2022:
A Year In Photos

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow?

Happy (belated) holidays! We always intend for these cards to get to you in time for Christmas, or at least New Year’s. As with the snow arriving at our house, it is arriving a little later this winter. Better late than never, as long as it happens eventually. (But, really, we’d like that snow sometime, please!)

This year has felt less full of major change compared to recent years and more like an evolution of previous states. We’re still living in the Hudson Valley, still spending most of our time together. We transitioned from pandemic isolation by more regularly leaving our town, our region, our state. In our adventures this year we intentionally went mostly to places we knew to reconnect with people we love and haven’t seen in far too long (and feels like even longer).

Since we’re both working from home, we spend most of our waking hours with the dogs. Ruby and Raku continue to bring us a lot of joy every day, whether playing or snuggling under a pile of blankets.

Traila’s still here, too, being a cat.

We love living in New York and keep finding new adventures upstate. This year we went cross-country skiing in Lake Placid at Mt. Van Hoevenberg for the first time.

We keep finding beauty around us, like this hike through the ice and mud to see the Kaaterskill Falls.

We went to our first maple syrup festival, at the Ashokan Center, a music and nature non-profit on the State Register of Historic Places, memorialized in the song “Ashokan Farewell”.

We saw them boil down the syrup and make delicious maple taffies. And we saw Jay and Molly Unger play – making Teresa’s fiddler heart very happy.

We returned to Dutchess Stadium throughout the summer to support our minor league team and to cheer along with our amazing mascots: Rascal and his parents, Rene and Rookie.

(Go ‘Gades!)

We also helped with the hop harvest at our favorite brewery for a second year in the row. The equipment this year was a major upgrade; we no longer had to pick them all by hand!

2022 brought back many experiences we’ve missed the last two years. We started taking the train down to NYC more often – a beautiful hour and a half ride.

In the city, we joined The Great Saunter again …

(We walked a respectable 14 miles in an absolute downpour before deciding we couldn’t go any further in our sloshing shoes. We’ll finish again one day!)

… saw the women’s singles final at the US Open …

… watched our friend MJ get ordained as an Episcopal priest at St. John the Divine …

… and got back into our habit of seeing Broadway shows, both new ones …

… and classics.

As is always the case, we were very happy to host family and friends at our home, including Teresa’s aunt Julie and cousin Breanna (seen here), MJ during her transition back to New York City, and Tom’s mom and Carole and Tim on either side of Christmas. Let this act as our standing invitation to any and all of you who want to come up to the Hudson Valley, whether for a day or a week!

Travel became a more regular part of our lives again this year. The pandemic showed us how content we can be at home, but going on real vacations also reminded us how much there is to see a little farther afield. This spring we drove to North Carolina, where Tom spent many summers, but hadn’t visited since he was a kid. Asheville reminded Teresa in many ways of Fort Collins …

… except the Biltmore is probably a bit more opulent than any building in Colorado. (The gilded age just wasn’t quite as … gilded in the Rockies.)

On the more casual side, we visited Laura and Daniil in Harrisonburg, hiked around Black Mountain, went brewery-hopping, Tom discovered latent life goals to become a pinball wizard, and met Geoff and Sonia for dinner in Raleigh.

This summer we took a few smaller trips, starting with Buffalo for Mother’s Day with Tom’s family.

Tom’s nephew chose him to read his bedtime story while we were there. Tom gave a truly dramatic reading of “The Pigeon Needs a Bath!”

In July we took our first flight in three years to celebrate the wedding of Teresa’s childhood best friend Tricia and her husband Mike, in Colorado. After their family-only pandemic wedding, the party was postponed to 2022. We were so happy to see them not only at their party, but to spend quality time with them afterwards just the four of us.

While in Colorado, we stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Ever seen “The Shining”? This bar might look familiar. Stephen King was staying at this hotel when he came up with the idea for the story. Tom – an avid horror fan – has been excited to stay there since he learned of it years ago, and we finally made it happen.

