Holidays 2005 / Text Only Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

2005 was a transition year for us. Obviously, we are still trying to catch up, but hopefully, this belated Holiday Greeting will help us bring it all together and share it with you.

Steve: I decided that I could have just as much fun working if I worked rather less. As a consequence, at the end of June I closed my office on Olive Way, helped my long time associate Jeanne find a new home with a CPA firm in Pioneer Square, badgered friends, relatives and complete strangers mercilessly to take most of the furniture and fixtures contained in the 2,200 sq. ft. office, and moved a fraction of my practice back home where I am now ensconced in the front parlor of the house, just as I was from 1988 to 1998. However, this time, my home office uses only the front 2 rooms instead of the entire main floor. So far this reduced practice hasn’t produced a very reduced workload – there’s still too much work – but maybe this new year will begin an easier trip into the next phase of my life. Peggy’s mother Audrey, is still a working CPA at age 85. She has set an awfully high bar for ever completely retiring. Still, there is hope that less will be better.
(Click here to see a picture)

Peggy: Meanwhile, I have embarked on an expanded venture. After having so much fun producing the Sewing Retreat DVD in 2004 with my friend Penny, we formed a new company together called Pengy Productions ( Pen-ny + Peg-gy) and we are working on an instructional sewing web site. Check it out at www.SewHow.com. So far we have been experimenting with presentation styles & technologies, including online video. I have been learning more and more about web site development and having a great time. We have lots of ideas and plans for the site, but you will notice it hasn’t progressed much since last May. As Steve described above, June got very busy, and as you will read below, the rest of the year never let up the pace. Steve’s office move generated a rash of computer problems, so my web development energies gave way to computer repair and re-configuration, which then extended beyond his office to clients of my own for the rest of the year.

But life was not all work…

Peggy’s Mom has wanted to visit to Switzerland all of her life, ever since she read “Heidi” as a child. This year she said, “I’m not getting any younger. I want to go!” Meanwhile, Steve’s Aunt Marie had located the village where Steve’s great grandfather Gottlieb Garber was born in Switzerland in 1859.

So in May, Steve, Peggy, Audrey and Peggy’s brother Don went to Switzerland for 2 weeks, where we met Steve’s Aunt Marie, her travel friend and her Swiss friend, who had been very instrumental in finding Gottlieb’s home village.

After acclimatizing ourselves for a couple of days in the Appenzell area, we met Marie & friends in Lucerne, then traveled by train and bus to the small village called Schangnau. It doesn’t seem like a German name, but it is in the German part of Switzerland. It is a very small town of maybe 500-1,000 people, about 50 miles directly north of Interlaken and sort of on a line between Lucerne and Bern. While the Alps proper are a bit further south, there are still pretty impressive mountains between Schangnau and Interlaken, thousands of feet high rock massifs, providing a spectacular backdrop to what is mostly dairy country, rolling green fields of hay and huge barns. The countryside looks very neat and quite prosperous. Nevertheless, we suspect it is rather like New England: pretty to look at, but not that fertile, not suitable for growing high value crops, and a hard place to make a living. (Picture)

(Picture of the 17th century Schangnau Church and house where we believe Gottlieb was born)
(Picture of Steve and his Aunt Marie inside the church)

One thing we now have learned since Aunt Marie got great grandpa Gottlieb’s birth certificate: we were Gerbers in Switzerland, apparently becoming Garbers upon entering America, perhaps in an attempt to approximate the German pronunciation. The cemetery in Schangnau has more Gerbers than any other family name. We presume they are distant relatives. Steve doesn’t remember any contact with the old country during his life. (Picture)

The rest of Switzerland was as beautiful as we have always imagined.

