Happy Holidays 2024!

Season’s greetings! We hope this finds you well and that you had a wonderful 2024. This has been an eventful year for us, with large changes for almost all of us.

We lost Frank’s dad, Sumi, in June at the age of 97. He had been living in assisted care for almost a year and a half and passed away peacefully. We will miss his stories of times past, his baking, and his generosity, especially with things from the garden or kitchen.

The other big event for the year was Tynor and Mallory’s wedding. It was a grand affair, and we enjoyed the opportunity to meet Mallory’s family, who flew in from North Carolina for the event. We are so happy that Mallory is part of our family, and we are all almost as smitten with her as Tynor is.

After almost 33 years at the University of Washington, Frank retired this year. We were busy for about a month and a half after his retirement date, so it took a while for it to sink in that he didn't need to go into the office. He has been doing things here and there around the house, and it's now hard to imagine how he also fit in a full-time job.

As usual, Melody worked on a large variety of German-to-English translation jobs, but this year she also worked on translating a book. The author was very collaborative, and it was a good experience. She continues to be very active outdoors with hiking and skiing. Sometimes Frank would join her when hiking or snowshoeing.

Kellen switched jobs in 2024, and he now works for the Pokémon Company in Bellevue. Brady (formerly Noël) also changed jobs, and they now work for Ravensburger (the German puzzle company) in Seattle. The two of them were able to spend some time in Japan during cherry blossom season. It was Kellen's first time there, and he's eager to go back.

Not surprisingly, Tynor and Mallory spent a large part of the year getting ready for their wedding. Tynor now works at Peach Finance, and Mallory's employer Seagen was bought out by Pfizer. They had a great honeymoon in Kauai and competed in their first ballroom dance competition this year.

We did even more travel than usual in 2024, starting with our traditional trip to Southern California for mochitsuki. We then flew back in time to celebrate New Year's Day with the kids.

In February, we went with a group to do some snowshoeing (and skiing for Melody) around Winthrop, which is in north-central Washington. The snow wasn't extremely plentiful, but there was enough for us to enjoy our outings.

In April, all six of us went to Texas to visit our cousin in Houston and then to see the total solar eclipse in San Antonio. We had a great time with Lindsay, Joe, and Noah, but ran into cloudy weather in San Antonio. We got glimpses close to totality and felt the weather get cold and saw everything turn dark as the sun was completely blocked.

We did a quick hiking trip to the North Cascades to hike in the Diablo Lake Area. It had been quite a while since we had been in the area, so it was nice to be there again.

The six of us went down in June for Sumi's funeral. Frank, Tynor, and Mallory went to the Japanese American National Museum to stamp family names in the Ireicho, which is a list of names of all Japanese and Japanese Americans who were relocated into camps during WWII.

Melody's sister Celeste was in town in September, so we went to visit their mom Jean in Yakima and uncle Neal in Spokane. With their brother Keith and his wife Bev, as well as their cousin Kevin who flew out to Spokane, there was a mini Winkle reunion of all the surviving grandchildren of their grandparents Keith and Irene.

Immediately after returning to Seattle and seeing Celeste off, we flew to Vietnam for three and a half weeks. We started with a few days by ourselves in Ho Chi Minh City then joined a group tour. The eight of us (everyone else was from Australia and New Zealand) and our tour leader worked our way north, ending in Hanoi. We had a wonderful trip, ate amazing food, and felt like we saw a good variety of what Vietnam has to offer.

Best wishes for this holiday season, and all through 2025!

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