Goodbye 2013

Tomorrow is the first day of 2014.  And you know what that means?  It means that Rudolph, Holly, Eve and I have successfully completed the challenge we set for ourselves – to post entries to our blog each and every day of December without missing a beat.  Not a single one!  We may have had to switch days with another family member when life made it complicated to post on our assigned day – but regardless of how we got here, we did.  And we each contributed a fourth of the blog entries.  I am SO very proud of our family for having accomplished this!

2013 was an exceptional year.  While it certainly wasn’t perfect, I loved it.  Possibly my favorite year of all time thus far.  Eve, Rudolph and Holly are an amazing family and I’m truly blessed to have been able to share so many wonderful things with them this year.

So, for my last entry of 2013, I want to highlight some of my personal favorites of the year:

-- Soup kitchen and Father/Daughter billiards with Holly’s Girl Scout Troop

-- Seeing lots of friends at my 25^th Cornell Reunion

-- Numerous school concerts for both kids (including 2 performances at School Board meetings and Holly in All-County Chorus)

-- Holly’s travel basketball and volleyball games

-- Rudolph’s cross country meets

-- Galapagos trip (including biking, surfing, snorkeling, swimming, kayaking, hiking, caving and exceptionally good mojitos)

-- Holly’s graduation from Seely Place and starting Edgemont Middle School

-- Walking miles and miles of the Old Croton Aqueduct trail

-- Sunset at Cayuga Lake and hiking to Taughannock Falls

-- Bicycle Sunday on the Bronx River Parkway

-- Blue Man Group for Holly’s birthday; Avenue Q for Rudolph’s

-- Lots of summer tennis at Maplewood

-- Visiting the Dexter set just prior to the finale

-- Amazing performances by both kids at Play Group Theater, by Holly in Bye Bye Birdie and Guys and Dolls and by Rudolph in Our Town

-- Hiking on Whiteface and corn mazing in Saratoga Springs with the Carpenters

-- Mask-making, gondolas and gelato in Venice, Florence cooking class, hiking along Cinque Terre, biking in Tuscany, Colosseum, gladiator school and Tiber River Festival in Rome

-- Rudolph’s Eagle Scout ceremony (and working with Rudolph on his Eagle Scout project where we all got severe poison ivy)

-- Eric and Eileen’s wedding (and seeing lots of old friends there)

-- Billy Joel concert in Birmingham; Fleetwood Mac concert at Jones Beach Theater

-- Fun dinner on the pier at Rye Playland (and fireworks!)

-- Laughing with our friends at the Telluride Film Festival

-- Discovering Bar Taco in Port Chester

-- Wonderful whirlwind weekend in London capped off with a visit with Andy Serkis

-- Lots of Broadway shows, movies and family dinners

-- Christmas shopping with Holly

Wishing all of you a happy and healthy 2014 filled with fun, love and laughter.

-- Frosty