Merry Christmas 2023 from the Holwicks

Dear friends,

It is late November and our Thanksgiving visitors (21 at final count) have departed.  Our grandkids cut down a tree in our backyard that turned out to be surprisingly shapely.  The average Christmas tree is 7 years old – ours is 18!  My backyard doesn't get much sun.

Our year began with both of us coming down with COVID.  Fortunately we were up-to-date on our shots so our cases were mild.  It was a good thing we were fully recovered by February because that month we joined Sara and our son Daniel and Kara and grandson Weston for a 10-day trip to Kenya.  Daniel was teaching some Kenyan kids science through Zoom and before he knew it he was getting them a water well and an extension to their school as well as meals every day of the week.  The school is outside Kitale and they gave us an incredible greeting with song and dance.  We were very impressed by how much the Kenyans had done with so little.  Celeste and I now support them monthly and David will visit again in February 2024.  You can check out their website at www.KenyaNow.org

We spent much of the winter and spring working on our kitchen remodeling which is now 95% done.  Celeste is a firm believer that you can never have too many cabinets.  There are so many it took us a month to remember which one held what.  When David found out how much they charged to install tiling, he did it himself.  His vacuum attachment for the sander malfunctioned so we still have sawdust clinging to our high cathedral ceiling.  Celeste is very pleased with the final result.

In March we spent two weeks with some of Celeste’s siblings in a rented house in Fort Myers, Florida.  The price was very reasonable, probably because of the extensive hurricane damage in the area.  We enjoyed our time there so much we will repeat it in the coming years.

Our grand adventure of the year was an RV trip to Alaska.  We have been planning it since we retired but epidemics got in the way.  We drove all the way from Maine and stopped in Ohio to see friends, then North Dakota to visit my mom’s ancestors’ homes in Milnor and Velva.  We even located my great-grandfather’s 40 acre farm outside Velva but only their graves remain now.  After Montana we angled up to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada.  They were gorgeous and we took several day hikes.  The Alaska Highway went through a very remote part of Canada and we saw more bear than deer.  The frost heaves were so bad our RV’s walls began separating from the floor which required an ad hoc repair.  In Alaska we went north to Fairbanks and then down to Denali where we had one of the best backpacking trips of our lives.  A bus took us as far as it could go and then we hiked up the Teklanika River.  It is a braided river, not too deep, and we set up our tent on the rock bar.  On our final day we packed up and began to hike out when we were confronted by a very large Grizzly.  He was using the river bed as his highway and he wasn’t very interested in us so he kept moving.  We got out our bear spray but Celeste wouldn’t let me take out my phone to take a photo of him until he was very far away.  Her priorities are different than mine.

In Anchorage we got a personalized tour from Elizabeth Thomas-Wilson and her husband Barry.  I took Liz to both my high school proms in Heidelberg, Germany.  From there we went down to Homer, Valdez and Seward.  We did a glacier cruise and I was surprised by how far back they have retreated.  Kennecott Mine was impressive but it took us so long to drive to it the tours were closed by the time we got there.  We returned to the States by the Stewart-Cassiar highway and toured the temperate rain forests of Olympic National Park which we both loved.  We stayed with our old Ohio neighbors Ron and Roberta Martinson in Oregon and headed back home through Colorado so we could see Josiah and Julia.  The whole trip was 15,321 miles and 1,455 gallons of gas (yes, that is only around 10 miles per gallon).  We saved big bucks by parking in turnouts and cooking our own meals.

Soon after we returned to Maine we became grandparents again.  Sarah and Matt’s daughter Lennox is number 7 and a real cutie-pie.  We have spent plenty of time with all of them by going to soccer games, flag-football games and dance recitals.  We even threw in a trip to Storyland and a demolition derby at the Union County Fair.  On Labor Day the Holwicks had a reunion of our own at Kristy’s house in Leesburg, Virginia; our quivers are all full.

This autumn David became an official Woodchuck in Boothbay.  Woodchucks are old geezers who meet twice a week to cut and split wood for needy residents in the area.  Some of them are in their 90s so I will be a youngster for quite some time.  Celeste makes her community contribution by volunteering at a church-based after-school program every week.  Her enthusiasm has become renowned.

We love Christmas and not just for the traditions and family gatherings and food.  We love it because it represents God visiting us in the flesh and offering us an eternal relationship with him.  We hope you know him, too!