Joyous Christmas Greetings from the Halpenny Family

2014

Liza

Good golly, Molly! Is it December already? Another year flown by. I hope yours was all that you hoped for it, and that you have been safe, well, and happy.

This year has been one of continuing the flow, trying new things, solidifying skills, and enjoying loved friends and family. I continue as librarian and manager of my church’s Christian Science Reading Room. I continue to teach Scottish Country Dance, to square dance, and to ride horses with Hannah.

On the Scottish Dance front: I co-taught a weekend workshop at Suttle Lake Dance Camp in the mountains of Oregon. It was an English/Scottish camp, so it was fun to get more exposure to English Country Dance. The group that puts on the yearly camp uses “global terminology,” so I had to learn to speak a new lan-guage, gender-neutral, for the event. That was quite a challenge,

but everyone was gentle with my verbal stumbles. This page of the Heather and Rose website gives a description: http://heatherandrose.org/terms.shtml. Another big new deal is the relocation of my Thursday Scottish Dance class to the YMCA. The room is great and there are good possibilities for future collaboration with the Y. There were no major dance trips this year, but a group of us did have a fun buddy weekend in August performing at the Hood Canal Celtic Highland Festival near Bremerton.

New for square dance: Tom and I are now vice presidents of the Happy Hopper Square Dance club. (For years I mightily resisted becoming involved with management, since we do so much of that with SCD. It was so nice just to show up and dance. But…we have succumbed.) That means that we are in charge of lessons – not teaching, but set up and clean up, scheduling registration and kitchen helpers, shepherding new dancers, keeping an eye on everything, and pulling “angel” (non-paying helper) dancers out

when a paying dancer needs to get into a square. We have also been hosting board meetings at our house -- one of my excuses for getting some excavation work done on our driveway to make more parking, and easier access to the upper yard. As with Scottish dance, square dance affords many opportunities for day trips or weekend trips within a few hours’ travel.

New for horseback riding: With Hannah’s patient help, over the years I have slowly regained the confidence that I used to have when I rode as a kid. And with Roo, our mischievous, low-to-the-ground, sure-footed mustang, I actually find myself relaxed and eager for action. No more knots in my stomach before heading out on a ride (although I still give a little prayer each time). I have finally accepted that I “stick like a tick” no matter what the horse does, and I’m so grateful for feeling brave.

On the family front, cousin Laurel from Pittsburgh hosted my sisters and me for a fun girls’ weekend in Portland, staying at a fancy hotel and exploring the local sights. And niece Cali and her boyfriend Jared hosted ten of us family members over Thanksgiving weekend at their lovely new home near Yakima. We ate lots of good food, played lots of games, and had many edifying and engaging conversations.

I am deeply grateful for my family -- Michael and Hannah, Hans and Kat, and my own intrepid and gentle Tom. We all keep chugging along, enjoying life and trying new things. Life is Good. I am also grateful that you are part of my life.

May your new year be full of blessings, fulfillment, success, and happy lessons.

Ender thinks he’s a lapdog

Near Yakima, Thanksgiving weekend Portland Rose Test Garden with Mary, Laurel, and Connie

Kat

Happy holidays my wonderful friends! Another year for our family has been blessed to have you in it and I hope that those of you who we don’t see as often check in to let us know what you’ve been up to.

The first month of 2014 was spent diving into the foray of my first real estate investment. Half my en-ergy went into getting my ducks in a row to purchase an apartment building and the other half went into convincing my cautious parents to go into business

with me. I still don’t know if they are 100% sold on the idea, but we have since been 100% sold a six-plex in North Portland. Now that I’ve tapped out the remodeling opportunities around my home, I’m enjoying property management as a way to further develop my construction skills and learn to diagnose and repair appliances.

This past winter Hans and I also picked up skiing. A decade of school and roller derby had me convinced that I was more of an “indoor girl” but now I’ve turned into a nature junky and Hans and I try to be outdoors as often as possible. Between skiing in the winter/spring and back-packing in the summer/fall we pretty much have that covered. Hans has also leveraged my love of tromping around outdoors against my hatred of fungus and now we are mushroom hunters extraordinaire. We had a very successful season gathering chanterelles with the puppies, the only downside being that my freezer is now filled to the brim with those icky things.

