DENNIS & DEB DELONG HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER 2006         

                                   SETTLING INTO WESTCHESTER COUNTY

2006 was a year of adjustment for us as we moved 40 miles down the Hudson Valley (or down Rt. 9) from Wappingers Falls in Dutchess County to Ossining in Westchester County.  It was also a year of adaptation, as we now have five delightful grandchildren and share in the responsibility to assist Dennis’ Mother in coping with the loss of Walter.  2006 also was Deb’s first full year in her new job with Westchester County (Director of Housing for the Department of Planning) and Dennis’ first full year of “semi-retirement” – although the extent to which he has retired has been a subject of debate among friends and relatives. 

In mid December 2005, while still in Wappingers Falls, Dennis took a trip to North Carolina to see Rob, Belle, Clare and Sammy to share an early Christmas with them.  In between trips, working and preparing for Christmas, somehow we found the time to enter into contracts to sell our Wappingers home, and purchase our new Ossining home. Mother joined us for Christmas and stayed until and Dennis' birthday. Mother also joined us as we joyously shared Christmas Eve and Morning with Tami, Dan, Sarah and Danny. Both the evening and morning were filled with good cheer and the happiness of the children. December closed and 2006 opened with a visit by our good friends, Mike and Pat, for New Years Eve and Day.

Early in January, Mother traveled by Amtrak from Rochester to Poughkeepsie. The next day, Dennis took her to the Newark Airport and she flew to Ft. Myers to spend three weeks with Uncle Reggie (Mother’s brother) and Aunt Mary Jane and to ready the condo for renters. She returned to Newark on the first of February. On the way back to Wappingers, Dennis and Mother stopped to see Shannon, Mike and the newly arrived (born on January 11) Kyleigh, Mother’s newest  great-granddaughter!  The next day, Dennis rendezvoused with Doug and Linda at the Roscoe Diner and they transported Mother back to Corning.  January 15 was a big day! Not only did we call NC to mark Sammy’s Second Birthday but we also attended a baby shower in NJ for Shannon and got our first glimpse of cute little Kyleigh. Grandma Nancy and other family members also were there!  

February was a momentous month.  On Friday the 3rd, we closed on the purchase of our new home in Ossining and then moved out of our Wappingers Falls (WF) home on Monday the 6th.  Although we did most of the packing ourselves, we had too much furniture for the movers to load and unload in one day, so we moved in the following day.  When Deb commuted home on the 7th, she was delighted to travel only 13 miles (from White Plains to the new home) rather than 50+ miles!  We will miss our large home and 3+ acre lot in WF but we love the setting (beautiful river views), the location (35 miles closer to NYC and proximate to hundreds of restaurants) and our wonderful, friendly neighbors (we didn’t know our neighbors in WF) – to say nothing about the much shorter commute for Deb.  Needless to say, we spent most of the rest of February settling in.

March was relatively uneventful on a social front, although we noted Andrea’s birthday on the 6th. It was month of many meetings as the United Way Board retreat was held at the end of the month, which Dennis as a Board member attended. He also serves as Vice-Chair of the Dutchess County Workforce Investment Board (DCWIB), Chair of the WIB’s Allocations and Evaluation (A&E) Committee and member of the Executive Committee.  The A&E and Executive Committees meet once a month and the WIB and UW Boards meet every other month.  All these groups met in March.  Dennis also accompanied Deb to Albany for a meeting of the Rural Housing Coalition’s Board. Deb is a Board member.   This Newsletter will make no more mention of these voluntary undertakings, but they continued throughout the year.  It should be noted as well that Dennis will chair the DCWIB in 2007. March also featured the start of two online courses Dennis taught for the March-May period – a graduate course for Marist College. “Research Methods and Statistics” (MPA 508) and an undergraduate course, “Social Problems” (SS 270) for Kaplan University. 

April certainly was not uneventful. It featured many birthdays, celebrations and visits to us and by us. As is the case every April, we celebrate the birthdays of Rob (18th), Doug and Tami (20th) and Nancy (21st).   Unlike last year, when both Deb and Dennis forgot their anniversary, this year they happily noted 10 years of marriage, on the 26th!  Once again this year – it has become a tradition we guess – the Easter Bunny journeyed to our home, since Sarah and Danny, as well as their parents, Tami and Dan, visited for Easter weekend. They were our first visitors!  This year, as the past two, Ninja our cat enjoyed assisting in the pursuit of the Bunny’s gifts. In mid-month, Mike and Pat visited our new home for the first time and the following weekend we joined them and many relatives, including James, Andrea and Jack, at a large celebration of Nancy’s 60th birthday in Rochester.  While in Western NYS, Dennis got to visit the Lynch homestead in Pavilion, something he has wanted to do since Michael and he have been friends – almost 30 years.  

