2010 Happenings

Hello friends and family,

Hope this finds you all well and enjoying the holiday season.

We are still kickin it here in St. Louis, MO. This will be our third year in the Lou and although it doesn't feel like home this is where we are for now. We're still the apartment managers of our building which keeps us very busy. Our location is the one thing that makes this a bright spot, with Tower Grove Park right across the street and the Botanical Garden a few blocks away.

John continues to work at Twillman Elementary school as the Pre-K teacher. This year he has eleven students that keep him on his toes and laughing. He’s enjoying the continuity of being in the same place. He has the same classroom aide who he works well with so the first part of the school year has been a blast. Not sure how it got to be December already, better start teaching these kids something.

Polly Mae was working as a librarian substitute for the STL Public Libraries up until summer time. They closed down the main library downtown for a two-year renovation during which her hours have been greatly reduced to zero. This is because the main library staff was spread out to all the other city library branches thus overstaffing everywhere, which leaves no room for substitutes. She misses it but has found ways to keep busy at home while John now leads as “sugar Daddy”. According to Polly Mae, her skills as a house-wife are lacking but she's a lucky lady!

Our goofy beautiful boxer puppy girl, Shaka, still rules the household. Especially couches, beds and pillows. However she also loves to cuddle right on top of us leaving us short of breath due to her 80 pounds of love. She enjoys playing in the dog park, taking long walks, playing slobber toy, mulching sticks and heading to the country to play with Grandpa and her cousin dogs.

Some highlights from our year included having lots of great visitors, journeying back to California in the spring for our good friends wedding reception and visiting family. During the summer we had a great Illustrious 8 reunion in Champaign where we learned our good friends Andy & Steph were pregnant! Of course there was the annual Rosa family trip to the creek to play in the water all day and sit around the campfire at night.

The most memorable part of our year was the road trip of a lifetime for Johns 30th birthday! Oh boy… We left St. Louis on June 6th and voyaged to the Badlands N.P. with a brief detour to the Mitchell Corn Palace. From there we checked out Wall Drug and Mount Rushmore. Looking at dead white guys carved into the mountain gave Polly Mae the giggles. A lot of giggles. There was a quick visit Devil’s Tower to watch the sunset (but no UFOs or dead cows). Polly Mae was enamored by the fields of squeaking prairie dogs giving each other kisses.

Yellow Stone was the next stop on our agenda. Our perfect campsite overlooked a field that ran down to Yellow Stone Lake. We biked, hiked, and enjoyed the steam from Geyser Basin. The Tetons were too close to pass up so we took a sunny boat ride across Jenny Lake and were then caught in a storm as we hiked back. Our last day of Yellow Stone saw us off with a snow shower at Artist Point.

Next we headed North to Glacier. Glacier was by far the best place we visited and it is now Polly Mae’s favorite National Park. John went kayaking for the first time and loved it. We rode bikes, hiked, and swam in lake Macdonald. Brrrrr! Unfortunately, the Road to the Sun was closed due to an avalanche, but we drove up as far as we could and took a nice walk through the Trail of the Cedars.

We bid Glacier adieu and spent a day in Seattle before we took the ferry across the Puget Sound to Olympic National Park. Our campsite was cozy and sat on the edge of a canyon with a waterfall and was by far our favorite camping spot. We enjoyed hiking around and getting lost in the rainforest. We also spent a night camping on the beach and were happy to be reunited with the west coast again.

We got some much-needed rest in Portland while visiting our good friends Andy and Steph and Polly Mae’s cousin, Claire. We laughed, played games and soaked up the love and friendships.

Once again we were hitting the road to drive along the Columbia River Gorge before heading south to Crater Lake. Now, we didn’t enjoy Crater Lake and that may have something to due with the mosquito-infested month of June. Or the mountains of snow that made it a bit hard to dig out a camping spot.

So, exhaustion had set in by the time we reached Rocky Mountain National Park. We spent most of our time at our little hike in campsite sending good thoughts to our friends Andy and Jessi who were welcoming their baby boy Terran into the world. We drove into Boulder where we crashed with Polly Mae’s Uncle Be and cousin, Emma. We ate A LOT of good food and shared lots of laughs. It was like Thanksgiving! We also let John loose in Denver to hit up as many record stores as he could, since we were there on his actual birthday.

It then came time to make our last big leg of our trip to Chicago to see our new godson, Terran. We spent some time getting to know this great little guy, reading him books, and John taught him the art of napping.

Our next and final stop was Neoga to pick up Shaka and partake in Ryan and Kattie’s best ever Fourth of July Fireworks Show. The whole trip was filled with unforgettable memories, but we were happy to arrive back in Saint Louis to sleep in our own bed for a very long time and stay in one place.

By the end of the summer we were happily surprised with our own news of being pregnant! We just recently found out that it’s a boy. Chuck, the womb name of our little wee, one will be due in early May. So far Mama and babe are doing well. Polly Mae feels very lucky to be a stay at home pregnant lady where she can fully experience everything and be totally in tune with her body. We're hoping he doesn't mind having two goof balls as parents...not that the poor kid has much of a choice. We are beyond excited for this little dude to arrive.

Other than that, we’re still our goofy selves that enjoy being together listening to music, reading as many library books as we can, and visiting near by family and friends as much as possible. We feel very lucky to have our life together with such great people all over the country and world that make us laugh and feel loved.

We hope you are all doing well and enjoy a wonderful holiday and new year full of love and laughter. Peace.

John, Polly Mae + Chuck and Shaka