Happy New Year 2010!

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And Martin Luther King Day. And while I am at it, let me be the first to wish you all a Happy Valentines Day too. The new decade took off without me and I have been running to catch up ever since. This year I have decided to put my holiday greetings on my blog here and will provide you with a succinct synopsis of our lives over the past 12 months. For those of you yearning for more, more, more, you can scroll back through the other 33 posts I have written since last January when I started this new form of written regurgitation, intending to post one per week which, for you math lovers, would mean that I somehow missed about 23 weeks. Not bad for my first year.
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Well, as I sit here feeling rather chilled in our new yurt, up the river and then up the creek from the Oregon coast, my thoughts turn longingly back to last year this time, when I might have been sweating in my bikini while walking the white sands of Playa Conchal, heaving a coconut into the warm waters for Duncan to fetch every now and again. (See photo from March 18 post.) Do we miss Costa Rica? Si, you bet. We miss our amigos y amigas a few thousand miles south down the coast. (And those a few thousand miles to the east of us as well...) We miss the warm sunshine and the blue sky and the palm trees and the mot mots and the howler monkeys and the leaf cutter ants and the playa. Bella and I just read "Slowly, slowly, slowly said the sloth" and reminisced about swimming each evening before dinner as the sun descended and the air glowed orange with the bats swooping the pool and our heads. We had a great year and hope to get back there soon. Micah got a ticket to Tamarindo for his March break from Santa. Lucky boy.
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Hannah is back in the US after living the Rio life in Portuguese for 6 months - running the sands of Copacabana and sipping Caiparinhas. She returned to her second semester as a Junior at Georgetown, struggling with three advanced physics classes and whipping herself back into shape for the rapidly approaching varsity crew season.
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Christiana took on Waldport High School for her senior year with her usual aplomb and adaptation. She played her first season of volleyball and is in the midst of her second season of basketball and second semester of taking classes at the community college since her class of 61 does not merit much of an AP roster. She has been in the throes of college apps and fingers crossed for an ambitious list of choices, hoping to continue her Spanish and Portuguese studies and major in Marine Biology.
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Micah is in the fifth form at St. Georges in RI and we miss him. My birthday present from him was joining the swim team where he has made great strokes and plans to swim the bay with me again this summer. I will be lucky to see his wake. He was happy to be back on the gridiron this fall but misses CR very much, as do we all.
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Isaiah is loving the fourth grade at his new school and is looking to be a great fan of reading, yahoo. He was also happy to play football again and is currently tearing up the basketball court after all the days he spent after school in the open air gym last year with his pal, Jackson. He misses hockey and will hopefully get to play again some day.
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Bella Grace is loving Kindergarten and learning to read. She gets home at noon daily and we are going agate hunting on the beach today with our west coast UB - Uncle Buster. She is dancing ballet and learning to jump rope.
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After last year's letter, a good friend heeded Andy's siren call for employment and he is now busily engaged as the General Manager of Silke Communications in Eugene where he toils away most days and nights of the week. He spent the fall building the yurts (see archives) and is happy to be back on the left coast again.
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Me? Well, I am writing. I finished my book, for the fourth time, and am seeking an agent or a publisher if any of you know anyone in the industry. I am the new Co-Hag of a local writer's group and we host authors monthly for our workshops so I am networking and meeting interesting people and loving that. I have just dug out my old fish biology hat and will manage a restoration project for coho salmon habitat through our local watershed council.
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Andy and I are on the steering committee to get the high school moved out of the tsunami zone. With the Cascadia subduction fault about 50 miles off our coast a massive earthquake is building that will generate a tsunami of freezing cold water, inundating our town within minutes sometime between now and the next 50 years. Time to move the kids to higher ground.
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With three thin layers of high tech fabric separating us from Mother Nature we are getting to know her ways intimately. The whistles of the elk, the hooting of the owls, the winds that threaten to blow our house down, and the many sounds 70 inches of rain can make on a vinyl roof all surround us with intimacy. The ocean here is mighty and majestic to behold but not something to take lightly or turn your back on. The hills are alive and the trees and rocks pushing each other off in a constant battle of rock, paper, scissors which encourage watchfulness. We are paying attention.
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I hope this finds you all happy and healthy through the wonders of cyberspace. Give yourselves a chocolate-covered kiss from us here on the edge of the continent. Happy Aught-Ten from our yurt to yours.
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Beisos - Kelly, Andy, Hannah, Christiana, Micah, Isaiah, and Bella Grace!
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You Better Watch Out...

Yes, so we did see Santa way back when. I took the kids nostalgically to the old Meier and Frank in downtown Portland where the first four used to sit on the old guy's lap. They always had the best Santa and there was a wondrous village set up complete with a monorail the kids could ride that was suspended from the ceiling. Unfortunately, the store is now Macy's and Santa's floor is no longer. Santa has been relegated to the basement and the monorail sits resignedly on the floor, alone and stationary, the sad little so-called "monorail museum," boo hoo. But we made the best of it and Micah even posed with Santa and Bella asked for a Barbie and Isaiah requested that his whole family to be together and everyone got their wishes and they were filmed by a new crew but we have no tv so never saw it. And, as an added bonus, we watched the mounted police arrest a homeless guy out in front of the store. HE should have called for Santa...
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And then there was the Nutcracker. Bella was an angel and a bon bon but she did not get to be the "naughty" bon bon at any of the three performances and I am not sure if she should be congratulated or straighten her tights and work harder. Mostly she was just happy to be wearing makeup.
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We have five noble fir trees lining our
driveway of staggering sizes so the kids each decorated their own live tree with different colored lights. It got very frosty for the week before Santa came to eat his cookies and every morning we awoke to a winter wonderland with everything coated in a heavy load of white. No snow. By the day after Christmas we were playing on a sparkling sunny beach with the girls running in their sports bras - quite a temperature fluctuation but no complaints, especially from Hannah who was still tan from the sands of Copacabana.
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The propane heaters were finally hooked up and running on Christmas Eve, in the nick of time, and we all slept in the yurts for the first time that night. We slept in our caps reminiscent of 'twas the night before xmas' - and Santa found us! We had a little live tree under the central domed skylight, the focal point of our round room, and Bella and Isaiah made ornaments at school to decorate it. We have a 'frig and a toaster oven and a crock pot and a coffee maker and that allows us to eat pretty well. Hannah brought pastries from Brazil and we had cookies Santa left us and a wonderful Christmas morning. Everyone got a new hat. Ho! Ho! Ho!
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K3
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Sea Lions, Sea Lions, Everywhere...

