2012 Christmas Letter

This year I'm opting to save more trees and going totally electronic with the Christmas Letter.  The folks I mailed them to last year now all have computers so hopefully this will work. 

It has been a momentous year for the family this year.  We've added a couple of new members, one by birth and one by marriage.

 The first big event for the family was Teresa and John's wedding in September.  I was concerned about them scheduling a late September outdoor wedding in North Idaho but they have some close contacts with the All Mighty and the weather was great.  Of course, I was a very proud Father of the Bride.   In keeping with the Avakian/Goode tradition, it was a great party.  My kids sure know how to celebrate a wedding.  John is a great man and we are all very happy that he is now part of the family.

We welcomed Celine Jai Goode into the family in October.  She is the third child of Michele and Stan.  Like her older brother and sister, she has carried on the tradition of being the Cutest Baby in the  World.  In the early evening she gets a little colically, much to her parents dismay.  I've had the privilege of babysitting several times now since she was born.  Needless to say, at bedtime, my hands are pretty full which is fortunate for her older brother and sister.  They get away with a few things while I'm tending to Celine that I wouldn't normally let them do.  We won't go into details.  But Hey, I'm a grandpa, we're supposed to spoil grandkids.

And now for the family member updates: 

Michele still works as a nurse in the local hospital.  Stan is fighting forest fires,   Saray is in second grade and cute as ever.   Raif is a typical almost 3 year old  boy who likes “frucks” (we've got to work on those “t” sounds) and Celine is just beautiful. 

John and Teresa have continued to work on their house and enjoy hiking and mountain biking together.  Teresa has developed a habit of crashing face first.  Finally, after a concussion and several bloody faces, she got a helmet with a face guard, much to my relief.  She is still teaching first grade.

Christine and Clint are the wedding attendees of the year.  Their summer seemed to be filled with weddings.   Christine is an ordained minister of the “Church of Who Knows What” and she presided over one of them.  Christine is still Director of Something (her title changes a lot and I loose track) at Remote Medical.  Clint bought a new, 80 something, VW Syncro.  At least it will be new when he gets done with it.  They've already had some interesting adventures in it, not the least of which was the engine catching on fire in Montana while on their way to, what else, a wedding.

Eric still works at Boeing.  He travels a lot, both for work and pleasure.  He's been to more countries than I have been to states.  He has inherited the family boating gene, but his gene mutated a little.  I loved nothing better than anchoring our sailboat in a secluded bay to read and to explore in the kayak.  Eric and his friend Scott share, what I describe as, a 32 foot “Party Boat”.   He comes into a bay with similarly minded  boating  friends.  They raft together and PARRRTY.  It must be Gail's DNA!  

I went south again last winter for a while to Arizona.  I managed to hurt my back by making two really stupid decisions and ended up coming home earlier than I had originally planned.  The rest of the year was spent mainly working on the house along with the big family events.  I won't go into details here.   If you are interested, details are on my blog:  www.knotaklu.blogspot.com.

I hope you all have a great holiday season and “may the happiest days of your past be the saddest days in you future”.  

Please stop by if you're ever passing by Rose Lake on I-90.  I'm just 2 miles from the freeway.    

Happy Holidays, 

Mark