This year's adventures have been much less exotic than in previous years, but we still managed to have some fun and a pretty full year…

The fact that Tyner enjoys snow and the dog park is nothing new, but I have to bring it up so I have an excuse to include these adorable photos of our boy:

(All those pictures were taken in February at the Sir William's Dog Run in Fort Tryon Park except for the last one which was taken at the NJ house on my birthday in March.)

We took a few quick day trips, including a surprise outing I planned for Rich to see the holiday model train exhibit at the New York Transit Museum gallery annex in Grand Central Station in January, a performance of Stars on Ice in March for which Rich had given me tickets for Christmas, a visit to the newly-reopened USS Intrepid that I planned for Rich's birthday weekend in May, and a drive down to Wanamaker's department store (now Macy's) in Philadelphia to see my former organ teacher perform on the world's largest pipe organ (by number of ranks).

We dog-sat Cody for the Fullers in May and in July. He and Tyner seemed to get along - they pretty much just stayed out of each other's way…

…and then there was Lady: In July, Rich and I attended "Broadway Barks", the annual pet adoption fair sponsored by Bernadette Peters held in Schubert Alley in the theater district. We didn't go with any intention of actually adopting anything - I mostly just wanted to see all the Broadway stars who had been slated to be in attendance. Rich and I procured a table on the deck of Junior's Cheesecake, from which we could overlook the whole scene and had a great view of the stage. This one mystery mutt kept coming over and looking up at me as we ate. I jumped down and played with her a little, and it didn't take long before I was filling out adoption papers. We brought Lady (that's the name she came with) home that night and found out very soon that our new little bundle of joy would be quite the handful. She and Tyner are almost exactly the same height, but she weighs about 10 pounds more, and at just over a year old, is still all puppy but doesn't recognize her own strength. It took quite a while for her and Tyner to come to an understanding regarding personal space (of which she has no concept), and Cody perched himself up on a piano bench in the kitchen until he got to go home.

Then Rich and I made the amazingly stupid decision to bring Lady along on our cross-country drive out to Utah and back. She was actually quite the little angel while we were driving and she was riding in the back seat of the diesel with Tyner. It's when we weren't driving that she turned out to be a complete terror - just ask the folks at the Residence Inn in Provo about the foot-wide hole she ate in their mattress. We have discovered, however, that she is a very smart little pup and learns quickly, so with a lot of patience and the consistency of being at home, her behavior has improved immensely.

Although we had to rethink all our plans pretty much on the fly, everything ended up working out. The stops on the westbound leg of our journey included seeing the Giacomazzos in Chicago, Iowa 80 (the world's largest truck stop), and an afternoon hike with the Johnson-Kraipowich family - including all three dogs - to see Horsetooth Mountain in Fort Collins, Colorado. We enjoyed the scenery, including field after field filled with rows and rows and rows of enormous windmills. Don Quixote would have had a field day!

In Utah we attended the pre-dedication open house of the Oquirrh Mountain LDS Temple. I planned a surprise "Heber Valley Railroad Reins 'n Trains" outing for Rich which included a round-trip ride on the Heber Creeper from Heber City down Provo Canyon, and a couple hours of horseback riding. We also bought a house.

Oh! I'm guessing you want to know more about this house and our plans for it, yes? Well, the house is in a tiny little town called Wallsburg. Apparently, Wallsburg is too rural for regular mail delivery service, so we had to get a post office box "downtown". (Downtown Wallsburg consists of a municipal building, a church, a necessities store with a little "restaurant" inside, and a post office the size of a shoebox.) The house sits at the end of a road that continues up into the mountains in the form of four-wheeler trails, and the view is of mountains in every direction. The house is about twenty years old and has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, a living room, a den, a food-storage room, a two-car garage, and a "great room" which I plan to turn into a music room. Hopes for the future of our two-acre lot include a workshop for Rich and horses. Our plan is to live at the house as much as possible, while keeping our apartment in Manhattan so that we can come back east in the spring for easter tunings, graduations and the Tony Awards at Radio City, and in the late fall/early winter for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular season. Keeping our schedule (subject to change) in mind when you try to find us, here are our new addresses:

Between buying the house and having to address some transmission problems on the diesel, we got delayed in Utah for a week longer than expected. We had originally planned to take our time getting back east, spending a day here and there at tourist sites like the Grand Canyon and the Very Large Array. We were pressed for time, though, because he had to get back for Bumpie's wedding, so we took almost the same route going as we had taken coming. We stopped only in Oz and St. Louis, and only long enough to take a few photos.

After Rich worked really hard on the MTV VMA Awards (which are broadcast from the Music Hall), he barrelled full-speed ahead into the Christmas season. Meanwhile, my own career choices have finally come full circle: I have retired from my job as an ATF investigator and am pursuing a career in music. A number of great musical opportunities have fallen into my lap this year, and although most of them haven't paid much (or at all), I have decided just to keep playing whenever and wherever I can. My piano gigs have included accompanying my friend Lisa in her cabaret performances at "Don't Tell Mama", playing piano for two benefit performances by "Different Directions" of excerpts of "Snoopy!!! The Musical", two presentations of "Women at the Well". Of course I still play both the piano and organ as necessary at church, most often as an accompanist for the choir.

My most exciting opportunity so far is that I was invited to play pre-show music on the Wurlitzer pipe organ at the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City for the Ballet West performances of "The Nutcracker" throughout December. I had gone back out to Utah over the Thanksgiving weekend for Abby's baptism and to do some fixing up at the house. (Thanks to Harvey, I now know that our water comes from a well via a pump in the downstairs kitchen, how to turn on the heat, and how to run the wood pellet stove in the den. Harvey also came up with the name for our new property: the Lone Pine Ranch.) I contemplated just staying out there to do the Nutcracker performances, but instead decided to take my time in December to get a nice program together and spend most of Christmas season with Rich, Tyner and Lady, and then to go play for the shows between Christmas and New Year. Besides being with Rich and our pups, playing music is, withouth a doubt, what truly makes me feel the most happy and fulfilled.

Before I left for Utah, Rich and I managed to do a few fun Christmassy things like getting and decorating this year's Christmas tree, romping around in the snow with Tyner and Lady, and going to Schaefer Farms to see their drive-thru holiday lightshow. We hope you, too, have been enjoying this holiday season, and we wish you all the best in 2010!

Love,
Ronnie, Rich, Tyner & Lady