Happy New Year

Photo by Daniel Ortiz

At this time of the year we start a fire in the fireplace first thing in the morning when we get up (6:30 – 7 am). We sit around, enjoy that first cup of coffee, read, check our e-mail, browse Facebook, watch the sun come up and have a leisurely breakfast. Most mornings we see deer in the yard and birds at the bird feeder. I usually head for the shop sometime between 9 and 10 am. At 10 am if it is cloudy Carol throws another log on the fire, if the sun is shining she lets the fire go out. I come back in about noon for dinner (what city folks call lunch). It can be 0 degrees F outside and on a clear day it will be 80 F inside and we will have a couple of windows open. After dinner I head back out to the shop and work until 7 pm. I usually take the last 30 to 60 minutes of my day to work out – I hit the speed bag, work with jo or bokken, swing the club bells, do pushups, dips and pull ups, or something else. At 7 pm I head back in, “honey I am home”, Carol comes running to kiss her lover. We sit down and have supper on the couch while watching something on TV.

Youngest daughter Brittany got married this summer to Brady Swanson. Our daughter Kristen put on a beautiful shower for the bride and groom early in August. The wedding was a few weeks later at the Stave Church at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead, MN. The bride was radiant in a full length white mermaid dress and the groom was handsome in a dark tux. The reception was at the Baymount Inn in Fargo. There was a sit down supper with music, dancing followed. Brittany and Brady moved to Karlstad, MN after the wedding, he has a job with American Crystal Sugar and she as an LPN at a local nursing home. Brady is also farming on his father's farm. Brittany will continue her studies to become a RN at Thief River Falls Community College.

Middle daughter, Kristen is at college and will graduate with a degree in business in May 2016. She worked an internship at the Fargo Forum this summer, they liked her so much that after two weeks offered her a part time job until she graduates, to become full time upon graduation. Kristen joined the League of Women Voters and is enjoying her role in being a citizen. Her husband Gabe was promoted to manager at Joseph School of Hair Design – west campus. They have been wonderful hosts the many times we were in Fargo this year.

Our eldest daughter Amy is also back in school. After a few years in retail management she has decided that she would rather work in the field of medicine and is working on completing a undergraduate degree in pre-med at the College of Southern Nevada next year and moving on to medical school at the University of Nevada. She is planning to graduate as a Physician's Assistant in 2019. Her husband Daniel was laid off at the Airport and is currently looking for work.

Amy's daughter, Aliyah, our one and only granddaughter is living with her father, Scott, this year in Grand Forks, ND and attending 7^th grade. Aliyah plays a double bass in the orchestra and is on the volley ball team. After a couple of years at a magnet school in Las Vegas, Aliyah says that math and science classes in Grand Forks are pretty easy. Either place, Aliyah is a straight A student.

Carol is becoming a good bridge player, playing Thursday afternoons at the Senior Center with the ladies from our neighborhood – when they play there is a lot of laughter and wow! are they loud. After Brittany's wedding I dropped Carol off in Park Rapids at one of our neighbor's lake cabins for a 4 day Bridge Boot Camp. She said they played 130 games during those 4 days.

Carol has been getting more exercise this summer taking several hikes with the neighborhood women. She also keeps a very neat and clean house, and she especially loves to cook and we have something delicious and unique for every meal.

Carol and I took a road trip to South Carolina to visit neighbors Jeff and Pauline, who have a winter home there. We started with a side trip to St. Cloud so I could attend Mark Larson's Spring Aikido Seminar at St. Johns University. Then south through Des Moine, Iowa, then on to St. Louis, Missouri, where we stayed with Leigh English and his wife Shiela Mapes for the evening. Leigh was my first judo instructor and we arrived in time so I could do Judo with Leigh and his Judo club which practices Monday evenings in his basement. I was so sore after 2 days of Aikido training I could barely move. I hadn't seen Leigh and Shiela in many years so it was wonderful getting a chance to visit.

