Thursday, February 2, 2012

2011 Christmas Letter

It's over a month after Christmas now, so it's fitting for this blog (is it really a blog with a post every 3 months?) that I FINALLY am getting the annual Hanke Christmas Letter for 2011 up here.  For those unfamilar with the procedure, back in the old days (ie, college) I used to send out Christmas cards with a ridiculously long letter to all my friends and family every year.  When I got married, we realized that doubling the number of cards to send out was not really an option, so we cut the list down to basically just family with one or two good friends.  However, I've tried to find a good electronic outlet for this every year, since I know EVERYONE is just DYING to read my Christmas letter.  Or something like that.

Well, even though I haven't actually used this blog for much, I finally have a perfect forum for putting out the Hanke Christmas letter electronically.  I originally finished the letter about a week before Christmas, but never got around to putting it up here until now.  An added bonus of the electronic version is that I can add some pictures to help tell the story.

So, since the letter is approximately 10,000 words long on it's own, let's just get started.  Merry (belated) Christmas!


Last night I saw that a house in our neighborhood had their horde of tacky inflatable Christmas characters up in their yard (and on their roof, and the porch, and the driveway…), so time must be running out to write the annual Christmas letter.  Based on the average length of my letters, ink, paper, and my laptop battery could also completely run out before I finish, so best to get right into it!

In Nerd Heaven!
Sarah and I rang in the 2011 New Year with a spectacular visit home to WI for the holidays.  We spent good times with family and friends, and got a chance to really appreciate God’s blessings to us.  I also took Sarah on her first serious cross-country and downhill skiing experiences, where I learned 2 things about my wife: 1) don’t put a girl from the MI flatlands on skis at the top of a steep mountain and expect things to be fine, and 2) don’t blink if you put a Culver’s burger in front of her after making her cross-country ski several kilometers through the lunch hour.  After New Year’s, Sarah spent another week or so in MI with her family while I flew back home to VA for work.

Well, I flew home for like an hour, at least.  I immediately turned around and hopped on a plane for Orlando because I had to fill-in for a colleague and present his paper at the AIAA Aero Sciences conference.  The presentation went well, and while in FL I got a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Kennedy Space Center with some of my NASA colleagues.  We had access to many great sites, but by far the best was in the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (where the Space Shuttles and Saturn V rockets were assembled before launch) - standing inches away from the Space Shuttle Discovery before its final launch to the ISS!  We all were kids in a candy store, or perhaps a better analogy for me; kids in a LEGO store, which I also got to visit in Orlando (only spent $10 – impressive, eh?).

The rest of winter and early spring were relatively uneventful.  My work at NASA focused on writing reports on the work completed before the cancellation of the Constellation program in 2010, before moving on to work on the Space Launch System (SLS) currently in development.  Sarah’s job as the Sustainability Fellow at William & Mary was hectic in spring, planning for lots of great activities and events for Earth Week.  She must have done well, since she was rehired for another year in that position, running through June 2012.  The birth of an adorable second son, Ian, for one of our good friends here in Newport News was another highlight of the winter.

Things got very busy for us as the calendar turned over into May.  First, we flew up to Newport, RI to attend the wedding of one of Sarah’s grad school friends.  The wedding and bride were gorgeous, and we had a blast in Newport, staying in a cute B&B through Monday morning.  The city of Newport was THE summer vacation spot for the rich and famous during the Gilded Age of America (circa 1900 or so), and famous families like the Vanderbilts built enormous, extravagant summer “cottages” there.  I don’t know about you, but my definition of a cottage does not quite stretch to a building that could fit 3 of my current house – inside the Great Hall alone!  It was a spectacular vacation and I highly recommend it to any history buffs (cough, Laura).  May also included wonderful visits from friends and family to our place in Virginia – apparently, no one wanted to come in July this year.  Wonder why?

One reason for the lack of summer visitors this year was that both of my parents retired from teaching at the end of the 2010-2011 school year.  Amidst the controversy surrounding teachers and public workers in WI and elsewhere this year, I think every student they taught and every person who knew them well can agree on this: Roger and Sharon Hanke worked very hard to be the best teachers they could be and cared deeply about the students in their classes.  Kristina and I were blessed to have them as the most important teachers in our lives, and I will always cherish the lessons I learned about life, faith, and academics from them.  Hope you guys are enjoying your retirement – you earned it!
Our really big vacation for 2011 came at the end of June when Sarah and I headed out to Hawaii for another AIAA conference where I presented 2 different papers.  (I can hear Kristi groaning about my rough life when my work pays me to go to Hawaii.  I’m just that good, sis – deal with it!).  We spent 8 nights in Honolulu, and I totally understand why HI is described as a tropical paradise.  Sarah spent the days on the beach and touring museums during the conference, and we squeezed in surfing lessons (which went surprisingly well, though far more tiring than expected), hiking in the jungle and to the top of volcano, a luau and Polynesian dance show, awesome snorkeling (though we did end up a little close to a reef at one point, making the experience a bit more, um, adventurous than I had hoped!), lots of beach time on the North Shore, and a ridiculous amount of the best seafood and tropical fruit that we could find.  I can send you the link to our photo gallery online if you haven’t seen it yet.  Best.  Vacation.  Ever!  (Note: honeymoon doesn’t count as a normal vacation, so Sarah can’t get mad at me for that!)
Sunset over Waikiki.

