Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a healthy, happy and prosperous 2009!

For us, 2008 was eventful, started out as usual but we had a few surprises along the way, ending up with us living here in DC!

John accepted an assignment in Washington!
Jan retired at the end of July!
We drove across the country in September - great trip, if a little too short -
We're happily adjusting to our new environment, the only drawback is the distance from our family and friends. We'll update this blog from time to time with our explorations, events, photos and news, and hope you'll all keep in touch via comments, email, or even the old fashioned way:

Here's where we are:
4448 Westover Place NW

Washington, DC   20016

Phone: 202-244-3065

Visitors are welcome!

Christmas in Arizona!

We visited Sara, Coy and family in Surprise, AZ. Our first Christmas ever that wasn't at OUR house... we had a wonderful time! Steve and Lainie joined us, so the whole family was there, except for Jason, who was having a wonderful time taking care of the Pleasanton pets (sorry, Jason) and having Christmas with his family!

Catching our breath... and catching up

We moved in on September 19th. After several weeks of John's travel for work and various minor illnesses we're finally starting to settle down, and it's beginning to feel if not quite like home, at least somewhat familiar.  We're enjoying "vertical living" in a 3 story townhouse (four with the basement).  It's keeping us in shape running up and down stairs!  We had some minor decorating issues - the living room couch we brought was wayyy to big for our smaller space so we took it to a consignment store and bought a smaller one from the same place.  Now that the house is more or less together we can start exploring the city and surrounding areas, there is so much to do here we'll never see it all, but we plan to make a noble attempt.

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving in 18 years without family and friends all around the table. Son Steve flew out to visit, which really helped, and we enjoyed a fun and festive dinner with our friend Peggy and some of her family. While Steve was here we took the opportunity to visit the Air & Space museum and some of the monuments - Lincoln, FDR, the Vietnam Veterans memorial, and Thomas Jefferson. These are so beautiful and inspiring, each in its own way - we plan to return for further exploration.
Here's the Washington Monument of course, with more to follow soon.