Last years' letter ... actually, there was no last year's letter, we never got one out the door. So we start somewhere in 2011:
In September Deb left her job at the hospital (yay!) and started working two new part-time contract jobs. One is a small clinic, Santa Fe Therapy Associates. The other, New Vistas Early Intervention, is home-based birth to age 3 intervention.
In October, Saskia moved from Holland to Silver City, New Mexico and started work at Hidalgo Medical Services towards completing her Master's thesis. Silver is in the same time zone as Santa Fe, and only 5 1/2 hours driving from here. It is an interesting town, with artists and miners, and the beautiful Gila wilderness to the North. (picture taken at City of Rocks State Park, nearby)
In December 2011, Niels moved home from Rochester, NY. He had finished all his coursework at RIT, and started working with a small off-campus software firm on an internship, the last requirement before getting his BS in game design and development. In this modern world, you can do this from anywhere, so he and Hubert emptied his apartment in Rochester, loaded up the car and drove home to Santa Fe, narrowly avoiding a blizzard.
We were now all living in the same state again, so we spent Christmas together.
In late 2011, Hubert's dad had been diagnosed with multiple myelenoma, but after chemo was on the mend again. However in January he was hospitalized once more. This time Hubert flew to Holland, and his sister Sofia flew in from Suriname. We got hospice care arranged for him at his home, and Hubert and Sofia spent two weeks with him, talking and arranging affairs. When the situation appeared stable, and his dad was even talking about physiotherapy to get more mobile again, Hubert flew home. However, a few days later his dad passed away. Deb, Niels and Hubert went to Holland for the funeral. We stayed for a short while, working alongside Hubert’s three sisters, brother, and spouses, to close up the house where they all grew up.
The picture is a self-portait from 1943. In November, we helped organize an exhibit and sale of his paintings, drawings and etchings , which was quite successful.
Back to February: We got a new kitchen! We had been talking about this for many years, but we finally did it. Because of the slow economy, everything went super fast, no waiting for (sub) contractors, delivery times were always much shorter than expected.
Deb had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome on both hands, staggered by two weeks. This ended up coinciding with the kitchen remodel. Luckily the kids were able to help with emptying the kitchen! Where did all of that stuff come from, anyway!?
In May 2012, Niels completed his BS is Game Design and Development and began a job search. So far he has landed several free lance projects but is still looking for a job with benefits so that he can pay off his student loans.
Also in May, Deb's nephew, Peyton Pollard, graduated from high school in Baton Rouge. She was there to cheer for him. He is enrolled in a pre-med program in Mississippi. Upon returning from the airport, we rushed off to the town of Placitas, NM, which was right on the path of totality to view the annular solar eclipse, which was quite breath-taking. Our friend Jin Huang posted these pictures from the viewing party.
Then in June came the transit of Venus, the last for a century. Using the same gear we had for the solar eclipse, we observed the transit from Santa Fe (Deb) and from the Phenix parking lot on Long Island (Hubert).
July 2012: At the International Folk Art Market Deb was an artist's assistant for Maria Pedro Martinez, a ceramic artist from Oaxaca who creates black pottery figures of women clothed in traditional costumes. Maria's husband, who is also her business manager, accompanied her. They are both medical doctors and are delightful people to spend time with.
In July, Hubert, Deb and Niels visited Saskia in Silver City. There they saw their first ever Monsoon Puppet Parade, which featured Saskia as a seagull and her partner in crime Andrew as a conductor on stilts. We stayed at the giant house where Saskia was house sitting and enjoyed the vast menagerie of animals there. We were fortunate that our visit coincided with the visit of Cheryl and Gerry Tegarden, the parents of Saskia’s significant other. It was a fun time with excellent food and home brewed beer.
For years, we had wanted to go to Glacier National Park, but we didn't quite know how. As luck would have it, we met our friends, Annemarie and Len from the Netherlands. They leased us their camper, named 'Dutch Annie' and we drove to Glacier in September. We hiked up to Grinnell glacier, and on the way we were able to view big horn sheep and mountain goats, but fortunately not the native brown and grizzly bears. The bears, we saw once we were back in our vehicle and headed back to the campground. A brown bear did stroll though the campground but was not interested in us because we had all of our food stored out of sight and smell!
In Glacier, every turn offers a postcard view. But hurry if you want to see it - of the 150 glaciers that were in the park when it was established, only 25 remain, and they are going fast.
On the way home from Glacier, we stopped at Antelope Canyon in Arizona and toured the slot canyons. This provided a much-needed driving break as well as a chance to see these world-famous slot canyons. After we returned Dutch Annie to storage in Arizona, we drove back to Santa Fe via Silver City, where we stayed at Saskia and Andrew’s new house, making us the first guests to visit the new abode.
October came and Hubert made this Halloween costume that made him look a bit disjointed. Most of the trick-or-treaters liked it very much, but some were not so sure.
December came. We drove south to spend Christmas in Corpus Christi with Saskia, Andrew, Niels and the Tegarden family. It was warm enough one day to swim in the Gulf of Mexico. The grapefruit was ripe and so delicious. We were gifted with a huge box to bring home with us.
On the way there we stopped at the Caverns of Sonora in Sonora, TX. These caverns are much smaller than those in Carlsbad, NM, but much more decorated. They are well worth the stop if you are ever traveling on I-10 through Texas.
One day we went for a walk on the beach at the Aransas Wildlife Refuge. It had been blowing and the beach was covered with plastic debris. We gathered up as much as we could carry and disposed of it. We were surprised that there were no trash bins to be found on the island.
Between Christmas and New Years, we attended a reunion in New Iberia, LA, that is held every 4 years with fellow Centenary College alumni, the 'New York 7'. This event was non-stop fun. We had not seen many of these fellow classmates in 40 years. Events that were organized included delicious home-cooked meals, big dinners in restaurants in New Iberia and Breaux Bridge, screenings of informative movies by James Edmonds, evenings of singing, and a bike tour of ancient live oaks in the area. We haven't laughed and eaten this much in 3 days in a long, long time. After the reunion, we rolled back to Santa Fe, having traveled 2700 miles in less than 2 weeks! Well worth it.