With Swiss Rail passes we hopped on trains like you would a downtown bus. We crisscrossed the country from top to bottom, east to west and even dipped down to Italy’s Lake Como. The trains are comfortable, quiet, on time, fast, and frequent. Some require reservations. One reservation Peggy made before leaving home put us in the VIP seats of the Golden Pass train. These VIP seats turned out to be the front four window seats of the engine. The train engineer sat above and behind us. It was a truly extraordinary ride! And the view of the gorgeous Swiss countryside from this unobstructed point of view was matchless. (Picture)

We mostly followed Rick Steves’ recommended Switzerland train itinerary: 1) Zurich; 2) Appenzell; 3) Lucerne; 4) The William Tell cruise down Lake Lucerne and train to Lugano and then on to Lake Como in Italy; 5) The Bernina Express bus from Lugano to Tirano, then train with its 360 o spirals to gain altitude for crossing the glaciers of the Bernina Pass to St. Moritz; (Picture)

6) The Glacier Express to Zermatt, then up the little Gornergrat Bahn to the observatory at 10,132ft overlooking the Matterhorn, where the morning cloud cover cleared to brilliant if brisk sunshine for breathtaking views. (Picture)

7) Then off to Montreux where Steve and Peggy had last been with Laurie & David and the Olympic High School Jazz Band in 1985 and where we took Peggy’s mom and brother to tour our favorite castle, Chateau Chillon, which was the inspiration for Lord Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon.” (Picture)

8) A side trip in a wonderfully restored old classic train to a chocolate factory in Broc, where even the air smelled like chocolate, and to the little hill town and castle of Gruyere, Peggy’s favorite kind of cheese. (Picture)

9) Then those exciting VIP seats on the Golden Pass from Montreux to Zweisimmen, where we changed to the narrower gage train to Interlaken, the town between two lakes at the foot of the Alps.

10) The first of 2 separate side trips into the Alps: a train to Lauterbrunnen where we rode an elevator up inside a mountain in order to walk down along side the Trummelback waterfall as it thunders and twists through caverns in the cliff down to the valley floor; a funicular to the little resort village of Murren on top of the cliffs opposite Trummelback, and then a gondola (Picture) to the 10,000 ft. observatory of Mt Schilthorn and the solar-powered Piz Gloria revolving restaurant, made famous in the James Bond 007 film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” and peek-a-boo views of the surrounding bowl of spectacular peaks through the thick & swirling clouds. (Picture)

11) A second Alps side trip: a train to the mountain resort village of Grindelwald, and then a cog train up and through a 10 km. tunnel inside Mt. Eiger & Mt. Monch to the “Top of the Europe,” the highest train station in Europe, at Jungfraujoch (11,782ft), in the notch between Mt Monch and the taller Mt. Jungfrau (13,642ft), where we visited the ice caves and walked outside on the glacier. (Picture)

12) And finally to the castle town of Thun at the west end of Interlaken’s western lake, Thunersee, then on to Bern and back to Zurich for our flight home. (Picture)

Audrey was a trooper, especially with her new Swiss walking stick. We had a fabulous time, and then a sudden jolt of reality upon returning home for Steve’s office move.

In early July, with the office barely settled back into the house, we welcomed our Danish friends, Janne & Ib, whom we had visited in Ikast last year on Steve’s 60 th birthday. It was Ib’s first trip to the US and they were off on a month long tour of our U.S. national parks from Yellowstone to Grand Canyon and Yosemite and points in between. (Picture)

In August, we went to Mt. Rainier for this year’s annual Cheeseman family getaway sponsored by Peggy’s brother Don. He rented a large lodge of a house with 7 bedrooms, a huge kitchen, a wide open living/dining room spanning the width of the structure and a covered veranda across the entire front. It was nestled into the forest just outside the Nisqually entrance to Mt Rainier National Park, making a short excursion to Longmire and Paradise especially easy with little ones along. (Picture)

In September, the two of us drove down the Oregon coast between Newport and Coos Bay on our way to our second Ashland Shakespeare Festival. This year we saw 6 plays in 3 days, before returning to Portland to share our 39 th wedding anniversary with Laurie, Dave & Owen.

In October, Peggy’s mother and Peggy experienced a couple of milestone birthdays: Audrey’s 85 th and Peggy’s 60 th. (Picture)Laurie and her family came up from Portland and we all had one big family party on Halloween weekend. Friday, David and Judy had a Halloween party for all the families of Adrian’s co-op preschool with costumes, games, food and the works. Adrian’s Grandma Jan had given her a Snow White dress, so Peggy made two little dwarf costumes. The dwarves were very cooperative. See our www.Garbers.com web site for more darn cute pictures. (Picture) Saturday we had the Birthdays Party where, much to Adrian’s delight, Peggy had to follow hints for a gift treasure hunt, which ended mysteriously with a package marked “Don’t Open Until…” Peggy was most curious, but completely clueless.

