Christmas Letter '16

Nadolig Llawen! Merry Christmas! Buon Natale!

Christmas 2016.

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.  2016 has been very much a typical year for us, happy with very ordinary challenges.

Tina continues to take casual shifts, nursing at VGH  while she enjoys her retirement.  She also keeps up her cello lessons at the Delta Community Music School under the tutelage of Bo Peng, accepting gradually increasingly more challenging music to learn.  Although Tina intended to resume taking harp instruction as well, that just did not work out again for this year; perhaps in the new year.

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues as stable, with only occasional colds and a few dental issues.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2500 m. in roughly 50 min.) with 3 days of cycling (16.4 km. in roughly 50 min.), sometimes substituting a good stiff walk (a little over 4.3 km. in roughly 45 min.).  In addition, Ted often walks Adam once or twice a day, depending on Angela’s working and studio activities.  With stops for sniffing and other doggy business, these walks do not constitute measurable exercise but can take an hour or more each.

Angela and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective continue to work in their studio in south Surrey near White Rock. She spends much of Tuesdays to Fridays with her own works at the studio.  Angela left her part-time work at Spawts last spring.  Instead she added another part time position as Monday ceramics studio technician for the South Surrey Recreation Centre to her Saturday ceramics studio technician work for Vancouver’s West End Community Centre.  Tina and Ted both remain in wonder at the beauty of Angela’s ceramic creations which range from hand crafted ceramic buttons through cups and bowls of various sizes and exquisitely delicate ceramic sculptures to large vases. The Dusty Babes had two exclusive gallery showings of their ceramic art works, the first, in July, was their Vanity Publishing show at the Pop Up Newton Gallery in Surrey’s Newton town centre. This show emphasized the Dusty Babes more artistic ceramic creativity and included Angela's “Wallflowers,” a collection imaginative decorative ceramic flower sculptures dispersed across one wall of the gallery. This month their Comfort Show at Pop-Up-Town Gallery in White Rock featured their more functional, pragmatic, ceramic works, all presented for public sale. Angela included beautiful vases, mugs, and bowls. Their open house in October give the public opportunity to see their works in progress within their various studio spaces. Now, the Dusty Babes look forward to fulfilling their invitation to show at the prestigious British Columbia Gallery of Ceramics not yet scheduled in the new year.

Outside of her art, Angela has developed a growing interest in sophisticated board games with which she shares with her girlfriend, Christie, and English as a Second Language teacher whom she met a year and a half ago.

David continues his musical studies as a founding student in the new strings music program within the Music Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, commuting to the Langley campus.  His focus remains on his viola, giving him great success while he really enjoys his studies.  The strings program remains very small which means that no large ensemble (required by the Kwantlen Music Department) exists, so the university continues to send him and the cello students to play with the Trinity Western University Orchestra. This should change with the new term in January as KPU anticipates having enough string students to put together their own, rather small, large ensemble. Kwantlen also requires music students to participate in small ensembles and we enjoyed the end-of-term recitals and concert performances by David's string quartet (David, the cello student, a flute student from Kwantlen Music's wind program and a piano student from Kwantlen Music’s piano program) in April and by his two trios (one with David, a cello student, and a piano student, the other with David, the same cello student, and a harp student) at the end of term this month.  Outside university, David continues with private study on his viola with Robert Hirschhorn Rozak.

Although studying music at Kwanten, David continues private study on piano, at the Delta Community Music school, in Garth Preston’s studio.  He also continued to play with the adult Richmond Orchestra for the first half of the year but decided to focus more on his KPU musical studies and did not return to the orchestra when it started preparing for it's new season in September. With the change in KPU’s large ensemble for strings scheduling, he anticipates being free to take his viola to play and perform with the Stradivari Ensemble in the New Year.  We had a surprise when we attended the Vancouver Welsh Mens’ Choir/Winter Harp Christmas concert as one of the choir members approached David to join the choir.  He excitedly looks forward to giving this a try when the VWMC resumes rehearsals with the New Year.

