2-zero-1-zero (Happy New Year)

Dear Friends and Family,

Imagine that the following letter came in the mail with those Christmas cards that I never sent out this year.

We hope that you are well and have enjoyed another flurry of holiday festivities that arrive each year in celebration of our Savior's birth. As we approach the end of both the festivities and another calendar year, here is a recap of 2010 as seen through the eyes of Finan Dandy.


Casey and Angela at a beautiful outdoor wedding (no, this is not our house!)


We continue to enjoy marital bliss, and though we don't (yet) have children to fill our home with love, laughter, and mess, we do have two important members of our family that currently fill the aforementioned roles: Zima and Trekker provide hours of cuddly-ness, entertainment, and clean-up.



Zima takes a cat nap in her pal Trek's bed

 Zima and Trekker get along very well; Zima often "borrows" Trekker's bed for a little nap. Casey's dream is for Trek and Zima to cuddle together; although that hasn't happened yet, they continue to become more and more comfortable with one another.

Casey and Trekker on the Current River

Trekker has loved his time in the water; he made it to the river on five different float trips this year, an all-time record for him. Once he's in the water, it is hard to get him out; and even after lugging him out of the water and into the canoe (that's a sight to see), he whines to get back in the water after only a few minutes.

Happy Birthday Adelaide!

Adelaide is getting ready to celebrate her 94th birthday. We treasure our Sunday afternoon visits with her, and when we get the chance, we celebrate her with a pizza party (and birthday hats)!



Angela, Jessica, Melissa, and Bekah

 My youngest sister, Jessica, also celebrated an important birthday this year--her 21st. The four of us, along with a few of Jess's friends, spent a fun evening together in St. Louis.



Happy 1st Anniversary!

Speaking of celebrations, on March 7th, Casey and I celebrated our first anniversary of being married. We didn't follow tradition by saving the top of our wedding cake (we ate in on our honeymoon), so instead we baked a new cake and enjoyed the unusually warm weather by hiking to a waterfall, setting out a blanket, and spending time with one another in beauty of the outdoors. 2010 marks our first full calendar year as married folk.

2010 was also a big year for our house. From bending metal and covering the fascia, to basement shelving (to hold all of our floating gear), to garden blooms, to grouting the kitchen, Casey and I love to spend time together working on our home.



We painted the basement floor and walls (goodbye musty stink) and then built shelves.

  

Casey cut down the dead tree in our backyard. He was excited to use his new chainsaw, purchased specifically for this purpose.Too bad the tree fell on the neighbor's fence (in Casey's defense, the tree not only rotten on the inside, but someone had filled it with cement, making it top-heavy so that it fell before Casey finished the appropriate tree-cutting technique).



And finally, a grouted kitchen back splash.

Our day to day lives haven't changed much. I am in my 5th year of teaching (freshmen English) and Casey is working as a carpenter for a construction company. We both have days where we enjoy our jobs and days where we want to pull out our hair. I guess that's pretty typical for most jobs.

New City has become our church home--Casey has become a team leader for the Work Day ministry and I sub about once a month for Sunday school--this past Sunday we had a birthday party. Happy birthday Jesus!
2011 promises to be just as exciting.  Bekah's wedding, a road trip out West...who knows what else is in store?

Peace,

Angela and Casey



If I sent out Christmas cards...

I haven't sent out Christmas cards for the past few years. I don't really have a good excuse, but I do tell myself that when we eventually have kids, I will start sending out cards again. I mean, come on. Everyone likes to get the cards with the cute little kids on them--those kids we haven't seen since summer, or maybe Easter, or perhaps, God forbid, not since LAST Christmas, when the card arrived with a much smaller version of Cute Kid and Cute Kid Jr.

And since I don't have Cute Kid or Cute Kid Jr.--yet ;), here is what my Christmas cards would look like... if I sent out Christmas cards.





Cute Kid on the left

Cute Kid Jr.

Merry Christmas with love from the Finans

All for one and one for all

I'll admit, I am not the best at keeping in contact with old friends; it was just about a year ago that I decided to create a facebook account so that I could see pictures of friends (and their kids) who are out of town. In that time, I have gained nearly a hundred friends! However, I am still not good at hunting down old friends, so it is nice when I get a friend request from someone I haven't talked to in years because most likely, it would take me decades to hunt them down.


A couple of weeks ago, I got a friend request from someone I knew in college; she hunted me down at the request of another friend who was looking for me to invite me to play in the Webster U. women's basketball alumni game.
 
In spite of it being the middle of basketball season (coaching), finals week, and the holidays, I decided to take a few hours to catch up with some old friends from my basketball years at Webster.

The game was today, so I spent my afternoon back on Gorlok turf.

Before arriving, I naturally assumed that we would NOT play an entire basketball game--I mean, come on. Two 20-minute halves? Seriously. YEP, that's exactly what we did. A bunch of old-timers out there huffing and puffing up and down the court. After the first 5 minutes of the game, both teams went to a zone defense. Good decision.

We had one player on our team who just graduated last year, so my team played a 1-3-1 zone for a while and she chased the guards all over the court. I played down low and got in on couple of traps.

Aside from my pulled hammy, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Casey told me that if I tore or broke anything, don't bother coming home until it's fixed. But the bum knee held up, even after all the time I've spent on the freshmen girls' tile practice court at Lindbergh this season.

After the game, the current coach got a photo of all 23 alumni together. And I started humming the locker room song from "A League of Their Own": "We're all for one and we're one for all." :)