“There’s something to be said for a good kidnapping every 10 years or so,” Steve says with a twinkle. Peggy should have been more suspicious. On her 50 th birthday, he whisked her off to San Francisco to her very great surprise. On that occasion, we had dinner with a room full of very dear old friends from when we had lived there in the late1960s and early 1970s. So now, it was 10 years later and, after a big family brunch, the children, ostensibly taking us on a shopping trip, instead drop Steve and Peggy off at Kenmore Air on Lake Union for a seaplane trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. Score another utterly successful surprise! Having never been up in a small plane locally, it was such a treat to fly low over countryside and waterways that we know reasonably well. We stayed overnight in a B & B, had a lovely meal overlooking the harbor, and wandered around the very nice little town very much oriented to tourists. It was a lovely get away, un-dampened by the gray rainy weather. (Picture)

On December 3rd, in a last ditch effort to enjoy some warm sunny weather before the next tax season, we headed to Costa Rica to visit its national parks with Overseas Adventure Travel. The flora and fauna are as amazing as we had heard.

The adventure began by flying to the Osa Peninsula and the Corcovado National Park in a 12 passenger, single engine plane which deposited us onto a gravel airstrip. (Picture) From there we bounced by Land Rover over rutted muddy roads and splashed across 2 small rivers to the beach, where we waded out to the waiting small open boat, which took us across Drake Bay to our Wilderness Camp lodgings. (Picture) The camp was actually quite beautiful and not all that primitive. We enjoyed it very much. We hiked, snorkeled, kayaked and toured a mangrove swamp by boat. However, the main attraction, Corcovado National Park, closed the day we were to go see it. A very long rainy season had adversely affected animals and birds, so people were temporarily restricted. It was the only disappointment of the whole trip. After 3 nights, we returned to San Jose the way we left it: small open boat, Land Rover crossing rivers, single engine plane taking off from the gravel strip. Weight was a concern, so all luggage was weighed using a big fish scale and limited to 25 pounds per person. (Picture)

The rest of the group arrived and joined our small pre-trip group, an excellent driver and a very knowledgeable guide for a total of 17 for the main trip. We drove over 800 miles in 11 days around the middle of Costa Rica. Some trip highlights include —

Relaxing in the hot springs near the Arenal volcano on the Caribbean side of the continental divide and kayaking on the huge Lake Arenal. (Picture)
Floating down the Tenorio River and seeing lots of birds, iguanas, monkeys, bats and even a couple of crocodiles. (Picture)
Visiting an organic dairy farm, milking a cow (Picture) and feeding the calves. (Picture)
Hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. (Picture)
Dancing with school children in St Elena. (Picture)
Riding horses. (Picture)
Swimming in the Pacific Ocean at the Manuel Antonio National Park. (Picture)
Relaxing in the pool with an ocean view at the Hotel Parador near Quepos. (Picture)
Fishing for dinner in the pond at Trogon Lodge at 7500 ft. in the San Gerardo de Dota Mts. (Picture)
Wearing all the safety gear (Picture) and zinging through the rain forest canopy across steel cables. (Picture)
Picking coffee in the central valley. (Picture)
Getting a little bit tan and having a fabulous time. (Picture)

We saw over 80 species of tropical & migratory birds including the resplendent quetzal; plus animals and reptiles and butterflies; and more new and interesting trees and flowers than we can possibly remember. It truly was an adventure tour!

2005 was a transition year for us: Peggy into another decade of her life, Steve into some version of semi-retirement, and finally with the passing of the last surviving member of a generation of McEachrans. Steve’s mother Florence McEachran Garber, the youngest of 4 siblings, died on September 4 th, 3 days before her 90 th birthday. As she often said in her final months, she had a long and wonderful life. She had a profound influence on her children, grandchildren and all their spouses, and in that sense she will always be with us. We have shared a considerable amount about her life, including photos, an extended eulogy, and other materials, on the www.Garbers.com website. (Picture)

With the loss of Florence, we treasure even more our whole family, especially our children and our grandchildren, and are reminded of the ongoing cycle of life. We cherish the warmth of their love and revel in their lives and accomplishments. Life doesn’t get any better than this. (Picture)

