Dear Everybody,
Season’s greetings from Albuquerque! This has been a wonderful year for our family with Abby starting kindergarten and Dunn 6 starting life! We’ve been blessed beyond anything we could ask for with family and friends and a wonderful new job that gives us flexibility to schedule our time however we want. We hope life is treating you well, and also would love to see any and all of you, so make plans to come visit us in the next millennium. Don't worry about Y2K, I predict it will be a 2 day hassle at most.
The year started with Lynda and Abby on extended vacation in Texas while I worked for three different customers from my home office. As soon as they got back to Albuquerque, they missed Nana, so we flew her out for Valentine's weekend. Between taking Nana out to eat and seeing lots of movies, I kept working. I bought some tall book cases and for the first time in four years got all my textbooks out of their boxes. This was just in time to pick up assignments actually requiring me to use my engineering books. I’ve been learning new science and dusting the cobwebs off old skills. What has really been fun is learning new stuff, like programming in C++, doing 3D graphics, and writing windows applications with slider bars and pulldown menus.
Lynda’s pregnancy went very well with no worries like the low MSAFP scare we'd had five years earlier with Abby. She got over the burps by the spring and enjoyed helping out at Kindercare where Abby was spending two or three partial days a week, just to socialize. Lynda organized the graduation ceremony and Abby looked very cute in a red cap and gown. We visited a midwife regularly and she was happy with all Lynda’s vital statistics. The baby in her tummy was growing nicely with a strong heartbeat. Abby began singing “You Are My Sunshine” to the baby, before she knew if she was going to have a brother or sister. We wanted to make sure everything was OK, so we talked the Air Force into approving an ultrasound. We made it a family outing and brought Abby along to see the first pictures. Karen, the technician at UNM was certain it was a boy and I thought the images were pretty clear myself. It was Dunning Idle the 6th! Abby joyfully exclaimed, “I always wanted a brother!”
Back at work, I was having trouble keeping up with all the writing I need to do. I had more ideas than time. Driving to work is a waste of time unless I'm carrying a micro-cassette recorder. But I didn't have time to transcribe my tapes. Then in March, my sister-in-law, Tricia, told me how eager she was to find a job, but how hard it was to get one with the flexible hours she needs to be a good mother to her two beautiful sons. I immediately hired her as my information management consultant and bought her a transcription machine and an ergonomic keyboard. I wonder how she felt when I handed her a box of about 30 tapes? She got right to work, learning my aerospace vocabulary as she went. Soon I could attend a meeting, describe what we discussed while driving home, priority mail the tape to Tricia, and get an e-mail back with a full transcription in only about three days! Talk about a competitive advantage! Some of my customers get these Christmas letters, so my secret is out! Thanks for all the hard work Tricia! Someday I'll get our little company incorporated and charge your hours to our contracts. For now, it's well worth it to pass some of my earnings on for such talented support. We're even getting ready for Tricia to market my science fiction stories to all the magazines out there. She's been collecting writer's guidelines over the Internet. This coming year will be very exciting.
Next, at the peak of her pregnancy, when Lynda was glowing and beautiful, we celebrated our 10 year anniversary on April 1st. We had hoped to renew our vows at the Air Force Academy chapel, but wanted Lynda in her original wedding gown. This was out of the question with Dunn beginning to show. Instead we had Grandpa, Mom, and Aunt Loisa all drive to Albuquerque, and Betty brought her fiancé Bryan and her kids. All our local friends and our extended church family came to celebrate at a sumptuous banquet. We each gave a little heartfelt speech about how happy we are with each other and how wonderful life in our family is. Ten years has gone by in a flash and it’s only the beginning. I think more than a few tears flowed that evening. The following Sunday was Easter. Lynda, as a Sunday School teacher, put together a chamming children's program for us.
Also in April, we began hunting for a serious school for Abby. We soon found Molly Krattiger, the director of admissions at a private school called Sunset Mesa. She introduced us to Glenda Tilton, one of three kindergarten teachers there. She had a room full of kindergartners sitting quietly at their tables reading vocabulary words from folders! I thought I was looking at an outstandingly behaved 3rd Grade class, maybe. But these were five year olds! Sunset Mesa gets about 50% of its graduating 5th Graders accepted into the Albuquerque Academy. As an Exeter graduate, I'd love it if Abby could get into a school like that some day. So we scheduled Abby for an admissions interview. We gave her a skills test on our computer, and she did above average in everything, especially vocabulary and computer skills. We still were nervous because all the kids at Sunset Mesa are above average. I had a hard time not pacing back and forth when my little girl, still only four, went into Molly's office and they closed the door. They were in there talking and making drawings for forty-five minutes! I told Lynda to stop peeking through the window but she couldn't help herself. Finally they came out and the news was good. Abby was accepted into the last opening for kindergarten! It's been our good fortune that Mrs. Tilton was chosen as her teacher. She is kind and patient.
