Christmas 2024

 Nadolig Llawen!        Merry Christmas!        Buon Natale!

Christmas 2024.

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

As we come home from a Winter Harp concert, it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over this past year.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2024 brought us mostly very routine living.

Angela, Christy, and their dog, Adam remain well-settled at their leased townhouse in Richmond. Christy continues working her job with Microsoft from home while Angela continues to seek opportunities to apply her new skills with digital modelling while expanding her portfolio preparation. She continues as a ceramics artist, throwing new pieces and showing with the Dusty Babes collective.

David remains active with his music. As principal violist with the New Westminster Symphony  Orchestra, he retains special musical responsibility. We enjoyed their Christmas concert, this year as a full orchestral concert. David also continues to perform with the VSO School of Music’s Camerata Strings adult ensemble, most recently in performance at the Vancouver Playhouse earlier last month.

Apart from his music, David remains happy with his part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. While the Tsawwassen store was closed for renovations, he enjoyed a brief reassignment to Meridian’s Ralph’s Produce store in Langley late last spring. David travel interest took him to Yellowknife to experience Summer Solstice with very long days and night twilight, no full darkness. He now looks forward to a trip to Florida earl/y in the New Year.

David ’s adopted vegan lifestyle remains important to him. In response to his ASD, David continues to see his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina continues to suffer ever stronger back pain that increasingly limits her general activity and requires her to use a disability tag on our car and her walker when out and about. She particularly enjoys Ladner’s Shirley’s Walk as a walk she can handle. Tina now has a new surgeon for her back but has to meet a new weight loss target before surgery can be scheduled.

Tina. David, Angela, Belle, and Adam along Shiley’s Walk on a lovely May Day yeah

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted remains in good health, feeling very well indeed. He remains a participant in the atrial ablation study out of VGH and periodically wears a monitor for a few scheduled weeks. He, Tina, and David did catch Covid-19 in September but, being fully up to date with our vaccinations, its impact was mild. For Ted, he experienced three days of total exhaustion, then it was gone.

Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily and a shorter walk before putting Belle to bed for the night, every day of the week. He easily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day. With Tina taking up swimming as gravity free exercise, he resumed semi-regular swimming, getting back up to 2500 metre swims fairly readily. Ted enjoys his camera, often carrying it while walking Belle. His collection of photos, here around  Ladner and south Delta, certainly continues to grow.

Ted is the one invariably behind the camera and not inclined to take selfies so, instead, here is his view of Saturn from September 9^th at 12:39 AM, a few days after opposition.

(Stack of 53 exposures on Olympus Pen-F at ISO 800 and ⅒ sec. with Dynamax 8 telescope, 2110 mm  f/11 projected through 20 mm eyepiece)

Belle remains our delight, filling life with love and laughter by her spirited dog personality. She remains fascinated with balls, especially well lost ones she finds during her walks and carries home, filling the house with dog balls, tennis balls, lacrosse balls and baseballs! Her susceptibility to ear infection remained well controlled all year. Thankfully, with veterinary care and prescribed medication, last year’s frightening liver condition has not reappeared. Belle is her cheerful self

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with John and Liz. We get together with Norman and Barbara for a few occasions, especially when Gareth and Rosy came up from Oregon to visit them, but will miss them this Christmas with Rosy reaching an age that it is more appropriate to mark the occasion in her own family home with her grandparents visiting.

As winter returned to us, we again watched South Delta’s annual return of vast flocks of Snow Geese, many now continued on to the Skagit River delta and/or California’s Sacramento Valley. Trumpeter Swans are back but less readily noticed than last winter. Resident Bald Eagles returned early, starting to renovate their nests before the end of October but transient Bald Eagles have been slower to return. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, Dark-Eyed Juncos, Song Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, the occasional Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeders as frequently as ever (we have a heated feeder for the very cold weather). Steller’s Jays continue to take our steady supply of in-shell peanuts. Three seem to be constantly together and we suspect they are siblings that must have hatched very near us last summer.

