Season’s Greetings to all for a Merry Christmas and Happy New
Year!
from the Schwartz family
The big event for the family as a whole was our recent trip to Orlando.
After Celeste’s Mom passed away last year, we decided that we would use our
share of the proceeds of her estate for a blowout family holiday in her memory.
We are sure she would be excited about our adventure if she was still with us.
We left Friday December 1 and returned Friday December 8. Darren’s family arrived the day before us and
departed the day after. Carla and Tyler stayed for an extra week. We spent four
days in Disney parks and two days at Universal. Carla, our master planner,
researcher, and Disney enthusiast had us well prepared. Thanks to the modern
miracles of smart phones and WiFi, we were all able to do our own things while
still meeting up frequently for family time. You can read about our adventures
and see many pictures at http://celesteglenn.blogspot.ca/.
The
other big news was specific to Darren’s family, as they moved to Victoria for
about two years. Sue’s company won the contract to build the first sewage
treatment plant in Victoria, BC. The primary design office is in Boston with some involvement by Sue’s office in Vancouver, but they wanted an on-site
engineer who could be present on a daily basis. Sue was offered this career
building opportunity and returned to full-time employment. They rented out
their house in Vancouver and found a great house to rent in a lovely
neighbourhood next to a large natural park in Esquimalt, adjacent to Victoria and
site of the new plant. Meanwhile, Darren was growing restless in a job he has
essentially been at since his university work term days in 1999. He relished
the opportunity to work part time from home focused on engineering and avoiding
the administrative duties that come with being in the office.
They
have both done some traveling for work. Sue flew to Winnipeg and a few times to
Nanaimo in her old job. In her new job, she flew to Boston to meet with the
design team and made a side trip to New York to visit a friend.
Darren traveled to Calgary, Denver, Chile, and Peru. The whole family again
traveled to Sue’s family cottage in Ontario for a few weeks in July.
The
boys have adjusted well to their new school. In Vancouver in the spring they
were involved in Tae Kwan Do, swimming, and piano lessons and Cameron was playing soccer.
In Victoria they are swimming and looking for a piano teacher. One of
their favourite family activities remains skiing. They frequently went to
Whistler from Vancouver, but the options are a little less exciting from
Victoria.
In the Matlock family, our youngest daughter Laura went back to work part
time at the pharmacy on October 30 after her maternity leave. We are
babysitting the three girls two or three days a week. Our babysitting days are
long and tiring, but worth every minute. Those little people bring such joy
into our lives. Brett decided he needed a change of scenery and applied for and
received a change of schools. He now teaches in the Uplands area of Regina at
St. Gregory School. The school is not known for its sports prowess and had not
won a Separate School Division championship in anything since 1997, but Brett co-coached
the boys volleyball team to the city championship tournament this year.
The twins started pre-school this fall and seem to be enjoying it. They
continue in Ukrainian dancing. They are also still enthusiastic bookworms. Louisa
is walking well, getting into all the twins’ things, vocalizing a lot (although
she is not really speaking words), and is really starting to understand our
speech. She has a great disposition, as proven by the torture she withstood on
our Orlando trip.
They purchased a small camper last winter and gave it a good workout
this summer. With Laura off on maternity leave and Brett off from school, they
will never have a better opportunity. They made several weekend and a few
weekday trips, including a marathon to Lake Diefenbaker with the Sprung family,
on to Cypress Hills, west to the dinosaur park and museum at Drumheller, then
to Calgary for the zoo and Calaway Park, and another stop at Cypress Hills on
the way home. We made a couple of day trips to join them at Buffalo Pound and
camped with them for a few days at Cypress Hills in August.
Carla and Tyler had a fairly quiet year – no trip to Japan this year. They went to Calgary in August for a week of shopping. They were quite excited about our Orlando trip, spending an extra week there. Carla continues as a network analyst for CGI Group in Regina. Tyler continues as an occasional worker for TSN at Roughrider games and with the company that produces content for SaskTel’s community channel. He seems to have been busier this past year, working many weekends and occasional weekdays covering mostly sports events, primarily in the smaller cities throughout the southern part of the province.
Glenn’s Mom and Dad are hanging in pretty well. Dad just celebrated his
92nd birthday and has not had any noticeable change in his health.
Mom will be 92 in May. She had a painfully sore shoulder in February that
turned out to be detached tendons that probably trace back to an untreated injury
from ten years ago. The doctor said that the solution for a younger person
would be rotator cuff surgery, but recommended against it due to age. She
decided to give up driving due to the limited strength and mobility in her
shoulder, but also because her vision has been deteriorating. That means
occasional chauffeur duties for Glenn and siblings, Gail and Cheryl, for going
to church, getting groceries, banking, doctor visits, and occasional other
errands.
And as for our year:
Darren’s family was here for Christmas last year. We went swimming,
trampolining, snow sliding, to the Sask. Science Centre, and, of course,
visiting family at Christmas parties. In January, we visited them and
experienced Vancouver’s longest lasting snow in recent memory. We visited
Vancouver again in April, June, and August, and checked out their new place in
Esquimalt in October. They won’t be coming for Christmas this year, as we just
had a family week together in Orlando, but will visit Sue’s family in Kelowna
and get in some skiing.
We went to Jamaica in February to help Ron Sprung celebrate his 50th
birthday (But don’t tell anybody! He is still trying to keep it secret.) In
July we drove down to Bismarck for the Germans from Russia convention. In
August, we spent a few days camping with Matlocks in Cypress Hills. We also had a visit from the family of Celeste's sister Angie as they drove from Ottawa to the Rocky Mountains and back. In
September, I built a platform in the back yard to erect our screen house. We
did not need it this year as the dry conditions limited the mosquito count.
That pretty much covers our 2017. Hoping to hear from all of you. You
can see this letter with pictures at http://celesteglennschristmasletter.blogspot.ca/.
Glenn, Celeste, and family.
P.S. If you received this letter on paper, please send your email
address to gschwartz@myaccess.ca to
help us save postage and paper. Thanks.
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