Lois

Lois and I are still pretty much intact.   No travelogues to report other than our annual snowbirding pilgrimage to Hilton Head (ahhh – dreaming of balmy breezes and murmuring of surf [as opposed to the snow, ice and sleet swirling about us as I write this]);  and the biannual informal reunion of my school fraternity’s classes of the ‘50’s.  The latter was held this time in Roanoke, Virginia, which proved to be an admirable, with-it town, blessed with quite interesting area attractions, among them Thomas Jefferson’s summer home, the National D-Day memorial, and a gem of a transportation museum with displays of mighty steam locomotives and salutes to those who made them so admirable:  the designer Raymond Loewy, and the gifted photographer Winston Link.

Dick

Our quietude provides an apt backdrop for some highlights of real pleasure.   Lois exercises her creativity by making quilts.  My creativity is mostly expressed in the surprising trajectories of tennis balls ricocheting off the frame of my racquet.  I continue to be devoted to the Metropolitan’s splendid live (!) opera videocasts, and have developed an enjoyable hobby of cobbling up greeting cards for friends and family, photoshopping them into whatever’s apt for the occasion, from classic paintings to New Yorker cartoons.  This niftily panders to my yearning to be artistic without requiring that I have any actual talent.

     Sue                 Jan Willem

The Van der Werff family had another busy year, as usual. We moved houses in Cincinnati, from number 865 to number 770.  We now have more space;  it’s a real house, with the benefits of a condo and close proximity to the boys’ high school, St Xavier.  Because we have more space, we needed to fill it up with stuff.  So we moved a container full of it from our house in Holland to Cincinnati.  We now have pieces of furniture that have more frequent flyer miles than many business travelers.

 Willem                                                     Nick

       Arthur

The past year has been a good one working at P&G’s pet-foods division, IAMS, as my dog Pumpkin passed the psychiatric evaluation required for her to be permitted to be come with me to the office (yes, P&G is risk-averse enough that they actually brought in a doggy psychiatrist for the evaluation).  Now I get to bring her to work every day, where I have trained her to guard against bear attacks.  She is very good at it, because in the past year that she has slept under my desk, there has not been a single bear attack in the cubicle area of P&G where I work.

Apart from work, I’ve been enjoying spending time with family:  Jan Willem, Sue, and their boys.  Willem is starting to get interested in cars, and in particular in fixing up my old Miata so he can drive.  It’s a treat for everyone that both boys come by my workshop to help me with my projects or to do car work.

Pumpkin

Richard                  on his Harley           

Alas, what has proven to be an Irresistible Force has collided with what has proven to be an Immoveable Object.  Richard and Ishraq are no more;  two excellent people with strong personas but different world views became increasingly incompatible over the years.  No bad guys;  nothing evil.  Just sad.  Richard and the children remain in Brussels, Richard continuing as General Manager of Reckitt-Benckiser’s Benelux subsidiary.  Ishraq is establishing residency in NYC, returning regularly to Brussels.

    Samer                     Lila

Samer’s already impressive skill in videography is growing;  he joined an intense course in the subject at the NY Film Academy this summer   And then of course there’s cars.  Samer and Richard were invited to the McLaren 50^th anniversary bash in England, following which Samer had had an internship in their automotive engineering department.  Sports are not neglected:  Samer’s volleyball team was European champs, and his baseball team second. 

Lila too is excelling in sports.  Her volleyball team was also second in Europe in JV.   In piano, she has been rated a 7/8 in the English scale and wants to start performing.  Her art teacher has labeled her as a real talent, which should provide her with a helpful foundation for her quest to go eventually into Marketing.

Peter, Alex, Steven, Cathy

Since I’m the youngest of the siblings, my entry in the family Christmas letter goes in last.  I do sometimes wonder whether anyone actually reads this far.  So I thought I’d try a test.

My product section of IBM, Websphere, provides software that allows transactions in large complex networks to be carried out in real time.  My personal moonlighting accomplishment this year was to write the web interface for the Obamacare sign-up site.  Personally I think it went well, but apparently there were complaints from several disgruntled curmudgeons.

OK - if you’ve gotten this far and are still conscious, send me a note.  (Dad – you, as editor, do not count).   [Editor’s comment:  “Smart-ass kid”.]

Test over – here’s our report:  both Cathy and I are still with IBM and “work from home”, which is why we’re able to snowbird with my parents in Hilton Head every year for a couple of months in winter.  (And as I write, we’re really looking forward to getting out of Pittsburgh’s arctic and heading south.)

The kids are both doing well.  Steven continues to excel in school and in band, and is doing more and more with his Boy Scout troop.  Scuba diving is also a growing interest;  this year, he not only went on a dive vacation with us in the Caribbean, but also on one with his mother.  Alex just loves learning anything and everything.  His favorite pastime this year was soccer, where he averaged about a dozen goals a game (typical scores were 22-4  [Editor:  there are  - a-hem - no goalies in the five-year-old league]).  The only reason his goal count was so low was that the coach and I kept yelling at him to stop scoring and PASS the ball.

So, as we progress through another year, everyone is doing well, and we’re looking forward to the future.