We remain attentive and concerned with events in our world beyond our family. The electoral decision by our neighbours to the south shocked and deeply troubles us. We continue to pray that peace may be restored to a fully intact Ukraine with the ignoble invader driven out. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict keeps us alarmed, such a complex problem! May Israelis find a way out from brutal suppression of their Palestinian neighbours and Palestinian terror extremists moderate their responses so both can find peace together. We accept an apparent end to the civil war in Syria with concern about the successful rebel group. How can that horrible civil war in Yemen and the new outbreak in Sudan resolve? May this season of peace touch all these and other conflicts.

And now we look forward to 2025.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

Merry Christmas with our love,

Ted, Tina, David, Angela, and Christy.

The day after opposition, on the night of December 9^th at 10:53 PM, Ted enjoyed an opportunity to connect his camera to his Dynamax 8 telescope and photograph Jupiter with its four Galilean moons.

(Stack of 6 exposures on Olympus Pen-F at ISO 500 and 1/15 sec. with 2110 mm  f/11 projected through 20 mm eyepiece)

P. S. This letter was scheduled, with intent, to arrive on Christmas Eve .

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!        Happy New Year!        Felice Nuovo Anno!

Christmas 2023

                         Nadolig Llawen!        Merry Christmas!        Buon Natale!

Christmas 2023.

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

Again, at this very special time, it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over this past year.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2023 gave us a mix of very routine living and a substantial challenge within our life experiences.

Angela, Christy, and their dog, Adam remain well-settled at their leased townhouse in Richmond. Christy continues working her job with Microsoft from home while Angela seeks opportunities to apply her new skills with digital modelling. Angela’s year  has been filled with portfolio preparation. The ceramics artist shows through in her digital works and Ted and Tina remain constantly impressed by the beauty in the creations she has showed us As an additional expression of her creative inclination, Angela has taken up sewing and found a wonderful opportunity to purchase a top-of-the-line but antique and fully functional sewing machine, at less cost than current bottom-of-the-line counterparts.

Angela, Studying Her First Sewing Creation

David remains active with his music and continues private study on his viola, with Thomas Beckman. As principal violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, he has special musical responsibility. We enjoyed their Christmas concert with a Richmond dance ensemble. David also continues to perform with the VSO School of Music’s Camerata Strings adult ensemble, most recently in performance at the Vancouver Playhouse earlier last month. The highlight of the year came last Spring the Camerata Strings included David’s composition, Memories, as part of a public concert.

Apart from his music, David remains happy with his part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. He recently received recognition for his five years’ service to the store and enjoys an increased but somewhat variable working schedule. David has picked up an interest in travel, arranging and taking his first ever flight on his owner a trip to Ontario. He now plans two trips away in the new year.

David ’s adopted vegan lifestyle remains important for him. In response to his ASD, David continues to see his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina continues to suffer ever stronger back pain that increasingly limits her general activity. She qualified for a disability tag on our car and uses her walker when out and about, a great help when Tina has to walk more than a few steps. That scheduled initial appointment with a surgeon in January only led to heartbreaking disappointment for Tina in particular and for our whole family. With new referrals, she is back to waiting on other scheduled initial appointments with different  surgeons, one not until 2025, November, the other pending the result of an upcoming MRI.

Tina and David at North 40 for Belle’s Second Birthday, July 1st

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues stable; in fact, he feels very well indeed. He remains a participant in the atrial ablation study out of VGH and periodically wears a monitor for a few scheduled weeks. Otherwise, he has not even been bothered by any occasional colds this year.

Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily with our Poodle, Belle, as a companion, every day of the week, allowing him easily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day. Ted enjoys his camera, often carrying it while walking Belle. His collection of photos, here around Ladner and south Delta, certainly has not stopped growing.

Belle remains an utter delight, filling our lives with love and laughter with her spirited dog personality. Her fascination for balls, especially well lost ones she finds during her walks and carries home, gives us dog balls, tennis balls, lacrosse balls and baseballs everywhere! Ear infections and a frightening liver condition worried us but with veterinary care and prescribed medication, Belle is her cheerful self.

