Christmas Letter

Once again, the Christmas tree is up. The kids have hung the decorations with varying amounts of care, and presents are already under the tree. This year has been no different than previous years when I say what a busy year we've had!

You may recall that last year I was selected for promotion to Major. The day finally came this past May. Catherine prepared a magnificent feast, for which my coworkers still approach me from time to time, and much like Chris Farley, ask me if I remember when Catherine brought in all that yummy food. Yup, I remember - it was quite the feast! Since promotions for me are few and far between, Catherine brought the kids to come enjoy. They fooled everyone with their good behavior ;-). My coworkers tell me I am a very lucky person. I know, but it's more than luck; I am truly and richly blessed.

This year our travels took us to Mt. Rainier for several snowshoe excursions (more on the way for 2014!!!), a trip to Miami to celebrate Catherine's parents 40th wedding anniversary, and many local trips. We visited some friends in northern Idaho where Leah took her first skiing lesson and Ian took his first snowboarding lesson; I got to ski through some powder and trees for the first time which was a lot of fun. My brother Jeff braved a trip out west to tackle an epic 5-day hike in the rugged North Cascades National Park. We walked the Copper Ridge trail and looped back via the Chilliwack River trail. The Copper Ridge trail is supposedly one of the preeminent ridge walks in the lower-48 (with the views we had, it has to be!!). We had rain on the first day and again on the very last day. In between it was unbroken sunshine - so we had phenomenal views of mountains, glaciers, valleys, and rivers. We swam in a snow-melt alpine tarn; can you say frigid anyone? 

The upcoming year looks to be fun and full of change for the Skinners. We'll be moving to San Antonio, Texas this summer where I will attend Baylor University and pursue a dual MHA/MBA degree (Healthcare Administration). It's hard to believe I keep doing this to myself, but it is back to school for me. This is the last time I go back to school, and I mean it (maybe). I wish everyone a blessed Christmas, and a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2014!                         Marc

As I'm reflecting on this past year it feels like it's been a calmer one in the scheme of Skinner years.  Marc seems to have covered most of the high lights. The meal I prepared for Marc's promotion was a Southern Style BBQ.  I was glad everyone at his work enjoyed eating it as much as I enjoyed preparing it.  My facebook friends had to put up with my posting about the preparations for a couple of weeks before that event.  I've spent a lot of time running the kids around from place to place after school.  During the summer we tried to get to the outdoor pool on base as much as we could. It will be interesting to live somewhere with AC in the house again after living the last 6 years without it.  I also did a fair amount of canning this summer.  I have done German style pickles, mixed pickles, pickled beets, salsa, apricots, peaches, cinnamon peaches, as well as tried out making a few flavors of jam after taking a class towards the end of summer.  So I made a spiced plum, serrano peach, and a pumpkin apple jam.  I still enjoy trying out new recipes on the family and experimenting in the kitchen.  I also have started having the kids pick a meal to cook once a month where I supervise them preparing it.  For the first meal Leah picked a chicken with roasted sweet potato with a homemade bbq type sauce, and Ian picked cornmeal coated fish sticks that he hand cut from cod fillets and served with sweet potato wedges.  They both did really well with minimal issues.  My big project for the new year is going to be getting rid of the stuff in our house that we don't want to have anymore after we move.  I've already started to sell some items on the local yard sale website, and I've been working on getting our large freezer emptied out.  I hope everyone has had a wonderful year!

Catherine

Merry Christmas everybody! I love my family, my friends, our nice house, and a nice bed to sleep in. I've had a good time this year visiting Mt. Rainer, Abby and Pop in Miami, and camping with Daddy. I did an all-night hike with the Boy Scouts. It was a loooooong walk. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Ian

When I learned to cook I started to understand but not that well.  You need to pay attention to what you are doing in the kitchen.  Love is the most important ingredient in the dish.  I skipped Daisies (and I'm talking about Girl Scouts), and I am a Brownie now.  When I first got there I didn't have many friends, but then I caught up.  One of my friends from school is also in the troop.  When I grow up I want to work with my brother and live in Hawaii if I can.  I have such a wonderful life! When I was a baby I got an elephant & her name is Ellie.  I really love her, she's so cute.  When I look at her it looks like she's happy that I'm there for her.  I love my family.  My family is so nice & I will tell you about it.  My mom cooks. Her meals are so, so good.  I hug her for the meal most of the time, but not that much.  My dad he plays with me and wrestles with me.  He's so hard to beat.  He makes me laugh. My brother loves angry birds go, and he got the blues and bomb on the first day.  Isn't that amazing?! I'm going to tell you about me.  I love to help my mom cook, I wrestle with my dad, my brother and I make up games.  I really like the squirrel and spy game we made up.  I love having my family here!  Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Leah

Merry Christmas everybody, and best wishes for a happy New Year!