Our outdoor season and wallets faced a pretty major setback because our boisterous Great Dane pup broke his leg. Though it was a trying time, he’s all patched up now and we celebrated by ditching him and going on an epic trek into Glacier National Park. A merry band

of eight of us drove across the Northwest and spent four days backpacking into the park and camping along a string of lakes. In keeping with my tradition of packing way too much weight, I decided to bring my brick of a camera along and spent most of my time experimenting with nature photography and moping about blisters. I can now say with authority that nothing com-pares to whiling away the hours sitting in a glacial lake with your hubby taking pretty pictures of fearless moosies who decide to take their morning bath right next to you. It was really hard to go back to work. Pyramid Peak from Glenns Lake Glacier National Park after storm

Celebrating our 7th anniversary in the Vancouver airport

The travel portion of Hans’s job has picked up again this last year. He is trying to build a rela-

tionship with a new factory in Columbia, which gave him the opportunity to explore Bogotá. He’s also started doing these weird daytrips where he goes to a meeting in San Diego or LA and gets home before I’m even off work; then we eat dinner like nothing happened that day.

Thankfully, despite having to travel so much for work, I was able to sweet talk Hans into tak-ing me on at least one extracurricular plane ride. My friend Jan has been writing his doctoral dissertation from the living room of his girlfriend’s apartment in Mexico City and, given the

city’s reputation, we thought we’d better take the opportunity to see it in the company of a native. Jan and Tania treated us to a wonderful vacation filled with boating on the canals, haunted island guarded by rotting dolls, pyramids, and vegan tacos. Now Jan is allowed to come back and defend his dissertation.

Hans and I have filled up our spare time with the typical clutter of random things. I’ve been taking

digital darkroom classes while Hans organizes nerd weekends gaming at the beach. We took more sign language classes and have been enjoying the chance to spend more time with our friend Miguel who is the latest temporary resident of our basement. Our honey harvest went well this year and I’ve decided that next fall I’m investing in a cider press. We were free from roller derby for a whole year but have recently been talked into coming back to co-coach the Break Neck Betties for what will inevitably be a season of eight-wheeled DOMINATION! I wish you each a year of similar victories; perhaps less bruisy if that’s not what you’re into…

Teotihuacan Pyramids

View of Mexico City from Chapultapec Castle

Tent snoozing with Sophie at Eagle Creek

First bout as Betties coaches Living the dream in Viveros de Coyoacan

Hannah

Yo ho de ho! It’s Christmas again! I hope that everyone has had a brilliant year with lots of laughter and cookies. For Michael and me, it has been a year of settling.

This time last year I was hired by an engineering firm called HDR, as a Right of Way Technician, where I have since been learning the ins and outs of the

consultant world and public sector. In March I passed my Oregon and Washington Real Estate license exams and made the jump from a Tech to an Agent, where I began interacting with property owners and participating in negotiations. The industry has proved extremely interesting, with lots of field opportunities, and getting to work for state and federal agencies such as the Bonneville Power Administration and Washington’s Department of Transportation. Other than the “grownup job” perks, my most favorite thing about this job is getting to see my sister! Kat, being a right of way manager at Oregon Department of Transportation, recom-mended me for the job, for which I will be forever grateful. And even though we don’t work for the same company, we still get to have sister

lunches in the city and hang out at symposiums and other industry events. I am very lucky to be the sister of someone so highly regarded by everyone I meet in the professional world. Definitely makes things easier being one of “those Halpenny sisters.”

While I was on the career path this year, Michael decided to follow his dream of going back to school for an Electrical Engineering degree. He has just finished his first year at Clark College, and I couldn’t be more proud of my husband, or excited for his future. He has managed almost perfect grades while balancing 19 credits and a part time job, without neglecting me or the projects I ask him to do around the house. Mighty impressive.

When Michael is entrenched in homework, I get to spend time with my mom, riding horses. Our new horse, Roo, has proved herself to be a trusty steed. One of my all-time favorite things in the world is

watching my mother fearlessly charging around on the little mustang dur-ing our weekly rides, while Rosie and I try to keep up. It’s always a blast, and I can only hope to be as active and brave as my mother when I am 60.

View from HDR

Roo and Rosie

With all the focus on professional and educational development, Michael and I have had very little time and resources for our usual adventures. We did manage one weekend getaway in May that proved most delightful. Michael and I drove up to Seattle, took a ferry across the Puget Sound, and continued our journey up around the Olympic Peninsula and down the Washington coast over four days, with several stops within the Olympic National Park.

