Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dear Family and Friends,

God has blessed us with another truly remarkable year.

Amy, Jay and Gina all continue to live their dreams successfully.  For Thanksgiving, we enjoyed seeing them all together under the same roof for the first time since Christmas 2010. 

Gina and her husband Laszlo hosted us for a few days and a great time was had by all, including Emma, now a talkative four year-old who knows how to read.  The location for this Thanksgiving was Gina's new house in the countryside of New City, New York.  With a large yard and spacious floor plan for entertaining a large family, it seems perfect for our bubbly oldest daughter and her family.

Making the gathering even more special, Wes's sister Darlene, her husband Brooks and their son Brooks (BG3) also made the trip from California for the occasion, spending a couple of days living the high life in Time Square before joining us in the tree-lined suburbs.  It was a much different Thanksgiving for Brooks, who has made a full recovery from major heart surgery that meant no turkey or stuffing for Thanksgiving last year. 

Jay also flew in for Thanksgiving, although he had to work through Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, so he arrived a few days after the rest of the California contingent. He loves living in Brentwood Village, a short commute from the offices of Universal Music, the largest record company in the world. His job couldn't be more perfect for him. When he was a teen, I used to find him listening to music, playing a video game on his computer and watching TV all at the same time.  I thought he was simply skipping his homework when in fact he was preparing for his career.  As a manager of film and television, he pitches the Universal Music catalog to projects, helps create remixes of classic tracks for synchronization, and works with music supervisors to get songs approved by artists for television shows. He attends lots of showcases and concerts to stay on top of what's happening in the music industry, which keeps him busy evenings and weekends, but he finds time for hiking, camping trips and get-aways to places like Temecula. He represented Universal Music at a country music conference down in San Diego in October. While he attends many shows on behalf of his company, Jay gave Julie and Wes tickets for Crosby, Stills and Nash at the Greek Theater for our birthdays. Jay and his girlfriend Nazish joined us for the terrific concert.

Laszlo's mother Ria lives at Gina's house most of the time, helping to take care of Emma, because Gina still works at Columbia University in NYC, about an hour from their new home, depending on traffic.  She fortunately has a friend she works with who makes the same commute with his wife, and with three of them in the car, they save on tolls, making everyone happy.  Gina also has spent a lot of time traveling for work, including an exciting new project working in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, about health effects of favela (slum) infrastructure.  Rather than commuting daily into NYC, Laszlo quit his public school teacher position and now works two part time jobs, one with computers at Independence High School in NYC and one tutoring students for SAT and ACT Exams closer to home. 

The primary reason for the move to the suburbs was Emma's education.  She now attends a loving pre-school a short walk from her house, and she really couldn't seem happier.  She loves going to school each day to see her friends as well as do art projects and other school work.  She used to just go in the mornings, but she now stays until 1:30 so that she can have lunch with her best friend.  At home, she is perpetual motion, and between a dozen or so adults, we could almost keep up with her over Thanksgiving. 

Before moving to her new home, Emma flew with her Aunt Amy to California to spend a week in Redondo Beach in June.  We had a lot of fun building sand castles at the beach, flying kites in the park and even visiting Disneyland.

At 23, Amy has risen to the top Editor position at Curbed.com, the NYC-based national desk for a highly successful real estate e-magazine. When her lease on the Harlem apartment she shared with three friends for the past two years ended in July, and her roommates dispersed to Washington D.C., Canada and world travel for their own compelling individual reasons, Amy opted for a gypsy existence, living briefly in different areas including Midtown and Brooklyn before settling in with a new roommate in Harlem. Her job at Curbed allows her to work remotely for short periods of time, so when she brought Emma to visit us in Redondo, she was able to continue blogging and editing during her stay. With her boyfriend Lukas attending engineering graduate school in Germany, she has chosen to spend most of this flex time and other vacation days with him either in Berlin or at his parents' home in upstate New York, where she has decided to spend Christmas this year.

Now in full "retirement" mode, Julie has assumed the role of chief domestic engineer, freeing Wes from most of the little chores formerly done when she was at work.  Julie has also doubled her focus on finding vacations for us to take in her newly found free time.  Wes still plans vacations for clients of Cruise Planners but now has more free time to play golf and attend a few L.A. KISS arena football games with buddies.  We both enjoy more time reading and strolling by the beach, when we're not traveling.

After our annual Christmas ski trip, we will have been to Montana four times this year.  In February, we went skiing with Darlene's family and Jay.  In July, we again saw Brooks and Darlene briefly when we returned to Big Sky for the Meadow's concert season, which was again terrific.  Julie's childhood friend Christy joined us for the Brewfest while we were in the mountains.  At the end of July, we headed north to Glacier National Park, an amazing destination near Hungry Horse Dam, a project on which Julie's father worked as an engineer after WWII. 

We again returned to Big Sky in September, so I could golf with Darlene and Brooks, and while Julie hasn't taken up the game, she enjoys riding around in the carts with us.  On the September trip, we swung through Rock Springs, Wyoming, where Julie's father was raised, before heading up through Grand Teton National Park on our way to Big Sky.  On our route back home, we took a sidetrack to to northern California's Grass Valley, where we visited with my Aunt Pete and cousins Tami and Richard, whom I hadn't seen in about 30 years. 

Somehow, we found times for two big international trips, too.  At the end of March, we flew to Miami, and after a spending the night and spending a sunny spring day in South Beach, we continued down to Peru, where we enjoyed an amazing whirlwind trip to Machu Picchu and Cuzco.  Though only four days, in conjunction with our short stay in Miami, it felt very much like we had taken a full vacation by the time our package flight returned to Miami, but we took the Tri-rail to Fort Lauderdale to board Island Princess.  We checked another item off our bucket list, cruising through the Panama Canal back to Los Angeles.  Despite being away from home almost three weeks, it didn't feel too long.

What a year!  But wait, there's more.  In October, we flew to Zurich, Switzerland, and headed to nearby Winterthur, from where Wes's great great grandfather Solomon immigrated as a six year-old boy with his nine brothers and sisters. 





After three days exploring beautiful Switzerland, we boarded Uniworld River Queen for another incredible voyage, a 12 night river cruise on the Rhine and Moselle Rivers.

With at least one destination each day, it has been difficult to sort out the kaleidoscope of fond memories, but it was one of the best vacations ever.

All that being said, you may think we must be eager to get away from home, but we love Redondo Beach, where the weather is almost always perfect, and all the stores, restaurants and services we really need for a happy life are within walking distance, including world class jazz at the Lighthouse Cafe and summertime concerts on the pier. Randy and Karen, who we met at the community hot tub, have become good friends.


Yes, life is very good in Redondo Beach.

We hope you are making the most of your life, too.

Love,

Wes and Julie

P.S. As always, there are lots of hotlinks in the text above which you can click to learn more about anything that may interest you.