Ted’s Favourite Belle Portrait

With its diversifying new variants, COVID-19 remains an active concern. All of us have kept up to date with booster vaccinations and strive to avoid exposure. As usual, we all had our Flu shots soon  after they came available.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with John and Liz. We get together with Norman and Barbara for a few occasions, especially when Gareth and Rosy came up from Oregon to visit them, as will be for this Christmas.

As winter returned to us, we again watched South Delta’s annual return of vast flocks of Snow Geese, many now continued on to the Skagit River delta and/or California’s Sacramento Valley. Trumpeter Swans are back and more readily noticed than last winter.  Resident Bald Eagles returned early, starting to renovate their nests before the end of October. Now, trees along Highway 10 and in the North 40 Park Reserve have started to burst into our annual crop of transient Bald Eagles. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, Dark-Eyed Juncos, Song Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, the occasional Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeders as frequently as ever (we have a heated feeder for the very cold weather). Steller’s Jays continue to take our steady supply of in-shell peanuts. Four seem to be constantly together and we suspect they make up a family that must have nested very near us last summer. As we write, a huge flock of Red Winged Blackbirds is settling into our backyard Hawthorne trees. They won’t stay long but they’re great to see.

Trumpeter Swans on a Ladner Farm Field, December 19th

We remain attentive and concerned with events in our world beyond our family. We pray that peace may be restored to a fully intact Ukraine with the ignoble invader driven out. The new Israeli/Palestinian conflict has us alarmed, such a complex problem! May Israelis find a way out from brutal suppression of their Palestinian neighbours and Palestinian terror extremists moderate their responses so both can find peace together. When, oh when, will the civil wars in Syria and Yemen resolve, sadly, not as long as other powers continue using the various sides as proxies. May this season of peace touch all these and other conflicts.

And now we look forward to 2024.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

Merry Christmas with our love,

Ted, Tina, David, Angela, and Christy.

P. S. This letter was scheduled, with intent, to arrive on Christmas Eve but has ended up delayed with our apologies .

        Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!        Happy New Year!        Felice Nuovo Anno!

Christmas 2022

Nadolig Llawen!        Merry Christmas!        Buon Natale!

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

Again, at this very special time, it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over this past year.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2022 certainly kept up the flow of different and more limited life experiences.

As the year winds down, Angela has just completed her studies in computerized three-dimensional modelling at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Angela’s artistic talent has always been primarily three-dimensional. This BCIT course of study was very intense, demanding her full-time attention but she excelled. What Tina and I have seen of Angela’s digital creations so far impresses us as amazing.

Angela, Christy, and their dog, Adam remain well-settled at their leased townhouse in Richmond. Christy continues working her job with Microsoft from home while Angela worked hard at her studies.

David continues private study on his viola, with Thomas Beckman, Principal Violist with the Prince George Symphony, online through most of the year with occasional in-person sessions. David remains a violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra. Much to David’s delight, the orchestra continues with in-person rehearsals but he is concerned that concert opportunities remain disrupted. Happily for David, the Camerata Strings ensemble at the VSO School of Music also remains active and gave a public performance at the Vancouver Playhouse earlier last month.

Apart from his music, David remains happy with his part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. He has had his working schedule increased. As a grocery store worker, David is among “essential” workers and experiences no loss of work as a consequence of COVID-19.

As a change in David’s life, he has adopted a vegan lifestyle. Following David’s ASD specialist psychiatrist’s retirement, David continues to see his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina among spring blossoms with David and Angela at Paulik Garden in Richmond

Tina continues to enjoy complete retirement from nursing but her health remains a challenge as she continues to suffer increasing back pain that imposes increasing limits on her general activity. She uses her walker when out and about, a great help when Tina has to walk more than a few steps. Tina did receive intermittent treatments giving tiny and only temporary relief. Finally, in January after a three and a half year wait, she will see a surgeon for a first appointment whom we hope to find helpful

Ted with Belle at the North 40 Park Reserve, Delta’s large off-leash dog park

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues stable; in fact, he feels very well indeed. He remains a participant in the atrial ablation study out of VGH and periodically wears a monitor for a few scheduled weeks. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds.Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily with our Poodle, Belle, as a companion, every day of the week. Belle fills our lives with her spirited dog personality. These long walks allow Ted easily to exceed the recommended minimum of 10,000 steps per day. Otherwise, Ted enjoys his camera, often carrying it while walking Belle. His collection of photos, here around Ladner and south Delta, keeps growing.

