Christmas, 2017

Dear Family & Friends,

I'm writing this letter about 2 weeks earlier than usual. Normally I compose it on Thanksgiving Day, and then spend a week or so tweaking and fine tuning it. However, this year, the day after Thanksgiving we are going to New Orleans where we'll spend a week in a time share exploring that famous city. The following week we are going on to Gatlinburg, TN, also in a time share. We have never been to either place and thought it was high time we remedy that.

A week and a couple of days after we get back I (Gee) am scheduled for hip replacement surgery – lucky me. The funny thing is my sister Marty is also having hip replacement on the same day, in the same hospital, with the same doctor! No, NOT at the same time! Our doctor's good, but not that good, and, no, we didn't plan it ahead!

That's happening December 18th, one week before Christmas – Merry Christmas to us! I'll be glad to have it over with, and hopefully be able to walk without pain again.

In other news, we took a 42-day cruise that left at the end of March from Auckland, New Zealand. We had 5 stops in New Zealand itself, 3 in Australia and 4 in the South Pacific before going on to Hawaii and finally Vancouver, where we flew back to New England to start our summer up north.

It should have been a fabulous trip, and, in some ways it was. However, 4 days into the trip Dick came down with an upper-respiratory bug that laid him low for most of the rest of the trip. They put both of us on Tamiflu, and that seemed to do the trick for me. A LOT of people on the cruise had similar symptoms – coughing, sneezing, chills, fever, etc. so it was hard to avoid getting sick.

There were 6 of us from our community in FL – Dick and me, my sister Marty, a friend of ours, Karen, who roomed with Marty and another couple, Terry and Harry. 3 got sick, 3 didn't.

Dick & Gee Sauvageau
5606 SW 58th St.
Ocala, FL 34474
(352) 873-4301

Dick & Gee Sauvageau
295 Sebago Rd. Lot 26
Naples, ME 04055

Cell phones:
    Dick: (203) 512-2057
    Gee: (203) 744-4193

Email addresses:
    geesauvageau@hotmail.com
    dicksauvageau@hotmail.com

On the plus side, the staff on the ship were great, and the entertainment was amazing! New Zealand was beautiful – lush and green and welcoming.

Each of the ports of call had its own allure, but I think I was most smitten with New Zealand and American Samoa.

In family news, grandson Teddy graduated from UConn in May and has gone on to SUNY in Stony Brook, NY, to work on his masters and doctorate in Physics. Yup, he's a bright kid! He's also in a relationship with a really nice young woman named Sarah who he met at UConn and started dating last year.

His sister Kayleigh graduated from high school in June, and is currently studying at UMass, Dartmouth, which is in southeastern Mass, not far from Cape Cod. She's on the university equestrian team, and seems to be enjoying that.

Grandson Ayden is 14 and a freshman in high school. He loves Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and LARPing (that's Live Action Role Playing for the uninitiated.)

His sister Alea is a happy, healthy 9-year-old who loves to sing and dance and walk on stilts and do artwork and… well, actually, she loves just about everything!

The last of our grands are Alden and Ethan, the kids who live in Spokane. They are 10 and 12, respectively. School is not the favorite thing of either of them, but Alden enjoys gymnastics and Ethan is more into Karate.

Son Scott (Teddy & Kayleigh's dad) changed jobs this fall. He's still in computer programming, but he's now working for a company called Agero, which is the second largest roadside assistance company after AAA. His wife Amy still teaches horseback riding lessons, boards horses, trains the horses and just generally keeps pretty darn busy running the farm.

Middle son Tim (Alden & Ethan's dad in Spokane) has left his job as an RN in a nursing facility, is doing some repair work on his house and will be looking for a new job in the near future.

His ex-wife Cristy is still a part of our lives, and I talk to her fairly regularly. She's doing okay, but wishes she could leave Spokane. However, she would not leave her kids behind, and Tim doesn't seem interested in moving to another area.

That leaves Michael & Jennifer (Ayden & Alea's parents). They're doing pretty well, although Jennifer was very sick with pneumonia a couple of weeks ago – hospitalized for 5 days! Bouncing back from that isn't easy.

They are the couple that started the chocolate business – Noteworthy Chocolates – a little over a year ago. The business is doing well, but, of course not as well as they had hoped. It takes a long time to get a start-up company going to the point where they can take a salary. However, it IS an amazing adventure, and we're all expecting it to become very successful!

We end this letter with our warmest wishes for a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah and a healthy, Happy New Year!

Dick & Gee