Holiday Greetings - 2023
We have to start somewhere so here we go.
Hey friends, thanks for joining us on this new journey, we hope you find it as enjoyable as our letters from years past. This is a bonus section for those who have received the hard copy version.
This year Nick finally got his way and put lights up on our roof. It was such a grand gift we had to share it. Checks (aka Chris) loves holiday lights it gives her such joy. And Plaid (aka Parry) loves Checks so much he will do anything for her, but is thankful he didn't have to go up on the roof.
In case you missed it, here is some of our Christmas letter....
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas 2023! Well, last year ended with everyone at our place for Christmas. It was a full house and lots of fun. After things calmed down, I took all the items I had “uncovered” during all of our 2022 cleaning and organizing sessions and restarted my eBay account. It had been quite a few years since I used eBay and it took a while to get into the groove While I spent the winter selling, Chris continued being very involved advocating for climate and justice causes.
I thought eBay would keep me busy in January. However, the more work you put into “listings” the better the bids so before I knew it, eBay took, more or less, the first 3 months of 2023! It was fun, kept me busy, we were able to get rid of a lot of stuff while making about $3,000! In April, packed up the remaining items we hadn’t sold (they will be going back on eBay eventually) and we moved into full “property managers” mode for our cabin. Throughout the winter, we did a lot of reading and studying on how to utilize VRBO and Airbnb, expectations from renters and creating lists of things we need to compete before the first renters arrived.
Let me back track a little, the past 3 years we have spent most of the spring/summer/fall at our cabin which we really enjoyed. That said, during the summer of 22, we realized three things: 1) We enjoyed Spring and Fall the best. 2) We often had to spend a few weeks in July/August back in Grand Rapids for various reasons. 3) rent for cabins like ours has risen a lot over the years. Given that, we decided to try renting the cabin for July & August. One of the benefits of this decision is that it focused us on what improvements the cabin needed. We bought some new furniture and lots of other items (sheets, towels, stove, etc.). Turns out, being property managers is fun. We answered many emails from potential renters and “shared” our Torch experience with several families. Since we were not sure how renting would work out and the difficulty of finding a cleaning service, we decided we would do the cleaning ourselves. So, in between renters, we drove to the cabin, cleaned it and drove back. That might seem like a lot of work but we, surprisingly, really enjoy it. The summer went well enough that we are going to do it again this year. It’s our “part time” job where we pretty much control everything!
We had a trip to Key West planned in March but between hurricanes and Ferrari’s health, we had to scratch it. Instead, we did a weekend in Chicago where we attended the recording of the NPR radio show, “Wait wait, don’t tell me” (it’s a comedy show whose format is a current-events news quiz). We have enjoyed listening to it over the years and always said “we should go see it’, so we finally did! We had a great time.
Spring went fast at the cabin as we had many things we wanted to do before our first renters showed up. If nothing else, having renters certainly motivated us to do things we had been putting off. Chris celebrated the big “60” with her sisters, they took her on an overnight outing and had a great time. I tip my hat to Ann and Barb!
In that same vein, being home for the summer took away my excuse for not doing several projects I had been putting off (for years!) For example, the sunroom the previous owners built had “settled” enough that the sliding doors on the north & south sides were no longer square. This was a project that really concerned us as we could not know how ‘bad’ it would be or how much effort it would take. My home improvement skills are much better at tearing down than construction so we started by taking the walls apart so we could see what was waiting for us. As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad and thanks to my friend, Pat, we were able to reuse the same sliding doors and re-square the two walls. Once that was done, I was able to complete the inside and outside of the walls myself. It feels great knowing that problem is gone and even better to know it didn’t cost us a ton.
During the summer, we were invited to go to Denver and use Nick and Rayla’s apartment for 10 days while they were on a trip to Yellowstone. The catch? The apartment came with their dog, Orion!😊 Given our cleaning schedule and Ferrari, it wasn’t practical for both of us to go but we were lucky that Chris’s sister, Barb, was up for an adventure so Chris and Barb were able to fly to Denver and take their EV and dog all over Colorado. They had a great time.