On the road to Myrtle Beach we stopped and saw the sights along the way: Japanese Garden in St. Louis, Mammoth Cave, the Corvette Museum and factory in Bowling green, the National Laboratory in Oak Ridge where they refined the Uranium for the first atomic bomb, the Baltimore Mansion in Ashville. Then on to neighbors Jeff and Pauline's place just outside of Myrtle Beach. Jeff got me out on the golf course, it had been almost 40 years – I shot a 111. We went fishing in the bay and I got to smell the ocean again. Lots of good food and great conversation. A week later we packed up the Mustang and headed for Savannah, then a night on the Florida gulf coast, on the beach, toured the battleship USS Alabama and submarine USS Drum, spent two nights in New Orleans (not impressed!), spent a night at an old plantation house that was occupied by General Sherman and his officers (we stayed in the Sherman bedroom), toured the battlefield at Vicksburg. By this time we had been on the road for 3 weeks and were excited to get home so we got on the Interstate and beat feet for home.

We also continue to get together with our neighbors on Wednesday evening for supper, we feel we are so lucky to have been included in this fine group of people. We have a great time together and help each other out when required. It has been great fun.

As for me, I continue to work around the house, but this year at a much relaxed pace, about 40 hours a week. The early part of the year I completed building some book shelves, installed the bathtub and shower in the master bedroom and started cleaning up the remaining construction materials. By early summer I was building slash piles and moving dirt. I dug out behind the master bedroom and created a 4' wide walk way and cutting garden – the wide path allows me to move wheelbarrows and tools freely to that side of the house, which is blocked off by the big rocks. Mid summer I started working on the fish pond in the front entrance and for Carol's birthday in September added the fish to the pond. This fall our son-in-law, Daniel, and I built a rock wall in the drainage channel, what we affectionately call the “moat” and moved several huge rocks for stepping stones and guard stones at the front entrance. My latest project is the installation of solar panels on the garage to heat hot water for domestic hot water pre-heat and space heating. We got the panels on the garage on Monday the 14^th, I am hoping to have all the plumbing completed and the system collecting heat by the middle of January.

It hasn't been all work though, we drove to Fargo in February for the 20^th annual Kangeiko (Winter Training Festival) our annual judo training, annual meeting and reunion. We have 5 judo clubs stretching from Dickinson to St. Cloud so it is great fun getting together. Then in late August Carol and I went to Dickinson for a judo seminar and celebration for one of the Dickinson Judo Club members who received his black belt. I miss judo, but am not excited to take on the responsibility of another club here in Custer. Something will work out, it always does.

It has been a good year for rock climbing. I did a first ascent in the Whistle Stop area, about 4 miles north of Keystone, SD in May, cleaned it, drilled it, bolted it under the guidance of Mark Strege, it is a long 100' climb that is rated at 5.9, I named it “Long Haul.” I helped Mark put up another climb on an adjacent rock, a 60' climb rated 5.10, Mark led it and named it “Stoner.” I can climb all but the last 5 feet of Stoner, the hardest part of the climb, so I am hoping to work out the moves and get it next spring when the weather warms up.

After I dropped Carol off in Park Rapids after Brittany's wedding I returned to Custer via Veblen, SD, where I worked on the family farm growing up, and visited with my uncle Roger and his wife Jo-Ann. Roger gave me the grand tour of the community of Veblen, the corporate dairy operation with 20,000 cows and an equal number of calves, the abandoned farmsteads where people I once knew lived. It was a sobering reminder of what progress looks like. It had been a couple of years since I had seen Roger, he was such a hero, such a good role model to me when I was growing up.

We had a steady stream of guests this year: Brittany and Brady were here for a couple of days in May, Judo buddy Sam Rudd was here for a week over the 4^th of July, then Aliyah was here for two weeks and a few weeks later Amy and Daniel were here for a week before Brittany's wedding, John and Susan Helgeland stopped by, as did Ken Nysether, Nick and Mary Lambert, and cousin Jerry Borgen. 

“its beginning to look a lot like Christmas...” Socks have been hung from the fireplace mantel with care, in hopes that St. Nicolas will soon be here. The smell of pine and fresh cookies fills the air. Every room of the house has received special decorating attention from Carol, there are Christmas trees, Santas, manger scenes, that fill the eye with delight.

Wishing everyone a most joyous happy New Year.

Love,

Van