The Coopers' 2019 Christmas newsletter

Merry Christmas from the Coopers

We wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and a Happy New Year!
This year Kitty's beloved Aunt Stasi reached her 100th birthday, and the Thannhauser cousins reunited in Wolfboro, where we spent many happy summers in our youth with our grandparents, to celebrate the occasion with her. Two months later she moved on to her next plane of existence. Stasi was the last of the three sisters. Her Smith classmate, Rose Bethe, also passed away this year at 102.
	The other big Munson news was Shipley's retirement from the Tabernacle Choir, as required at age 60. They had a beautiful "graduation" ceremony, which Kitty went to Salt Lake to be part of. The weather was glorious and Kitty got to see swarms of painted lady butterflies in Ro and Art's garden.


	Travels After seven dry years, last winter had so much rain we were no longer in a drought. This meant that the not only did the painted ladies swarm, but the nearby desert bloomed and of course Kitty had to go see it. Twice. Once with Ro Kaplan and another time with cousin (half fourth) Corinne, who winters nearby in Palm Springs. If this interests you, click here for an article from PBS about the Anza Borrego super bloom or click on any of my pictures here to get to my online album. The other fun sight was snow in the nearby hills on Interstate 8, which we crossed in February to go to the Tucson regional where we always visit with friends Bill and Adrienne Horne. We also had a lovely meal with Steve's family friends Barbara and Martin Mannlein in Tucson. Barbara is very into genealogy, so she and Kitty have much in common.
Kitty, of course, took her two trips to NYC to see her grandchildren. One was tacked onto the Wolfboro trip, which meant Kitty got to ride in son Paul's Tesla from NYC to NH and back. The other was for grandson Jack's fourth birthday party and included a visit to the Natural History Museum and some scary dinosaurs. Grandaughter Julie insists that Kitty must come to her next birthday party in May!
	Bridge Otherwise we did very little traveling this year and played far less Bridge. We did go to the Las Vegas Nationals but did not distinguish ourselves there although it was fun having Matthew Granovetter on our team for a few days. We are also still enjoying producing the bi-monthly online magazine for District 17.	Steve's health We had a scare this year when after 10 years of relatively good behavior through many rounds of treatment Steve's prostate cancer metastasized to his ribs and backbone. Through his M.D.Anderson oncologist we got a specialist at UCLA medical school, Dr Matthew Rettig, to take over his case. The new medications, Lupron plus Abiraterone, now have it under control. The pain is gone, his PSA is down, and his bones are mending. We are very hopeful that he will be fine for many years now.

Visitors Although we traveled very little, we had lots of visitors this year. Kitty's son, Paul, came with grandson Jack, and we all had a wonderful time. Jack liked our local playground but was less enthused about seeing the pandas at the San Diego Zoo before they left for China. We joined Paul's former bridge partner, Jason Feldman (son of Kitty's friend Lynne), with wife Erin and daughters, Abigail and Maya at Legoland. This was absolutely Jack's favorite thing! He also enjoyed visiting Jason and his family at their house the next day; at the nearby playground he did some serious climbing!		Jack, Maya, and Abigail
Susan Das at Coronado Beach (Hotel Del)	Marty and Kitty in Wolfboro	Kitty's Munson cousin and family history maven Susan Das (daughter of George Pasquet) visited San Diego with her husband for a conference, so Kitty took her to various beaches, in addition to bringing her home for a meal and a visit to the genealogy cave. Kitty's Thannhauser cousin, Marty Beyer, was in town for work, so Kitty brought her out to the house for dinner, finally showing her the garden and introducing her to Kyndra. We were too busy talking to take photos, so the one from our favorite childhood haunt, the Yum Yum Shoppe in Wolfboro, from the Stasi event will have to do.
Before	During	After
Home Improvement When the six ring electric cooktop on our kitchen counter gave out, we discovered it was a very large non-standard size into which no modern cooktop would fit. Kitty was very fond of our old fashioned tiled counters, but matching them to fit in a smaller cooktop or using contrasting tiles was not going to be easy. She decided she wanted a cool looking black glass induction cooktop which boils water almost instantly among other fine qualities. We found a wonderful tile guy for the project who quickly convinced us to replace the counters with granite. He helped find us a gorgeous warm colored granite that picked up the colors of the cabinets and floor tiles. The only problem is that it is hard to see food particles on it! The changeover is shown above.
	A small car accident Who would have thought a five mph glancing blow from an SUV at a four way stop where we both went at the same time would total our Volt. But it did. Insurance was generous, so we were able to get a 2017 Volt, which has almost double the electric mileage. Enough to get to the airport and back before switching to gas on the final hill. We love having a plug-in hybrid and almost never buy gas any more. It helps that we have solar of course.
DNA and genealogy Kitty was very sad to participate in the last SCGS Jamboree this year. It will be back in 2021 perhaps in a new format. It turns out she likes doing presentations and teaching people about genetic genealogy. She continues to do this locally, but no longer travels to far away conferences, at least not without Steve, who will join her in Las Vegas for the 2020 i4GG conference.
		New Cousins With the handy tree matching algorithms at Ancestry and MyHeritage, Kitty finds new distant cousins quite regularly, but this year's surprise find was on the Langermann side. Her mother often told her stories about the Langermanns who went off to make their fortunes in South Africa, Uncle Max, and his brothers Jacob and Isadore. Uncle Max succeeded and returned to Europe where he was very present in the life of Kitty's grandfather. Sadly the other two died fairly young. Kitty had thought there were no living descendants of any those three, but DNA proved her wrong! Isadore had a daughter who ran off with a Catholic and so was not mentioned in the family stories. Her granddaughter Sharon Hill tested her DNA at 23andme and some sleuthing figured all this out. We now have four South African third cousins, two of whom still live there. Click here to read about it.
		Our beloved darling dog Kyndra continues to bring us much joy. She is always happy and demands petting from both friends and strangers when we go on our daily walks. Once again, happy holidays to all and come visit our lovely warm climate!

Copyright © 2019 Kitty Cooper