Wyman Christmas Letter 2019

“John-Adrian’s voice is remarkably clear on that Facetime call.”

It was remarkably clear because it was not John-Adrian on Facetime from Alaska, it was John Adrian, Jocie, and daughters Aurora and Quinn actually in the next room, arrived at Jonathan and Heidi’s completely by surprise.  Doubling down on long-distance surprise, Chris was also there from Norway, and Ben arrived from Texas the next day. Surprise #4 is that Jocie had not told any of us about her pregnancy, and new daughter Bella – fifth consecutive granddaughter for us – will be born in early January. The four girls were together constantly over the next nine days, especially the two eight-year olds, Sarah and Aurora. An entire week’s activities were hastily planned, including Thanksgiving and half of Christmas. The intense concentration of Wymans provided enough memorable quotes to create a Christmas letter all by itself: Three-year old Quinn sidling up to Jonathan’s Doritos and earnestly saying “Sharing is Caring;”  Aurora suddenly asking Ben about the afterlife; or John-Adrian assuring us that if it was up to him we would all just get more salmon every Christmas.  Chris has a similar view, though his choice is the thin-sliced dried whitefish that Norwegians regard as a snack.  Between the two of them, Christmas stockings tend to be fish-intensive for us.

John-Adrian and Jocie are discussing moving from Nome to Anchorage, which would make it easier for all of us to get to them, and mean more room for them now that they will have three girls.  Chris likes working for BMW instead of Mercedes in Tromso, and has a serious girlfriend, Maria. Ben’s job is less about filmmaking and increasingly about managing people and communications at First Methodist Houston.  He mischievously shepherds the pastors through an “Ask Me Anything” podcast every week, which we listen to with amusement.

The End of an Era – 100 Costumes

Tracy gave away almost fifty years of accumulated costumes. Most were biblical or medieval, but there was considerable variety, including an extremely eccentric collection of hats.  I thought this was going to be more painful for her than it turned out.  Going to a good home turned out to be the key.

   

“Next Year We Might Not Be Here.”

We are looking to downsize – fewer rooms, less driveway snow, smaller lawn. We will remain local. We both have part-time work in our career fields and scheduled volunteering we don’t want to give up, not to mention granddaughters nearby.

The reality is that we find something “wrong” with every house we look at.  We have finished fixing everything in our house of 35 years in order to make it easily salable.  New heating, new roof, new septic, patching the holes made by lacrosse balls in bedroom walls – the works. The place finally looks like we always wanted, including the lawn, which had previously suffered mostly neglect. I now know the difference between crabgrass and Less Desirable Grasses. Maybe we’ll just stay.

“One Good Thing That Came Out of the Army”

Kyle is finishing up his six years in the Reserve, and is strongly considering switching to the Air National Guard.  He has no temptation to re-up with the army.  Just as everything is winding down, however, he has started dating a girl from his platoon, who we like a great deal. He continues at the Post Office in Concord, and thus has very little time and little sleep in December.

North Carolina was great except…

Well, a tree fell on the car, that wasn’t good -  at 40mph on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ben and David…eventually decided the car was drivable and as there was no cell phone reception, just drove on to the pre-wedding party at Swananoa. Back to normal life seamlessly. We got to roast the groom, that was a plus. Later we calculated that 0.06sec difference would likely have resulted in us going over the edge to a grim fate. We were unhurt at the time and got nervous later, which is the best way to have emergencies, I think.  David got more irritated at not being able to get a waffle for breakfast the next morning.  He expected that in the South it should certainly be possible to do this, but in West Asheville, everything was avocado toast and twenty variations on Eggs Benedict. Shameful. I will grant Asheville this: there are nice walks, climbs, and views in the area.  But not enough waffles.