Belle among summer buttercups at the Patterson Park off-leash area

COVID-19 remains the dominant unsettling factor in our lives. Even with eased restrictions, public indoor mask-wearing, physical distancing, and limited public gathering all remain our norm. All of us accepted COVID booster vaccinations throughout the year. On top of continuing COVID variability, flu is expected to be particularly nasty this winter. As usual, we all had our Flu shots soon after they came available.

A bit of drama came our way during the summer when Ted had a car accident. ICBC ruled our Mazda MPV as a write-off and we had to seek an alternative. The insurance settlement allowed us to replace it with a nice little used Kia Spectra.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with John and Liz. COVID-19 restriction relaxation throughout the year did allow us to get together with Norman and Barbara on a few occasions, especially when Gareth and Rosy came up from Oregon to visit them. 

Weather variability extremes have become more to be expected with anthropogenic climate change but we really feel the past week’s sharp cold snap. Heavier than usual snowfall even proved challenging for Belle as she preferred being out on previously tromped paths over pushing through deep snow.

As winter returned to us, we watched South Delta’s annual return of vast flocks of Snow Geese, many now continued on to the Skagit River delta and/or California’s Sacramento Valley. Trumpeter Swans are back but not as readily noticed as with other winters. Resident Bald Eagles have now returned to renovate their nests. Very soon, trees along Highway 10 will burst into our annual crop of transient Bald Eagles. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, Dark-Eyed Juncos, Song Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, the occasional Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeder as frequently as ever (we have a heated feeder for the very cold weather). Steller’s Jays continue to take our steady supply of in-shell peanuts less frequently. The current snow has brought flocks of Red-Winged Blackbirds to our feeder. When we bought this house we gave it the name Ty Adar, Welsh for “House of the Birds,” and how right we were.

We remain attentive and concerned with events beyond our family. The attempted insurrection early in January to thwart the electoral will of our neighbours to our south gave a strong shock. As 2021 wound down we shared dismay with the rest of the world at the Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s borders but were really alarmed last February 24th when Vladimir Putin actually had his military invade his peaceable neighbour on very spurious grounds. Ted eventually had to have some say, sharing his thoughts on his blog. We pray that peace may quickly be restored to a fully intact Ukraine with the ignoble invader driven out of that sovereign nation.

And now we look forward to 2023, to hope for continuing COVID-19 decline, a flu season not as severe as anticipated, a return to peace wherever conflict threatens people’s lives all around the world, and a more normal year.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

Merry Christmas with our love,

Ted, Tina, David, Angela, and Christy

P. S. This letter was scheduled, with intent, to arrive on Christmas Eve. 

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!        Happy New Year!        Felice Nuovo Anno!

Christmas 2021

Nadolig Llawen!            Merry Christmas!            Buon Natale!

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

Again, at this very special time, it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over this past, continuing unusual, year.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2021 certainly kept up the flow of very different life experiences, including major changes within our family.

Angela experienced 2021’s greatest change. With COVID-19, she and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective had to remain with markedly reduced work in their ceramic art studio in south Surrey near White Rock. The property owner from whom the Dusty Babes rented the site finally moved to redevelop it and the Dusty Babes had to vacate at the end of October. Much of Angela’s equipment, supplies, and works came home to storage with us. Through the spring, Angela continued her part time position as the lead ceramics studio technician for the Semiahmoo Arts Society in the South Surrey Recreation Centre, working Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and teaching ceramic art classes of limited class size to meet COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday evenings. Late in the spring, Angela left that position to take up a new challenge and finished her work by training her replacement.

Angela’s new challenge? A big change, yet in many ways, not so big as she enrolled in a computerized three dimensional modelling program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Angela’s artistic bent has always been primarily three dimensional. This BCIT course of study is very intense, demanding her full-time attention. With her first term, she worked entirely online but the second term meant taking in-person classes at BCIT. What Tina and I have seen of Angela’s digital creations so far impress us as amazing.

