Merry Christmas 2014!

I’ve been trying to think of a unifying theme for our Christmas letter this year. “The Year We Built a House with Handtools and Lived in it for a Year,” “The Year We Cooked a Meal from a different Country Each Night,” or “The Year We Sold Everything and Lived on the Beach in Hawaii” all suffer from the same shortcoming—no basis in reality.   “The Year We did Stuff and Things Happened” lacks pizzazz, but is accurate…I guess it’ll have to do.

January’s highlight was whale watching off Dana Point.  We saw only one whale, and that was just his fluke, through binoculars, at 200 yards.  Not exactly the “whale rider” experience we were hoping for.  But the captain opened the throttle through a massive pod of dolphins.  They hurled themselves in the air behind the boat, playing in the wake: flips and turns and twists.   We returned cold and smiling.

Emily turned thirteen in March, a fully-fledged teen.  Her plumage has undergone a remarkable transformation.  I harbor a sneaking suspicion David Attenborough is lurking outside, waiting to make some trenchant observation about humanity’s connection to animals in a clipped British accent. Who hasn’t wanted to punch Attenborough in the face?  Emily enjoys standing as straight as she possibly can in order to gaze past the top of her mother’s head.  Meanwhile, Jenn has enjoyed looking at Emily’s baby pictures. She’ll look up, see Emily in the flesh, and faint.  I can hardly keep her conscious these days.

During Spring Break we had two halves of the Los Angeles experience.  One day we visited the Griffith Park Observatory with its huge, zapping Tesla coil, Foucault’s pendulum, and live image of the sun.  The Art Deco architecture is a favorite, as is the smog-obscured view of the lowlands.  Two days later we visited Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum on Hollywood Boulevard.  Throngs of tourists, locals dressed in ridiculous costumes trying to entice tourists to pay for photographs, and celebrities made of paraffin were all in full display. It was all silly good fun.

Claire’s Girl Scout troop raised money to go to San Francisco for their Bridging Ceremony.  Previous bridging ceremonies have been conducted on five-foot homemade bridges and on Kiwanisland’s four meter foot bridge.  Clearly, traversing the Golden Gate bridge was the next logical step.  Claire pushed a wheelchair occupied by her friend Emily Kim, who had injured her knee.  We turned it into a family weekend with Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown and Jenn’s favorite, the truly magnificent Grace Cathedral.  We stopped by Pea Soup Andersen’s in Buellton on the way home.  Funny thing, neither of the girls likes pea soup.  Now we know.

Once school let out, we had options.  We visited Universal Studios Theme Park and had a lot of fun.  The tour of the back lot is still the best part. 

 Emily took a trip with her Grandma Holly through the desert Southwest. 

 The girls and I drove to Las Vegas to fly to Duluth for the start of our Wisconsin vacation with my parents.  Jenn joined us for the last nine days in Wisconsin.  On the way home, we spent time with my cousin Steve Arnett and his lovely family.  We stopped by Hoover Dam, and I tried to point out the Art Deco design elements, but the heat was overwhelming.   

When we returned, we learned that Emily’s photographic entry in the Orange County Fair had won a judge’s choice award. 

It was a busy, exhausting and fulfilling summer.

Jenn’s unique skill set was acknowledged by Disney when they made her a permanent manager, not just a fill-in manager, in September.  She gets to wear business casual to work (a rare ability among Disney employees) and comes home much happier than the days when she spent eight hours in a ticket booth…excuse me, in a vacation planning center.  We are very proud of her.

In November, we spent the long Veteran’s Day weekend in Joshua Tree with the Kims, Blums and Jows, all Girl Scout families.  The kids always have a great time scrambling on the abundant rocks, and the adults have fun putting up tents, fetching water, cooking, cleaning gravel out of everywhere, rolling up sleeping bags, straightening up the tent, building fires, extinguishing burning children (just the once), and the like.  Camping is fun! Because I said so.