Hope your holidays were happy, and best wishes for 2006,

Peggy & Steve Garber

Back to Holidays Home		Back to Garbers Home
Dear Family and Friends, 2005 was a transition year for us. Obviously, we are still trying to catch up, but hopefully, this belated Holiday Greeting will help us bring it all together and share it with you. Steve: I decided that I could have just as much fun working if I worked rather less. As a consequence, at the end of June I closed my office on Olive Way, helped my long time associate Jeanne find a new home with a CPA firm in Pioneer Square, badgered friends, relatives and complete strangers mercilessly to take most of the furniture and fixtures contained in the 2,200 sq. ft. office, and moved a fraction of my practice back home where I am now ensconced in the front parlor of the house, just as I was from 1988 to 1998. However, this time, my home office uses only the front 2 rooms instead of the entire main floor. So far this reduced practice hasn’t produced a very reduced workload – there’s still too much work – but maybe this new year will begin an easier trip into the next phase of my life. Peggy’s mother Audrey, is still a working CPA at age 85. She has set an awfully high bar for ever completely retiring. Still, there is hope that less will be better. (Click here to see a picture) Peggy: Meanwhile, I have embarked on an expanded venture. After having so much fun producing the Sewing Retreat DVD in 2004 with my friend Penny, we formed a new company together called Pengy Productions ( Pen-ny + Peg-gy) and we are working on an instructional sewing web site. Check it out at www.SewHow.com. So far we have been experimenting with presentation styles & technologies, including online video. I have been learning more and more about web site development and having a great time. We have lots of ideas and plans for the site, but you will notice it hasn’t progressed much since last May. As Steve described above, June got very busy, and as you will read below, the rest of the year never let up the pace. Steve’s office move generated a rash of computer problems, so my web development energies gave way to computer repair and re-configuration, which then extended beyond his office to clients of my own for the rest of the year. But life was not all work… Peggy’s Mom has wanted to visit to Switzerland all of her life, ever since she read “Heidi” as a child. This year she said, “I’m not getting any younger. I want to go!” Meanwhile, Steve’s Aunt Marie had located the village where Steve’s great grandfather Gottlieb Garber was born in Switzerland in 1859. So in May, Steve, Peggy, Audrey and Peggy’s brother Don went to Switzerland for 2 weeks, where we met Steve’s Aunt Marie, her travel friend and her Swiss friend, who had been very instrumental in finding Gottlieb’s home village. After acclimatizing ourselves for a couple of days in the Appenzell area, we met Marie & friends in Lucerne, then traveled by train and bus to the small village called Schangnau. It doesn’t seem like a German name, but it is in the German part of Switzerland. It is a very small town of maybe 500-1,000 people, about 50 miles directly north of Interlaken and sort of on a line between Lucerne and Bern. While the Alps proper are a bit further south, there are still pretty impressive mountains between Schangnau and Interlaken, thousands of feet high rock massifs, providing a spectacular backdrop to what is mostly dairy country, rolling green fields of hay and huge barns. The countryside looks very neat and quite prosperous. Nevertheless, we suspect it is rather like New England: pretty to look at, but not that fertile, not suitable for growing high value crops, and a hard place to make a living. (Picture) (Picture of the 17th century Schangnau Church and house where we believe Gottlieb was born) (Picture of Steve and his Aunt Marie inside the church) One thing we now have learned since Aunt Marie got great grandpa Gottlieb’s birth certificate: we were Gerbers in Switzerland, apparently becoming Garbers upon entering America, perhaps in an attempt to approximate the German pronunciation. The cemetery in Schangnau has more Gerbers than any other family name. We presume they are distant relatives. Steve doesn’t remember any contact with the old country during his life. (Picture) The rest of Switzerland was as beautiful as we have always imagined. With Swiss Rail passes we hopped on trains like you would a downtown bus. We crisscrossed the country from top to bottom, east to west and even dipped down to Italy’s Lake Como. The trains are comfortable, quiet, on time, fast, and frequent. Some require reservations. One reservation Peggy made before leaving home put us in the VIP seats of the Golden Pass train. These VIP seats turned out to be the front four window seats of the engine. The train engineer sat above and behind us. It