2012 New Year letter

My goodness, another year has passed. I can’t really even remember what was happening at the beginning of 2011. We had just started to settle in to our house in Fort Worth. Andy’s boss had told him to settle in to his position because there wouldn’t be any shuffling around or transfers to other departments in 2011. We planted a vegetable garden in the back-yard; the squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes were growing like gang-busters, and then… Major changes started in May when Andy was unexpectedly offered a new job at one of his company’s plants in California. So, in one month, we packed and closed up things in Texas. We drove away at the beginning of June with our Honda Civic packed to the brim with clothes, valuable, the two pets, and us. We were all so thankful to not get into the car after three days on the road.

We lived at a hotel for four LONG months. After a month’s delay in the purchase of our new house, we finally moved in with a borrowed air mattress and two newly purchased Adirondack chairs. Our household goods were delivered, and I got busy trying to dig us out of boxes. Things were quickly put away so that we can have everything off of the floor quickly and easily. We planned this so that the nasty carpet can be ripped out and new floors put down in January of 2012. Then we can put everything where we truly want it, making the house into a home. We have all kinds of renovations planned for the next few years, including a new façade, kitchen, bathrooms, patio, and an outdoor dining area. Now doesn’t that sound like a whole new house?

The new house is in a small town with one four way stop. The town considers itself a community of equine enthusiasts although we also have a local vineyard. Despite its rural location, Andy only has a 20-minute commute, and the stores we frequent are only about 10 minutes. Our property has over three acres, a small barn, and arena. The house is a two-story farmhouse with 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a 3-car garage. Andy is thrilled that we have a wood-burning fireplace that we are using regularly since the temperatures are below freezing at night.

After about a month in our new house, our cat, Cappuccino, went out one evening to go potty one last time and never came home. We assume that he became coyote or mountain lion food. We still miss him quite a bit.

We’ve had a few other notable occurrences this year. Our laptop’s hard drive crashed while we were living in the hotel. We thought this wasn’t an enormous issue since we have a back-up hard drive that Andy is quite religious about using. Unfortunately, we discovered that it backed-up our applications but not any of our documents, pictures, or music. So, basically, we lost everything that we were trying to save. The folks at our local Apple Store managed to replace the burned-out hard-drive and restore the operating system. Apparently this was happening to everyone with our type of laptop (something to do with hard-drive vendor quality control). Recovering the data from the old drive will most likely require a clean-room (you know, the kind with the full-body suits and gas masks, where no dust exists) and a lot of time & money. The fried hard drive is the main reason that we can’t really remember what was going on at the beginning of the year.

Andy’s sister, Cici, had her second baby at the end of August. He’s very mellow and smiles a lot. The birth of Hudson Fritts brings the count to half a dozen nieces and nephews for us.

We both read/listened to the entire Harry Potter series this year. We also saw the final film in the series this summer. I enjoyed being able to go through the books one right after the other instead of reading each when it was published.

Andy is really enjoying the challenges that his new job is providing. He now does quite a bit of creative thinking and problem solving while working on lots of “cool stuff”. He’s fitting in quite well, and they saw fit to give him a promotion, despite having only been in CA for a five months. Sometimes his brain is quite tired by the time that he gets home, only to have to begin his schoolwork at night. Three courses and a written thesis are the remaining obstacles for his Master’s degree.

We hope that you have all had a lovely holiday season and are looking forward to many adventures in 2012.