Dear Friends and Family,
Happy Holidays!! We hope you and yours had a healthy, happy 2009. Our year has been interesting, starting with Bill's Dad falling and breaking his hip on Christmas Day 2008, a small house fire in our Master Bathroom on January 19th, contractors remodeling that bathroom and our bedroom from then until the middle of April, traveling in Europe from the 20th of June until the 4th of August, Bill's Dad in Swedish Hospital September 2nd - 20th then he stayed in a wonderful Romanian Hospice home from September 20th - November 13th when he passed away. It has been extremely difficult for Bill but we all feel great comfort in know how much time he had spent with his Dad throughout the past 4 decades. No child has spent more time with their father. Most of that time was spent having something to do with baseball and/or household projects (theirs or ours). The interactions and discussions between Bill, his Dad and Matt will be greatly missed. Matt continues to work at Siltronic. Like all businesses this year the company has fluctuated. Matt feels extremely fortunate to be employed by such a great company. So many times we will be trying to think through something and Matt will come up with a solution within seconds (like Nick). Nicole is working for Super Supplements in Seattle as Marketing Manager and Nick has been promoted with the NW Branch of Oracle to a Regional Manager. He is traveling quite a bit and they both enjoy any time they can get with Nash, who enriches all our lives with impulsivity, love and laughter. On the other hand our travels were a great surprise. What a year to travel, it was worth the 3 year wait, savings and planning. All of our plans, reservations, weather, waters, activities were better than we dared to anticipate. We were amazed at how many tourist we DID NOT see. Only at a few places did we stand in a short line. Prices were also less than we expected (and we are pretty realistic). Who would have guessed?? We should have known that we were on a special adventure when we drove straight from Ostia Antic (Rome Airport) to a parking spot one block from our hotel in Rom in less than 1 hour. Other than 10 minutes of welcomed light rain during a very hot day in Madrid, we had perfect comfortable weather. In St. Petersburg we wanted to experience the White Night Canal Tour: so we felt it was worth a splurge. To our surprise it was the tow of us on a boat for 200 for 3 hours. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. In Athens the new Acropolis Museum opened in July and the entrance fee was 1 Euro through this December. Built mainly of glass you are constantly gazing up at the Parthenon while viewing its original artifacts and walking on glass floors above ruins. Needless to say we went several times. It is pretty incredible. Brussels, Belgium Stockholm, Sweden Catherine's Palace / St Pete's Athens, Greece
St Petersburg, Russia Gdansk, Poland Kusadasi, Turkey La Mancha, Spain
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We have become even more hungry for any and all Parkinson's information. Bill has had some real highs and lows with his medication. Everything is constantly changing while food and emotions add o the challenge of balancing them all out. We are so thankful that Matt has been a third pair of eyes and the Schunks and Osters spent time wit us on a vacation to try to figure out what is going on. Nicole has been a constant sounding board with additional resources, idea and constant support. Nick and his family have added additional insightful medical expertise. We are so thankful for them. We attended 3 Parkinson's Workshops, Bill has been involved in a 10 week OHSU study, and is scheduled for four weeks four days a week Speech/Swallowing Clinic all of February. We are so appreciative of all his doctors, support staff, and mainly friends who have helped us so very much deal with this not so fun disease. We are going to try some new things in 2010 to make dealing with this as positive of an experience for everyone as possible. We are really hopeful that 2010 will be a calmer year.
We sncerely hope you have the time to enjoy these holidays
in the manner most meaningful to you and your family.
Happy Holidays
Bill and Debbie
We sncerely hope you have the time to enjoy these holidays
in the manner most meaningful to you and your family.
Happy Holidays
Bill and Debbie