Striking a pose on Waikiki Beach.

By far the best part about the Hawaii vacation, however, happened when we got back to VA.  No, I’m not talking about the jet lag (didn’t sleep for about a week) – when we got back, Sarah and I found out that she was pregnant!!!!!!!!!  (I would use more exclamation points, but space is tight).  As some know, Sarah and I suffered through a miscarriage in July 2010, and the following year was very difficult for us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  We are so grateful to the friends, family, and pastors who helped us through, and what a wonderful God we have that has answered our prayers!  Sarah is currently 27 weeks pregnant with a son, due on March 13, 2012, and baby and mother are doing well so far.  He hasn’t cured cancer, invented cold fusion, or become a star football player yet, but I’m trying to be patient with the boy and give him a few more months.  We are so excited to start this new chapter in our lives (I’m not to the panic stage yet – probably around Feb.) and are right in the middle of the baby preparations.  I got to replace my old desktop computer with a new laptop to eliminate a desk, but I have yet to convince Sarah that our son NEEDS a new TV and a PS3.  We are down to a shortlist of names, and things are progressing well – if only we can get an UNDAMAGED crib delivered sometime…
Ultrasound picture of the next Hanke!

Another hot VA summer came and went – we spent lots of time in the garden, but as usual the tomatoes still failed, though other crops were more successful.  At the end of July we drove back to MI to help Sarah’s dad celebrate 35 years as the organist for his home church, and then flew to MN/WI in August for a trip that included a Twins game at Target Field, camping and fishing in Northern WI, a trip to the Leinie’s brewery (mmmm!), and an all-around great time.  We got back to VA in time for Apocalypse Week – a 5.8 magnitude earthquake centered about 100 miles away shook us up a bit (no damage, though) on Tues., Aug. 23, and Hurricane Irene made landfall 150 miles away in NC on Sat.  Irene dumped 10 inches of rain on us with sustained winds over 50 mph for much of the day, but we missed the worst of the storm, never lost power, and came away with only minor tree limbs to clean up.  Many throughout the East Coast were less fortunate, so we have lots to be grateful for!

I looked just like my dad with the 'stache.
Soon after the hurricane, Sarah’s parents visited (mostly so Vicki could listen to the baby’s heartbeat, I think!), and we took trips to Richmond and Mount Vernon for a day each.  Sarah presented a paper on W&M’s sustainable dining initiatives at an AASHE conference in Pittsburgh in Oct. (for those scoring at home: Hawaii >> Pittsburgh).  My newly retired parents made the annual Hanke Fix-It visit in Nov. – this year’s projects were reroofing a storage shed and repainting/fixing all of the windows and trim on the house.  As usual, I picked up a few new tools in the process and the house looks great!  We did take breaks for a boat tour of the Norfolk Naval Base and some other fun things, but it felt wrong that I couldn’t get dad up in the attic in 95°+ heat.  We spent Thanksgiving in MI with Sarah’s family, and Sarah went to the baby shower for her friend Sarah Taylor (expecting a girl 5 weeks before my Sarah is due).  I would be remiss in recapping Nov. without mentioning the goatee I grew to support the Movember movement for prostate/testicular cancer awareness.  I shaved it to just a fabulous mustache for the last few days.  Sarah was thoroughly creeped out when I dressed like my father and started saying things like, “What are you trying to do, kill me?” when she added spices to dinner.


So, now it’s mid-December, and I again look back and marvel on the year.  We are driving home to visit both WI and MI for about a week each this Christmas.  Sarah is excited to show off her incredibly cute baby bump.  The next year promises to be unlike any other for us, in the best way possible!  Our prayers are that this letter finds you and yours enjoying peace, joy, and love in this holiday season and always.  I will close with the words of a favorite Advent hymn, taken from Isaiah 40; words that express the abiding message of Christmas.

“Comfort, comfort all my people; / Speak of peace,” so says our God.
“Comfort those who sit in darkness, / Groaning from their sorrows’ load.
Speak to all Jerusalem / Of the peace that waits for them;
Tell them that their sins I cover, / That their warfare now is over!”


                                                                        Jeremy and Sarah Hanke

No comments:

Post a Comment