We are healthy and happy and wish you the same,

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas 2013!

Christmas 2013

I don’t know why we even need another year. We saw it all in 2013. And as far as I’m concerned, I have seen enough age related deterioration of my physical self to know that I will have no more part of it, thank you very much.  Time can stop right here.

For example:

Emily saw snow falling in Southern California.

 We touched the Endeavor space craft and Rose Parade floats.

We met a family in Theodore Roosevelt National Park who suggested we inch our van forward so they could keep its bulk between them and the bison that had just charged through their ranks.  I’m pretty sure infantrymen in WWI did the same thing with the first tanks. It was everything we could do not to ask why they had left their own vehicle in the midst of a herd of bison.  It’s best not to ask insane people too many questions.

We said goodbye to a beloved pet and adopted a new one.

Generally, I don’t see how 2014 can live up to the high standard set by this year; disappointment surely awaits.

Timothy Leary said all great literature is about a trip.  We took trips all right, but not Timothy Leary’s kind. 

Jenn went off with her mother for five days, playing the ultimate tourist in a game of New York City smackdown.  The city never stood a chance against these two. You name it—they saw it. 

 Claire, Emily, my dad and I reprised our car trip from last year from Garden Grove to Wascott, Wisconsin.  We hiked Arches National Park and saw the last unburnt parts of Colorado.  It was a very fun first leg to our summer travels.

Jenn joined us in Minneapolis for our road trip home during August, our highlight of the year.  We spent seven days on the road and stayed at KOAs most nights in our tent, eating one hot meal per day.  It was loads of fun seeing Yellowstone, the crazy bison-baiting family, Little Bighorn battlefield and the Grand Tetons. I devised a wicked little social experiment on the integrity of Midwesterners our first night out: I left my wallet behind in a Perkins restaurant.  Jenn was less impressed, as it meant my turn behind the wheel was performed sans driver’s license.  But the Midwesterners passed, as we knew they would, mailing my wallet to our home address with all the cash inside. 

Outside Yellowstone, Red Lodge, Montana was our favorite small town.  We had pretty good Mexican food, and I tried the sampler platter of beers at the microbrew next door.  It reminded me of Jackson Hole without the crush of tourists.  We walked the downtown and were charmed by its red geraniums in huge flower pots and live music drifting out of the pubs.

By the time we got home, it was nearly time for school to start.  Emily attends the local middle school, and Claire officially goes to Barker, but its campus is closed for remodeling.  Emily was up in our local mountains for science camp in March, and this is when she saw it snow.  Now she thinks she wants to live somewhere with precipitation, like Seattle.  It’s not the traffic, the idiots or the mundane suburbia that will drive my daughter out of CA—it’s the weather.

In November it was time for our annual Joshua Tree weekend with three other families: the Jows, the Kims and the Zeemans. Hiking, climbing, sitting and socializing were the orders of the day.  All activities were accomplished, but not by all attendees.  Age seemed to be a deciding factor. All the families are veterans now and things run smoothly.

As our last memorable excursion of the year, we took a tour of Huntington Harbor in one of those electric Duffy boats to see the Christmas decorations.  It’s similar to Newport harbor, except that instead of ridiculously extravagant the decorations are merely garishly over-the-top.  We had cookies and hot apple cider.

In the non-trip category, there are two big contenders for occurrence of the year. We attended a celebration of my grandparents’ 70^th wedding anniversary.  Try not to think about how old you’ll be at yours.  We had a photo montage and scrapbooks to look at while we snacked.

Number two was the adoption of our chocolate lab, Bailey, from a family who couldn’t keep her with a newborn in the house.  At first I thought, “Labs are great with babies!” But after a week with her, I understood that she needs only slightly less attention than a newborn.  She is active, loving and very active.  I thank heavens for the inventor of tennis balls, because without them we would have difficulty filling the time. She is not much of a conversationalist.

That’s it for us.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

The Leebs

Merry Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas one and all!

