Travels

Not surprisingly we did much less travelling this year, as we were very busy with settling into our new home after we moved in early in April. We did go to Memphis, Tennesse, where the Spring Bridge Nationals were held, in March.

Kitty also drove to Utah to see her Dad and was pleased to be able to do that in two days as it was a sign of improvement for her since her accident. She also drove to Las Vegas and stayed with friends Roberta and Mark Epstein in order to meet up with her double third cousin Nava Isseroff from Israel and her daughter Shani. Why double? Well her great-grandmother Charlotte fixed up her sister Lina (Nava's great-grandmother) to marry Charlotte's husband Josef Thannhauser's half-brother Albert! The family story Kitty was told was that Charlotte and Josef needed more money for their business so wanted Lina's dowry.

Kitty kept doing a double take when walking with Nava because she held her head and tilted it exactly as Kitty's mother did plus Nava's eyebrows and eyes were very like Gretchen's as well. Looking at old photos, there is a strong resemblance between Charlotte and Nava while Shani resembles Lina's daughter Bella a bit, her great-grandmother.

Travels and Celebrations

Then in the early fall, our good friend and frequent Bridge teammate Varis got married in the most spectacular setting high above Boulder, Colorado in the Sunrise Ampitheater on top of Flagstaff Mountain. We took the scenic route there, via Arizona, then through Utah's monument valley, and finally over the Rockies on I-70. Our current smaller motorhome, 28 feet long, had no trouble with Eisenhower Pass even towing the Honda Civic. It has the same size engine as the 35 footer did and much less weight to pull. While the foliage was not Vermont, the yellow aspens against dark green spruce trees by the Colorado River were quite pretty.

More Travels and Celebrations

We had a wonderful Munson family thanksgiving in San Francisco with Kitty's brother Shipley, his wife Erika and all five of their children. The two oldest sons both live and work in San Francisco. Geddes and his wife just moved into a house in order to have more room for their increasing family. We also visited briefly with cousin Lee and Merla on our last day there. Lee made us lunch in his wonderful redone kitchen.

Visits from Friends

So we expect more friends to be visiting us now that we live somewhere great!

And indeed good friends Bill and Adrienne visited for a lovely long weekend. We apologized for the late August 80s weather but since they live in Tucson they thought it was lovely.

Plus Kitty's best friend from grade school came to town for a conference a day early so they had half a day together and ate at Poseidon on the beach in Del Mar and had a good long walk by the ocean as well.

  Bridge

Steve became a Grand Life Master at the Mesa Senior Regional in June. We won fewer regional events this year but at least we won one with our new local team in San Diego. We also played a few less tournaments than usual this year since we were enjoying settling into our new home.

We are continuing with our job as the editors of the District 17 newsletter even though we moved to District 22. We do go to many tournaments still in our old District and still feel a part of it in our hearts.

Kitty decided to learn the Meckwell-lite Precision bidding system with her friend Anne Brenner from Denver. Anne and her husband Dave Caprera were getting coached by Eric Rodwell, which seemed like a good opportunity for Kitty. This was more mental therapy to help Kitty get her brain working again. Plus it gave Kitty a female partner to enter women's events with. They finished 14th and 7th in the Memphis Women's Pairs and teams. And improved on the pairs with a 6th in San Francisco.

But the highlight of the year was that Kitty and Steve won the National Senior Mixed Pairs championship at the San Francisco Nationals! Click here to read all about it in the Daily Bulletin. It was nice to finally win another National Championship together.

Open Sky Web Design

Most of Kitty's projects this year were bridge related. She is working on the new World Bridge Federation (WBF) site - due to launch in 2013 and the new ACBLscore program for the ACBL. She launched a new web site for the Denver unit. She has three interns and is using another designer/programmer to help with the WBF site. She is happy to have a brain again.

Genealogy

Kitty's new passion is genetic genealogy. She has found many new distant cousins from DNA testing in Norway as well as in the USA. One Norwegian cousin has filled in the ancestors of her great-grandmother Anna Knutsdatter Wold. These are now posted at Geni.com. Rather than bore you all to tears, if you are interested, go read Kitty's blog page about the family DNA test results there. The price is down to $99 so she hopes that more relatives will test at 23andme.com.