The Coopers' 2008 Christmas newsletter

Kitty and Steve, GNP, photo by Bonnie Bagley

Our News

Well we did it, we sold our Albuquerque house in February and moved to Fort Collins, Colorado. Our new house is smaller inside but very well laid out for our life-style. We have much more land, over an acre, with a barn and a horse pasture (there were two pastures, but we added one to the backyard and Kitty is redoing it as lawn and garden)

Our other big news (no pun intended!) is that we lost almost 100 pounds (Steve 60, Kitty 30) by doing Nutrisystem.

Our Animals

All our dogs are doing well and love the new big backyard. Ilsa is getting old and forgetful so we have her on a new drug for doggy Alzheimer's, so far it seems to be helping. Our cat Sammie has successfully transitioned to being a barn cat. We aquired a miniature horse named "Tonka Toy." A neighbor rescued him, boarded him with us, and now he is ours ... Another neighbor has a nine-year-old girl who feeds him and Sammie when we travel and may ride Tonka some day.

Bridge

Kitty made Grand Life Master at the Albuquerque tournament playing with son Paul Bethe. Otherwise, no major successes to report in Bridge. As usual, we won many regionals and had only low overall finishes at the Nationals. We did win our first Bridge trophy together - for the most points won at a local tournament by local players.

Tonka and Kitty, photo by cousin Marlys Matheus

Jenny Lake, the Grand Tetons

Travels

We have been almost coast to coast this year. Kitty finally saw the Grand Tetons and revisited Yellowstone during a trip to Idaho Falls for a Bridge tournament. We went to Boston for a Bridge National Championship and stopped to see family and friends on the way: Dave Spahn, Kitty's Aunt Trudi, the Shipley Munsons, the Blooms, Laura Geisel, and the McCallums. We are much closer to Salt Lake City and went there for Bridge this year, seeing Steve's college friend Rochelle and meeting Linda Gordon's brother and discovering that they know each other! We also stopped in Park City on the way home for Christmas to see the Petersons and Shipley Munsons.

Kitty also attended her 40th high school reunion in April in New York City.

Visitors

We had a number of visitors to our new home. Steve's old friend RJ Becker, our bridge team-mate Mark Jones, and Kitty's cousin on the Wold side, Marlys Matheus with husband Larry. Looking through her family pictures, Kitty was startled to see her teeth on so many Wold relatives!

Social Media

Kitty started experimenting with social media for business purposes: Linked In, Twitter, and finally Facebook. She is really enjoying connecting with friends and family on Facebook. The others are more work related.

RJ and Steve, Bear Lake, Rocky Mt National Park

Open Sky Web Design

The economy may be bad but the web design business is booming. Kitty hired a part-time assistant and had to outsource some design work. Most of our business has become custom programming work and creating CMS (Content Management System) sites using JOOMLA or CMS made Simple.

Scroll down for a picture of our new home taken Christmas day.

Click on any photo or set of blue words to get to photo albums with more photos.

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