Losing the the Dusty Babes’ studio, leaving her employment, and taking on new studies do not limit Angela’s changes this year. She moved out in May as she and Christy leased a townhouse in Richmond that Adam found for them (They had been looking for a place of their own for a while when, while returning to Christy’s car after checking possibilities in Richmond and walking Adam, Adam insisted on turning up a street they had not considered. On that street, they found a small townhouse complex with a vacancy, just right for them, and it also allowed tenants to keep a pet). The three of them are now well settled in with Christy working her job with Microsoft from home and Angela working hard at her studies.

David continued private study on his viola, with Thomas Beckman, online through the spring but in person this fall. In September’, he grieved the sudden passing of his previous viola coach, Robert Hirschhorn Rozek. David remains a violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, but really missed in person rehearsing and performing under conductor, Jack (Jin) Zhang as disrupted by COVID-19. The orchestra assembled another online performance this spring. Much to David’s delight, this October the orchestra resumed in person rehearsals but without a concert for a live audience. instead, the orchestra videoed this concert for release in the New Year. Happily for David, the Camerata Strings ensemble resumed in September and gave a public performance earlier this month.

Apart from his music, David continues to enjoy his Monday and Thursday part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. As a grocery store worker, David is among “essential” workers and continues to experience no loss of work as a consequence of COVID-19.

David’s ASD specialist psychiatrist will retire with the end of this year, leaving him with his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina continues to enjoy complete retirement from nursing but her health remains a challenge as she continues to suffer increasing back pain that imposes increasing limits on her general activity. She accepted buying a walker, a great help when Tina has to move more than a few steps, and she qualified for a disabled person parking tag for our car. Tina received a long anticipated treatment earlier this month and looks forward, with hope, to her next treatment opportunity in the New Year.

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues stable; generally he feels very well indeed. He did experience another bout of atrial fibrillation in the spring, Again, his heart doctors decided he needed cardioversion to correct it in April and again used external stimulation instead of making Ted’s ICD jolt his heart. Having dropped into persistant atrial fibrillation three times over the past few years, Ted’s doctors saw need for more active treatment, atrial ablation. In spite of having remained in sinus rhythm since the last cardioversion, Ted accepted an invitation to participate in an atrial ablation study and received the procedure in the middle of September. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds but developed Plantar Fasciitis of both heels during the summer, relieved with physiotherapy and a pair of Strassburg Socks.

Ted celebrated a landmark birthday, his 75^th, and received the pooled gift from the whole family, including his brothers, of an Apple Watch.

Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily with dog companionship, every day of the week.  These long walks allow Ted readily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day. Otherwise, Ted enjoys in his camera, often carrying it while walking the dog. His collection of photos, here around Ladner and south Delta, keeps growing.

With the current situation, we again did not take a get-away this year, as so many of us have been obliged to do. As we are sure is the case with the rest of you, COVID-19 remains the dominant unsettling factor in our lives. Public indoor mask wearing, physical distancing, and limited public gathering have all become our norm. All of us accepted the two COVID vaccinations through the summer and Ted received the invitation to take the third, booster, shot late in the autumn and readily followed up. Both Tina and David are now booked for their booster stots early in the New Year. Angela awaits her booster invitation/notification.

Another change: with Adam gone with Angela, we missed having a dog around our home. Tina particularly missed Adam’s company and we filled the gap with a puppy late in August. She is also a Standard Poodle, this time from a breeder in Langley, also red but with white markings. Belle fills our lives with her spirited dog personality and, enjoying long walks just as much as Adam, guarantees that Ted exercises.

The new puppy, Belle has grown a lot since Ted took this photo at the beginning of September.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with Norman and Barbara and with John and Liz but COVID-19 restriction relaxation during the Autumn did allow us to get together with Norman and Barbara for a few occasions.