"Well?" you may well be wondering and rightfully so, what happened to me after the very pregnant pause following my birthday which post was considered to be highly inappropriate according to one very special adolescent, He Who Shall Not Be Named, since it contained several questionably controversial "p" words? Well, having birthed seven babies and shredded most of my anatomical self-consciousness in the delivery room, that is not, alas, the reason for my long silence. It was more like the end of the year got away from me and the new year began before I was ready and I have been running to catch up with "aught ten" ever since. So, this is a catch-up post, better late than never.
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And here, on the beach by Heceta Head - a few miles south of where I sit happily typing in my yurt, live and online in person for the first time from my lovely life in the round since we finally have internet service to our barn even tho we have no indoor plumbing (or outdoor plumbing, so I guess we have no plumbing, to be clear...) and so you can see by that where our priorities and other things lie but I digress and will pick you back up here mid-sentence - yes, here, en masse are the missing California sea lions that once sank the piers of San Francisco with their halitosis and gas-eosis and exuberant mating behavior and blubbery bulk, the same lions of the sea which had everyone wringing their hands with frustration as they flatulated in a most uncivilized manner and openly displayed their affection for one another, causing the well-heeled urban ladies to cover their eyes with kid-gloved hands, fingers nevertheless parted with unconfessed curiosity, until the tourist dollars flowed like so much saltwater into their palms and they threw their arms around their marine mammal friends, embracing their slippery skins which recently slid out from their clutches, leaving them scratching their heads and fingering their empty wallets with wonder. (No, I don't really intend to catch you up here all in one gigantic sentence..)
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"Where did they go?" our neighbors to the bankrupt south of us yodeled in fake Austrian accents with tears matching the salinity of the waters around their shores which now lapped uninterrupted by barking except as emitted by proud pampered poodles being walked by their pooch-sitters and doing their duty with propriety in several different languages. And no, they did not call over their little shoulders in perfect imitation of their governor, "I'll be back..." Or at least not so anybody heard. But it is fun to think about and certainly something a sea lion seems capable of.
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But, anyway, not to worry your permed little heads about it any longer as here they all are, right here in Oregon, safe and sound like so many other economic refugees from the Golden State. Eureka! Perhaps they are enjoying the temperate rainforesty weather for a change, tired of all that sunscreen application, perhaps they are simply following the herring who have done the same, their little fins tired of traipsing off to Rite Aid to stock up. Nobody knows WHY, but the amazing sight we beheld on our Thanksgiving trip down the breathtaking Oregon Coast was thousands of them soaking up some, ahem, rays and catching waves en masse. They looked and sounded to be enjoying their stay and who knows, perhaps they will tarry awhile. Hopefully you can tell that those brown blobs in these photos are, in fact, the missing Californicators, as folks in these here parts have been known to call those who try to take their motto across the border with them crying Eureka! (tr. "I have found it!")
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So, we headed south along the edge stopping briefly to remember ourselves to Paul Bunyan and Babe, the big blue ox with the big blue testicles - never mind, Micah - that Andy had to pose holding up, irresistible to males of all ages. But I will leave you to your own visual imaginings on that one and keep right on moving through the last vestiges of the oldest things on earth, Sequoia Gigantia, which we stopped to admire immensely and on under the Golden Gates of the city where Hannah was born and where we began our happily wedded life together and still keep on going a bit further south to where we ate turkey and celebrated the holiday of my Mayflower ancestors, hosted by Henrietta the chicken and her lovely caretakers, our friends from our days in Costa Rica which seem like yesterday but are fading quickly into the past. Too quickly.
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And what better to do after eating all that pumpkin pie than to walk over the famed Golden Gate. So the next day we did. And I won't bore you with all the dramatic details of how our nephew was married the weekend before in Seattle but chose not to invite us to witness his nuptials because, well, that goes along with why we celebrate holidays with our friends vs. family out here on the left coast, but I might just drop a little reminder about the bitchiness of Karma because who do you think we ran into strolling under the Golden Arches but said nephew and his lovely new bride on their honeymoon. So remember fair reader, as I told him, you can run but you can't hide. And as an added bonus he got to meet Bella and Isaiah, his first cousins, for the first time even though one of them has been on the planet for over a decade now and the other for a half. His blushing bride remarked how much Bella resembles Dakota Fanning, asking, "Has anyone ever told you that before?" "Why, yes," I replied in my perfect Scarlett O'Hara imitation. But then I missed my golden opportunity to add, "And don't you think she would make a perfect flower girl?" Darn it...
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K3