Christmas 2019

Dear Friends,

Retirement has been good for us.  Patti is still active in the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians and continues to make sashes for members as they join from across the state of Maryland.  She attends their monthly meetings and occasionally other meetings.  She also lectors once a month at Mass.  Paul, although retired,  is still an active Deacon in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, he does volunteer work in our parish. He visits men in two of the local prisons and manages volunteers who visit men in one of those prisons.  He regularly performs baptisms, preaches once a month and occasionally presides at a wedding.  We do work out regularly either walking or visiting a local gym to pump iron or whatever.

Our big news is that our daughter Honor took on a position in the Johns Hopkins Medical School so she and her husband moved to Baltimore.  Now both our daughters live within about twenty miles of us so we get see them more often.  Our Grandson now has a job but still manages to occasionally come over on a Sunday to watch either  baseball or football with us.

Our travels have continued.  As usual we went to Breckenridge Colorado in January for our annual ski trip. This year we had an addition to our trip.  Last year Paul learned that his 93 year old Uncle Roger lives in Grant NE which is only a three hour drive from Denver so we added a day to our trip and went up to visit him and one of his daughters who Paul had never met.  The next day we headed to the mountains.  We don’t ski as often or as hard as in our younger days but we still enjoy getting out in the snow and enjoying the vistas we see from the top of the lifts.  The Rocky Mountains are a wonder to behold.

In March we spent about a week and a half on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The Kilauea volcano has quieted down.  It is no longer spewing lava, but it is generating steam all around its crater.  Paul did some SCUBA diving.  We  went out for a whale watch and saw a couple of whales breaching, what a magnificent sight!  We toured parts of the island.  One evening we were out late and the sky cleared so we could see billions of stars and the Milky Way.  The Hawaiian islands are filled with so much natural beauty!  Of course, we spent time just laying around the swimming pools.

 

In July we returned to our roots, sort of.  We spent about four days in Boston and went to Fenway Park to watch a Red Sox game.  We also visited  Patti’s nephew James and his family which included their newborn.  We hadn’t seen James in over a decade so it was great to catch up with his family and he updated us on other members of the family.  They live near Charleston which has changed significantly from when we lived in New England.

We left Boston and spent a week in North Conway NH.  In our teens we both had skied on Mt. Cranmore  which is in North Conway.  We must confess that after spending a number of years skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado Cranmore looks awfully small.  During the summer the mountain hosts a number of other activities such as zip line and mountain coaster.  We didn’t do the zip line but did take a ride on the coaster. We also  took a train ride  to Crawford Notch.  The train is a vintage model and brought back memories from our youth.  We did a little moose watching and took a ride up to the top of Mt. Washington.  The Green and White mountains aren’t as tall as the rockies but they still hold many memories for us.

In August we made, what is now, our annual trip to Nashville to watch a Professional Bull Riding competition and to visit with Patti’s sister Andi and Paul’s niece Katie and her family. 

May the joy and peace of this holy season brighten all the days of your New Year

Patti and Paul Gifford

P.S. visit our web site for more pictures as Paul gets around to posting them,
     https://pattiandpaulgifford.com