During the trip, I worked on our sunroom and Pat graciously volunteered to help me clean the cabin a couple of times. Worked out great for both of us. My cleaning work was much easier, and Pat ended up with more $$ when on our last trip we stopped at the casino, and he was able to make a nice “withdrawal”. Everybody wins!
Fall brought exciting news. Rayla got a new job in Ann Arbor! They moved back to MI the end of August. We met them to pick up Orion as they were heading to stay at Chris’s sister, Barb’s, while house searching. THANKS AGAIN to Barb and Charlie for their great hospitality. Sept/Oct are a blur between having two dogs and assisting as we could with their house search. The market was still hot and while the first 2 houses they wanted didn’t work out, it was for the good as they found an even better house and moved in just before Halloween. Needless to say, we didn’t spend as much time at the cabin this fall but more than a fair trade overall. When we did get to the cabin, we had an “incident” and of course it occurred on the one day I was not at the cabin. Orion discovered, just about 10 feet from the cabin’s back door, that a hive of ground bees. Chris, Orion &Ferrari all got stung. Not sure how many times for the dogs but Chris was strung 5 times. The good news is that we thought Chris was allergic to bee stings but with these particular bees, her overall reaction was rather mild (as far as swelling and such). The bad news is while swelling was minimal. The stings themselves continued to cause quite a bit of pain for well over a week. We came home early as there were more things for Chris to do at home (in order to ignore the pain). As if that wasn’t enough change for the Fall, Nick was “head-hunted” and offered a new remote position with a nice raise. He is looking forward to the new challenge and started the end November.
Nate and Andrea summer was also busy as they went to Europe (Paris, London and around Iceland) for over 2 weeks. The pictures of the trip were fantastic. They are both doing well, and Andrea defended her dissertation on 12/15 and “passed” so she has her PhD and is now, Dr Andrea! So cool!
For Thanksgiving we were very lucky in that Nate and Nick were both able to come home for the full week before the holiday week. Nick and Rayla then went to Pittsburgh to celebrate with her family and Andrea flew in to join Nate and us for Thanksgiving. It was incredible and totally unexpected to have both boys home for a week and we really enjoyed it. Chris was surprised when Andrea and Nate (but mostly Andrea) offered to do all the shopping and preparing of our Thanksgiving meal. It was delicious.
13 years ago, this Christmas, “I” bought a convertible “for Chris” (but I can be honest, I have loved having it all these years). So this time, I won’t claim it is “for Chris” and share we bought each other a Tesla Model Y SUV Long Range and boy, do we have travel plans for it. Ideally, over the next few years we are going to try and visit nearly all of the National Parks we have yet to see (as well as seeing many again!). There are 63 National Parks (57 that are more practical to reach) and while we have already visited 28, that leaves us plenty! Charge the car, it’s nearly time for a road trip! NOTE: Send good thoughts to Parry as the EV replaces his beloved mini-van and he hasn’t been without a mini-van for 27 years!!! For fun, we have decided to log our road trips as we travel so we have created a blog (website) where we are going to document the fun and thrills of traveling across America (and Canada too!). If you care to travel virtually with us, you can go to plaidnchecks.com and on the website, please feel free to ask us questions or add comments.
There were three additions (grand nephew/nieces) to our extended families this year. Isabelle born in April, Palmer born in August, and Samuel born in November.
For Christmas we will be hosting Nick/Rayla and Mom/Dad and are looking forward to seeing other friends and family. We hope you are part of a full house as well this holiday season.
Parry, Chris and Ferrari – yes she is still with us at 14+
Footnote: Sadly it was Ferrari’s last Christmas. She passed on and is now running freely with no pain and basking in the sun. She was 14 years, 7 months, 26 days old when she died. She is dearly missed.
