Alan is winding up his third full year as aerospace and science editor at GeekWire, with lots of work-related travel under his belt.

Highlights included SpaceX's inaugural launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket in February and April's trip to Stanford for the Breakthrough Discuss conference (plus a visit to Evan's digs on campus), followed by the Space Symposium in Colorado (and a meetup with brother Kevin).

In May, Alan got to interview Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, at an L.A. space conference. We played host to siblings Donna and Dave in June and July during the run-up to the Special Olympics USA Games in Seattle. August's highlight was a trip to Utah to attend the SmallSat conference (and see Natalie). December's big story was the first 50-mile-high spaceflight by Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane — marking the next chapter in a story that Alan has been covering for 14 years. Here's a selfie Alan took on the Mojave runway after the flight.

Tonia had a great time in Hawaii during a big January trip with Alan and other friends and family. What you see here is Tonia sampling the rambutan (a lychee-like fruit) at a farmers' market in Hilo on the Big Island.

During our stay in Kona, we climbed aboard a submarine for an underwater tour, and also saw Mauna Kea and the HiSEAS Mars habitat (OK, maybe that was more for Alan than for Tonia). Then the scene shifted to Maui, where we attended our first real Hawaiian luau, took a helicopter tour and went whale watching. Tonia's favorite stops were the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, the Maui Tropical Plantation and the Enchanted Floral Gardens of Kula, where she could luxuriate in displays of flowers and plants we just don't see in Seattle.

Tonia's latest obsession is "The Great British Baking Show" (and its American spinoff), which is getting her in the mood to try new frontiers of baking. This year's canning season extended all the way into December, thanks to our warmer-than-usual fall. And that means we have a larger-than-usual larder of homemade canned goods to see us through the long, wet winter.

Natalie and Dan are in long-distance marriage mode, with Dan working as a research scientist/engineer at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and Natalie buzzing around the country as an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. Natalie is based at Utah State University in Logan, and Dan can occasionally work remotely (and put on a backyard barbecue) while hanging out at the house Natalie is renting there. Natalie's research focuses on native bees, such as the blue orchard bees that were the subject of a recent New York Times article. Here's one of Natalie's most recent publications. Dan's work focuses on underwater acoustics and imaging. Check out this sample study.

Evan and Elias are in the latter stages of their respective Ph.D. programs at Stanford — Evan in genetics, and Elias in volcanology. That means they're both looking at postdoc opportunities. Stay tuned for breaking-news updates!

Evan is still picking up some buzz from a paper he co-authored last year, focusing on the omnigenic model of complex traits. Check out this report from Quanta. He's also delving into the mechanics of CRISPR gene editing. To keep up to date, consult Semantic Scholar's list of publications. Elias is building up quite the list of publications as well.

Outside the lab, Evan has been teaching a series of "Stanford Splash" courses to high-school students on timely topics such as "From Fake News to Fake Video" and "Staying Afloat With Facts in America's Media Maelstrom." There's also enough leisure time for excursions to places like Northern California's Trees of Mystery (featuring the Paul Bunyan statue shown here).

We're sad to report that Rosie, our lovable Cavalier King Charles spaniel, passed away on Oct. 31 at the age of 11 after suffering for months from progressive heart failure. Several days in an animal hospital brought her back from the edge, but only temporarily. She breathed her last at home, not long after being released from the hospital. "She was as sweet a dog as I have ever known," Tonia says.

Our Tibetan spaniel, Bijou, turns 16 on New Year's Day — and although she sleeps half the day away, when she's awake she shows amazing amount of vim and vigor for a dog her age. (To tell the truth, she's more like a cat than a dog.)