Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

We continue living in two places and loving both of them.. Our yellow house in New Hampshire is great with lake views out our front windows and Dan and Kelly living in the downstairs and literally keeping the home fires burning when we escape winter in North Carolina. My gardens next to the house were lovely this year and I enjoy adding glass bottles and other decorations to the bottle tree and ‘glass garden’ below it. We’re still trying to extricate ourselves from ownership of the inn, but getting on with life.

A couple of years ago we added an orange Maine Coon cat to our family- Purring Pumpkin by formal name, but Punk most of the time!

We’ve also added another potential house to our lives, buying a well built garage with unfinished upstairs in Pittsfield NH not far from our present house. It will probably be an investment in the end but Dick and Dan have made lots of improvements already and I used the fenced in garden to grow the best vegetable garden I’ve had in years. The property next to it also sold and now there’s a lovely horse farm for neighbors. As a real curiosity some people up the road from there have a camel and it’s incongruous, to say the least, to see a camel in the wilds of New Hampshire!

Our North Carolina life consists of seeing movies on Tightwad Tuesday, walking beaches, straightening trees bent over from the hurricane, picking pecans in season (bumper crop this all), and living a relaxed, but busy, life. Dick had a pond dug next to the house and it’s big enough that we’ve kayaked in it. Dick sold the other two properties he had down there to uncomplicate his life.

We had visitors down there- Bob on his yearly vacation, and Nancy Blair, a great friend Who’s making it a yearly event too. It’s lots of fun taking them places and searching out new things to do. And we went off near and far to see places and friends. Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina is a favorite and we’re gaining a love for the river towns in South Carolina as well. Friends moved to Bluffton, South Carolina and it was fun seeing Angela and Cindy in their lovely new house. We took another trip further south to Stuart, Florida to see Kim in The Sound of Music and enjoy time with her and her mom, Susan- old neighbors from Sandwich, NH.

But our longest trip came about unexpectedly when we were invited to visit Sandi and Ben Zuber in Vina del Mar, Chile in November. We spent nine days visiting them and seeing the area around Vina including a trip to Valparaiso, on the steep hillside overlooking the ocean, with art shops and murals on buildings everywhere you looked. Then we rented a car and headed north up the coast. All the photos and journal from the trip can be seen at our dicksandy.org website.

We’ve just had a lovely Thanksgiving, first with Christy in Kennebunk, ME, then a family reunion Thanksgiving in Endicott, NY with Dick’s brother Dave and his family.

Our families continue to do well. Christy, John, Liam and Gracie have added a dog, Perry, and chickens to their lives. Liam and Gracie are 8 and 6, and great readers as well as fun people! Rob has moved from the Natural Resources Dept. to the Information Tech Dept. with the State of New Hampshire.

Cindy is the global head of hiring for Tesla Motors and loves her life with Chris in Half Moon Bay, CA. Heather is moving to France for the year to work in a Buddhist Meditation Center there.

We hope this finds you healthy and very happy!

Sandy and Dick