was a truly extraordinary ride! And the view of the gorgeous Swiss countryside from this unobstructed point of view was matchless. (Picture) We mostly followed Rick Steves’ recommended Switzerland train itinerary: 1) Zurich; 2) Appenzell; 3) Lucerne; 4) The William Tell cruise down Lake Lucerne and train to Lugano and then on to Lake Como in Italy; 5) The Bernina Express bus from Lugano to Tirano, then train with its 360 o spirals to gain altitude for crossing the glaciers of the Bernina Pass to St. Moritz; (Picture) 6) The Glacier Express to Zermatt, then up the little Gornergrat Bahn to the observatory at 10,132ft overlooking the Matterhorn, where the morning cloud cover cleared to brilliant if brisk sunshine for breathtaking views. (Picture) 7) Then off to Montreux where Steve and Peggy had last been with Laurie & David and the Olympic High School Jazz Band in 1985 and where we took Peggy’s mom and brother to tour our favorite castle, Chateau Chillon, which was the inspiration for Lord Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon.” (Picture) 8) A side trip in a wonderfully restored old classic train to a chocolate factory in Broc, where even the air smelled like chocolate, and to the little hill town and castle of Gruyere, Peggy’s favorite kind of cheese. (Picture) 9) Then those exciting VIP seats on the Golden Pass from Montreux to Zweisimmen, where we changed to the narrower gage train to Interlaken, the town between two lakes at the foot of the Alps. 10) The first of 2 separate side trips into the Alps: a train to Lauterbrunnen where we rode an elevator up inside a mountain in order to walk down along side the Trummelback waterfall as it thunders and twists through caverns in the cliff down to the valley floor; a funicular to the little resort village of Murren on top of the cliffs opposite Trummelback, and then a gondola (Picture) to the 10,000 ft. observatory of Mt Schilthorn and the solar-powered Piz Gloria revolving restaurant, made famous in the James Bond 007 film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” and peek-a-boo views of the surrounding bowl of spectacular peaks through the thick & swirling clouds. (Picture) 11) A second Alps side trip: a train to the mountain resort village of Grindelwald, and then a cog train up and through a 10 km. tunnel inside Mt. Eiger & Mt. Monch to the “Top of the Europe,” the highest train station in Europe, at Jungfraujoch (11,782ft), in the notch between Mt Monch and the taller Mt. Jungfrau (13,642ft), where we visited the ice caves and walked outside on the glacier. (Picture) 12) And finally to the castle town of Thun at the west end of Interlaken’s western lake, Thunersee, then on to Bern and back to Zurich for our flight home. (Picture) Audrey was a trooper, especially with her new Swiss walking stick. We had a fabulous time, and then a sudden jolt of reality upon returning home for Steve’s office move. In early July, with the office barely settled back into the house, we welcomed our Danish friends, Janne & Ib, whom we had visited in Ikast last year on Steve’s 60 th birthday. It was Ib’s first trip to the US and they were off on a month long tour of our U.S. national parks from Yellowstone to Grand Canyon and Yosemite and points in between. (Picture) In August, we went to Mt. Rainier for this year’s annual Cheeseman family getaway sponsored by Peggy’s brother Don. He rented a large lodge of a house with 7 bedrooms, a huge kitchen, a wide open living/dining room spanning the width of the structure and a covered veranda across the entire front. It was nestled into the forest just outside the Nisqually entrance to Mt Rainier National Park, making a short excursion to Longmire and Paradise especially easy with little ones along. (Picture) In September, the two of us drove down the Oregon coast between Newport and Coos Bay on our way to our second Ashland Shakespeare Festival. This year we saw 6 plays in 3 days, before returning to Portland to share our 39 th wedding anniversary with Laurie, Dave & Owen. In October, Peggy’s mother and Peggy experienced a couple of milestone birthdays: Audrey’s 85 th and Peggy’s 60 th. (Picture)Laurie and her family came up from Portland and we all had one big family party on Halloween weekend. Friday, David and Judy had a Halloween party for all the families of Adrian’s co-op preschool with costumes, games, food and the works. Adrian’s Grandma Jan had given her a Snow White dress, so Peggy made two little dwarf costumes. The dwarves were very cooperative. See our www.Garbers.com web site for more darn cute pictures. (Picture) Saturday we had the Birthdays Party where, much to Adrian’s delight, Peggy had to follow hints for a gift treasure hunt, which ended mysteriously with a package marked “Don’t Open Until…” Peggy was most curious, but completely clueless. “There’s something to be said for a good