Happy New Year!

Well it wasn’t the year we hoped for but despite it all there were some good things that happened.

In January we were able to go to warmer climes in Arizona and spend time with our friends there.  Lots of friends, good birds, and a few jobs painting to help pay the bills and brighten up some Arizona homes.  There’s even a promise of a really fun mural to paint when we ever go back. 

We made it till March when all hell broke loose and we managed to get ourselves home while the getting was good.  

By April after everything had closed down including pickleball at the Y.  We were lured outdoors to relative safety, if we wore masks and tried to keep a distance.  Our friend Howie Natenshon generously offered his own outdoor court where we played every day that the weather allowed. When it got hot we could also jump in his pool after.  We are still playing and our goal is to keep on playing in every month of the year.  Snow has stopped us for a few days

but we went snowshoeing instead. 

Then the court was shoveled and we were back at it.

  I cannot emphasize enough how much this has helped and continues to help me get through this difficult time.  When it was warm Denny would come over and watch and do his walk over there.  

We enjoyed some beautiful flowers and trees in our home garden.

Also went canoeing a couple of times with friends. This is at Tully Lake with Dick and Dagmar where we walked to the falls after paddling.

Our life wasn’t only pickleball,  there were lots of walks with neighbors (again masked and at a distance). Denny and I also discovered a lot of new and forgotten trails where we did some good birding.

We even went birding with friends and found this guy – our biggest bird of the day!

We had a lot of activity in our own backyard. Turtles laying eggs (that we never did see hatch) and Wrens raising young in our nest box.

Our neighborhood even recently managed a cookie swap where we put individual bags out for participants to take and walked around to get ours.  

I also have been busy with our Arts Coop trying to keep us alive when we had to close for 4 months. 

We’ve put together an on-line store which helps and although I don’t personally work in the gallery I do go in to hang new shows and redo the window.  Because of the uptick in virus cases we decided to close for the month of January but hopefully did well enough while we were open to survive.  Since many of you don’t live here and can’t get to the gallery I hope you will take advantage of our wonderful artist’s work that is on-line.  

Other artistic endeavors included painting a sign on Howie’s pool house for Camp Gampy, what he calls it when his grandchildren visit. 

I also recently painted a sign for his new sauna. 

My biggest job has been illustrating a book about frogs.  These are all black and white drawings and started out with about 30.  It continues to grow to almost twice that and I’m not finished yet.  I’m hoping it will be done by February but who knows.  

It was a beautiful fall even if these pictures don’t quite capture the true brilliance.

We really missed our usual Thanksgiving dinner at Beth’s with so many friends but so many of us we had our own at home.

I made the standard turkey dinner which was good but not the same. Hopefully this year we’ll be together again.

Denny was doing his daily walk on the bike trail by the train yard until recently.  On Dec. 20th as we were getting ready to do the Christmas Bird Count he fell down the basement stairs and fractured his clavicle. 

He also got pretty banged up all over.  Fortunately he didn’t need surgery, just a sling, and time will heal it all.  He was hardly able to walk for a while but now seems to be doing pretty well.  The pain has lessened a great deal.  Our granddaughters gave us a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle which is keeping  him quite busy.  I help a bit too.

We miss our family a lot.  We were supposed to have David visit last April for Denny’s 80th birthday and Sam and his girlfriend, Tionna, were coming in August.  That didn’t happen.  We lost friends from the virus and other causes who are greatly missed. Hopefully Biden will get things moving on vaccinations and get the virus under control so we can all get back to the new normal. It will be good to have someone who cares in the White House. I’d rather be hugging friends and family than making more masks.  

Wishing us all a better, more compassionate, science-based world in 2021. 

Stay safe and well.

Peace,

Nancy & Denny