With Abby's academic needs provided for, an increasingly pregnant Lynda squeezed behind the wheel of our Windstar and drove Abby to Colorado for a week with her cousins getting ready for Aunt Betty's wedding. Nana arrived early for the wedding too, so they celebrated Mothers Day with her. I stayed behind and worked. After a few days slaving away at my keyboard, I caught an airplane to Colorado Springs. I have a new laptop, so I worked on the plane too. Betty's wedding was beautiful, and I really enjoy Bryan as a brother in law. He just got his nursing degree and is a hard working, responsible man with a great sense of humor. The wedding went off perfectly, and my mom cried. Abby and I had a blast dancing at the reception.
After partying with Betty, we decided to have a blowout fifth birthday party for Abby. It was important to us, with only a month to go before the arrival of her baby brother, to show Abby we love her more than ever. So we had all the cousins down from Colorado, and all our friends over, and rented a Moon Bounce for the back yard. The Salmons showed up with a Slip 'N Slide and the kids were having so much fun, even the adults joined in. Lynda, who used to teach the owner's grandson, got a really good deal from Powdrell's. They catered with huge piles of barbequed chicken, brisket, and ribs. Our big present to Abby was a trip to Disneyland. Lynda couldn't come because she was down to the last two weeks of her pregnancy, so Abby and I visited Disneyland for two days by ourselves. It was a dream trip! The weather was perfect, and school was still in session in California, so the lines were short. We stayed at the Disney Hotel itself and they gave Abby a pin that said it was her birthday. All the ride attendants saw the pin and gave her special treatment. On the way out of the park to go home on the evening of the second day, the conductor saw her pin and let Abby actually drive the monorail! She pushed the go button, started the audio tape, and honked the horn at the Disneyland Train driving by underneath us. The train conductor blew his whistle back at her.
The big movie this year was Star Wars Episode I. We took Theresa, Josh, and Tammy Salmon to premier night. We missed Jerry who was in South America, but still had fun waiting in line for three hours. We had lawn chairs and a Star Wars Trivial Pursuit game which we played with fellow fans. Abby held her own because I made up special questions for her like, "Who is Luke's father?" Remember from a couple years ago, she decided Mommy was Chewbacca? At last, there is a new female character and Mommy is now Queen Amidala. I think this works out because I'm Annakin/Darth! We'll see what happens in Episode II! Abby and I saw Episode I eleven times in the theater. It was our favorite movie this year, just before Austin Powers.
Finally the big event we were waiting for arrived. Dunning Idle the 6th was born! We had lots of visitors to see the baby over the summer. He is continuing to thrive, and starting to eat a little now. We feed him cereal, and squash, and mashed potatoes. I even got him to eat a Ritz cracker this week. He held it and brought it to his mouth, or sometimes to his forehead. It got soggy after about 10 minutes and after about 20 he had consumed about half of it. The other half was all over his clothes. He will sometimes sleep a full eight hours now, and lies happily in his crib with a big smile on his face if we sleep in. When we need to get chores done, he has been known to sit in his swing and watch computer graphics videos for up to an hour!
The summer went by in a flash with lots of visits from baby admirers. I soon got behind in work again, so Lynda took Abby and D6 to Texas for two weeks in August. I not only caught up on my "deliverables", I traded in our Windstar when its lease ran out. For a new Windstar. We like our new van better because it has a driver's side sliding door and captain's chairs where the middle bench was in our last van. When my family returned it was time to prepare for football season. John and Tricia visited us three times in September, because Tricia's wonderful parents wanted to visit them and it was much less expensive to fly in to Albuquerque than in to Colorado Springs. We enjoyed the Rodrigues so much we joined in calling them Oma and Opa. Oma loved D6! He's already a big football fan with a Redskins outfit that has a cute little football on his butt. I bought that for him the week I found out he was a boy. Nana has bought over half his clothes since, but I bought the first outfit. At five months and eighteen pounds, D6 is either going to be a linebacker or a Hog, we'll have to wait and see! We won't discuss the Cowboys.