If you are reading this, we survived the Mayan apocalypse.  Hurray!

I should probably put all that money back in our retirement accounts. And maybe I can get that 911 Turbo back to the dealer before they notice.

Soccer has taken on undue importance in our household.  Emily’s team in the fall of 2011 was stacked with some really great players, and they made a playoff run that lasted eight weekends: parents were groaning with jubilation.  It seems now that the fall season lasted until April for her.  Claire’s team had the misfortune of being coached by me, and we came in a solid fifth out of ten teams—never in danger of extending the season.  We watch the highlights of the English league and have become the annoying people who discuss how soccer should really be called football, and that American thing with helmets could get a lesser name.  If my girls were unattractive boys, I would foresee many beatings in middle school.  Claire is improving dramatically, both as a keeper and a field player.  Secretly I enjoy every minute of soccer with them (I can’t let them know how much or they’ll hold it over me).

Adorned with her awards

Ready for battle

The girls’ activities have become the focal points of our lives: music, church, girl scouts and soccer.  Every once in a while, I get a stray thought on some intellectual topic and then reprimand myself for not focusing on laying out cones for practice or sorting out the cookie boxes quickly enough.  Claire is playing the violin and Emily the flute.  We tried to record the Winter Music program but our iPad was acting up.  We were quite embarrassed to be the only parents there enjoying the event without recording it.

We got a couple of good trips in this year.  Over spring break we saw Death Valley with Holly and Rich while it was only dad-blasted hot, not %$d-d@*+ed blasted hot.  

Not too hot??

Badwater - the lowest point in N.America

 The girls, my father and I took a week-long road trip from CA back to Wisconsin at the end of the school year.  Don’t we all have memories at staring out the window at the desert Southwest?  Of course, this time part of it was on fire.  Jenn couldn’t come along as Mickey Mouse takes a dim view of his employees taking the busy season off.  She had been to Santa Fe with her mother in the spring and recommended we see Mesa Verde and its ancient cliff dwellings.  Two days later we met up with my brother and his family, Carolyn, Natalie, Magdalene, Emma, Camden and Kedzie at Wind Cave, but we were traversing the continent in opposite directions and couldn’t stay together long enough.  Lots of stories from this trip: double rainbows, fire, wind and ice; so if you’re interested please ask.

At Bishop's Lodge - Santa Fe, NM

Mesa Verde, CO

Wind Cave, SD

We became good friends with a lovely family down the street with a daughter Claire’s age and a younger son.  The mother has been dragging me out running most mornings, so I berate her publicly and thank her privately.  We ran a 10K in April and are training for a half marathon in May 2013—we have our doubts, too.  The Kims have been a true blessing.  So much so, in fact, that Mrs. Kim has helped secure some employment for me, making math videos for an education company.  Better days ahead.  We also had them along on our annual pilgrimage to Joshua Tree over Veteran’s Day.  They are still thawing out, but hope to have feeling in their extremities by February.  Mr. Kim and I were bemoaning the pathetic state of the wisps on our heads that try to pass themselves off as hair, when I half-remembered a report that said men with excessive testosterone experience early hair loss. “Ahh, we are so manly, it scared the hairs off our head: I like it!” he said.  It’s good to live next to happy people.

On the rocks

The trail blazers

Jenn also upgraded her employment situation by taking the management training program at Disneyland so that she can switch over from hourly to salary with benefits—full exhale.  We celebrated with a dinner at the new fancy restaurant in California Adventure, Carthay Circle.  We are all very proud of her.

Fall 2012 Emerging Leaders Class (I'm just to the right of Mickey)

Claire is now nine years old and growing up quickly, but some subtleties escape her.  The other day in the kitchen I was focused on making sandwiches when she said with a note of self-criticism, “I’m not a very good cracker.”  My Father Warning System shot from zero to Defcon 4.  I was trying to simultaneously pin down where she heard that particular Southern term (not on our road trip surely) and wondering how to respond to her not claiming membership in that group (“That’s okay, honey, you’re not supposed to be a good cracker” seemed insufficient). Then I noticed she was handing the ice cube tray to me.  She couldn’t get the ice cubes out for her water bottle.  Parenting crisis averted.