We share in the whole world’s experience of anthropogenic climate change. New meteorological terminology, “heat dome” and “atmospheric river” really hit home to us with extraordinarily hot weather at the end of June and early July and heavy rains late this autumn that isolated Greater Vancouver from the rest of British Columbia with flooding in the Fraser Valley and all mountain highways cut by numerous washouts. As the year ends, the highways are being repaired back into service.

As winter returned to us, we enjoyed south Delta’s annual return of vast flocks of Snow Geese, many now  continued on to the Skagit River delta and/or California’s Sacramento Valley. Trumpeter Swans are back but not as readily noticed as with other winters. Resident Bald Eagles have now returned to renovate their nests. Very soon, trees along Highway 10 will burst into our annual crop of transient Bald Eagles. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, Juncos, Song Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, the occasional Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeder as frequently ever. Steller’s Jays enjoy our steady supply of in-shell peanuts less frequently ever since the cedar hedge on the other side of Ladner Elementary School was cut down for redevelopment of a single house lot into two homes. The Jays must have used the hedge as their roost. We continue to enjoy the George C Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary although COVID-19 has drastically limited our visits.

And now we look forward to 2022, to hope for COVID-19 decline, and a more normal year.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Merry and Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

Merry Christmas with our love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

P. S. This letter was deliberately intended to arrive on Christmas Eve and Ted completed the first draft in time but simply living and keeping a puppy dog  active held priority over revisions.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!                Happy New Year!                Felice Nuovo Anno!

Christmas Letter, '18

Nadolig Llawen! Merry Christmas! Buon Natale!

Christmas 2018.

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

Again it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  We hope you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2018 brought challenges and changes.

Tina continued to take casual shifts, nursing at VGH while she enjoyed her retirement but found those shifts increasingly wearing on her health. She took complete retirement in the spring and feels the release from ward nursing  For the first half of the year, she also kept up her cello lessons at the Delta Community Music School under the tutelage of Bo Peng, accepting gradually increasingly more challenging music to learn. With autumn, Tina changed from private lessons to joining the Camerata Strings adult ensemble in the VSO School of Music. She, now, enjoys the new cello music and playing as part of an ensemble.

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues as stable although the atrial fibrillation that developed very late last year persisted well into this year, long enough that his heart doctors decided he needed cardioversion to correct it. This was a very simple procedure, the doctor simply made Ted’s ICD jolt his heart. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds.  While in atrial fibrillation, Ted did have to ease off on his swimming and cycling exercise routine, substituting long walks with Angela's dog, Adam.  In addition, a change in Angela’s working schedule meant that he continues to walk Adam twice a day, most days of the week.  These are long walks that can take an hour or more each and Ted routinely exceeds the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day by a substantial margin.

Angela and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective continue to work in their ceramic art studio in South Surrey near White Rock. She spends much of Tuesdays to Fridays with her own works at the studio.  Angela continues her part-time position as the lead ceramics studio technician for the South Surrey Recreation Centre, working Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and teaching ceramics classes at South Surrey on Tuesday evenings. From time to time she also teaches on Saturday mornings or Wednesday evenings. Angelo teaches mainly adult classes which vary from those for absolute beginners to classes in more advanced ceramics skills. Most recently, she taught glazing. This class involved presenting much more theory than any of the other classes she has been teaching. After the first session, Angela announced, "I have never talked so much in all my life!" Busy at South Surrey, Angela left her one day a week studio technician position at Vancouver’s West End Community Centre early in the new year.

Tina and Ted both remain in wonder at the beauty of Angela’s ceramic creations which range from handcrafted ceramic buttons through cups and bowls of various sizes and exquisitely delicate ceramic sculptures to large vases. Last May and June, the Dusty Babes received the honour of having a main gallery showing in a public art gallery, the Gibsons Public Art Gallery. The Dusty Babes also hosted an open studio showing and sale, just this month, presenting works by the entire collective. Angela remains an active member of the Potters Guild of BC, participating with their substantial changes at the Gallery of BC Ceramics.

Outside of her art, Angela continues her interest in sophisticated board games and computer gaming which she shares with her girlfriend, Christy, enjoying relaxing time to play and be together each Sunday afternoon and evening.