-The Skinner Family
Marc, Catherine, Ian, and Leah

Skinner Family Christmas Letter

Well, the Christmas tree is up with the decorations and lights are on. We're ready for a happy time together to this Christmas season, and to wind down the year. And what a year it has been! I won't bore you with all of the details - for that you can read the other 70+ blog posts that Catherine and I have published here.

Suffice it to say, we've been busy. I've had a wonderful time exploring the National Park System, with day trips and camping trips in the Olympic NP, Mt. Rainier NP, Grand Teton NP, Yellowstone NP, Glacier NP, and Crater Lake NP, as well as the backcountry surrounding Mt. St. Helens. I've had so much fun exploring the wild places around here on foot and through my camera lens, alone and with my family. At work I've transitioned through a couple of jobs, as some of you are aware. I started out the year with a physical therapy student at the clinic I was running, which was both challenging and rewarding. In June I took over as the sole physical therapist providing care for every ROTC cadet nationwide, which brought me much closer to my athletic training roots. That was a long and busy 3 months, at the end of which I took a much needed vacation "out west" (as I like to say, though that would put me squarely in the Pacific Ocean from here!) to go see some of our most picturesque parks. Catherine and the kids were absolute champs, spending 3 cold (COLD in Yellowstone) nights in a tent at Grand Teton NP, Yellowstone NP, and Glacier NP. Glacier was my favorite for sheer remote and rugged beauty. We spent Ian's birthday there, and he asked if we could go back for his birthday next year. YES! Once back to work, I started to do inpatient care, which is wildly different and way outside of my comfort zone from what I've done for the past 10 years. To finish out this year I am assuming the duties as Assistant Chief of Physical Therapy. Oh yeah, and I graduated from Temple University with my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree this May. To top everything off a couple of weeks ago I found out I was selected for promotion to Major, which is kind of a big deal. When I look back on the year, I see that I have been so richly blessed that it leaves me practically speechless. I pray for a happy and blessed Christmas with you and yours, and a wonderful and prosperous New Year! Marc

This year has flown by.  I've been driving the kids all over our small part of WA state.  We started out the year with swim lessons, cub scouts, and ballet, and now no swimming, but still ballet, cub scouts and a couple of other therapies.  Thankfully both kids are comfortable swimming on their own in a pool now.  Seems as if everyone else has already shared about our travels this year.  Hmmm.  So, what else did I do this year?  I taught 2 cooking classes this past year at the local cooking school in Olympia.  One was an English Tea class in the spring, and another was a Cuban Cuisine class at the end of summer.  I also did some quick and easy recipe demos at the Taste of Christmas open house they do. 

I also got together with a friend and did A LOT of canning as soon as school started.  We did pickles, salsa, peaches, honey spiced peaches, chutney, pickled beets, jam, and ketchup.  We also froze a big batch of roasted marinara sauce and applesauce.  Since that worked out so well we combined efforts on a few homemade mixes for Christmas: Oatmeal Pancake Mix, Beer Bread, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Hot Chocolate Mix.  I also have enjoyed trying out numerous new recipes on the family this year.  A couple of the keepers have been a Cooking Light recipe for a corn chowder with squash, and a crock pot recipe for pork chops with mustard sauce that I serve with quinoa.  I've gotten away from posting to my cooking blog when my camera died, but I'm hoping to get back into it.  It was fun sharing some of the new things I was trying with everyone. If you're interested my blog is: www.catalinamuse.blogspot.com.

One other big thing I started this fall was working on taking better care of myself.  I have been doing pilates once a week (where we are working on the reformer and other challenging apparatuses), and water aerobics (once a week in the deep water, and trying to get there a second time each week for working in the shallower pool).  I also have been starting to balance what I eat better.  So far, I've lost 8 lbs.  Hoping to get to 10 lbs by the end of the year, but not sure I'll make it. I'm happy I have a starting point to continue from next year.   Hopefully I'll have a bigger weight loss to post about next year! 

Hope you all have had a fabulous year and a very Happy Christmas!  Catherine

I had a good year. I got to go to Disneyland and I had a lot of fun. My favorite part of Disneyland was the Star Wars Jedi Training Academy. In Miami I got to go over next door to Mrs. Johnson's house and we went swimming in her pool. And after we were done we got to have ice cream. We went to three National Parks and we each got a Ranger Badge. To earn ours in Yellowstone, we had to see Beehive Geyser while it was going off.  We went to Mt. Rainier and I got a book. I am thankful that I got to have a fun time with my family. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Ian

In the summer I went to lots of National Parks and I got lots of tokens. Last year I was in kindergarten. And when summer came, I graduated. Now I am in the first grade! In summer it was Ian's birthday and in January it was my birthday. And I am six and a half, on January seventh I will turn seven. In Disneyland there was a hotel and there was a giant pool and there were lots of rides. I met Tinkerbell and her sister, Periwinkle. My dance teacher is really fun! I am thankful for my family and that I got to meet Tinkerbell and I got to go to Disneyland. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and have lots of fun. Leah

