Hope for a better year

It's been a month since I've put up a post. In the meantime, we celebrated our family Christmas. It was a bitter-sweet experience for our immediate family. Our son Derek was not there (as he had predicted a year earlier), but we had a new addition to the family. His name is Alexander, the son of our niece and her husband; he is the first baby boy in the family, since Derek himself was born. The young people had a great time at Christmas - as usual, too many presents (they didn't mind).

My wife and I spent New Year's in Puerto Vallarta, with good friends. Our host (and good friend) had unfortunately contracted pneumonia earlier in December, and had just gotten home from the hospital for Christmas. Therefore, he was not quite his normally exuberant self. Talking to him today, and he sounded a lot better. We met many people we hadn't seen for a number of years and several very interesting people we had never met before.

We have visited Puerto Vallarta for New Year's for many years. The city has improved its beachfront walkway (the Malacon) wonderfully, see picture. It is always nice to walk under palm trees in warm weather when it is miserable at home.

The weather was a nice 23 to 26 degrees Celsius during the day, and not much less during the night; we spent every evening outside, or in open-air restaurants.

The Mexican people greet a new year with fireworks galore. These were going off all around us for almost an hour after the New Year arrived. 

We all expressed the hope that this year will be better for all of us.