Holiday Letter 2012

To Austin and back again...

Last year’s letter closed with a bit of foreshadowing that 2012 might offer our family an adventure, and indeed it did with a semester abroad in the Republic of Texas!   It could not have been a better experience.  The people we met, the school Eleanor joined, and the colleagues with whom Mike worked – no one could have been more welcoming.  We made new friends, reconnected with old friends, and learned the genuine pleasure of living within driving distance of parents, brothers, and sisters.  Quite possibly, we were overly courted by a Hill Country spring, but Austin swept us off our feet.

Still, we are really happy to be home.   We missed it here with our house, our friends, our backyard, our delicious tap water.   Our time in Austin revealed a few things, including our inner Hobbit.  While the Pacific Northwest inspires a lifestyle considerably hairier and paler than any other, it is also a life grounded in seasons and sustained by a familiar cycle of creature comforts -- on those two points we are quite smitten.  It’s good to be back in our cozy home.

Spending a mild and sunny spring in Texas made possible weekend after weekend of adventures all around the state, but it also gave us a middle-of-the-country perch from which to launch farther flung trips, like a LittleHouse pilgrimage to Missouri and an awesome two week road trip from Austin to Portland.

The second-grade-Eleanor loves math problems, she’s still playing the violin (we’ve made it to Suzuki Book 2 – Hooray!), she likes making stuff, and she loves playing with her friends.  At almost eight, Eleanor is fair, thoughtful, and (as I’ve said before with great relief) true to herself when it really counts.  These days the big news is: she reads like a maniac.  I dedicate a good portion of the time she’s off reading to finding more books for her to read. 

The chance to mix-it-up a bit at work with Austin’s projects proved to be reinvigorating for Michael.  He still works for the team in Austin and as such he spends some weeks here and some weeks there.  We miss him when he is gone, but when he is in Oregon he is really home.  Like, all the time.  He works from our home office now and eliminating his long commute to Intel’s local site has been great for all of us. 

I feel like I spent the year getting lost, shopping for groceries, and getting lost while shopping for groceries.  It was, of course, a bit more complicated and interesting than that but you get the gist of it.  I continue to serve on two boards, one local and one national, I am slowly moving in and falling in love with the new painting studio in our backyard, and I almost never think about the fact that I turn 40 in 55 days.   (I joke.  Usually it seems kind of young compared to how I feel and that somehow seems like I’m winning a race, which is backwards now that I think about it….)

This year required each of us to s-t-r-e-t-c-h a bit.  And for that I’d like to raise a toast to my little family -- especially to Eleanor -- for meeting the challenge with gusto.  While I hear this kind of shake-up keeps you young at heart, and while I spent many a younger year longing for the uprooting kind of adventure, I guess it’s like that country song for me now.  There’s just no better view anymore than that from my own front porch looking in.

And in the words of the irrepressible Bruce Springsteen… may your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love bring us love!