Christmas Blog 2012

 Schwartz Family Christmas Letter 2012

Best wishes of the season from our home to yours!

It is our pleasure to update you on the happenings in our family and we hope to hear what is happening in yours.

Our year started off with a bang! In February we took the whole crew for a week at an all-inclusive resort at Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun. We had a great time just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. 

Celeste and I took a twelve day Mediterranean cruise in May/June. We visited many interesting places and enjoyed everything about the ship. 

We visited Vancouver for about a week at a time in April, July, September/October, and again in November. We had the boys on our own for the Sept/Oct visit, as Darren and Sue were both away at separate conferences. Glenn also stopped in on the way to and from a genealogy conference in Oregon in mid-September. In the late summer and fall we helped paint Laura and Brett’s basement and installed the flooring and finished the ceiling. We had left it basically untouched since we built the walls, finished the electrical, and did most of the ceiling in the winter of 2010-11. In November we installed a hardwood floor in our family room. Just could not keep that carpet clean. Otherwise, things have been pretty quiet in our lives.

Carla is still with CGI Group and enjoying her work. She had to make a working trip to Vancouver in August and managed a short visit with Darren. Tyler graduated from his Graphic Communications program at SIAST, but still has not found a position. He has been finding quite a bit of temporary work though. He worked most of the Roughrider games for either TSN or the stadium video crew. He has also traveled around the province for a company that produces local programming for SaskTel’s community channel. He has been to tractor pulls, roller derbies, minor hockey, awards presentations, etc. They have slowly been acquiring furniture for their home. Carla is pretty particular, so they are still looking for a few items that are exactly right.

Darren is still with Teck Resources, working on processes to extract minerals from ore. He traveled to Peru for a week in October, meeting with a company that is interested in their extraction technology. Sue is still a process engineer specializing in wastewater treatment with AECOM, a global engineering company. Sue and the boys went to the Spruston family cottage in Ontario again for a couple of weeks in July. They dropped in to Regina for a couple of days on the way home and Darren joined them here to take in an anniversary party for Grandma and Grandpa Schwartz. Sue also went to Las Vegas for a marathon in early December. While there are still many small finishing jobs in the house, their major interior renovations are pretty near complete. While we were there in July we helped tear out and rebuild an 8 foot by 11 foot section of their interior stairs and entryway. Replacing the deck and refinishing the exterior remain on the list for next year.

Simona, their au pair from Italy, had to return home in July as her visa was expiring. Friends with two small boys of their own moved into the suite with the mother caring for the four boys three days a week, but the arrangement didn’t work as well as hoped and they all agreed to terminate it at the end of September. They came up with some interim arrangements until Simona gets a new visa and returns, hopefully early in the New Year. And what can we say about our grandsons? Justin will be four in February and Cameron just turned two. It is such a joy to be with them every time we are able.

Laura is still a pharmacist at the North Albert Rexall and doesn’t have much to report on that front. She continues to enjoy her Irish dancing and moved up to the senior group in just her third year. She finds that it is fun and good exercise. Although she has a lot of experience tap dancing, she finds that this is more different than you would expect and she enjoys the challenge. Brett graduated from Education in April and taught as a sub almost every day until the end of the school year. He was one of the fortunate few to earn a full time position in the fall at St. Matthew School, where he did his internship. He is very excited about it and really enjoying it so far. He moved his personal training business to another studio in the spring, but found it was too much of a commitment while teaching school and gave it up in October. They visited Darren’s gang in Vancouver in August and had a lot of fun. Their dog Charlie remains the centre of their lives.

You may recall from last year’s letter that Celeste’s Mom had returned home from a hospital stay and convalescence on Nov. 15 and was doing well and improving every day. Well, in mid-December she started to show signs that something was not right. We suspected a recurrence of her infection and got her to the hospital where they did detect some infection and put her on intravenous antibiotics. However, one of the nurses noticed some incapacitation in her left arm that we had all attributed to the infection problem. The nurse recommended a brain scan which showed that Mom had a leaky blood vessel which was building up pressure between her skull and brain. While no brain surgery is minor, hers was on the low end of the scale, being relatively simple and common, and she soon recovered, although she now usually uses a walker for safety. We have also convinced her to quit driving because of the slow reaction in her feet.

Glenn’s Dad passed his vision tests and was cleared to drive before Christmas last year, but he does not have confidence in his peripheral vision so Mom has been doing almost all the driving. He passed another test late this fall, but is still not comfortable. Now it sounds like SGI wants him to undergo further testing. His bad knee continues to slow him down. Dad also had some shortness of breath over the summer. It took a while to pin down, but they finally decided that it was emphysema and gave him an inhaler. He seems to be fine now. He reluctantly gave up golf and Rider games this past year. Meanwhile Mom just keeps chugging along. She is very small and thin, but still seems strong. They celebrated their 65^th anniversary in July and we put together a small party, complete with a visit from the Queen! OK, she was an impersonator, but she was quite funny.

Best wishes for the Christmas season and throughout the New Year!

Glenn, Celeste, & Family