Christmas Letter 2023
It looks like this became more of a post-New Year’s and (barely) pre-Valentine’s Day letter 😊
We did some traveling this year after several years of little or no travel since COVID arrived in 2020.
The first big trip was in September to the extended family’s cabin at McGowan, near Lassen National Park. We had a lovely week with Colin, Victoria, Robert, and his son Dan. We stayed in a motel rather than in one of the cabins at McGowan to accommodate Peter’s declining mobility due to advancing spinal stenosis that causes numbness in his feet and lower legs.
Ian and Sabrina invited us to join them for several days at the beach in Puerto Peñasco on the coast of the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) in Sonora, Mexico, as an early Christmas present – best present ever! Puerto Peñasco is the closest beach town to Tucson and Phoenix, a 4.5-hour drive from Sierra Vista, and features an active commercial fishing port and extensive development catering to Arizona-based tourists.
We shared a large and lovely Airbnb on the beach with Ian, Sabrina, Lilly, Sabrina’s mother, Marcela, and brother Adam. The beach was littered with seashells! Lilly found 171 seashells; she knows because she counted them herself. 😊
After we returned, Marcela invited us to join her and Pat (plus Ian, Sabrina, Lilly, and Adam) for Thanksgiving. The Skoras put on an impressive and delicious Thanksgiving spread!
A few weeks later, we spent ten days around Christmas in Austin, TX, visiting Colin; Victoria and our niece Nicole joined us. Nicole’s birthday is December 23rd, so Cindy took her shoe shopping, which is their thing. 😊 We did a “white elephant” present exchange for Christmas, but everyone had good gifts, not the weird stuff I remember from white elephant exchanges years ago.
We especially enjoyed eating at new restaurants and seeing new places. We drove, so we saw the parts of New Mexico and Texas between Sierra Vista and Austin – twice 😊
Aside from those trips and our monthly-ish trips to Tucson for big-city shopping and dining, we stay in Sierra Vista. Life is pretty quiet in retirement.
Peter did some contract technical writing over several months through UpWork and then for a startup he encountered on Reddit; how the work world has evolved! The extra money was nice, as was the familiar routine of working, though the quiet of retirement afterward was welcome.
Ian is now a Senior Faculty Lead at Revolution Prep, managing several dozen tutors while still doing some tutoring himself. He’s been moving steadily upward in the company since joining ~3 years ago.
Sabrina started her own counseling practice, Plamondon Therapy, and had all the clients she wanted within a few months. She has office space a 5-minute commute from home (no place in Sierra Vista is more than ~15 minutes away).
Lilly is in kindergarten this year and loves it. She’s an eager reader and absorbs learning like a sponge.
Colin became the Chief Operating Officer at Datum in July. Datum has been around for 20 years, and their business is “Bringing the power of mobile phone data to build and activate your target audience and solve real-world problems.”
That’s about it?! At least for us, retirement is a pretty quiet endeavor that doesn’t generate much that’s newsworthy.
We spent much more time with family this year than in recent years, which was great – we hope to continue that!
Here’s hoping we all have a great 2024!
ISV Results With Microsoft 