This has been just another crazy year in the ongoing chaos of the Leeb family.  We hope you all are well and enjoy the Christmas season.

The Leebs

Go Tacos!

Emily is still playing soccer from the fall season.  Her team, the Toxic Tacos, won the Area championships today!  They already won their Region by winning all their games.  They have continued their undefeated season in the round robin tournament leading up to the championship games today.  They were both nail biters.  The other team scored first in both games but the girls kept up their attack and scored 2 unanswered goals and won 2-1 each time.  They play with such team work and are so supportive of each other.  They are a blast to watch.  Just as amazing to me is that the coaches are both volunteer college students.  Kelly and Chloe have given so much of their time and talent to help a group of girls that they had no connection to at all at the beginning of the season.  The girls found out that they will get to walk on the field of a Galaxy game some time and get cheered for their accomplishment.  They are super excited about that!

Getty Villa

Our Christmas present this year to our parents was a day at the Getty Villa.  The girls got to have a "Family Field Trip" day.  They walked to school then almost immediately got signed out.  We got the earliest reservation time that we could and it was a good thing.  What we thought would be a couple of hour thing turned out to take all day.  We went on several of the tours that were offered.  The docents were amazing.  They knew so much about their topic and were great story tellers.  They kept us all interested and taught us so much.  The first tour was the architecture tour.  We learned about what the different rooms of the Villa represented and the history of it.  The edible garden tour was a lot of fun.  John and the girls even sampled a dried berry from the garden.  Emily picked the world's largest radish.  We did a touch demonstration about the glass art with recreated pieces.  At lunch we brought out a picnic and had gourmet sandwiches.  We still had time to go back and look at a lot of the art we saw in passing on the tours and the girls got to play in the Family Forum. 

Happy New Year!

We had a fun New Year's Eve party with neighborhood friends.  What a treat to not have to drive on New Year's Eve!  The Kim's picked us up on the way over to the McCarthy's.  We brought our little red wagon along with all the stuff we had.  Emily L and Noah had a ball building Legos.  The rest of the girls did crafts and ran around doing whatever it is that 8 year old girls like to do when they are together.  Since the McCarthy's have access to New York time TV, we watched the ball drop over Time Square at 9:00 local time.  there was champagne and kisses for the adults, streamers and Martinelli's for the kiddos.  By 9:30 we were walking home and by 10:00 I was asleep!  It was a perfect night!

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas everyone!

Over the past year we have had many experiences that push us towards reflection.  My daughters are eight and ten and getting too tall to carry comfortably.  We lost a beloved pet (Skitter, a guinea pig).  Emily kicked the soccer ball between my legs and nimbly stepped around me in a scrimmage, proving that her soccer skills are in the ascendancy while mine…well, it’s not polite to use the terms I am thinking of.  Father Time marches on, and it’s our job to adapt.

Claire still has a wonderfully bubbly and undefeatable personality.  We were out selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door in the neighborhood when a very nice older woman opened the door.  She immediately sensed our intentions (the wagonload of Thin Mints might have given it away) and was crestfallen, “I’m so sorry—I don’t have any cash.”

Claire responded, “That’s okay,” and the woman got her smile back, assuming she was off the hook, “you can write a check.”  She laughed for a moment and then bought four boxes.

