This has been a sad year, a year of loss for us and our families. Our wonderful dog Amica succumbed to her cancer and Kitty's beloved Uncle George passed away at 87.

Amica was the friendliest and most loving dog we have ever known. She had one blue eye and one brown eye. She still chased her tail at 14 and loved to run after a tennis ball and then rip it to shreds. She was a therapy dog and would put her head on the lap of a wheelchaired individual and wait to be petted. Rex still does weekly therapy at the rehab center and is getting better at it but is not yet at Amica's standard.

Kitty flew back to Rochester in August for Uncle George's memorial service and to spend time with her Aunt Trudi and her cousins. She had spent many happy times in the house on the lake as a child and as an adult.

It was a lovely service with tributes from all his children, Uncle Cal, and a round of Dona Nobis sung by Kitty's son, Paul, and his second cousins Laura and Jessica. Click here to download the recording (warning, very large -21MB!!). George touched the lives of many with his generous helping hand.

The Bridge part of the trip was unsuccessful, but the sightseeing was marvelous. We had perfect weather when we visited Venice and Kitty took many pictures. Click on any photo above to see many more.

Other Bridge endeavors have gone better this year. Kitty and Steve finished second in the National Mixed Pairs and won many regionals. Steve is hoping to break 1000 points for the year. To do this will require winning about 100 points at the last tournament of the year in Reno.

Kitty's genealogy research resulted in receiving photos of her Munson-maternal-side great-great-grandparents Jørgen and Anna (Knudsdatter) Wold (parents of Maren Wold Lee) of Skoger, Vestfold, Norway, taken in the mid 1800s. These came from cousin Michael Wold-Steele who is descended from their son Martinius. This resulted in a reworking of the ancestral collage and new T-shirts with the collage for all her nieces and nephews.

Kitty's business, Open Sky Web Design, has had a number of interesting projects this year. More and more of the business is subcontracting programming for other web designers. A highlight was redoing the United States Bridge Federation (USBF) site using the JOOMLA content management system.

This included custom software written with son Paul to display the hands from the trials and various championships in HTML format for easy viewing.

Final words, the Albuquerque dog-friendly legislation that Steve helped draft, passed recently. And last but not least, we had Christmas in California, just North of LA, with the Nathan family, (Cathy, Marc, Megan, Casey, and Kevin Bathurst) which includes Lindsay, Paul's significant other.