David completed his musical studies as a founding student in the new strings program within the Music Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University at the Langley campus, earning a Bachelor of Music in Musical Arts degree, specialized on his viola. His studies gave him great success while he really enjoys the associated performance opportunities.  The strings program remained very small which meant that no large ensemble (required as part the music degree program) existed, and KPU continued to send their strings players to the Langley School District Honour Orchestra who rehearsed on campus in order to make up that large ensemble. David played Principal Viola. Kwantlen also required music students to participate in small ensembles and kept the chamber orchestra under instruction from the Borealis String Quartet as a small ensemble. We enjoyed end-of-term recitals and concert performances by David as a solo performer with piano accompaniment, by the Chamber Orchestra, and by the full orchestra.  Outside university, David continued with private study on his viola with Robert Hirschhorn Rozek and keeps those studies up.

Last spring, David rehearsed and performed with the West Coast Symphony Orchestra, a semi-professional organization that mixes professional and amateur musicians. After KPU graduation, David continued to watch for opportunities in other orchestras. He found the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra to be a better fit for him and joined in September, really enjoying rehearsing and performing under conductor, Jack (Jin) Zhang and a guest conductor. David also plays his viola with the Camerata Strings adult ensemble in the VSO School of Music. In both cases, David is playing as an amateur but he watches for professional opportunities to arise.

David continues to enjoy writing, especially fiction, with which he extends his imagination. He continues his major rewrite of The Stolen Treasure, a novel he had originally developed as a young teen.  His novel, The Sheltered Life of Betsy Parker, published three years ago as a digital copy, continues to draw ongoing interest and responses on the GoodReads literary sharing site. David keeps the second addition available both digitally and as hardcopy on Amazon. Apart from his music and his writing, David has found part-time employment with Meridian Farm Market at their store in Tsawwassen, working two days a week. He continues to keep a lookout for other non-music employment opportunities.

David’s ASD remains a significant factor in his life, limiting his social connection among his contemporaries and gave him another crisis mental health issue this autumn. He has the courage to share this publicly. His ASD specialist psychiatrist and our minister at Ladner United Church, together, give David wonderful support in response through that issue. Tina and Ted feel deeply thankful for such readily at-hand support. David's ASD psychiatrist does travel a lot in his work and asked David to find a fall-back professional for those occasions when David may need urgent support while he is away. For this, David has reconnected with the Able Developmental Clinic and their principal psychologist who assessed David as a child.

Other than a few quick trips to Vancouver Island, our only get-away this year was, again, a return to Cusheon Lake Resort on Salt Spring Island for the Canada Day weekend.  This brought us our familiar enjoyments of the lake, Beddis Beach, Ruckle Park, Ganges, and Salt Spring Island Gelato at Harlan’s as well as the, remarkable for a small community, Canada Day fireworks.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family. With Ted’s brother Norman, wife Barbara, and son Evan living nearby, we share visits regularly. Evan and his business partner keep very busy establishing their construction contracting business, Form to Finish Construction. Evan’s brother, Gareth completed his post-doctoral work at Melbourne University (Australia) and returned to North America during the summer, taking an Assistant Professorship position at Western Oregon University with the responsibility to create a new environmental research laboratory. While settling in at Monmouth, Oregon, Gareth, his wife Zoë, and baby daughter Rosy took a brief opportunity to visit home with Norman and Barbara and join us for one of our visits to the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, We look forward to when they come again after Christmas. At Thanksgiving, Ted’s second great-nice*, Cassie Hopkins, her brother Luke, and his new bride Adele, graced us in sharing our festive dinner, letting us connect more closely with remote family. Early in November, Ted’s brother, John and daughter Leah visited from Calgary, enjoying Adam and Norman’s dog, Lola’s time in the North 40 Dog Off-Leash Park.

Several years ago, Ted had done genealogical DNA testing with 23andMe. Angela gave Tina a 23andMe kit for her birthday this year. As part of their service, they advise of others in their database with closely matching DNA.  Both of us continue to discover relatives previously not known to us. Ted found a distant cousin living in Sydney, Australia, who is related on the Butchart line of his mother’s side of the family. She is most enthusiastic about our family connection. Tina found Petraccione relatives, the son of one first cousin and the daughter of another first cousin plus several other not yet resolved possible connections. She looks forward to discovering connections on the Crompton side of her family.