During Spring Break Emily and Claire travelled north to San Simeon to tour Hearst Castle with Holly and Rich.  Rich took a hilarious twenty-second video of Claire up to her chin in short rib bones (and up to her eyebrows in barbecue sauce), still chewing and yet reaching for more.  We have an agricultural balance among our daughters; one wants to raise livestock, and the other wants to eat them.
See the rib eating video - click here 

Morro Rock

Claire played on the Lavender Lava under 10 girls AYSO soccer team, and I was the coach.  We learned how to win and how to lose.  Claire made many friends and is getting better all the time.  I still have a long way to go in knowing what nine-year-old girls think is important—it took two days and three rounds of voting to come up with “Lavender Lava.” Yet we struggled with keeping both feet on the ground on throw-ins all year (sigh).

Emily moved up to the much bigger field with the under 12 girls, and I had the pleasure of watching her score the winning goals in two games (I can describe each one in less than ten minutes if I leave out the details, ask me).  Her team is undefeated and will be participating in the playoffs in January.

Soccer is the confirmed favorite outdoor activity of Emily and Claire, which is a relief because I secretly believe it means a lot to my wife.  Just because I played and refereed for years and think it is the greatest game in the world don’t think I’m the one pushing them to play.

Other competing outdoor activities this past year included playing in the snow up at Mt. Pinos in January where I learned that repeatedly crashing your elbow onto ice will cause it to swell no matter how cold you keep it.  We got some sliding discs and whiled away a Saturday—only stopping for lunch.

Wisconsin during the summer with my parents is also very outdoor heavy.  Emily water-skied around the lake for the first time.  We actually ate some of the fish we pulled out of Leader Lake, thanks to the deep-frying maestro, Uncle Matt Ryder.  Speaking for all the girls in the family, Claire said,” I don’t really like to eat fish…unless it’s deep fried so you can’t really taste it.”

We took our annual expedition to Wilderness Walk, half a zoo for woodland creatures plus one Bengal tiger and half a collection of themed shacks (maze, tilted, jail and the like): very unpolished and very fun for us.  While we were watching the wolves a passing ambulance siren set them off to howling and all the game animals got very alert all of a sudden; very fun to watch.  At the end of the day the girls all had a memorable time on a trail ride outside of Hayward.

Jenn and I returned to the scene of childhood memories by taking our girls up to Gooseberry Falls, fifty miles northeast of Duluth near the northern shore of Lake Superior.  We had a very nice two hour hike and played in the water; no rangers and no safety railing nearby, just one warning sign and an ethos of personal responsibility. Jenn likes to contrast that visit with the inanity of some of the visitors to Disneyland, “I didn’t know I could be hurt if I put my hand between two moving pieces of metal.”  She says that something about overpaying entrance fees turns off parts of people’s brains.

Gooseberry Falls

Speaking of childhood memories, at Claire’s birthday party we resurrected a game my grandfather used to organize for my cousins, brother and me: a kind of scavenger hunt in which we would discover rhyming clues and eventually discover the grand prize.  Everybody loved it and Claire’s group did too.

Back in school, Emily decided she wanted to run for treasurer but she lost to a sixth-grader: disappointing but not crushing.  Now this particular sixth grader had the good sense to up and move just two weeks after the election, so Emily was appointed the post.  I asked if the horse’s head she put into the sixth grader’s bed affected her decision to leave, and she just looked at me funny.  Now she gets to count up the Santa-gram money.  Sonny would be proud.

Jenn is moving up through the ranks at Disneyland—every couple of months she comes home talking about new training and responsibilities and yet is still in a good mood.  She really enjoys it and is looking forward to more training this year.

I’m still trying to land a full-time teaching job and occupy myself with substituting.

We were just invited to go on an evening boat cruise with Ryan and Angie Balius.  We cruised around Huntington Harbor to see all the lights while sipping hot chocolate and eating cookies. The electric power went out on one side of the harbor, obviously an overloaded transformer.  We gleefully indulged in speculation about the owners of waterfront mansions not being able to afford that month's electric bill.  After an hour SC Edison must have taken pity on the paupers and turned the power back on. This trip can put even the most convinced Scrooge in the Christmas mood.

Disney Family Chistmas Party with Jenn's parents

That’s about it.  See you all soon,

The Leebs