David continues to enjoy writing, especially fiction, with which he extends his imagination.  The novel, The Sheltered Life of Betsy Parker, that he published last year as a digital copy has drawn ongoing interest and responses on the GoodReads literary sharing site. David received sufficient feedback that he made some significant revisions to the novel and published a second addition, now available both digitally and as hardcopy on Amazon. David has also taken two the events in the novel and written piano tunes attached to those events, drawing interest from his instructors at KPU. In the same way, one of David's written assignments this past term drew such interest that his instructor passed the work on to David's Music Technology instructor for development into a musical project in the new term starting in January.

David’s ASD remains a significant factor in his life, limiting his social connection among his contemporaries and gave him a crisis mental health issue late last spring. His ASD specialist psychiatrist and our minister at Ladner United Church, together, give David wonderful support in response through that issue. Tina and I feel deeply thankful that David continued connection with his ASD specialist psychiatrist while he had no significant ASD issues for psychiatric attention. Dr. Bailey was thus able to respond promptly when this issue arose.

Other than a few quick trips to Vancouver Island, we did not take a get-away this year.  On one off those trips we enjoyed visiting with Ted’s former schoolmates, Dick and Lynn Zandee at their beautiful home in Duncan.

This year brought few life events for us to mark, the one of significance being that Ted joined all other first-year Baby Boomers in celebrating his seventieth birthday in March.  We shared an early "Christmas" as Ted’s brother Norman and his wife Barbara prepared to leave for Australia for a Christmas visit with their son Gareth and wife Zoë at the University of Melbourne where Gareth works on a post-doctoral fellowship studying the effects of artificial lighting on cricket and other insect populations.

Looking beyond ourselves, Ted grows increasingly concerned with the direction Canada’s new federal government takes: not enough of the promised “real change” and too much keeping the troubling policies of the previous government.  This applies most particularly to the approach to so-called free trade treaties that are more accurately characterized as corporate protection deals containing the sovereignty attacking ISDS provision. Ted has written open letters to our MP, the Prime Minister, and other appropriate Federal ministers and Opposition critics and copied them to his blog.  We also share a certain unease with many around us at the result of the Presidential election among our neighbours to the south.

We share many Canadian’s concern for the plight of the many refugees from that horrible civil war in Syria.  Our congregation at Ladner United Church participates with many others across the country and added a third refugee family whom, with the previous two, we participate in giving financial support as they settle into their new lives.

Catinka, in her seventeenth year, remains very much queen of our house, while Angela’s ducks continue to hold authority over our back yard.  Sadly, we lost Tango this past autumn. At fourteen and a half years of age, his moult in August took just too much out of the old boy.  He recovered his full plumage but was just not quite the same drake, moving delicately with elderly caution until the morning when we found he had passed in the night.   Jemima and Rebeccah resumed their egg production with the new year, less heavily than last year, then slowed and stopped completely when they moulted with the end of summer.  They have not yet resumed resumed laying again.  Adam, Angela’s red haired standard poodle, has settled in as very much a part of the family, continuing to endear himself to us all.  He has 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 as he runs too fast for them.

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 sport 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, advising that they are preoccupied with implementing new province-wide Physical Education curricula.  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 world-wide, but he still awaits word of anyone actually playing either game.  You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know.

And now we look forward to 2017.  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 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!

Christmas Letter '15

Nadolig Llawen!                     Merry Christmas!                              Buon Natale!

Christmas 2015.

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.  2015 has been very much a typical year for us, happy with very ordinary challenges.

Tina continues to take the occasional casual shift, nursing at VGH  while she enjoys her retirement.  She continues with cello lessons at the Delta Community Music School under the tutelage of Bo Peng, accepting gradually increasingly more challenging music to learn.  Although Tina intended to resume taking harp instruction as well, that just did not work out for this year.  Perhaps in the new year.

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues as stable, with only occasional colds.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2500 m. in roughly 50 min.) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km. in roughly 40 min.), sometimes substituting a good stiff walk (a little over 4 km. in 40 min.).  With David well moved on from the Richmond Delta Youth Orchestra and Ted’s term as immediate Past President completed at the end of August, he is no longer active with the Delta Symphony Society.

