Merry Christmas from Kyndra, Kitty, and Steve

Our lovely dog, Kyndra, has adjusted well to her new home with us. She is amazingly sweet and friendly towards people, but a bit shy with dogs. The lab in her comes out when she is near water, and she has taken two unplanned swims in the water feature of the golf course next to one of our usual walks. Her other interesting habit is to climb onto the roof of the car to try to prevent us from leaving for bridge when we’re on a trip. She won’t play fetch with a ball, but she will play fetch with a stuffed toy, even a Santa!

Travels

We visited Salt Lake City in May for a bridge tournament and got to see our friends Rochelle and Art at just the right time to see their irises in their glory. We also saw Kitty’s brother, Shipley, and family. In terms of weather, this was a much better time to visit than during the Rootstech conference in February.

We next stopped at CSU Vet school on the way to play bridge in Denver for a few days and saw the new wing and cool machines. We are happy to have them in our wills. Then we drove on to Houston for another MD Anderson visit. We had a wonderful Chinese meal ordered in with our friends Carolyn and Tom Peters. Good conversation and many laughs. Carolyn was thin and weak, but still fighting after a four year battle with breast cancer. After we left she happily reported that she had been provisionally accepted in a new trial. Hard to believe that she was gone just a few weeks later. We miss her.

For the next visit we tried going to Houston in the Mustang convertable rather than the RV, staying in dog friendly motels along the way. We won’t be doing that again! At our motel in Houston we met a charismatic young boy named Rodney who played with Kyndra and liked her so much that he gave her his stuffed monkey as a goodbye present.

On the way back, we went through Austin so Kitty could finally meet cousin Mike Wold-Steele, who did the initial research on our Wold ancestors. We also had breakfast there with Kitty’s best friend, Kathy, from grade school days.

The year’s big trip was to Oregon to see the full solar eclipse in August. The drive there included a stop in Medford, Oregon, to meet Cindy Hardcastle, the daughter of Kitty’s first cousin Claire Munson. Her brother Sayer was also there and it was wonderful reconnecting with them. Cindy has done her DNA at Ancestry, as many of Kitty’s cousins are doing to help her research. In return, Kitty does their family tree. Of course the Munson side is already done :)

We picked up Steve’s honorary sister, Grace, at the Eugene airport and recaptured Kyndra, who was delighted by the automatic doors. As we drove over the mountains, we saw many burned out wooded areas and side roads closed due to fire. There was a constant smell of smoke in the air.

Steve had seen a total eclipse before but Kitty had not. We made reservations months before to camp in the RV on a field in a small town just south of the center line in Madras. We were East of the mountains where the weather there is almost always cloudless. A group from the Sun River Oregon observatory was camped there too, with many telescopes which they shared with the rest of us.

The night before the eclipse Kitty and Grace enjoyed seeing Saturn and its rings through the Observatory’s telescopes. During the run up to the total eclipse we had some views of sun spots from them. The eclipse itself was eerie, with the sudden coldness of the air and a gray darkness like at twilight.

We’re Getting Greener

Our electric bills were going up and up and up, so we went solar. Kitty also bought herself a mainly electric car, a 2015 Chevy Volt plug in hybrid. This is the first time she bought a car while her old one was still running. As much as she loved her 23 year old Honda Civic, she was ready for a more modern vehicle with a space age console. It is so much fun to have the car read text messages to her and answer her phone! And she has only bought gas once in the last three months! Most of the time her driving does not exceed the 35-38 mile electric range of the Volt. When it does, the flip to gas is almost unnoticeable. Plus more and more places have charging stations, including her favorite restaurant, Poseidon in Del Mar. During the San Diego Nationals, she was able to plug in every day in the hotel parking garage.

Visitors

Some of Kitty’s Norwegian fourth cousins, descendants of Jorgen and Anna Wold via their oldest daughter Olava, stopped by for a visit. Torgeir, his wife Kristin, and their two childen, Troy and Annea. They provided an excuse for Kitty to visit Sea World which was a wonderful treat. Hopefully, when Kitty’s grandchildren are older they will come and enjoy it too...

Grandchildren

Kitty now has a granddaughter, Julie Elise Bethe, born last May, just a week or so after Kitty’s visit. So much for the thought that she would arrive on Gretchen’s birthday! Julie takes after “Oma” in that she was late. Interestingly, the extra time in the womb seems to have helped her reach developmental milestones earlier than her older brother did.

Grandson Jack seems to have an amazing memory and visual skills. When looking at pictures of his parent’s wedding on a December visit to his 100 year old great grandmother, Rose Bethe, he pointed at a picture of Kitty and said “Oma”! Since he had not seen her since September, except via Facetime, that is pretty amazing!

Genetic Genealogy

Kitty continues to love helping people understand their DNA tests; she does one-on-one training via Google Hangouts. She is also in great demand as a speaker, and presented at numerous conferences this year, with more coming up next year.

A conference highlight was hearing LeVar Burton, aka “Geordie” on Star Trek, the Next Generation speak about family history at Rootstech 2017, online here: https://www.rootstech.org/video/levar-burton

Kitty’s blog continues to get thousands of unique visitors daily, and several of her posts have been republished elsewhere, including “Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor in Norway” and “How to get your Ancestry match to respond.”

Kitty had numerous successes with helping adoptees this year, the most interesting being a Florida woman with a half brother in Australia, reported here:

http://blog.kittycooper.com/2017/12/dna-makes-a-merry-christmas/

Brearley

Kitty’s 50th high school reunion is next spring, so she decided to track down her best friend from 9th-10th grade, Karen Murphy, using online people finding sites and her newfound sleuthing skills from helping adoptees with their DNA. She is delighted to have succeeded and can’t wait to see her old friend again next spring. They are now FaceBook friends.

Open Sky Web Design

We are closing down Open Sky, taking no new clients but keeping the existing WordPress clients. The rest are being farmed out to other designers. One last new site, created this year, was for Brearley classmate and other best friend in 9th and 10th grade, Michele Gerber Klein, who has written a marvelous book about a brilliant fashion designer, Charles James: https://www.michelegerberklein.com

Health

Steve is almost done with the MD Anderson trial and the hope is that his prostate cancer will be completely gone. Otherwise we will learn to live with it and manage it as a chronic disease.

Kitty had another concussion, just a mild one, in October when Steve had to make a sudden stop in the RV while Kitty was putting food away in the fridge. She went flying. She claims she is having memory issues now, but on the bright side she no longer remembers the plot when we watch old Law and Order reruns!

Too many of our friends have more serious health issues than us, and we are grateful to keep blundering on. Kitty’s beloved cousin Lee passed away this year, and she was very sad that she could not get to his funeral.