Our travel, writing, and family news for the year 2003
Christmas Letter 2003
Greetings! May God’s blessings fall on you abundantly—good health, good friends, and a chance to change something in the world for the better.
TRAVEL NEWS
Our travel this year has been largely to visit our kids in Laramie, Wyoming; San Francisco, California; Ft. Worth, Texas; and Hilo, Hawaii. We also visited Don’s brother and his wife, Gail and Betty Dull, who have just moved to a golf course community near Hot Springs, Arkansas—perfect for them. (To each his own.) And I attended the annual conference in Los Angeles of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. It’s great that we are able to still travel.
Actually, the second trip grew out of a glitch with Orbitz. When Don made our online purchase of tickets to Laramie and Los Angeles, Orbitz did not acknowledge that the transaction went through, so the next day he tried again and reserved a slightly different itinerary. Fortunately, these were paper tickets. When both sets arrived, he tried to cancel one of them—even with all the modern inventions, it is still impossible for one person to occupy a seat twice at the same time or be on two different planes at the same time. But Orbitz refused to give us a refund. We were allowed to change the dates on one of the pair by paying a change-date penalty. And so we were able to see all our kids this year instead of just two. We have never had any problem buying tickets online with Expedia.com and will give them our business exclusively after this.
Smooth travel: all planes on time (Hawaiian, Delta, Frontier, Mesa)—we all had to flap our arms to make the Mesa plane lift off, but it was uneventful after that—all luggage on time, security checks routine. PTL!
PUBLISHING
My big event this year was to win the Ka Palapala Po’okela award for LULLABY MOON. This lift-a-flap book was chosen as best children’s book published in Hawaii in 2003. Don and I sat holding our breath at the award ceremony and gave each other’s hand a little squeeze when the runner-up was announced. We knew LULLABY MOON had won.
Island Heritage published another of my books this fall: THE ROYAL WAKER-UPPER. It has a pop-up of Iolani Palace inside the front cover. Cool. Andrew Leung of San Francisco was illustrator. I was invited to Waimea, Big Island, to do a book signing at the Christmas in Waimea event with Cook’s Discoveries, a gift shop in cowboy country in the northern part of the active-volcano island. It was fun meeting other local authors and doing my Christmas shopping in an unusual venue.
HEALTH
Don is doing fairly well. He had gout again last week but is getting around pretty well now. He has a horrible cough brought on by taking Lisinopril, but hopefully he will discontinue that next month. All in all, I’d say he is healthier this year than last, largely due to working out at the Y.
As for me, my hip and lower back pain which come on when I walk more than a half hour keep my wings clipped a bit, but overall I’m doing fine.
KIDS
David is living in San Francisco, married to Margaret, and into a Science of the Mind group. Positive thinking and all that sort of thing. Margaret is still an office manager and David is a systems maintenance engineer for VISA. They’ve bought a condo in San Francisco this year (they were renting before this) which, in San Francisco, is quite an accomplishment.
Vicki and John have moved with their second brood (the first have all grown and flown) to Laramie. Vicki is still an Emergency Room doctor. John is still a pastor. They have five adopted kids now and are doing well. We spent three weeks with them in July and August—folks in Laramie say we hit their annual 3-week summer. Cold most the year. They’ve bought a pretty house with about five acres(?) Plenty of space for their big family. Vicki loves the emergency room, comparing it to the one she worked in before in Kentucky. Much more friendly and relaxed. Their kids, in descending order of ages, are David, Amy, Joseph, Daniel, and Tarik.
Jennifer has found her mileu living in Hilo as Public Defender. Hilo has the laid-back, no-rush-hour-traffic that she finds appealing. Patrick has retired and could also move to Hilo if he chose to, but the surfing is better on Oahu, so he limits his visits to a week or two every now and then. He’s local, you know, so he arranges his priorities accordingly. Candace and her baby son have moved to Hilo, too, and live with Jennifer. Caroline and Colette have graduated from high school, live with Patrick, and have fulltime jobs.
Kevin and Ashley and their two cute tiny daughters Krislyn and Kyleigh live in their home near Ft. Worth. Ashley cooked Thanksgiving dinner for us and did a great job. Kevin is still flying for UPS. They have four dogs and three cats (I think—I’m not sure I counted all of them) and a couple of saltwater fish tanks and a freshwater tank. Did you know that an octopus will climb out of its tank, slither across the table to another tank, climb the side of the second tank and dive in to feast on an attractive fish? I didn’t know it either until Kevin told me about it. Clever beasts, octopi.
Vicki and John’s first brood are doing fine: John and Brandi live in Louisville, Kentucky. John is a civil engineer. Brandi is a secretary. Johanna and Tom also live in Kentucky, had three children until last week when they adopted a boy from Sierra Leone. Andrea and Scott live near Atlanta. Andi is a pediatrician and Scoot is a pilot.
WRAP-UP
Back here in Honolulu, our time is occupied with reading, writing, church stuff (I facilitate a bi-weekly study/share/prayer group) TV (Don has one of the fastest fingers on the remote here in Waikiki) and weight training at the Y. Now and then we walk over to Micky D’s for a burger on the beach and watch the sunset—it’s a tough life, but somebody’s got to do it, or drive over to the movie theatres at Ward Centre. Our favorite so far this year is SECOND HAND LIONS, maybe because it’s so close to what our lives have been. Didn’t seem implausible to us at all.
Again, God bless. May we see you again next year, same time, same place.
Aloha,
Elaine
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