Angela’s news is most exciting as she and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective found a studio in which to work.  One of the major British Columbia ceramic artists had retired and sold his studio property to a developer who was not developing immediately but offered the site for lease as ceramics studio space.  Angela discovered the notice and the Dusty Babes promptly took up the lease; they have it for at least a full year from last June and she now spends most Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays working her art there.  Angela continues part-time work at Spawts, a ceramic studio that specializes in ceramic family pet paw print impressions, working Mondays and Fridays.  She enjoys this work with the very small staff that includes one of her Dusty Babes friends.  In January she added another part time position as Saturday ceramics studio technician for Vancouver’s West End Community Centre.  Occasionally Angela also teaches school break concentrated children’s ceramics classes at the Delta Potter’s Association studio.  Tina and Ted both remain in wonder at the beauty of Angela’s ceramic creations which range from hand crafted ceramic buttons through cups and bowls of various sizes to large vases.

David continues his musical studies as a founding student in the new strings music program within the Music Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, commuting to the Langley campus.  His focus remains on his viola, giving him great success while he really enjoys his studies.  The strings program remains very small which means that no large ensemble (required by the Kwantlen Music Department) exists, so the university continues to send him and the cello student to play with the Trinity Western University Orchestra. Kwantlen and also requires music students to participate in small ensembles and we enjoyed the end-of-term recitals and concert performances by David's string trio (David, the violin student, and a piano student from Kwantlen Music’s piano program) in April and by his quintet and his duo in December.  Outside university, David also took up private study on his viola with Robert Hirschhorn Rozak and occasionally fills in with his viola for the Stradivari Ensemble.

Although studying music at Kwanten, David continues private study on piano, at the Delta Community Music school, in Garth Preston’s studio.  He also continues to play with the adult Richmond Orchestra; fortunately that orchestra’s major concert this fall did not conflict with Trinity Western University Orchestra’s major concert as it did last year.

David enjoys writing, especially fiction as he extends his imagination.  In his free time, during the summer before last, he wrote an initial draft of a novel.  As he found chances through autumn, winter, and spring into this past summer, he worked through revisions and published the book as digital copy.

Again, our year brought a few significant life events for us to mark.  Ted’s cousin David T. E. Hopkins passed earlier this month after a few month’s battle with cancer.  He rests, treasured, in Ted’s boyhood and current Internet connection memories.  Earlier in the Autumn we celebrated with Ted’s brother Norman as his son Gareth and wife Zoë left for Australia to take up a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne upon completing his PhD in Environmental Studies at Utah State University.

Looking beyond ourselves, Canada’s federal election last Fall drew our attention more intensely than ever before.  All of us have always voted in every election for which we have been eligible, keeping our political thoughts largely to ourselves.  For this election, issues were so critical that Ted just could not remain private with his thoughts and shared his views via his blog, and some e-mail messages.  The most critical issue to Ted’s mind did not get addressed properly but over all the whole family is satisfied with the election result.

We share many Canadian’s concern for the plight of the many refugees from the civil war in Syria.  Our congregation at Ladner United Church participates with many others across the country and is providing for two refugee families anticipated to arrive any day now, by year end.  The Ladner community gives enthusiastic support, participating in this project.

We took only one get-away this year, returning to Cusheon Lake Resort on Salt Spring Island for the Canada Day weekend.  As usual, we enjoyed Beddis Beach, Beaver Point at Ruckle Park, and Harlans’ Salt Spring Gelato among all else we enjoy on Salt Spring.

Catinka remains very much queen of our house, while Angela’s ducks continue to hold authority over our back yard.  Jemima and Rebeccah resumed their egg production with the new year, less heavily than last year, then slowed and stopped completely when they moulted with the end of summer.  Less frequent egg laying resumed this month.  From January to August, Tango remains convinced that he should not let any of us exit the back yard.  Adam, Angela’s red haired standard poodle, has settled in as very much a part of the family, continuing to endear himself to us all.

