Letter

Once again, it's time for a Christmas letter, or rather, a series of pictures with the briefest descriptions I feel like I can get away with. Normally I tend to go through the year roughly chronologically, but I figured this year I'd try something new and organize the pictures first by theme. We'll see how it goes.

First, let's talk about some outings and events that happened in the past year. We took a number of local day hikes as usual, although we kept ourselves pretty exclusively to hikes where we could bring the dog, like Almaden Quicksilver and Uvas Canyon county parks:

Evan & Splash at an overlook in Almaden Quicksilver

Boulder scrambling while geocaching in Almaden Quicksilver

At Uvas Canyon

We went cherry picking with some friends at an orchard in Morgan Hill on Memorial Day. Unfortunately neither of the boys is a big cherry fan, so while they enjoyed picking them it was mostly up to Steph and I to eat them. We did our best, but we had to find some creative uses for fresh cherries, like cherry mojitos (which just tasted like regular mojitos with a pink tint).

Picking cherries in Morgan Hill

Making cherry mojitos with all the extra cherries

Broadway San Jose brought Hamilton to the Center for the Performing Arts in October, and Steph and I loved it when we saw it in San Francisco last year so we took the opportunity to bring the boys while it was playing in our backyard!

Seeing Hamilton in San Jose

Steph's sister Megan got married in July, although we managed to get essentially no pictures from the event itself aside of the one below of the boys and their younger cousins after the ceremony. Steph and her sisters did a bachelorette getaway in Napa a few days before, and that there were pictures of:

Steph and her sisters in Napa before Megan's wedding

Evan and Alex with cousins Lola and Ruby after the ceremony

Steph's youngest sister Kim and her family flew in from New Jersey for the wedding, and they stayed with us a few days afterwards before heading back home. We took them down to Monterey one day to ride e-bikes along the 17-Mile Drive (which my sister Hallie turned us onto earlier this year):

The biking crew taking a break along 17-Mile Drive

Evan, Alex and Hayden waiting for everyone to catch up

Steph and Kim at Lover's Point

We also went up to the city for a day and visited the California Academy of Sciences and Golden Gate Park:

The cousins on Strawberry Hill in the center of Stow Lake

In August Steph taught a week-long felting class at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. Since she was going to be in the area a gallerist in Asheville invited Steph to show some of her work in her gallery, and they worked the timing out so she was able to give an artist's talk during the opening reception:

Steph giving her artist's talk at Katrina Chenevert Gallery

While there was no dog to exercise, Steph's gotten in the habit of taking a couple hearty walks a day, which she continued at Penland. After spending so much time in the yellow-to-brown hills of Northern California at the end of summer she especially appreciated the verdant green landscape of western North Carolina.

Steph in a field near Penland School of Craft

Steph's in-person workshop had been pushed back a year thanks to COVID, and it was limited to a much smaller group than usual -- with a much longer wait list. But, like many others, she took the opportunity to 'pivot' as a result, and spent nearly nine months of the year creating a video version of her popular workshop, filming and editing in the home studio. Teaching in person may never be the same now that she's harnessed the wonder of time-lapse in video demonstrations of what is normally a very slow and gradual process. If you're interested you can check it out at http://courses.stephaniemetz.com, which includes a brief video overview of the class near the top.

OK, next topic, assorted nice pictures of the family. Over the last year we took a series of pictures of the boys on the back patio steps with Splash to mark all of their growth. I think this will be the last one, since the dog is pretty much full grown now.

The last picture in the porch stoop series

Steph gave Alex a new haircut at the turn of the year, and she took this nice picture of her and the boys while she was staging a portrait of him for the school yearbook.

Just a nice picture of Steph and the boys

Speaking of which, both boys moved on to new schools this year. Evan finished up middle school in June, and is now a freshman in high school.

Evan graduating from middle school

Evan graduating from middle school

Evan graduating from middle school

Alex finished elementary school, and started at our neighborhood middle school in the fall.

Alex graduating from elementary school

Alex graduating from elementary school

Both guys are really doing well at their new schools, and I think they like being back in person this year. I know I like not having to drive kids to school every morning since they can both walk to school!

