Hi! Happy holidays and new year!

This photo was taken Thanksgiving day on a ferry. We were having fun traveling over the Puget Sound and through the woods of Crane Island to Grandmother's house.

Main highlights of 1999:

• The parents: Burr's management of the Y2K fix at the airport is wrapping up, and the final test, Jan. 1, is around the corner. He's now starting an interesting new job as planning director with an external as well as internal focus. He's been traveling a fair amount, this year including Amsterdam and Jamaica. Barbara recently quit her job at the airport after 18 years! The plan is to do freelance writing or maybe go back to French translation (after getting caught up on modern methods!) or maybe something radically different-who knows? Meanwhile, despite a broken toe that has slowed her down considerably, she's had a chance to do some volunteer work and be less stressed about how to coordinate all the family's activities.

• The kids: Both are having great years at school. Robin is a sophomore in high school and is really into math and physics as well as computers. This year he's added such new activities as cross-country running, vocal ensemble, and peer tutoring. Laurel is in 7th grade, which has only 13 kids this year-only four of them girls! Her chorus, violin playing, and Youth Symphony are still keeping her very busy, too. Recently, her chorus was on the local classical radio station on a half-hour live broadcast (without commercials), and she even ended up being interviewed!

• Two of the kids' extraordinary experiences: An overnight cross-country ski trip in February (tents in the snow?-yes!), and participating in an incredibly creative musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (with 17 wonderful songs composed by their very talented drama teacher, including one for which Laurel wrote her own harmony).

• Hobbies: the model railroad-still progressing (now "17 years into a 50-year project") and a popular attraction for visitors to our home; and music-every chance we get (not enough)!

• In the news: WTO-Interestingly, both Burr and Barbara would have been very involved as Port of Seattle employees, but neither turned out to be since Barbara quit before that and Burr happened to be out of town! So we got to watch all the turmoil on TV like the rest of the world. What a crazy vision everyone got of our city. We think Seattle really is too laid-back, naive a city (with a visionary, idealistic mayor) to have been really well-prepared (if any city could be) for the intensity of such events. No one was really to blame, and it was good to see the successful peaceful protests; but it was horrible to see our beautiful city trashed. Now there's lots of "hindsight" studying what went on, but the real spirit of our gentle and friendly city is returning.

Hope we get to hear your news, too. Meanwhile, best wishes for a wonderful 2000!