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 continued to approach schools as their Physical Education and intramural sport 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 kept up a web presence for the games, having revised the site, and on Facebook.  These continued to catch attention world-wide, but he still awaits word of anyone actually playing either game.  You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know.

And now we look forward to 2016.  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 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!

Christmas Letter '14

Nadolig Llawen!                      Merry Christmas!                      Buon Natale!

Christmas 2014.

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

It’s a pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  We hope you are enjoying a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2014 has been very much a typical year for us, a happy year with very ordinary challenges.

Tina enjoys her retirement but still takes the occasional casual shift, nursing at VGH.  She continues to enjoy cello lessons at the Delta Community Music School (http://www.dcms.ca) under the tutelage of Bo Peng, cellist with Borealis String Quartet (http://www.borealisstringquartet.com).  Late in the spring and through the summer, Tina added to her musical repertoire by taking up harp lessons from Lori Papajohn, harpist and Musical Director of Winter Harp http://www.winterharp.com), an ensemble whose concerts have become one of our favourite Christmas traditions.  Tina attended these lessons in Lori's own home, delightfully filled with harps all over the house.

Ted's health continues as stable, with only occasional colds.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2000 m. in roughly 40 min.) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km. in roughly 40 min.), sometimes substituting a good stiff walk (a little over 4 km. in the same 40 min.), with this exercise and prescribed medication, Ted remains well.  For the 2014/15 orchestral year, Ted continues to serve as immediate Past President of the Delta Symphony Society, the sponsor of the Richmond Delta Youth Orchestra.

Angela keeps contact with her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective as they continue to strive to find their place among British Columbia ceramic artists.  In the mean time, Angela has taken part-time work at Spawts (http://spawts.com), a ceramic studio that specializes in ceramic family pet paw print impressions.  She enjoys this work with the very small staff that includes one of her friends from ECUAD.  Being employed, Angela has to spend less time in her own studio here at home and at the Delta Potter’s Association studio.

Tina and Ted felt touched and blessed when David chose to confirm his infant baptism and informally joined the congregation at Ladner United Church.  During the year, our congregation completed major renovation of our aging church building and returned from temporary accommodation in the fall.

David continued his mathematical studies at Simon Fraser University through the spring and summer semesters. He does well with pure Mathematics.  In the spring, he received a surprise invitation to become a founding student in the new strings music program within the Music Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, at their Langley campus.  This university had brought the Borealis String Quartet onto its faculty to create this program and the quartet identified selected students to invite.  David took the invitation up and has been studying music, with focus on his viola, full time since September, really enjoying the fall term.  He is currently one of just two students taking this new program.  This means that no large ensemble (required by the Kwantlen Music Department) exists, so the university sent him and the violin student to play with the Trinity Western University Orchestra. Kwantlen and also requires music students to participate in small ensembles and we enjoyed the end-of-term recital and concert performances by David's string trio (David, the violin student, and a piano student from Kwantlen Music’s piano program).  He will continue with these musical studies for the spring term, likely returning to Simon Fraser University in the summer for Mathematics while Kwantlen Music is idle.

Although studying music at Kwanten, David continues private study on clarinet and piano, here at the Delta Community Music school.  He also continues to play with the adult Richmond Orchestra (http://www.roca.ca) but was disappointed when that orchestra’s major concert this fall conflicted with Trinity Western University Orchestra’s major concert (http://twu.ca/academics/samc/events/2014-2015-events/band-orchestra-fall.html).

Our year brought significant life events for us to mark.  Tina lost her uncle Sisto in the spring and we shared with his wife Gloria at his funeral.  Then, in early summer we lost a very dear family friend from David’s years with the Delta Youth Orchestra, Sherri Plewes.  They rest, treasured, in our memories.  Summer brought the excitement of Ted’s brother Norman’s son Gareth’s wedding with Zoë Stopher, whom he had met early in his doctoral studies at Utah State University and who has enthusiastically assisted him with his newt research.  This was a beautiful wedding in a beautiful setting. 

