Hope forthe Holidays: The 2017 edition

Tonia, sister-in-law Alice, brother Ray, Natalie, Dan, Elias and Evan gather round the table, with Alan behind the lens.

		Alan passed the 40-year mark in his journalism career this year, and continues to chase stories as aerospace and science editor at GeekWire, a Seattle-based tech news site. Here you can see him taking a break in Blue Origin's spaceship mockup during coverage of the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Other memorable trips include the 40-year reunion of his Columbia J-school class in New York in April; and family get-togethers in Iowa for sister Donna's 50th wedding anniversary (and a canoe adventure), in Oregon to see August's total solar eclipse, and at Mount Rainier in September. October's highlight was a successful gathering in San Francisco for the World Conference of Science Journalists.
		Tonia was in on the Mount Rainier trip and also managed to get away to North Carolina for a week in October to see her sister and brother-in-law Andromeda and John (and meet up with Natalie and Dan). Other memorable trips include visiting friends in Port Townsend and Whidbey Island, and seeing Natalie in Utah. Here's a portrait from the Utah trip, during which Alan and Tonia had a great time with Natalie, Dan, and Dan's parents Roy and Deborah. The scenery is part of the Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge, where Tonia was able to indulge in one of her favorite pastimes: bird watching. When she wasn't traveling, Tonia's busy agenda included keeping up with the gardening, canning and house updating (wrought-iron railings, exterior painting, and new sod for the backyard).
		Natalie and Dan marked their first wedding anniversary this year with a trip to Yellowstone (and a breakdown that led Natalie to buy another car). That's not the only trip they took: The fact that Natalie is a bee researcher at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service office in Logan, Utah, while Dan is an acoustic physicist at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle, means that they do a lot of traveling back and forth. Here you see them together at Andromeda and John's cabin in North Carolina in October. Check out this article that Natalie wrote for a publication called Growing Produce. Maybe she inherited the journalism gene after all! Natalie enjoys the house she's renting in Logan, and it's become the base of operations for Pip, the family cat. Make that "cats": This year, Natalie added to the menagerie by adopting a charming Siamese-ish kitten named Bartlett.
		Evan is into his fourth year of study at Stanford University, working on his Ph.D. in genetics. He's associated with the Jonathan Pritchard Lab as well as the Greenleaf Lab. He focuses on bioinformatics as well as the mechanics of gene editing, using such tools as CRISPR-Cas9. He's built up a long list of research papers, including a treatise on what's known as the "omnigenic" model of heritability. The Atlantic's Ed Yong explains the concept in this article. Elias, Evan's boyfriend, is a volcanologist from Reykjavik who's working on his Ph.D. at Stanford. Evan and Elias went to Iceland this summer to visit Elias' family (check out Evan's pictures on Facebook if you can), and then Elias accompanied Evan to Bellevue for Thanksgiving and a traditional American turkey dinner. Here you see the two E's working on a jigsaw puzzle, which is a post-Thanksgiving tradition around here.
		Rosie and Bijou are both in the golden years. Rosie (the Cavalier King Charles spaniel with the stylish kerchief) turned 10 years old on the Fourth of July, while Bijou (the Tibetan spaniel with the Zoolander "Blue Steel" look in this portrait) will hit the 15-year mark on New Year's Day. Rosie had to have some oral surgery this year, and Bijou is getting crochety, but they're still wonderful companions. Pearl is the latest addition to the family. Our previous female canary, Greenie, passed away this year after a long illness. After the loss, Tonia decided that our male canary (which Alan calls Lemony Snicket) could still use some female companionship. We'll see what, if anything, develops come the spring.
For more pictures (including bigger versions of the pictures you see here), check out our Flickr photostream — and feel free to friend us on Facebook if you haven't done so already. We're already looking forward to next year's big family trip to Hawaii. Happy holidays, and Happy New Year to all!