This year, Gillian, Carolyn, and Gary each wrote their own Christmas letter. Ryan demurred. Here they are below.

Gillian

This has been a very eventful year. My job as Front of House Manager at a community theater has not been a pleasant one, to put it politely. I've applied to the TSA, passed their initial test, and am waiting to hear back with hopeful patience.

I had a major scare when my mother was rushed to the ER after her knee surgery due to intense pain. Actually, I got injured rushing to and from the ambulance. My mom nearly died that night due to the hospital's negligence. I'm incredibly grateful we didn't lose her. As my parents legally pursue them, I'm hoping they'll see at least a measure of justice.

Another barrage of medical issues visited me over the course of the year. This caused a significant delay in the coding project I'd like to build a business around. Additionally, the regrettable situation at work locked me into survival mode, which further hindered my ability to function cognitively. This was compounded by losing several friends because of their harmful and hateful ignorance. For this, I've been wary of my Star of David being visible in many public places. Although it took months to determine causes and medications, and for those meds to take full effect, my physical condition has improved again. In fact, I'm back in Judo! My abilities there were limited due to dizziness, but it's cleared up dramatically in the past few months.
At work, a production this summer caused me to have serious medical concerns for not only myself, but our patrons. This year's musical featured domestic violence - and the story did not treat it as such. Normalizing domestic abuse, physical or emotional, is not only damaging in propagating harmful notions that it's okay, but physically triggering for survivors. And I am a survivor, myself. (For anyone unaware, a trigger is a physiological response in the brain and nervous system as a result of PTSD, which is a disability. It can become a medical emergency if severe enough. It is not the same thing as being upset.) The theater has, in the past, given content warnings both for those with PTSD and those prone to seizures. The latter affects less of the American population than PTSD related to abuse. Yet privately and tactfully addressing this concern not only caused invalidating dismissal from the director and board, but brutal punishment from my superiors. I'm not sorry. I would do it again. I hope that the true nature of domestic abuse becomes more well known in the public consciousness, despite this disappointing outcome.
There has been some good news: I was cast in my first production in over 12 years! This past October and November, I made my stage debut in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I played the female Mr. Hyde and Poole (Jekyll's butler). The experience was invaluable in my recovery and in creating more friendships. I am beyond grateful for the praise I received and the incredible cast and crew I had the honor to work with. Alongside the life-changing full eclipse in April, this was the happiest part of my year. I'm hoping to audition for more productions once my life is in order.

During the show's last weekend, I was in a severe car crash. A motorcycle attempted to trail behind a long line of cars turning left in front of me, all running a red light.

The motorcycle was hidden until it was too late. Its passenger was unharmed, but the driver flew, and broke his tibia and fibula. They later revealed that they were on their way to a funeral. The motorcycle belonged to the deceased, and it was going to be put on display. Despite this, the driver and his family were shockingly gracious. He took fault immediately (which the passenger and two other witnesses agreed on). One of his sisters even helped me de-escalate from a freeze response. This has unfortunately layered itself onto my pre-existing condition of C-PTSD. Regardless, I still performed that night and for the rest of the weekend, and hosted the show's afterparty with my parents.
My car was totaled. The driver is alive with no permanent head injuries, but he lost half his leg. It was amputated the day before Thanksgiving. He is back in Utah and supported by friends and family. I dearly wish for his recovery and hope he is able to get a good prosthetic, and that he never has to experience anything like this again. I'm pleasantly surprised and thankful for the incredible kindness he and his family have shown me during this tragedy, instead of the vitriol so common in accidents like these.

I hope to drive again soon, and am in the process of looking for a new car. Being able to visit some of my closest friends and brother in Virginia this past November has helped immensely in recovering mentally from the crash. As of right now I'm recovering from Flu A after intense symptoms. Without a bowl of steaming hot water in front of my face, I risked horrible pain for about 24 hours. I'm still diligently giving my body the rest it needs, and it has eased into bronchitis - an irritance, but manageable.  Despite current events, I wish everyone good fortune in 2025.

Carolyn

2024 was not an event packed year for me. I really have only four things that happened this year.

In early April we traveled to Texas as a family to watch the eclipse (me, Gillian, Gary). Definitely an exciting event, well worth the travel.

In June, my good friend Karen spent some time with me here in New Mexico during a critical point of my recovery, and it helped a lot. In September Gary and I traveled to California to visit my brother and his family. Gary spent most of his time with his life-long friend Barry, I stayed with my brother and his family.

But the big event of the year for me came in late April when I had a partial knee replacement. I should not have been sent home that afternoon … I ended up in the emergency room. I was given morphine when I first arrived, and then my paperwork got goofed up and I was abandoned for 7 hours. I was in horrible pain, violently convulsing, with Gary pleading with the receptionist to attend to me. I was subsequently admitted to the hospital and, once admitted, was properly taken care of. The remaining post-surgical care was awful as well: the doctor failed to diagnose neuropathic pain (which fortunately I was able to diagnose and request meds for) and the initial physical therapists who worked with me were wildly incompetent. I did eventually get all this sorted out, but I am now being treated for post traumatic stress disorder.