That wedding occurred on a beach near Gold River, Oregon, and brought us our major getaway for this year as we travelled the remarkable Oregon coast.  We were pleased to accept the kind invitation of one of Ted's former secondary school classmates, Heather (Granger) Kirkwood and her husband Jack, to stop at their home in Seattle for our first night on the road.  They are wonderful, welcoming, hosts.  One highlight of that trip occurred as we reached the mouth of the Columbia River before crossing the Astoria Bridge and discovered pelicans in large numbers fishing and flying around.  All along the Washington and Oregon coasts we found spectacular scenery, both similar to yet also different from our own British Columbia scenery, replacing the deep inlets with long beaches directly facing the open Pacific, punctuated here and there by great rocks on the beaches or just offshore in the sea.

Earlier in the summer, our other get away was a very special trip to Oliver for the fifty year reunion of Ted’s formers schoolmates.  Imagine that, a half-century since graduating secondary school.  Ted enjoyed reconnecting with classmates and introducing Tina and David to his old friends.  Southern Okanagan Secondary School is newly rebuilt and we enjoyed exploring around outside the beautiful building, suggestive more of a fine community college than of a secondary school, while reminiscing about the school Ted knew.

Catinka remains very much queen of our house, while Angela’s ducks continue to hold authority over our back yard.  Jemima and Rebeccah have slowed their egg production with the new year and stopped completely when they molted last summer.  We await egg laying resume.  Tango still remains convinced that he should not let any of us exit the back yard from January to August.  At the end of November Angela added a new pet to our menagerie bringing home Adam, a red haired standard poodle puppy. He quickly endeared himself to us all.

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 continued to approach schools as their Physical Education and intramural sport 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 kept up a web presence for the games at http://twoballanddelta.org (although the site is currently down as he develops major revisions) and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TwoBallAndDelta.  These continued to catch attention world-wide, but he still awaits word of anyone actually playing either game.  You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know.

And now we look forward to 2015.  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 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!

Christmas Letter '13

Nadolig Llawen!               Merry Christmas!                      Buon Natale!

Christmas 2013.

From our home to yours, Family and Friends,

What a pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  I am slow getting this out, more of a New Year greeting than a Christmas greeting.  We hope you are enjoying a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2013 has been very much a typical year for us, a happy year with very ordinary challenges.

Tina has settled into her retirement but still takes the occasional casual shift, nursing at VGH.  Ted's health continues as stable, with only occasional colds.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2000 m. in roughly 40 min.) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km. in roughly 40 min.), with this exercise and prescribed medication, Ted remains well.

Angela completed her studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in May.  Her graduation show presented more of her remarkable ceramic objects.  She joined the Delta Potters Association and, since graduation, spends much of her time on a potting wheel, at a working table, or with a kiln at either the guild studio in Tsawwassen or her own studio here at home.  Angela still loves to carve her ceramic pieces and the results show ever growing sophistication with freed imagination.  She presents some her works on her ceramics web site, http://angelahopkinsceramics.com.  She and her ceramics classmates from ECUAD remain together as the Dusty Babes Collective (http://www.dustybabes.com/artists.html), taking part in as many art and craft shows as they can enter, including the Yellow Crane Festival at ECUAD last summer and the big Got Craft? Christmas market early in December.  She had the privilege to get selected as the “featured artist” for the month of September at the British Columbia Gallery of Ceramics on Granville Island and had two mugs accepted at the Autumn Cup Show at prestigious Medalta Potteries in Medicine Hat, Alberta.  Angela also participated in the Delta Potters Association Autumn show in October.  Before Christmas, Angela also completed a small two piece commission from Australia.  Now, out of school, Angela and the Dusty Babes strive to find their place among British Columbia ceramic artists.

In May, David completed his mathematical studies at Langara College, earning an Associate of Science degree.  He remains on very much a part time studies program as he moved on to continue at Simon Fraser University in September. David excels in his Mathematics courses, especially with pure Mathematics. Course work of a more pragmatic nature continues to give him more of a struggle.