kidnapping every 10 years or so,” Steve says with a twinkle. Peggy should have been more suspicious. On her 50 th birthday, he whisked her off to San Francisco to her very great surprise. On that occasion, we had dinner with a room full of very dear old friends from when we had lived there in the late1960s and early 1970s. So now, it was 10 years later and, after a big family brunch, the children, ostensibly taking us on a shopping trip, instead drop Steve and Peggy off at Kenmore Air on Lake Union for a seaplane trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. Score another utterly successful surprise! Having never been up in a small plane locally, it was such a treat to fly low over countryside and waterways that we know reasonably well. We stayed overnight in a B & B, had a lovely meal overlooking the harbor, and wandered around the very nice little town very much oriented to tourists. It was a lovely get away, un-dampened by the gray rainy weather. (Picture) On December 3rd, in a last ditch effort to enjoy some warm sunny weather before the next tax season, we headed to Costa Rica to visit its national parks with Overseas Adventure Travel. The flora and fauna are as amazing as we had heard. The adventure began by flying to the Osa Peninsula and the Corcovado National Park in a 12 passenger, single engine plane which deposited us onto a gravel airstrip. (Picture) From there we bounced by Land Rover over rutted muddy roads and splashed across 2 small rivers to the beach, where we waded out to the waiting small open boat, which took us across Drake Bay to our Wilderness Camp lodgings. (Picture) The camp was actually quite beautiful and not all that primitive. We enjoyed it very much. We hiked, snorkeled, kayaked and toured a mangrove swamp by boat. However, the main attraction, Corcovado National Park, closed the day we were to go see it. A very long rainy season had adversely affected animals and birds, so people were temporarily restricted. It was the only disappointment of the whole trip. After 3 nights, we returned to San Jose the way we left it: small open boat, Land Rover crossing rivers, single engine plane taking off from the gravel strip. Weight was a concern, so all luggage was weighed using a big fish scale and limited to 25 pounds per person. (Picture) The rest of the group arrived and joined our small pre-trip group, an excellent driver and a very knowledgeable guide for a total of 17 for the main trip. We drove over 800 miles in 11 days around the middle of Costa Rica. Some trip highlights include — Relaxing in the hot springs near the Arenal volcano on the Caribbean side of the continental divide and kayaking on the huge Lake Arenal. (Picture) Floating down the Tenorio River and seeing lots of birds, iguanas, monkeys, bats and even a couple of crocodiles. (Picture) Visiting an organic dairy farm, milking a cow (Picture) and feeding the calves. (Picture) Hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. (Picture) Dancing with school children in St Elena. (Picture) Riding horses. (Picture) Swimming in the Pacific Ocean at the Manuel Antonio National Park. (Picture) Relaxing in the pool with an ocean view at the Hotel Parador near Quepos. (Picture) Fishing for dinner in the pond at Trogon Lodge at 7500 ft. in the San Gerardo de Dota Mts. (Picture) Wearing all the safety gear (Picture) and zinging through the rain forest canopy across steel cables. (Picture) Picking coffee in the central valley. (Picture) Getting a little bit tan and having a fabulous time. (Picture) We saw over 80 species of tropical & migratory birds including the resplendent quetzal; plus animals and reptiles and butterflies; and more new and interesting trees and flowers than we can possibly remember. It truly was an adventure tour! 2005 was a transition year for us: Peggy into another decade of her life, Steve into some version of semi-retirement, and finally with the passing of the last surviving member of a generation of McEachrans. Steve’s mother Florence McEachran Garber, the youngest of 4 siblings, died on September 4 th, 3 days before her 90 th birthday. As she often said in her final months, she had a long and wonderful life. She had a profound influence on her children, grandchildren and all their spouses, and in that sense she will always be with us. We have shared a considerable amount about her life, including photos, an extended eulogy, and other materials, on the www.Garbers.com website. (Picture) With the loss of Florence, we treasure even more our whole family, especially our children and our grandchildren, and are reminded of the ongoing cycle of life. We cherish the warmth of their love and revel in their lives and accomplishments. Life doesn’t get any better than this. (Picture) Hope your holidays were happy, and best wishes for 2006, *Peggy & Steve Garber*

© Steve & Peggy Garber, January 2006