Merry Christmas everybody! Marc, Catherine, Ian, and Leah

Christmas Letter 2011

Merry Christmas everyone! We are too late to send out letters in the mail, so we are doing our Christmas letter via our blog once again. Last year, when we did this, we were packing up for a trip to England and Wales. We got lucky and dodged some nasty weather - London-Heathrow had many flights cancelled, and London-Gatwick was closed for at least three days, but somehow we got in. We had a great time taking in the pre-Christmas festivities in London and Wales, with a quick to stop to Stonehenge thrown in for good measure. We travelled locally in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg for the first half of this year. In late May we hopped a long, direct flight to Seattle, and we've been enjoying the Pacific Northwest ever since! We've camped and explored fairly extensively on the Olympic Peninsula, taking in the coasts, the rainforests, and the mountains. We've also done some initial exploring of the Mt. St. Helens area. We'll do some more of that this upcoming summer, as well as Mt. Rainier!

Our big trip this summer was to Miami to visit with Catherine's family. It was nice to visit someplace truly warm again. I enjoyed the weather, the storms, the fresh mangos and avocados - and of course seeing all of Catherine's side of the family too! I didn't terribly enjoy the sunburn. It turns out that after a couple of years in Germany that I burn fairly easily - who would have guessed? From there we flew to Ohio to visit with my family. We had a nice visit with my Dad and Pam, then it was on to my brother David's wedding to Jenna. It was a great time, I got to catch up with cousins that I hadn't seen in close to 20 years (Hurricane Bob, Cape Cod)! Both trips represented the first time in at least two years that I had seen most of our immediate families! It was good to be back.

This fall, I went back to school. I'm officially a Temple University student pursuing my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree. I have finished my first semester, and have signed up for my last semester starting this January. Three classes in addition to work and the Cub Scouts with Ian means I'll be pretty busy the first half of this year.

Merry Christmas everyone! As always, we have been truly blessed in our health and happiness. We wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year! Cheers,

Marc


Hmmm.  Where to start?  I've had writer's block for a couple of days on what to put here.  This year has just flown by!  Marc has covered out travels and our big move stateside.  One of the big things I did before we moved from Germany was I had sinus surgery.  I have mixed feelings about having it, but it seemed the right thing to do at the time.  I also am on different allergy medicines now, and it seems to have helped.  This was the first fall in years that I haven't had a sinus infection.  So, I'm making progress.

The other big thing I did before leaving Germany was try to get rid of and sell as much stuff as I could so we didn't have to unpack it on this end.  Some of this was successful, some not so much.  I have been good about starting to go through everything again and taking a bag or two to consign every time I head to the thrift store, along with some donations.

Then came our move with a search to finding a new place to live and then heading to see family in Miami & Ohio for a few weeks.  It was great to see everyone after we had been gone for so long!  Then it was back to the new place and unpacking and getting the kids headed to school.  The kids seem to be enjoying their new school with only a few hiccups along the way.  Both have been making some new friends.  They also have been taking swim lessons and Ian is a boy scout.  Leah is dying to be a girl scout & sell cookies, so watch out for that!

I spent some time towards the end of this summer doing some canning and freezing of the summer produce from our local farms.  I canned salsa, peaches, and pickles.  I froze blueberries, raspberries, roasted marinara sauce, and some other random produce items (pureed nectarines, pureed strawberries for ice cream, blanched squash, carrots, green beans, leeks and more).  The kids could eat a jar of peaches every day, so I've been rationing those.  Probably will try to do a few more jars of that next year.

Besides volunteering at the church and thrift store, I've also been working part time.  I have been working as an assistant at one of the local cooking schools, and hopefully will start teaching classes in the spring.  I also joined The Pampered Chef as a Consultant.  If any of you are looking for any items for your kitchens, or would like to have a web/catalog party, my website is: www.pamperedchef.biz/skinner  Finally, I've also started to take pictures and write down some recipes so I can start blogging again.  It's been awhile, but so many of my facebook friends have been asking me for recipes of what I've been cooking I just decided to get the blog going again.  The web address for that is www.catalinamuse.blogspot.com  Probably won't be an everyday thing, but it should be fun and it will allow me to share some recipes & pictures easier than at facebook. 

So, overall life is good.  Turns out I had more to say than what I thought I would!  I hope each and every one of you has a Merry Christmas, and to my Jewish friends a Happy Hanukkah. 

Catherine


I've been having lots of great Christmases and I've been getting lots of toys & I can't wait until next Christmas.  This one is only 3 days away! My special year is going to be this year. I love how Jesus has a birthday. 

Ian

This year  I  started kindergarten, and I met someone in the second time and her name is Taliah.  My teacher is so great, I love her in all my heart.  I love the gym teacher (at the school) because she does all fun activities like balloon lollipop bounce.  Merry Christmas!  The special thing about Christmas is it is Jesus' birthday.  And I also want to say Ho, Ho, Ho.

Leah