David continues very active with his music, still studying viola, clarinet, and piano.  He has now moved on from the Delta Youth Orchestra to play with the adult Richmond Orchestra but remains welcome to return as a guest alumnus with the youth orchestra, as he did this Autumn for Classical Cabaret and the opportunity to play Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, “The Pastorale.”  This symphony holds a very special place in our family’s memories of David’s growing up.  When David was two and a half, Ted gave Tina a CD of the Sixth Symphony that immediately caught David’s fancy.  Every day, at least once a day for two months, our little David would ask to have “Dakoven” played and would stand, enthralled in front of the stereo through the entire symphony.  This was our first indication that music would hold a special place in David’s life.

For the 2013/14 orchestral year, Ted now serves as immediate Past President of the Delta Symphony Society, the sponsor of the Richmond Delta Youth Orchestra (the Society changed the orchestra’s name last spring in recognition of the participation we draw from Richmond).

All of us felt loss when Ted’s half-brother Bud (Edward Joseph Hopkins) died in June at eighty years of age after a long bout of illness that had put him in hospital in January.  We were prepared, yet found this unexpected as he had shown good recovery for weeks prior.  Bud went through a very good day’s physiotherapy, then quietly died in his sleep the following night.  At his specific request we held no memorial service, but, in September, Norman, John, and Ted, along with David and Angela met Bud’s request and took his ashes and those he had kept of his much loved horse, Swedan, up into the Cascade Mountains along Whipsaw Creek off the Hope-Princeton Highway, Bud’s favourite wild place get-away, and scattered them.  We miss him but feel confident he has found a better place.

Our getaway this year was again our usual escape to Cusheon Lake resort on Salt Spring Island, a trip early in the summer for Canada Day, another at the end of summer, and a third, quick trip for the Salt Spring Apple Festival at the end of September.  I had the privilege to find and reconnect with an old schoolmate, John Sutherland, now living on Salt Spring.  We always make this a relaxing time, paddling on the lake or swimming, fossicking at Beddis Beach or Beaver Point, and visiting in Ganges.

Catinka remains very much queen of our house, while Angela’s ducks hold authority over our back yard.  Jemima and Rebbecah have turned out as prolific egg layers, keeping our home well supplied all year long.  Tango remains convinced that he should not let any of us exit the back yard from January to August.

Ted continues to seek players to experiment with his invented team sports of Two Ball and Delta.  His first approach was to schools as their Physical Education and intramural sport programs likely offer the best chance of drawing sufficient groups of players together.  This proved very disappointing as no schools have taken up either game yet.  Ted also gives the games a web presence at http://twoballanddelta.org and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TwoBallAndDelta.  These have caught the attention of well over three thousand people, world-wide, but he still awaits word of any of them actually playing either game.  You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know.

And now we look forward to 2014.  This will be a remarkable year simply because Ted will mark a half century since his graduation from Southern Okanagan Secondary School.  Wow, amazing!  Just for that occasion he is including more of his former classmates while sending these greetings.

Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations and Christmas itself.  We hope yours have gone well and we hope you had a Merry and Blessed Christmas and wish you all happiness in the New Year.

With our love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

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

Christmas Letter '12

Nadolig Llawen!                    Merry Christmas!                           Buon Natale!

Christmas 2012.

From our home to yours, Family and Friends,

What a pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  I have rather deliberately scheduled this to come to you on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day depending on where in the world you live (actually, rather ordinary events waylaid us and I did not finish when intended, thus the late arrival).  We hope you are enjoying a full and restful Christmas season.

But for one significant change and a lesser change, 2012 has been very much a typical year for us.  It was a happy year with very ordinary challenges.

Tina continued nursing at Vancouver General Hospital, then took her retirement in June.  She does still take the occasional casual shift.  Tina had looked forward to getting back into her art but has found household projects to which she feels need to give priority.  The New Year should see us convert an area in our basement into a printmaking studio.  Her press awaits her there.