And in November an abscess that I've had for almost a decade started swelling and became infected. It took a trip to urgent care to get that sorted out, and weeks to recover.

New Mexico is a lovely place to live but it definitely needs improvement in health care.

My knee is much recovered. I can now walk for several miles, and I have returned to Jazzersize.

I want to especially thank all those people who have been communicating with me through this year's travails. Your support has really helped.

Thanks to Haulfryn Care Home in North Wales. My mother continues to enjoy good health and is happy there and her dementia has been relatively stable.

I hope that we all have a happy, healthy 2025.

Gary

This was a year for the records.

In February, I decided it was time to wind down my career as a software engineer. I had a lot of vacation saved up because of COVID, so I started taking off every Friday. By late March I had burned through all my vacation, so at the end of March I resigned. My final project for Sandia Labs was writing software for physical security, and it was undoubtedly the most memorable in my career.. It was by far the worst managed project I'd ever worked on, or even near. It's truly impressive the extent to which you can take astonishingly talented engineers and piss away their work. I left the project during year five of a three year project, with no end in sight.

In early April we (Gillian, Carolyn, and myself) went to Texas to witness the eclipse. We stayed with our former neighbors, the Silanis. It was a somewhat overcast day, but we did get to see the eclipse. It was really memorable. Gayle Petroski Wade came up from Iron River, MI to watch our dogs for us. When we returned we had a very nice visit. I first met Gayle when I was a freshman in high school.

A few weeks after returning to Rio Rancho Carolyn went in for her knee operation. She received a partial knee replacement... partial because it was supposed to lead to a faster and more complete recovery than a full knee replacement. The operation itself went well, but the night after she got home the pain was so intense we ended up calling an ambulance. The emergency room staff apparently got her paperwork mixed up and seven hours later she was violently convulsing in pain while I tried to get the staff to notice. After several letters back and forth over the subsequent months the hospital refused my offer to abandon any possible legal claims in return for a serious study of what went wrong; I have contacted several personal injury firms.

With that excitement behind me I decided it was time to start acting like a retired person. I have been doing some exercises I have been given to quiet my shoulder pain, so I decided to return to judo. Sometimes Gillian came with, sometimes not. I'm pleased to report that although my competition days are behind me I can still do (at least some) judo.

I also started folk dancing a lot more. I'm typically dancing four nights per week now, Tuesday (Israeli), Wednesday (International), Thursday (Balkan), and Saturday (International). Thursday nights are split between judo and dancing, since both classes are held in the same building. If Gillian is with me in judo I forgo dancing. I particularly like this club because they allow me to go off into a corner with Gillian and practice self defense, which includes a lot of techniques that are not legal in judo.

This year, for the first time, I volunteered to help organize the annual dance weekend retreat. As I suspected, it is a lot more work than it seems.. Of course, folk dancing all over the country seems to be dying as the folks who were doing it 40 years ago are still the folks that are doing it today. There are very, very few dancers under 50. Seems like everyone is aware of the problem, many have tried to address it, few have met with any real success. But it is still a wonderful way to meet people, and I've made some real friends here through dancing. But they are all old farts like me. I'm guessing 10 years from now folk dancing will be hard to find.

Now that the weather is cooler I'm scootering with the dogs again. Vita, at 15, runs about 0.2 miles, and walks the remainder of a mile. Gusty (who is now 13) got up to doing 5 miles almost every day, but as I write this I've had to cut his distance back. We tried yet again to adopt another dog into the house, and failed yet again. Gusty figures he is on to a good thing and definitely does not want to share.

I've met two retired competitive mushers this year. One I met while I was waiting for someone to service my guitar … and the other I met through folk dancing. The former now keeps horses and has completely given up on mushing, the latter has a house dog she is trying to teach to pull. Albuquerque & Santa Fe are not a huge cities, but have a lot of interesting people.

Just after Thanksgiving I managed to get up to Sandia Peak to enjoy the snow with Gusty. He performed remarkably well. We had a very early first snowfall, but I had a cold, so I had to wait to ski until I recovered … unfortunately, shortly after I skied the snow largely burned off. At the moment I'm predicting Gusty will not be fit enough to compete this year … I'm concerned he will not finish any race we enter.

I spent some time dealing with Gillian's car crash. A motorcyclist blew a red light and slammed into her. Gillian's car was totaled, and he lost his leg. I dealt with the insurance company and related paperwork. Gillian was physically unharmed but very shook up.

Ryan reports that his year was pleasingly predictable, aside from one expensive car repair. He's still working at the same place (frequently from home), still climbing once or twice per week, and still gaming. We're looking forward to seeing him here over the holidays.

We'll all see what 2025 has to offer. Donald Trump, I am certain, will not allow 2025 to be a boring year.

I appreciate the effort people have made to stay in touch with me. So drop me a line, send me some email, or text me. If you want to come to Albuquerque to see the balloon fest in October be sure and let us know early. That seems to be the most popular time for friends to come by. Barry Kaye came by one weekend this year, and Matt & Suzi came by the other weekend. It was great to see them, and a good time was had by all.

PICTURES

Here is a picture of Gillian in costume right in front of the theater, and

here she is with the cast.