Well it’s nearly the end of another year, and quite a year it has been. Fortunately, we and our immediate families have kept safe and covid free. We anxiously look forward to the vaccines that may return a bit of normalcy to our lives. Our tree is already up so it must be time to wish you a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year. Hopefully your last year has been just as good as ours and everyone remains healthy.
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In April, we finished moving from our home on Loch Lomond in Bella Vista to a smaller, cozier place on the edge of town in Bentonville. Life has become a lot simpler, the chores take hours instead of days, everything is 20-minutes closer. But we miss our old neighbors and the lake. Phantom has a large, fenced backyard, but longs for the freedom of a yard with no fence and no traffic.
Sylvia had another back surgery in August...much improved at first, but her leg pains are coming back as she gets more active. She was thinking that she’d be playing tennis again by now with Wimbledon in the near future. She’s rethinking that dream. Jerry’s broken shoulder is healed...no pain unless he uses it. We here in Bentonville prove that “growing old is not for the faint of heart.” Phantom sleeps almost all the time; otherwise he is frisky.
We’d love to tell you about our grand annual pilgrimage that we took to northern Europe in August, but we can’t because we didn’t go. We postponed the scheduled trip with Joyce and Kenn until August of next year. All being well it looks like we ancients might be up for getting the vaccine in March. If so, we might be able to go in 2021, but we’ll proceed cautiously without getting into any risky situations.
Not knowing any better and just as we were learning to spell ‘covid,’ Jerry and his twin Joyce, along with her hubby Kenn and Sylvia, celebrated their 75th birthday in early March at Padre Island, Texas. We spent three days exhausting all the tourist haunts and enjoying many plates of seafood. The sometimes sunny seaside was a nice break from our respective cold winters (Joyce and Kenn live in Minneapolis Minnesota). Little did we know it would be our last travel this year.
We’d also like to tell you about our grand social life, but that has gone even deeper underground than our travel. We occasionally dine out and Jerry still does “Burgers” on Thursday, but as much as possible we try to do it out of doors, minding the rules. In April, Sylvia and Phantom’s “therapy” duties with the hospice and the airport were suspended. We suspect that those activities will not happen again before April. Sylvia hasn’t seen her family in nearly two years.
That catches you up on us, and so we close another annual “Christmas” letter. The usual invite stands: “if you are in the area, please stop in.”
Again Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – Keep Safe