This will be our first Christmas in our apartment. We are enjoying seeing how folks decorate, especially in the hall outside their door. Since our own Christmas decorations are still stored in our Arizona winter home, our apartment doesn't look very festive. We did buy a tree. The garland (?) of yarn is a tribute to the tree decoration our first holiday in the funeral home we owned in Castle Rock. We had moved in just a few days before Christmas and we brought our artificial tree from our Boulder home to Castle Rock. My sister-in-law had some yarn that was very thick and I used it to make large bows on the branches of the tree. This year, I didn't want to duplicate the decorations we have stored in Arizona, so I again used yarn and a borrowed nativity. Next year we will have our own decorations in our apartment. The nativity scene next to this tree is borrowed from our daughter-in-law, Liz. She has a collection of these and agreed to my using this one this year. Many

We bought this house in May 1992 and it was the location of so many wonderful events, from family gatherings for Christmas and Thanksgiving to entertaining friends and hosting vestry meetings. There were baby showers and teas with our grandchildren. We built an HO guage model railroad in the basement which we enjoyed with our grandchildren. John set up a stained glass workshop where he produced numerous windows for our home and for friends and family. In 2009 we moved out and began traveling year-long in our RV. The house was converted to rental property and our son Eric managed it. In the last 13 years we had two renters who provided us with a steady income. But it is now time to simplify our lives and we decided to sell it. Just before Thanksgiving, we closed on the sale of the house. Yea! We will invest the proceeds so we can receive some income to compensate in part for what funds we had been getting in rent. It was a great home and then income property. But i