Happy New Year to all! It's been a wonderful year for us with many travels, a big bridge win, and a great new life style. Thank you everyone for your various Christmas cards and newsletters, We don't send cards but rather this end of year creation. The image above is from our San Diego balcony at sunset.

Our Bi-Coastal life

We love the spring, summer, and fall in Connecticut. Winter in San Diego is very pleasant, and busy. It is nice to complain that 62 is cold! So far our new bi-coastal life together is working out fine. The main problem is when and where the Bridge Nationals are. The past two years, the Fall Nationals have been West which works well except that the Grand National Pairs Qualifier in New England is the weekend before that, which means too quick a cross country drive in the Fall. This year we skipped it and left on Halloween for a longer more pleasant crossing.

Since we live in a community with an 18 hole golf course, we finally started to play a little. Kitty joined a weekly ladies clinic and Kitty and Bart played a nearby easier 9 hole course. We also played nine holes on our own course with our younger pro. One time Kitty’s clinic played a scramble, she got in only part of the first hole before a thunder storm. Another time when we played down on Long Island with Kitty’s son Paul, we had a lightning warning cancelling us after 6 holes - are we unlucky?

Bridge

It was a special year for Kitty at Bridge as she won a National Championship in the summer, playing with her son Paul. Her teammates were best friend Lynne Feldman and Mark Perlmutter who became a Grand Life Master with that win. Bart was 2nd in a National Championship in the Fall. Both were Board-a-Match events, considered one of the truest and toughest forms of the game. Plus Kitty and Bart, playing together, won many Regional championships, including a team game at their third anniversary tournament in Palm Springs

Rockie

Our sweet beautiful dog has grown bigger. She has mellowed some now that she is four, although chase and fetch are still her favorite games. The vet said she is ever so slightly overweight, possibly because she is the pre wash cycle for our dinner plates and loves treats …. She is a terrific traveler and loves visiting friends and family and always wants to stay a bit longer!

DNA and Genealogy

Kitty gave only one talk this year, online, and is blogging less often. Apparently she is somewhat retired, and is enjoying her new life with Bart, playing more bridge, and traveling. She did have a few successes with her German side DNA from her maternal grandmother. She figured out that an adoptee born in Munich is descended from her grandmother's grandmother by a different husband (click here for that story). Also another group of DNA matches turned out to be fourth cousins, descended from a relative who moved to Pennsylvania in the mid 1800s.

Her New Year's Resolution is to teach herself more about doing German genealogy research!

Friends and family

One of the hardest parts of aging is losing people we love. A good friend and bridge partner of Kitty's, Markland Jones, passed away this year. We are glad we stopped with him and Barbara on our trip East this past spring. One of Bart’s old friends Luke Gillespie, who we visited last year, finally succumbed to his health issues. So many of the bridge community we knew in Boston are gone.

However, funerals are a way to reconnect with family. Kitty finally met many of Bart’s Feinson cousins at the one for Bart's aunt Bobby (the second wife of his uncle Mo). It was a lovely outdoor ceremony this past summer in Danbury, Connecticut.

Travels

In addition to our now usual two cross country trips and drive to the trials in Chicago, we took a road trip that included all five Great Lakes in order to go to a wedding in the upper penninsula of Michigan. We also took a one week Maine and Canada cruise. The bay of Fundy was on Kitty's must see list but it was the Maine Coastal Botanic gardens which we loved the best, especially the troll sculptures!

As usual this newsletter is too long. There are many more pictures on the next page, so click here for the full travelogue and photos.

Happy New Year!