Looking beyond ourselves, here in British Columbia, we participated in the referendum on electoral reform. Together, we found ourselves ill at ease with the options offered in support of so-called proportional representation. As a life-long voter who has prided himself as a vote-the-person voter and not a vote-the-party voter, Ted is particularly uncomfortable with the idea of placing MLAs into our legislature for whom nobody has directly had an opportunity to cast a personal vote. He could only see the partial option for a preferential ballot (STV) as somewhat reasonable. since he has long hoped B. C. would return to voting with a preferential ballot. Ted remains troubled by the direction Canada’s federal government continues to take: not enough of the promised “real change” and too much keeping the destructive policies of the defeated previous government. This applies most strikingly to the government’s approach to so-called free trade treaties (more accurately characterized as international corporate protection deals) containing the sovereignty-attacking ISDS provision that treats international business corporations not as subjects of nations and welcome guests within other nations but more as non-territorial kingdoms apart from and equal with nations. Ted is pleased that ISDS did get removed during the NAFTA renegotiation into the new USMCA treaty. It does remain in the CTPP agreement and as part of the ongoing negotiations towards the TiSA. We also share a certain unease with many around us at the actions of the current President of our neighbours to the south and his insistence on denying anthropogenic climate change, feeling some satisfaction that Congress is no longer Republican dominated. We continue to share many Canadian’s concern for the plight of the many refugees from those horrible civil wars in Syria and Yemen.

Perhaps the greatest change among us was with our family pets. Well past her eighteenth year, our calico cat, Catinka, remained very much queen of our house but, over the summer, showed every sign of remaining healthy but elderly, losing weight and moving more carefully, yet very much still her confident self. Then we lost her. She simply disappeared. A neighbourhood lady told how two of her cats had successively grown elderly and disappeared without a trace. It seems that it is an elderly cat thing to have a sense that the end has come and find a very very private place to die. We miss our Catinka dearly. Angela’s ducks continued to hold authority over our backyard. Jemima and Rebeccah again resumed their egg production with the new year, almost as heavily as last year, giving eggs all through the spring and into summer. Then came mid-August when we lost them to unknown wildlife.

Adam, Angela’s red-haired standard poodle, continues to endear himself to us all.  He keeps quite the collection of “friends” that he loves to greet and engage in play when out and about, his favourite game being “Chase Me,” running in great circles centred on the one of us who is out with him while his “friend” chases him along an inner circle.  To Adam’s dismay, many of his “friends” give up on this game. He runs too fast for them. Adam has much of Ladner well mapped in his head and his chosen routes when we walk are many and varied.

As winter came back to us, we are enjoying south Delta’s annual return of Trumpeter Swans and the vast flocks of Snow Geese. Very soon, trees along Highway 10 will burst into our annual crop of Bald Eagles. Early last summer, Ted had the privilege to show off to an Australian visitor several of Lander’s resident Bald Eagle nests with their near fledged youngsters. He also shared our own resident Steller’s Jays, the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, and the great Tsawwassen Heronry with this visitor. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, and Juncos while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeder more frequently and Steller’s Jays enjoy our steady supply of peanuts.

Ted continues to seek players to experiment with his invented team sports of Two Ball and Delta.  Lacking sufficient contact of his own among sports-minded youth, he continues to approach schools as their Physical Education and intramural sports programs likely offer the best chance of drawing sufficiently large groups of players together.  This remains disappointing as no schools have taken up either game yet.  Ted also keeps up his web presence for the games, periodically posting to the site blog, and on Facebook.  These continue to catch some attention worldwide, but he still awaits word of anyone actually playing either game.  You remain invited to have a look, perhaps to draw the games to the attention of sport-minded people you may know.

And now we look forward to 2019.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Merry and Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

With our Christmas love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

P. S. That this letter arrives on Christmas Eve is entirely deliberate.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! Happy New Year! Felice Nuovo Anno!