Christmas letter 2017
The Ravens
Apple Valley, CA 92307
December 2017
Dear friends,
Merry Christmas! Hope your 2017 was great. Ours was so busy the year positively flew by.
It started off with a bang. On January 1st, we thought we would drive up to the mountains to play in the fresh snow from the big winter storms. Unfortunately, we kinda slept in that day, so we got off to a late start … or we would have if we hadn’t discovered a box of Christmas chocolates that we’d overlooked. After gorging ourselves, it was pretty late for a trip to the mountains, so we finished the box and called it quits. And all this happened the very first day!
Then some friends who had reservations for the Inauguration chose not to go because their candidate didn’t win, so they offered them to us. Bingo! We don’t fly, of course, because of TSA infringing on our Fourth Amendment rights, so we loaded up the car and took off. By the time we got to New Mexico, though, we were sick of restaurant food and hotel wifi, so we turned around.
By March, that incurable wanderlust of ours had struck again, so we thought, “Why not go catch a movie?” At the last minute, we discovered a show on-demand, so we just watched TV.
On a whim, we opted to fulfill a long-held dream of an Alaskan cruise. But the Bogoslof Volcano erupted, so our flight was canceled. Talk about a hectic first five months of the year.
In July, Laura agreed to go along on one of Greg’s “bucket list” goals, hiking the Lassen Volcanic National Park’s Bumpass Hell trail. Turned out the trail was still closed due to snow. Propitiously, we found out before we got the car all packed!
In August, we wanted to travel to Cheyenne to see the eclipse, but Greg couldn’t cancel his hair appointment. Reading the newspaper accounts was almost like being there.
To make up for that missed opportunity, we decided to tour northern California the next week but on the way to Tehachapi, we learned that some fairly serious fires had broken out, so instead, we changed things up and scheduled a visit to the Ventura area in December.
A friend who is “in the business” wrangled us tickets for the November premiere of Kevin Spacey’s new movie, but as you probably heard it was canceled. We hadn’t even gotten our outfits back from the dry cleaner.
After such a frenetic year, you can well understand why we’ve elected to take it easier in 2018!
Best wishes for the New Year,
The Ravens