We also made sure to see Uncle Norm, Teresa’s former radio show co-host, in Fort Collins.

In August, after finishing all of the classwork for her graduate program, Teresa made a trip out to Iowa to see family, including spending time with her dad in his garden, and (finally!) visiting her cousin Breanna in Ames to take a campus tour of Iowa State.

Our major vacation this year was to the Southwest, first to New Mexico – nearly six years after getting married there – and then to Arizona.

No matter how many times we go to Santa Fe it is always magical and always wonderful. The architecture, the elevation, the food, the memories, the people. One night we were able to have dinner with Teresa’s college friends Laura and RJ. We stayed downtown with Carole and Tim coming in from Seattle, and Matt and Martha coming from DC. We went to galleries and breweries and on the ski lift to see the changing colors.

And no trip to Santa Fe is ever complete without seeing Carole Owens (Carole’s namesake and the officiant at our wedding) at least once. In the Land of Enchantment, Carole Owens remains one of its most enchanting residents.

After several days we parted ways with the rest of the group and drove to Arizona. Teresa insisted Tom try his first fry bread taco. (They were just as delicious as she remembered from over a decade ago.)

We drove through dramatic Western weather …

… through a painted landscape …

… and saw the petrified forest.

The next day we were supposed to see the Grand Canyon. We were staying right there, at a hotel in the park, but all we could see was … this. Get to the edge and only fog. So, determined to see something, we drove.

At the edge of the park we were finally able to see the canyon in fits and spurts. So we drove out of the park entirely …

… to the most iconic view of them all.

We realized we were right next to Utah, and if we popped over the border Tom would have visited all Four Corners states this year. So we did. Tom commemorated it with a celebratory photo.

Luckily, the fog cleared out overnight and we could actually see the Grand Canyon the next morning in all its glory.

And the elk were kind enough to see us off before we left for Tucson.

Tucson is in the land of saguaros. Tom had no idea how tall they got. Or how long they live. This is actually a small, young one, about Tom’s age.

And there are so many in Saguaro National Park. Most of these are hundreds of years old. It’s beautiful.

All of our friends who’ve lived in Tucson recommended the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which showcases the flora and fauna of Arizona. We had no idea ocelots lived in the US, let alone the area.

During the trip we became completely enamored by javelinas – which locals described as smelly pests – and we decided we had to see some. We finally found some at the desert museum. (Pests? C’mon! How can you not love them? So scruffy! And snuggly! They’re just trying to get by.)

Unlike the museum, only one friend told us we need to have an Eegee’s frozen fruit drink. You’ve probably had an Icee? These are on a whole other level, made with fresh fruit, not syrup. We now find ourselves craving them from time to time. (To be fair to our other friends, they all reacted similarly: “How did I forget Eegee’s?!”)

Our last stop was Scottsdale to see Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home, studio, and school.

As someone who grew up wanting to be an architect and collected books about Frank Lloyd Wright in middle and high school, it was exciting to tour this place and cross it off of Teresa’s bucket list together.

This fall we both had some personal changes. In September Teresa started working as a policy analyst at ExcelinEd. She mostly works remotely in her art studio/music room/office (plus some travel out of state), reading and writing about education policies across the country. It’s a big shift away from teaching high school, but it’s good to do work that tries to make teaching better for teachers (and tries to make sure students have good teachers in their classrooms).

Tom turned 40. To celebrate, Teresa took him out for a night in NYC. It involved surprise tickets to see Little Shop of Horrors, one of Tom’s favorite musicals since childhood. But it started at this amazing hidden bar right in Grand Central Terminal.

The second part of the birthday celebration was a weekend in Vermont with Tom’s childhood friends, nerding out with some D&D. Tom hadn’t played since high school. Teresa had never played before. We both had a blast and are looking forward to playing more. (Thanks for DMing, Micah!)

I’m sure there’s plenty more we could tell you, but we won’t go on any longer. Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our year. And we hope yours was great too, and look forward to hearing about it the next time we talk to you.