And of course this fall Abby started Kindergarten. She is taking Sunset Mesa by storm. This leaves room for improvement in her listening skills, but at least she's having a blast and all the kids and teachers love her. She's already got about three boyfriends. She's had lots of fun show and tells, great construction and art projects, and fun extracurricular activities. She's in dance class, and I’m taking her to piano lessons. I'm learning right along with her and we're almost to the point we can play a song. It's just my speed. Lynda is a home room mom and set up the Thanksgiving and Christmas parties with rave results. Lynda is also once again making good use of her leadership abilities as Abby’s Daisy Girl Scout troop leader. This lead to us taking D6 on his first hike. It was a short walk but the girls all earned patches. Actually, I bought Abby real hiking boots from REI in the spring and we have a standard periodic two mile hike up in the Sandias where we stop to scramble up a rock we call "Abby's Rock". It's the size of a house and Abby is quite a rock climber. And speaking of rock, Lynda went to her first concert with me this fall. She tearfully left D6 and Abby with the Salmons and we drove to the Paolo Soleri outdoor amphitheater under the stars in Santa Fe. Even with the sound so loud it visibly vibrated my windbreaker, it was very romantic, and nostalgic at the same time. We enjoyed the intimacy of such a small venue with only about 2000 other fans. We were only about 40 feet from the stage where Tommy Shaw helped remind us of our youth, belting out classics such as "Come Sail Away" and "Renegade".
Next, we all went along for Abby's first field trip on a bus to the Albuquerque zoo. That was on a beautiful sunny day, and we had a picnic lunch under some marvelous big trees in the zoo's central park. We had a perfect blue sky, a slight breeze, warm sunlight, and happy cute laughing kids running around. I looked up at the activity from the blanket where I was taking a nap and suddenly realized, this was my exact mental picture of Heaven. The feeling lasted about twenty minutes. It was wonderful. May the real Heaven be that nice! A few days later, the day before Abby had a rattlesnake project due, I surfed rattlesnakes on the web and found the International Rattlesnake Museum right here in Albuquerque. We got Abby rubber snakes, real fangs, real skin, and lots of pictures. We edited together a short 3 minute video of Abby pointing out the live rattlesnakes in their glass cases. Abby and her Mommy put together a posterboard with all the items and Abby practiced a demonstration where she related three facts about rattlesnakes. Her teachers said to save the display for high school where Abby can do it again.
And now the holidays are here. For Halloween we had the Walters over. Abby, with a new short haircut was a perfect Snow White. Alyssa was an M&M which brought cannibal comments whenever she got M&Ms in her trick or treat bag. D6 was a cute and snuggly pumpkin, not really sure what was going on but enjoying himself anyway. We started November by flying Nana here for her birthday. Then we started trading viruses back and forth, so we decided to rest and stay home for Thanksgiving. We had both Jerry and his brother Jaime Salmon and their families over for a traditional turkey dinner. It was Lynda's first turkey without help from her Aunt Loisa or Mom. So she bought a humongous 24 pounder! The day before Thanksgiving I was telling my mom how much space it was taking in the freezer and she mentioned a turkey that big would probably take three days to thaw! We didn't panic, we just got creative. We couldn't keep the turkey in water overnight in the sink because it didn't fit! So I got a large Rubbermaid storage bin from the garage and submerged the turkey in that in the master bath. The water dripped into the bin and then overflowed and went down the tub drain all night long. When we sprung a leak in the bin, Lynda, Abby, and I all chewed bubble gum until I could plug the leak. Whatever works! Lynda put the turkey in the oven for five hours and it was melt in your mouth delicious. I stood at the head of the table and carved in a scene straight out of Norman Rockwell. We had such a good time we had both families over again yesterday for an early Christmas turkey dinner and gift exchange.
In two days, we start our annual "Triangle Drive". This year we'll spend Christmas day in Colorado Springs with my folks and Win and Michelle, and Betty, Bryan, and their kids. Then we'll head down to San Antonio on a short 14 hour drive which we hope D6 will behave for. Abby likes long drives because we've got the VCR-TV combo to entertain her. We'll see all of Lynda's extended family in San Antonio and let them be amazed at how D6 is less than 6 months old but fits clothes designed for 12 months. We are really looking forward to the vacation and seeing all our loved ones. It's really fun with a baby to show off. We'll bring in the New Millennium the way we have many New Years in the past, by popping off firecrackers on Grandpa's porch.
We hope you have all been having as much fun enjoying the bounty of life this year as we have. The new millennium is going to be filled with wonder, adventure, love, excitement, cute kids, and lots of fun! We send our love and best wishes to all of you in the coming year, and pray you will share in blessings as bountiful as those we have received. Merry Christmas!
Dunn
& Lynda Idle
11540
Jewel Cave Rd, SE
Albuquerque NM 87123
(505) 275-0202