December 19, 2012 Lake
Wobegon-on-the-Atlantic-Lake
Merry Christmas,
Was 2012 the year of the Bucket List? Or maybe it was the year of the weird
headgear? Read on to discover the
answer.
In January we celebrated a number of special
occasions – our 37th wedding anniversary, and Diana’s and Sara’s
birthdays, so we decided to celebrate by inviting the Yeager’s to join us on
our vacation to Kauai, Hawaii.
While we were there, Juli, Diana, Sara, Jacob
& Steve went zip-lining over waterfalls and streams in the tropical rain
forest. It was terrifying at the first
step, but way awesome as soon as I knew I was going to be okay! Here is a photo of us looking very dork-like
in our gear, which included those awesome
red helmets. I temporarily removed mine for this photo, as did Jacob.
At the end of February disaster struck at the
Hawthorne Hotel. We were in the middle
of a multi-million dollar renovation of the bathrooms when some workmen broke
the main water supply pipe in the attic of the hotel, flooding every floor in
an entire wing of the property. They did
about $2 million dollars in damage and lost business, and we are still putting
things right, although the majority of the fixes were done in two months, we
have been at such high occupancy since then that a lot of the work will be done
now that we are slow again for the winter.
We were able to attend one of our favorite
wintertime Salem events, the Salem Film Festival, in early March. This comprises 10 days of terrific
documentary films in our local CinemaSalem, and what great movies they were! One of them was so inspiring that we actually
traveled to an art museum in Yonkers, NY later in the spring, to see the art of
Wilfred Rembert, called “All Me” which was really an excellent movie and made
seeing the exhibit even better. The
bonus of that trip was going back to one of our favorite restaurants in NYC
called Dirt Candy – a tiny
jewel-box of a gourmet vegetarian restaurant.
Highly recommend it if you go to NYC but do make advance reservations or
you will never get in.
In late winter Walt and I made a trip to
Nashua, NH and went indoor skydiving. Think
more charming shots of us with helmets, which I will omit from this
letter. Walt was actually better at it
than I was, having more upper arm strength which it turns out is helpful when
you are trying to hold yourself in a flying position against a tunnel of wind
current. But it was a good step for me
to take, because now I had been parasailing in Mexico, zip-lining in Kauai, and
indoor skydiving. While there I found
out that a regular tandem jump has one in free-fall for about 45 seconds, and I
had managed to do the indoor skydive (the equivalent of the free-fall part of a
parachute jump) for 4 minutes! Stay
tuned to learn why this is of some importance.
In late April the Salem Chamber of Commerce honored
me as their Businesswoman of the Year. It
was quite a surprise, and as you can see by the photos, both Walt and I were
delighted that I was recognized this way.
Perhaps it was because I had completed not one, but two separate terms
as the President of the Chamber, but they did name off a lot of other things
that I had accomplished, including getting the hotel back up and running in
time for the tourist season this year after the big flood.
In the summer we made two trips to Maine, the
first time to Kennebunkport and Bar Harbor, and to Acadia National Park, with a
planned stop in Pepperell on the way home.
Later in the summer we made another long weekend trip just to go to Kennebunkport,
ME since we liked it there so much on the first visit.
On August 25 we went back to Pepperell, MA so I
could jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
And this turned out to be a case of the third time was the charm because
I got weathered-out two times prior. Here
is a collage of some of my photos. If
you want to see the video you can go to YouTube via this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvA3ghVenyI Or type in “Lederhaus Leaps” in the search
window on YouTube.
I felt absolutely as calm as I have ever felt,
and it was such an amazing adventure. If you have ever thought about tasting a
cloud, or wanted to feel like you were flying, I can highly recommend this
experience. More helmets.
On Labor Day
weekend we took a trip to Montreal, so we could go eat at Schwartz’s Deli and Au
Pied du Cochon, shop and play golf, all to celebrate Walt’s birthday. It was a fabulous long weekend for us both.
One of the most exciting pieces of news we have to share with family and friends this year is that Walt is off all the medications he was on for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, all because he has lost 55 pounds! He is a new guy, walking everywhere and loving it, eating in a more measured way, yet not having given up anything.
Along the way I lost 47 pounds, so between us both we lost about a person. All of this was done with the help of Weight Watchers on-line program, utilizing our iPhones and computers. It is a totally different kind of program than what I had expected, and one that we can live with, so we have both maintained our new weights since about six months ago – a happy outcome I can assure you.
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In early November we went to the HHA annual
conference in Ojai, CA. We got to see
cousin Linda Sanna McKinley while we were out there, and played some golf and
used the spa at the resort, and we went to the beach at Santa Monica too.
November saw the workmen finally start on the
exterior of our house, which turns out to have a serious case of dry rot in a
lot of places, so what we had planned to be a new bathroom project turned out
to be re-siding most of the house, with a whole lot of window and underlying
work as well. The new color scheme
turned out to be a happy accident of this project. We hope it is done soon, as the weather is
definitely closing in on us. Stay tuned
for photos in next year’s newsletter.
During the year we discovered the power of
connecting with friends on FaceBook, and are really enjoying that, so if you
are on there as well, please let us know so we can “friend” you there.
The dogs are all still with us, and in
relatively good shape, although Kookie is nearly 15 years old and we are not
sure about how much longer she will be with the Lederhaus family. JayJay and Dewey are the delight of our lives,
healthy happy little dogs who love to play and cuddle.
Much Love,
Juli & Walt and the doggies!
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