Ted's health was more stable this year, with only occasional colds and one cardiac false alarm just a few days ago.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2000 m in roughly 40 min) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km in roughly 40 min) and with this exercise, Ted remains generally well.  Ted had a special opportunity to reconnect with an important old friend from his days with the Royal Life Saving Society.  Now in her 90s, Jean Lathwell still lives in her own home and keeps in touch with RLSS developments Commonwealth wide.

David continues his mathematical studies at Langara College.  He remains on very much a part time studies program because of his disability and continues to excel in his Mathematics courses, especially with pure Mathematics. Course work of a more pragmatic nature does give him more of a struggle.

Angela thoroughly enjoys her final year studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.  Angela keeps bringing home remarkable ceramic objects.  She is very independent minded at school and takes what she finds useful from her instructors and teaches herself where she feels there are gaps.  Angela loves to carve her ceramic pieces and took part of last summer to go into production in her studio, here at home.  Part of her output included a series of vases featuring various beautifully carved local songbirds.  She took these and other pieces to a summer outdoor art market in Langley.  Compared with other potters displaying at this market, her work was very much high end.  Although she did not sell much, Angela considered this a good learning experience.  She had much greater success at the Autumn student art sale at Emily Carr, selling all her most expensive pieces and most of her other works as well.

David also remains very active with his music, continuing to study viola, clarinet, and piano.  He is now the oldest regular player in the Delta youth Orchestra.  He just loves performing with this orchestra and delays moving on to an adult orchestra.  For the 2012/13 orchestral year, Ted continues as President of the Delta Symphony Society, the sponsor of the Delta youth Orchestra.  The DYO outdid themselves this Autumn with a wonderful Classical Cabaret with guests Infinitus string trio and a truly remarkable Christmas concert featuring Howard Blake’s music for The Snowman.  David just loved playing this special music.

Our getaway this year was again our usual escape to Cusheon Lake resort on Salt Spring Island.  We always make this a relaxing time, paddling on the lake or swimming, fosicking at Beddis Beach or Beaver Point, and visiting in Ganges.

One sad note in 2012, Mother’s Day evening a racoon killed Puddles, one of Angela’s pet ducks.  Tango got left as a lonely duck for a while but June saw the arrival of two Welsh Harlequin ducklings, Rebecca and Jemima,  Once they grew to near full size and could join Tango in the back yard, he became a much happier duck.  Catinka remains very much queen of our house.

Summer us busy with many changes to the back garden, new flower beds, new trees, and refreshed vegetable garden.  Substantial security improvements to Angela’s duck enclosure and a rebuilt night time coop for three ducks instead of two kept Ted well occupied.  The end of summer brought is a change of car.  Marvin, the Mazda WPV we bought in 1992 finally had it’s twenty years catch up with it as our service mechanic (not a dealer) warned us of impending very expensive maintenance that he could not recommend doing.  The car still ran well but he told us we could no longer trust it for any trips away from home.  We dithered a bit, seriously considering taking the expense, but found a replacement in a 2006 MPV, the last year they were built.

Many years ago Ted, rather uncharacteristically since he generally takes very little interest in team sports, hatched an idea of a novel field team sport.  He called it Two Ball and experimented with a bit when he was substitute teaching, but otherwise did not do much with it.  The idea kept rattling around in his head though and gradually developed into two games, Two Ball and Delta.  This year, Ted finally decided to do something with the ideas, seeking potential players to experiment with the games, and published rules of the games.  Anyone on Facebook can find out more at https://www.facebook.com/TwoBallAndDelta?ref=hl and the rules are available free at https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/two-ball-and-delta/id518412984?mt=11, https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/two-ball-and-delta-duplicate/id549644267?mt=11, or at the Two Ball and Delta web site, http://twoballanddelta.org/styled/index.html.  You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know..

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 love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

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

Christmas Letter '11

Nadolig Llawen!                     Merry Christmas!                           Buon Natale!

Christmas 2011.

From our home to yours, Family and Friends,

What a pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  I have rather deliberately scheduled this to come to you on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day depending on where in the world you live.  We hope you are enjoying a full and restful Christmas season.