Choice parts of the trip included the Folk Life Festival in Seattle, the blindingly foggy drive up to Hurricane Ridge, our hike through the Hoh Rain Forest, and my ultimate favorite -- getting to see a pod of orcas hanging out in the surf at La Push beach in the Quileute Indian Reservation. I am so thankful that we live in such a rich and beautiful place full of nature and backyard excursions.

In September, Michael and I took our domestication to the next level and adopted a kitten. We named her Freyja, after the Norse Goddess of love and battle. Freyja

has been a joy to have around the house, and very well behaved for having so much alone time on her… paws. Besides herself being so lovely, my favorite thing is Michael’s enjoyment of her, which has been shockingly adorable. They are best buds, and she loves to help him with everything he does, such as putting away his socks (under the couch), eating his cheese, and supervising his home-work from his shoulders. She also likes to spend time with me, purring in my ear while I try to sleep, batting at my mascara stick while I am putting on make-up in the morning, and playing the fun game of ‘splash Hannah with toilet water while she cleans the litter box.’ Don’t worry, I get her back.

Olympic coast

Mosstaches

Tom

A warm hello to friends and family from our woods in Ridgefield, Washington. I reviewed my journal for the past year as a reminder of activities, and I observed a certain preoccupation with folk dancing like Scottish and Square dance. Liza and I average four days per week dancing, and we very much enjoy the social friend-ships, the dancing fun of moving to the music, and maintaining health. Frequent dancing contributes to the average pedometer steps: a non-dance day is 11,000 steps, while a dance day is 17,000 steps, for an overall average of 15,000 steps. We visited Scottish dance events in Oregon at Suttle Lake, Eugene, and Bend, where we met new friends and learned

Scottish and English country dance ideas. Here are videos of a couple of our performances: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zc53NEHMDY and www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4DODtiSn-o.

I am also involved in leadership as secretary of our Scottish dance branch and vice-president with Liza to organize the Square dance lessons for the Happy Hoppers. I got myself elected this year to a three-year term as the only North American management board member of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. I attended my first meeting via Skype at 2:00am on my birthday.

I had a memorable family Fathers Day with 20,000 pedometer steps. I drove Liza to church and walked around Vancouver. The Arnada neighborhood concrete sidewalks were poured in 1919. I followed a route to observe half-marathon runners. Liza picked me up, and we met Kat and Hannah and drove to Top Burger in Camas, an old time burger restaurant where they serve delicious fries and peach milk shakes. After lunch we walked around beautiful nearby Round Lake. The rain began pouring as we approached the end. We drove back to Hannah's home where we joined Michael to dry our clothes while watching a Netflix comedy.

My Chula Vista High School class of 1969 had its 45-year reunion. I was unable to attend, but I as-sisted with the publicity from 1000 miles away, by creating the Facebook event and posting weekly music videos in order to generate interest in the event, and finally posting the event photos by class photographer Salvador J. Viesca.

Thinking about my good friend Ron Paulsen who departed our lives Sept 12, 2004. One day Ron humorously stated a Latin phrase for his motto in life, something like "Sufficientiam enim semper

studeant" which translates to "Strive always for adequacy".

Here is a fun logic puzzle I heard this year. Cannibals ambush a safari in the jungle and capture three men. The cannibals give the men a single chance to escape uneaten. The captives are

lined up one behind the other, and are tied to stakes. The man in the rear can see the backs of his two friends, the man in the middle can see the back of the man in front, and the man in front cannot see anyone. The cannibals show the men five hats. Three of the hats are black and two of the hats are white. The men are blindfolded and a hat is placed on each man's head. The two hats left over are hidden. The blindfolds are then removed and the men are told that if one of them can guess what color hat he is wearing they can all leave unharmed. The man in the rear who can see both of his friends' hats but not his own says, "I don't know." The middle man who can see the hat of the man in front, but not his own says, "I don't know." The front man who cannot see ANYBODY'S hat says "I know!" How did he know the color of his hat and what color was it?

I have enjoyed your friendship this year. Best wishes for a happy life in 2015!

Have a wonder-full

Christmas and a healthy and

happy New Year.

Hangin’ with Brent Spiner after his show

Love,

Multnomah Falls