In May, the distance courses Dennis was teaching finally ended. The Kaplan course was draining in particular in that it included a live chat room every week at 11pm in which Dennis was expected to lead 25+ students from all over the country (and some abroad) in a lively discussion of social issues.  In May our friends Treacy and Pete from NYC visited us and we journeyed to NJ for Kyleigh’s christening. Of course, no May is complete without the mandatory trek back to Dennis’ home area for the Memorial Day parades in Oxford and McDonough. This year, we went to Corning Saturday and then on Sunday transported Mother to the home of Doug and Linda where we spend a enjoyable afternoon.  That afternoon, Deb and Dennis discovered the fun of jumping on a trampoline. We all stayed over Sunday night and enjoyed the parades on Monday.  As is usually the case, Dennis had the chance to see a number of friends and acquaintances from his high school years.  Once again, the brothers split the transportation of Mother, following the annual chicken barbeque at the McDonough Fire Station, as Doug and Linda drove her back to Corning, while Dennis and Deb returned to Ossining,

June was an interesting month and the point at which we fully realized just how wonderful our backyard is with its deck, the bird feeders which attract not only 40-50 birds at a time on occasion but also deer, squirrels, chipmunks and, yes, even skunks, and the river views and sunsets!  Although it began in late April, it was especially in June that we enjoyed many a sunset sitting in our two white rocking chairs.  The deck also is very sunny and quite hot in the afternoon, which prompted us to obtain and erect an enclosure over part of the deck to provide some shade and keep the house a little cooler.  Early in June, Dennis drove to Corning and brought Mother back here for a four-day visit, after which he returned her to Corning and stayed over with Mike and Pat at their home near Oneonta to break-up his trek back to Ossining. 

Later in the month, we both traveled to the home of Tami's famliy near Troy and attended Sarah’s very first dance recital on a Saturday. She was with the littlest girls, with 4 and 5 year olds,mixed in with classes of older girls, up to middle school. After staying over in Troy, we all traveled back to Ossining, which enabled a bit of vacation for Tami and Dan and the kids. Deb had ordered a trampoline, and it had finally arrived. We spent part of Sunday putting it up, and all the kids of all ages jumped and jumped. The next day we all traveled down for a visit to the Bronx Zoo, and spent the next day just chilling out.  Our friend Ande Szabo joined us for an afternoon and evening of hanging out on the deck, grilling dinner and watching the sunset. At the end of June, Mike and Pat arrived here and then the next morning the four of us traveled to NH for our annual stay at Rye Beach.  The two couples have enjoyed the week together in NH for 12 straight years!

After returning from NH, we hosted Andrea, James and Jack for an overnight visit and continued to enjoy our almost nightly ritual of wine while sitting on the rocking chairs on the deck.  In Mid-month, Dennis took advantage of his semi-retirement and the summer break from the usual monthly meetings and went on a sojourn to VA and NC to visit the southern grandchildren (and their parents, of course).  He began and ended his trip (July 13-19) with Andrea, James and Jack) in VA and in between visited Rob, Belle, Clare and Sammy in NC.  Dennis also had the opportunity to see Rob’s new office at Virginia State University where Rob was teaching a summer course and began a full-time, tenure-track faculty position in the fall.  Later in July we journeyed back to Dennis’ home area twice – first for the wedding of Nichole Champlain (daughter of hunting buddy of Doug and Dennis, Craig, in Delhi) and then the following weekend to attend an alumni party at Steere’s Pond in McDonough, hosted by Dennis’ good friend from the Oxford Class of 1959, Linda (Emmick) Orman.  During this visit, we also had dinner with Doug and Linda.

In August, Dennis initiated a career move, the full fruits of which have not yet unfolded. Beginning August 2005, as mentioned in last year’s Newsletter, Dennis launched the writing of his science fiction novel. Work on the book continued on and off during the remaining months of 2005 and into 2006 and in March Dennis signed a contract with an agent to promote the book, once it was finished, After a year, Dennis could sense his writing was culminating and began to give serious thought to career matters. He had applied for a few jobs in the region, limiting himself geographically due to a commitment to Deb to remain within easy commuting distance of White Plains – preferably in their Ossining home.  Although Dennis had several interviews in both 2005 and in 2006, none of them resulted in an acceptable offer.  With all of this in mind, he decided to explore becoming a real estate agent – a direction which Deborah, herself a housing expert, encouraged. 

Dennis began the real estate quest by completing an online simulation after which he was encouraged to become licensed.  He then completed a intensive, two-week license preparation course offered by the Westchester County Board of Realtors, aced the course and, in September, took and passed the NYS examination to become a real estate salesperson. In late September, Dennis was licensed and accepted an affiliation with Prudential Rand Realty in Briarcliff Manor – a small village in the Southern portion of the Town of Ossining.  Dennis has begun some work with the firm and will begin in earnest in 2007.  During October and November, he completed the novel, which is entitled: Encounter With the Trigorian Extraterrestrial.   The nearly 400-page novel has been submitted to the agent and is being marketed.

