill on the property, and they even provided the sleds so we had a lot of fun with that. We also played plenty of games, went on hikes, toured the Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory, Leo's family did some cross-country skiing, and we all feasted on delicious meals cooked by Leo's mom. After the totality some folks braved the roads to drive home that day (the rest of us waited until the next day). Julia said it was a bit crazy because Google maps claimed that it would take 3 hours to get home, and it continued to give that 3 hour estimate for the next 6 hours. She finally got home after 8 hours of driving with her friends, but she said it was definitely worth it! Vermont eclipse album

In July we got to visit with old family friends Rick and Steve Dill. Steve was one of Karen's best friends while growing up in New York.

At the end of July we took a long weekend trip to Toronto with the four of us. Leo qualified for Grand National Teams in the bridge tournament, so he went early and then the rest of us joined him. Only Leo had been to Toronto before, so we had a great time exploring. It feels kind of like a larger, cleaner, and more polite version of Boston. It was shocking how well-behaved the pedestrians and cars were. Our whole family loves bubble teas so we had them all 4 days in Toronto. One day we decided to rent a car and drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls and that was quite an adventure. We walked from our downtown hotel to the tiny city airport which was the only location that had cars available on a Sunday. We got to where Google maps directed and there was just a small, empty building and no airport. We milled around in confusion a bit and then discovered a pedestrian tunnel! We took the tunnel and popped up on the other side where suddenly there was a tiny airport! Once we got the car we had to take a ferry back. The ferry is a bit anticlimactic and amusing. "The 90-second ferry ride is one of the shortest scheduled ferry rides in the world and travels across the 400-foot-wide Western Gap on Lake Ontario". We did wine tasting, hiked along the Niagara River, and ogled the Las Vegas-like pageantry on display nearby. Oh, and there were also giant waterfalls! We also spent one very enjoyable day biking at Toronto Island Park and going up the CN Tower.

On Leo's birthday in August, we were thrilled to have a few visitors from Russia: Kirill and his son Misha, who are 2nd/3rd cousins.

In honor of Leo's 50th birthday, in the beginning of September we went on a cruise to Greece (where he has always wanted to go), followed by a few days in Athens. The theme of the trip seemed to be epic hikes!
Mykonos: Hiking for many miles along the shore through many beaches until we finally swam at the last one.
Santorini: A most spectacular hike from Fira to Oia (but very hot).
Ephesus, Turkey: A private guided tour of the amazing ancient city.
Kavala: We split up and some did another crazy hike up a mountain while others went to some interesting museums.
Thessaloniki: Really cool hike on Mount Olympus.
Nafplio: Gorgeous fort with a hike up 999 steps up and then a hidden swimming cove after we got back down.
And then we saw as many Athens sights as we could fit in. All in all, a wonderful family trip. Greece album

In September, Leo, Karen, and Gregory went to an Alan Walker concert. Alan Walker is one of our favorite music "artists" (that is in quotes because he doesn't actually perform any of the music himself - instead he is a DJ and producer). It was kind of an odd experience to go to a live concert where no one is actually performing any music, but there were cool light effects, and Alan Walker has good energy as he bounces around the stage. Karen somehow miscalculated the time we needed to get there so we were very early so we used that time to go to the top of the Prudential building for amazing views.

Karen's Dad came for his usual fall visit and when we mentioned that our shower fan had stopped working, he jumped into action, ordering replacement parts and then splicing the wires when the new motor arrived (since the connection type had changed in the last 15 years). Karen was a bit dubious, but it all works perfectly now. We also went on some nice fall hikes. One stop was at the "tallest lighthouse in the country" which was a bit ridiculous because it is at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro which is over 20 miles from the nearest coast, but it was still fun to go up and look around. We also did a very nice educational walk by a cranberry bog.

Karen and Leo had a chance to catch up with some of her college friends in early November when we had a lovely brunch at Gigi's house.

We spent Thanksgiving in Lancaster, PA for a wonderful 3 days of food and games with Karen's cousin Jimmy, his husband Thomas, and Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Jim. Barb, Jarrod, and Grace also joined us starting Friday. We helped put up the Christmas lights, attended the local "Christmas on Main" festival with craft fairs, food trucks, and our very own Aunt Marilyn playing in a handbell concert. We also tried out a new disc golf course nearby that was pretty intense, where some discs flew into a creek, the strong winds sometimes made the discs fly backwards, and one of the holes was really, really long and uphill.