2011 has been very much a typical year for us.  It was a happy year with very ordinary challenges and no events of super special note in our family.

Tina continues nursing at Vancouver General Hospital but does get very tired now.  She anticipates taking opportunity to retire.  In the meantime Tina is excited at getting back into her art.  This year she rejoined the Malaspina printmakers society after many, many years away from printmaking, and has enjoyed brush-up lessons.  Tina has already started planning to convert an area in our basement into a printmaking studio.

Ted's health remains a bit of an issue with us, the result of damage left by his heart attack in 2007.  After a series of abrupt weariness with slowed pulse that required visits to the Delta Hospital emergency ward through the spring, doctors installed an ICD unit to control his heart rate in May.  Ted's heart is now controlled to a minimum of 50 bpm, no longer dropping as low as 33 bpm.  That surgery followed by a month later with an inguinal hernia repair stopped Ted from maintaining his normal swimming for exercise routine.  He had been swimming 6 days a week for a while as his back had rebelled over him leaning over the handlebars of his bike.  Having to stop swimming, Ted got the handlebars raised rather dramatically and can now cycle comfortably.  Through the summer, he cycled for exercise 6 days a week.  By the end of summer, Ted was able to resume alternating 3 days of swimming (2000 m in roughly 40 min) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km in roughly 40 min).  With exercise, Ted feels generally well.

David continues his mathematical studies at Langara College and Angela continues to enjoy her studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.  David is on very much a part time studies program because of his disability.  He tends to excel in his mathematics courses but certainly does struggle with the required non-mathematics courses.  He is very excited at attaining an "A" in his just completed Real Analysis course.  That is, mathematical analysis built around real numbers and involving proofs; don't ask me for further explanation, ask David.  Angela keeps bringing home remarkable ceramic objects.  She is very independent minded school takes what he finds useful from her instructors and teachers herself where she feels there are gaps.  This fall, one of her ceramics courses focused on mould making.  Angela does not like the slip casting process so, having read a little about throwing into moulds, she decided to use this technique for her major course project, much to the fascination of her instructor and fellow students.  Angela loves to carve her ceramic pieces and now we have this 5 sets of beautiful teapots paired with lovely tea mugs, all beautifully carved.  Angela experienced her 1st success at selling her own ceramics during the student art sale this fall.  When she is not at her studies in school, and was downstairs in her own ceramics studio throwing them firing pieces and experimenting with glazes.

David also remains very active with his music, continuing to study viola, clarinet, and piano.  He is now the oldest regular player in the Delta youth Orchestra, but he just loves performing with this orchestra.  Ted has found himself elected President of the Delta Symphony Society, the sponsor of the Delta youth Orchestra, for the 2011/12 orchestral year.

Our getaway this year was again our usual escape to Cusheon Lake resort on Salt Spring Island.  We always make this a relaxing time, paddling on the lake or swimming, fossicking at Beddis Beach or Beaver Point, and visiting in Ganges.  A couple of the photos are from Salt Spring.

One sad note in 2011, Cymro died late in the summer.  Having passed his 16th birthday, he was very much an elderly dog.  He had a very serious illness late last winter but recovered, though much weakened.  His final illness brought rapid decline and he passed at home in the night.  We certainly miss him but do not intend to replace him with another dog.  In the meantime, Catinka remains very much queen of our house.

Autumn has seen us busy with the minor renovations inside and outside the house.  New banisters and other touchups inside and renewed fencing outside certainly improve our home.  The fencing work gives a bit of an adventure.  With preparations for replacing the north fence we had a bit of a temporary patch job.  I came home from the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Lardner Cenotaph to find Angela's pet ducks, Puddles and Tango, in distress in our neighbour's yard.  They had found a weakness in the patchwork, went exploring, and got mauled by the neighbour's dog.  Substantial veterinarian bills later and indoor healing time, Puddles and Tango are now very much themselves again.  The new fence in place and they are secure in our backyard.

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 love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

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