There were several significant happenings in August other than the real estate course, writing on the novel and enjoying the deck and river view. Doug and Linda visited is in mid-month for a weekend and the following weekend we visited and joined with them to attend the 50th Wedding Anniversary of our cousin Janice and her husband, Mal Davis.  Janice is important to us beyond being a cousin for whom we are very fond - she was the Justice who married us on that fateful day ten years ago! We should note also that Mother celebrated her 88th Birthday on August 22. In early September, we traveled again to the Norwich area and attended the wedding of Nephew Joseph Bishop, Doug’s grandson.  The following day, we traveled to Corning to help host a party for Mother’s birthday attended by relatives and neighbors. On the 20th Grandsom Danny turned two and the weekend of September 16th we journeyed to Troy for a party in his honor. During this trip, Papa Bear, as Sarah calls Dennis, was able to fulfill his wish to observe her getting off the school bus. Sarah started kindergarten the fall.

October was an eventful month, some of it planned and some decidedly not anticipated. Sarah’s 5th birthday was on October 3rd and she and her parents visited us the following weekend. Prior to the arrival of Tami and her family on Saturday, Nancy, Tom and Mikey stopped by on their way to NJ to visit Shannon, Mike and Kyleigh and spent Friday evening with us.  We gave them a small tour of the area and then shared a meal with them at a new restaurant in Ossining, which has become one of our favorites, Goldfish Oyster Bar.  After such a fun-filled weekend, perhaps it fitting, or at least not surprising, that Dennis ended-up in the Emergency Room at Westchester Medical Center on Monday evening. Nothing specific was found to be wrong with him even though he was admitted over night for tests. As a consequence, Dennis changed doctors and embarked on a healthier lifestyle including a reduction in alcohol consumption and less red meat.  The month was not done however, and it was decided to continue several trips, which had been planned, although the ER visit caused Deb to cancel out of a Rural Housing Coalition meeting in Utica.  Later in the month, Dennis joined son Rob, Rob’s friend Brett and Doug at the cabin for some bird hunting. Still later, Dennis and Deb flew from Newark to Nashville for an enjoyable stay in “Music City” – the trip Dennis chose celebrate his 65th birthday coming up in December. 

In November, Dennis was able to restart his “bambi bashing” tradition (as friends have labeled it) after a two year hiatus. Last year he cancelled the hunting due to Walter’s death and in 2004, he and Deb chose to go on a cruise during deer season with Walter and Mother. Dennis joined Dan, Doug and Craig at the cabin for the first two days of the season.  Dan earned the only success, bagging a six-point buck, opening day.  While the boys were away, Tami and the kids traveled to Ossining to visit Grandma Deb and all of them took a train ride to NYC to enjoy the sights. This was Danny and Sarah’s first train ride. It was quite a thrill for them and enjoyable for mother and grandmother too!

The Thanksgiving holiday was unusually rewarding this year, since we were joined by two of the three families from whom our grandchildren derive. First, Rob, Belle, Clare and Sammy journeyed from NC to Ossining (after an overnight with the Anfrea and family in VA) and then later in the period Tami, Dan, Sarah and Danny joined us. It was an opportunity for cousins to interact and for us to enjoy four grandchildren at once!  Before the Loya’s arrived, the rest of us traveled into NYC by MetroNorth.  Sammy, who is more that a little enamored with trains, was enthralled.  His experience duplicated that of his cousins, Sarah and Danny, the weekend before. This time it was his chance to keep his face glued to the window, down and back, watching for boats on the river and, of course, other trains!  It should be noted as well that we celebrated Clare’s 12thbirthday and Deb’s 52nd during the Thanksgiving visits.

As the Newsletter is composed it is early December and we are grateful for all the wonderful events of the past year, the great visitors we have enjoyed, the places we have gone and people we have encountered.  Still to come this month, is a trip to the home of Mike and Pat and a family gathering with Mother in Corning with the families of Doug and Nancy to celebrate Christmas and exchange gifts.  We also expect Mike and Pat to visit us later in the month. To enable Mother to spend some time in Florida, Dennis will drive her down there, beginning the trek south the morning of the 26th. Prior to the departure, Deb and Dennis will spend Christmas Eve, Eve with the Tami and family and Christmas Eve with Mother in Corning. Deb will then return to Ossining but fly to Ft. Myers on the 29th,Dennis’ birthday. Mother and Dennis are expecting to arrive in Ft. Myers on the 28th after stopping on the evening the 26th in NC to visit Rob. Belle, Clare and Sammy. Andrea, James and Jack are expecting to be there as well.

We wish all who read this Newsletter a wonderful holiday season full of love, peace and happiness!  .