The final trip for the year was at Atlantis Bahamas. Karen was a bit worried her dad wouldn't be able to make it after he fractured his hip in a bicycle accident at the end of October, but his surgery and recovery all went relatively smoothly and he was able to join us, with just a cane for support. Atlantis was tropical and beautiful, and we made full use of their amazing water park. Our favorite water ride was the Rapids River, a mile long loop with giant waves and white water rapids. We went on it over and over while Galina and Katya enjoyed the ocean. We also went to the hot tub nearly every night, spent one day walking all around Nassau (we accidentally wandered off the usual path so got to explore the real residential neighborhoods), played lots of bridge and a few games of "Poopacalypse" (a game gifted during the Secret Santa exchange) and as usual, enjoyed the amazing feasts that Galina prepared. Atlantis album

Leo continues to enjoy his work with WB Games Boston. He is very slowly improving at Rocket League and enjoys playing it with Greg. In addition to continuing to play a lot of Marvel Snap, he also started playing Pokemon Pocket, and just recently started trying to learn Japanese through Duolingo in anticipation of our trip to Japan in the spring! He is currently obsessed with the TV series 'Arcane', having watched it several times - watching reaction videos on the internet, listening to the soundtrack obsessively, talking it up to anyone who would listen, etc. Disc golf continues to be a fun activity on most Saturdays. We even got a group lesson from a disc golf pro as part of an event to promote a possible future course in Attleboro. Leo also continues to enjoy building and taking apart Legos, playing bridge, the Pathfinder campaign, and other fun activities.

Karen is still loving her gig as a solo Salesforce consultant for nonprofits, and the freedom it brings to work for herself. She really enjoyed attending the local "Northeast Dreamin" Salesforce conference in the fall and getting to meet up with some other consultants. She also loved having Friday night dinners with friends. This year we had another 27 foster kitties for the Medfield Animal Shelter, which brings us to 153 fosters total! She's continued to love her Lego projects with Leo. This year she starting buying some used Lego sets off Facebook Marketplace which has been moderately successful. There have been some annoying random missing pieces, lots of taking apart sets, and the awkward meetups that feel a bit illicit where you pull up to another car in a parking lot, load some goods, and hand over a wad of cash, but we did get some pretty cool Lego sets out of it. After the election, Karen was tempted to take Leo's approach of simply avoiding all news altogether, but she couldn't manage to do it. *sigh* Luckily, foster kitties are a good antidote to politics.

Karen with a foster kitten

Gregory is living at home and enjoying working as a software engineer for WB Games Boston. In June, Greg got to take a long-delayed trip to Italy with 4 of his best friends from high school. They had been supposed to go in 2020 but that was cancelled (for obvious reasons). One of his friend's grandmothers has a house near the beach in the suburbs of Rome so they had a great time staying there. And now for a confession. Gregory didn't write any of that, nor did he help choose the Italy photo below. This is Karen writing and Gregory has so little interest in my holiday newsletter that I am betting that he will never see this paragraph. Maybe when he's getting elderly and interested in old family photos and geneology he will stumble across this. Hello old Gregory! In the meantime, let me share with you that Gregory has become OBSESSED with hedgehogs this year. He adopted 7 of them and they live in a potted tree in his room. Okay, fine, I made up that up about the hedgehogs. I figured anyone who made it this far in the family newsletter deserves some entertainment!

Greg with his best friends in Italy and with his favorite hedgehogs

Julia has continued to love her time at Tufts! She is currently in her senior year and has continued to stay actively involved with Tufts Engineers without Borders and with TAing for the Computer Science department. Over the summer, she worked as an intern at Tatum Robotics and is excited to be returning there full-time as a Software Engineer following her graduation this upcoming Spring. Many of her friends (including 7 of her housemates!) were abroad in the Spring, so she enjoyed visiting many of them in London over Spring break. A couple more highlights from this year include being part of a CS TA soccer league, summer camping trips with friends, lots of biking, sunsets, game nights, picnics, and more!

Julia in London and and with friends

Our resident cats (Bliss, Rosie, and Momo) had a few health scares this year (pancreatitis and kidney disease), but overall they are doing well. We also count Galina's cats as family and sadly had to say goodbye to beloved Misty in March. Mina had to adjust to new cat brother when Galina adopted Quincy, one of the kittens Karen fostered. Below are some fun and artsy cat photos that we took this year.

Family cats!

Wishing all our friends and family a happy and healthy 2025!

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