The year 2019 was a life-changing year for our family. We brought in the new year at Holdfast with a fabulous meal. My wife was still working but we still managed a week in Arizona, a weekend trip to Seattle for some IU baseball, a week in Thailand, a quick business venture to Chicago, Maui with the Auto Dealers, Walla-Walla for wine tasting, a few days at Canada’s Butchart Gardens with the pups, a long weekend in Steamboat during the summer, two trips to San Francisco for my wife’s youngest daughter’s wedding, a second wedding in Portland for my wife’s oldest daughter, the sale of our house and subsequent move to an apartment, a visit with the grandkids in Florida, and what was to be my wife’s final business excursion to New York. Whew! By the end of the year, my wife had lost her mother, and we we were both retired, driving through Florida to look for a new home. 

None of us knew at that time that Covid was lurking around the corner. Fortunately, my wife’s mother never had to deal with the additional isolation it would have brought to her life. Sadly, she never got to see her granddaughters walk down the aisle. So, two weddings, a funeral, my wife’s unexpected retirement, and the sale of our Portland house were the most memorable events of 2019. There were also 24-Marriott stays of various lengths that were scattered around these life-changing memories. 

In 2020, we would not go back to Indiana for the first time in our lives. There were no more visits to Rochester where my wife’s mother lived, no travel to Elkhart where I grew up, or holiday get-togethers in Indianapolis with my wife’s sister. Our immediate  family was now spread from coast-to-coast: Portland, San Francisco, and Florida. We had to decide where to eventually settle down.