Holiday Letter 2022

Merry Christmas, hyvää joulua, frohe Weihnachten, happy Hanukkah and happy holidays, everyone!

Here's a rundown of what we've been up to this year.

We made a few trips, including one to visit Peter and Alexa (and the two boys in the photo above, Soren and Johan, who are wearing Norwegian cardigans made by their great, great, great aunt from Bergen.) One of the trips was the annual Rose City Yarn Crawl.

Charlie's brother, Jim, moved to Florence, Oregon, which is on the coast. We made two trips to visit him. The first time we stayed with him. The second time we stayed in an RV campground at the harbor. We ate out at a place outside on the water. They allowed dogs.

We made visits to the beach, and the dogs got to walk around. Rocky rode in his stroller until we got to where we planned to spend some time.

Peter's family came to visit several times, including Thanksgiving. Dusty got to play with and take walks with his best buddy, Louis.

We managed to do some demolishing in and around the house and a little rebuilding to our liking. We didn't like or use this soaking tub.

We had it ripped out and replaced with this nice, big shower.

The original shower was smaller than a phone booth when you actually had to stand in it. There was a seat in it, taking up about half of the floor space.

We had it ripped out and a closet built into the space. The previous owner had left some of the ceiling unpainted, so the whole bathroom ceiling got a new coat of paint. The doors on the original closets (like the one on the right) opened into the closet, eliminating a lot of storage space. We had the doors reinstalled opening out.

Charlie is lining the closet with cedar. Some of the cedar was left over from lining our closet in Dana Point (circa 1987). Yes, we've been moving it around with us, only four moves plus going into storage in California when we moved to Indonesia. He had to buy a little more to complete the closet, and it's a slightly different size, but he put the new cedar along the back wall. There is still more to do, but it will have shelves, etc., for storing our woolens. (It smells lovely!)

Charlie demolished the old dilapidated plastic greenhouse, which was on the property when we bought it.

We only used it for storage, and it wasn't very good for that, because snow and rain came in. Maybe a new greenhouse will go there next year.

The young man who built our new cedar closet also helped repair and refurbish our front porch, finishing it with black paint to match the shutters. The new rails are easier to grab when you're going up and down the steps.

We voted twice each (in the primary in May and general in November). Oregon makes it easy for us to vote. Every registered voter gets a ballot. You can mail it or drop it into a ballot box. You can check online to find out if your ballot was received and counted.

We got Covid boosters twice each, along with other vaccinations we needed. We have managed to avoid getting even a light case of the dreaded virus, but we didn't go out in public a lot.

We endured the smoke that resulted from all the forest fires in our part of the state. The fire season is getting to be a regular thing. We have air conditioning now, so we don't have to open the windows when the air quality is bad. We use air purifiers strategically placed around the house. This was one an air filter from one of our purifiers. We were glad this stuff wasn't in our lungs.

Gardening is difficult here, because of the short growing season and the busy birds and squirrels, but we managed to get some strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and a few other things.

We've been using a very small Dutch oven to bake bread. This kind of bread is best fresh, so we make small loaves, just enough for two or three servings.

We're still making sourdough bread for sandwiches, and occasionally some Finnish pulla.

I pieced a quilt top using the fronts (mostly) of T-shirts from Hash runs in Indonesia when we were there. I'm still working on the back.

Rocky turned 18 in August. We baked him a doggy cake. No sugar, no salt, but otherwise like a cake and frosted with mashed bananas mixed with unsalted peanut butter. (There's another frosting recipe made with cream cheese and peanut butter, but I needed to use the bananas.) Both dogs enjoyed the cake. We put the leftover cake in the freezer.

As of this writing, Rocky is still with us. He can hardly see and hear, and he sleeps a lot, but he really enjoys his food and the occasional walk around the yard or to the mailbox.

Last year, Karen's family came for Christmas. This year they go to Texas. We stay in touch with our almost-weekly Zoom calls. 

Daphne was picked for the honor roll at school for the quarter just finished.

She still enjoys her dance classes. She went en pointe this year.

Zachary still finds dancing fun, too. 

His favorite subject is math, which he can't seem to get enough of. Of course, the parents (and grandparents) are proud of all the grandchildren.

Soren is a good runner. He participated in the Special Olympics this year. They let Johan participate, too.

I enjoy singing in the choir. We're lucky to have really good direction! I feel fortunate to have had a great director at St. Luke's in Park City and now at Trinity. It makes singing so much more enjoyable, and I've learned a lot over the years.

The Doll's Storybook has had a new addition. Pauly joined us this year. His back story is that he doesn't live with us, but lives in the neighborhood with a boy named Jeffy. He was actually manufactured as a boy, not converted, like my other two boys, who were manufactured as girl dolls. Here's Pauly with Emil in a scene from a recent story from the story blog. Pauly hasn't made an appearance in any of the books yet, but he probably will be in the next one. The link to the story blog is found at the bottom of this letter.

This year's book is Classic Tales Retold, the third in the series. It's a little longer: 70 pages. As with the other two books, the royalties go to St. Jude. I'm very lucky to have great proofreader/editors in my family. This book gave them a lot more to do.

The local yarn shop, Fancywork Yarn Shop, is selling my books to customers. Some of the knitted items in the photos are my patterns on Ravelry, and they are free. A customer can buy the book and the yarn to make something for a child's doll. Here's the display.

Alex, our older granddaughter is still in Salt Lake City, and is still working as a photographer. Tim and Patty moved to Indianapolis, to be closer to Tim's work. His job keeps him pretty busy, especially this time of year.

This will be a quiet Christmas. Jim is in Arizona for the winter and doesn't plan to come here. The kids will be with the other grandparents. It will be peaceful, and we will visit with them all virtually. We've been blessed with relatively good health, interesting things to occupy our time and enough money to live on. What more could we hope for for our friends?

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and that 2023 is safe and happy!

Here’s how to get in touch with us:

Charlie: 435/729-0893 tupsu99@hotmail.com

Peggy: 435/714-0048 pudelfreund@juno.com

872 SE Airpark Dr., Bend, OR 97702

The Doll’s Storybook: thedollsstorybook.blogspot.com for the stories, and email thedollsstorybook.icloud.com

Charlie & Peggy Stuart