Dearest Decemberites: As the Big Day looms, we welcome the end of a below-zero (-18°C) cold spell that called into question our residential standing as the best place on Earth to live, work, play, drive, and retire. JoAnn endured the chill with typical Swedish stoicism, until the siege’s third day, when she found Tom in …
Month: June 2020
Dearest MX Thrivers and Survivors: Congratulations to everyone for enduring “The Lost Decade.” Those years saw incredible technological innovation and offered 24-hour connectivity, all of which failed to prevent the constant misplacement of our belongings and the straying of our vehicles from their intended paths. As the Kindles, iPods, and Notebooks pile up at our …
Dearest Recipients: A heavily-adorned balsam fir shades the kitchen table. Glass shards of broken ornaments cling to the webbing between Tom’s frog-like toes. Sub-zero temperatures and deep snow drifts turn the backyard squirrels to peanut-eating frost wraiths. Thanksgiving leftovers change colors to signal the approach of holiday letter-writing season. In January, we traversed …
Nightly happy hours of POG, Mai Tais, crab cake pupus, and Don Ho impersonators
Merry White Light Season from the Harmony Road Gateway: The world lost a kind soul in October, when JoAnn’s Grandmother, Harriet Bennett, passed away at the age of 94. She left us with the memory of her smile, a mirthful sense of humor, and the legacy of a lifetime spent caring for others. When we …
Joy to the medical profession (2006): After years of unflagging hard work and dedication, along with proportional quantities of lost blood, sleep, and sweat, JoAnn has gained her much-sought-after admission to the nursing program at Front Range Community College. This long-awaited development comes none too soon for Tom, who marked his entrance to middle age …
Ethan Michael Maus, a gift to the world from his loving parents, Kathleen and Joe, arrived as a radiant reminder of our purpose on Earth on August 4, 2005. He lived a lifetime in just a few short days, filled his family with elation and hope for the future, fought his battles, and left us …
Dear Friends: Please help us celebrate Christmas this year by joining us in a short memorial to our nephew, Ethan Michael Maus, the son of Tom’s sister, Kathleen, and her husband, Joe. After providing us all with a collection of memories we will always treasure, Ethan passed away unexpectedly in August at nine days of …
Dearest Fellow Celebrants: In keeping with the spirit of the season, Hovland household elections took place early in November. Despite a late-October scandal involving the distribution of year-old Halloween candy, JoAnn emerged as Master and Commander of the House when her accuser and political opponent, Tom, consumed the evidence during an episode of red-eyed, chocolate-breathing …
Fellow Mistletoe Enthusiasts: The first Christmas decorations appeared in Colorado shortly after Labor Day this year, an event that left us feeling unprepared for the holidays. We compensated by attending our first Christmas party of the season on Halloween, during which, in the midst of an indecorous candy-eating spree, Tom ingested a small doily …