They also both had low-key birthdays at home, Evan turning 14 and Alex 12.

Evan's 14th birthday

Alex's 12th birthday

We took the obligatory "first day of school" picture on the front porch, although this happened to only be Evan's first day of school. The high school district is separate from the elementary/middle school district here and they have independent schedules. Luckily most of the significant breaks overlap this year (that hasn't always been the case), but Evan's start and end dates are a week earlier than Alex's. 

First day of school (for Evan, Alex started a few days later)

The boys decided they were getting too old to dress up for Halloween and go trick-or-treating, but when I pulled down the boxes of old costumes along with the decorations they took the time to try a bunch on (none of which fit anymore, of course).

Trying on way too small old Halloween costumes

By the fall both boys' soccer teams were back in full swing, so most evenings involved driving one kid or the other to soccer practice and most weekends saw us all around the South Bay (and sometimes beyond) at a game or three.

Eating lunch at Alex's soccer tournament

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving at home this year, playing board games and a fair amount of ping pong on our new back deck (more on that later). The dog really wants to play ping pong, too, although her version involves more running and ball carriage than normal.

Splash's version of getting involved in the ping pong game at Thanksgiving

Speaking of Splash, let's go over a few very dog-specific pictures. Ever since we brought Splash home last summer every day involves at least one, usually two significant dog walks. Most of those go unremarked and unrecorded, but some of them generate a picture or two, and there are enough of those that there were a lot of pictures to sift through to find a few shareable ones.

Steph and Splash on one of their morning dog walks

Splash and the boys at Cardoza Park, a frequent destination over the winter and spring

Splash from the adoption flyer and at one year old

Splash with some of her best friends at Cataldi Park

At the top of the bluffs at Fort Funston

Down on the beach at Fort Funston

Finally, Steph has been taking Splash to agility classes starting in the spring, and she really seems to like doing it (by "she" I mean the dog... I know Steph enjoys it). A few weeks ago they participated in their first "Fun Run", which is basically a practice competition where no one actually runs a timer or keeps track of mistakes (normally you get penalty time added on if you miss obstacles and such). Here's a video of Splash making one of her runs (the last one of the day if I remember right):

Last, like so many people during the pandemic we did a lot of yard projects this past year. In 2020 we repaired and repainted our back patio portico, took out a row of dense juniper bushes in the back yard and had our back fence rebuilt, along with removing an old fruit tree we never liked. That was all in preparation for replacing them with new fruit trees this year and building a series of raised planting beds for a garden and a flagstone patio where the juniper bushes used to be.

Lots of wheelbarrow trips were involved... mostly moving rock

Digging holes to plant a few more fruit trees (apple and nectarine here)

Alex and Splash both like laying around on the patio (in progress here)

The area along the back of the house that used to be solid juniper bush

The flagstone patio and raised planting beds pretty much finished

We maaay have planted too many zucchini plants... this is one day's harvest at the peak

A day's bounty from the garden near the end of summer

One stand of tomato plants

The other big project was building a low deck over the aging concrete patio. Ever since we bought our house 6 years ago we'd planned on cladding the two sets of stairs down to the patio with some type of composite to better match the stairs into Steph's studio and bring the top step to the same grade as the inside floors. Since we also needed to do something sooner or later about the patio itself, someone (I think this one is my fault) came up with the brilliant idea of expanding the stair project into a full blown deck project. I'm not sure I really appreciated just how much work would be involved, but we're pretty happy with the results so all's well that ends well I guess.

You end up in some weird positions building a deck

The messiest task of the whole project was grinding down a concrete step

Nothing like a little concrete dust to freshen up the environs

The best shot I actually took of the deck when it was almost finished

The new flagstone patio, raised planting beds, and new back fence at night

Splash in one of her favorite resting places on top of the new patio steps

So here we are at the end of another calendar year. We've seen some very visible changes- not just in the yard, but also in our growing boys (Alex truly rocks his hairstyle, and Evan wants you to all know he's as tall as Steph, broader, and still gaining). We've missed connecting with you in person, but look forward to that happening again...some day soon. In the meantime, thanks for being part of our lives, if mostly in spirit and through phone calls. Happy Holidays!

Our 2021 Christmas card picture