Happy Holidays to all our friends and family.

Wow, it’s been a crazy year.

As most of you know, about the first of the year Andrew and Teresa decided to get married and we started researching where and how and when. It was a long and crazy process.  In August, we finally tied the knot.  We had a small ceremony at a Bed and Breakfast in the North Georgia Mountains.  We had a much larger celebration the following weekend to celebrate with all our friends and family.  In September we went on our Honeymoon.  We drove out to Boulder, Colorado and toured along the way.  We visited Elvis at Graceland in Memphis; we soaked in a spa in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  We dug for selenite crystals in the Great Salt Plains of Oklahoma.  We summited Mt Capulin (8,182 ft) an ancient volcano in New Mexico. We checked out the beach at Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes and then played in the Garden of the Gods.  We visited our friend Terry in Boulder, Colorado and she took us out for a hippie-like soak at the Cottonwood Hot Springs.  With her we tried to summit Mt. Princeton, but ran out of time.  We toured through Rocky Mountain National Park in time to hear the elk to bugling.  We went through Kansas (because we couldn’t avoid it) and into St. Louis, Missouri where we rode the Katy Trail, went up in the St. Louis Arch in these little elevator capsules.  We stopped at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee on the way home and got our obligatory “See Rock City” birdhouse.  It was a blast!

We adopted two pets this year.  We adopted a kitten early in the year (well, she really adopted us!).  Terra, a tortoiseshell kitty, showed up on the back porch, skinny and full of fleas and worms.  After a couple of visits to the vet, she now keeps our chipmunk and squirrel population in check around the house.  We adopted Simon, a Golden Retriever mixed with a Border Collie.  He’s an absolutely perfect dog (aside from a little beef jerky mishap). He’s gone camping, mountain biking and backpacking with us… he must think we’re crazy, but he loves us nonetheless.  Fred, Teresa’s cat of almost 14 years, is still in good health and spoiled rotten, although he sleeps a lot and he's not crazy about having so much competition.

Andrew’s company, Fast-Talk, is looking better all the time.  He’s been there over two years; he was one of the first employees.  They’ve been getting a lot of media coverage and many companies are interested in the technology they are working on.  Teresa started a job in June, but it only lasted a few months before the company went out of business.  But as one door closes, another opens; Teresa started another job in November for a much better company, the Miller-Clapperton Partnership.  She really likes the people she’s working for and working with.

 In February, Teresa’s father died after a long illness and we made a short visit to Florida.  All the Piercy brothers and sisters were there and it was nice to see the whole family together, since it’s been many years.  On Andrew’s side, much of the Koransky/Arbeiter family was present at the wedding.  It was a lot of fun and we feel much closer to them all as a result.  In November we went to visit Andrew’s Grandfather and Grandmother in Boca Raton, Florida for Thanksgiving.

We are still involved with the Sierra Club as Outings Chairs for our local group, and hope to lead more trips next year.  The wedding planning took up a lot of time and kept us out of the woods this year!

Hope everything is good with all of you.  We wish you all a very Happy and Peaceful Holiday, happy trails!

Peace,

Teresa & Andrew
Fred & Simon