Burton Family Christmas Newsletter 2021

Season’s Greetings!!!

If you’re reading this digital Christmas card it means you survived 2021 and everything that it threw at us including: deadly pandemics, droughts, forest fires, tornados, bomb cyclones, and another album from Kanye West. Ugh, what a year. But “iron sharpens iron” as the good book says, and hopefully 2021 made us all stronger, more resilient, and grateful for all the blessings in our lives.

As many of you have probably noticed, John and Amy decided to step away from Facebook this year. While Facebook is a great platform for sharing photos and updates with friends and family, it’s unfortunately also a great platform for sharing misinformation and propaganda, bickering about politics, alienating friends and family, and exposing our personal data to greedy corporations. So, we decided it was time to “close the book”. However, you can still read about us online if you want to follow Amy on Instagram and John here on his new blog.

Speaking of quitting… John and Amy both made the difficult decision to give up alcohol in 2021 to focus on living healthier. While we did occasionally find ourselves craving a cold post-run beer or a nice glass of wine with dinner for the first few months, kicking the habit was much easier than we anticipated. And we discovered that non-alcoholic “mocktails” can be almost as fun as the real thing. 

We managed to do a little local travelling this summer during a lull in the pandemic. In June we snuck away up to Palisades Tahoe (formerly known as “Squaw Valley”) where we spent our days hiking in the mountains and brunching by the pool. Such a beautiful place. Then in July we headed up to Yosemite to celebrate John Paul’s 14^th birthday and Amy and John’s 16^th wedding anniversary. We stayed at a fun little mountain resort just outside the park, which proved to be a great basecamp for our daily adventures while providing some amenities you don’t necessarily get with wilderness camping such as hot showers, heated pools, hair dryers, WiFi, and vanilla lattés.

Amy’s dog walking business – Woofie Walkers – is getting back up to speed after surviving a downtick in business during the pandemic. As people are slowly returning to work and beginning to travel again, requests for dog walks and pet sitting have begun to pick up. Amy is also staying active with her daily trail running which she still enjoys, despite not having been able to do much actual racing this year. She had to cancel her trip back home to run the Boston Marathon this year due to a medical issue, but she’s back on the mend and getting out on the trails again. She also enjoys the occasional scenic bicycle ride… on her stationary bike in our garage where she closes her eyes pretends that she’s riding through the bucolic French countryside.

John Paul shocked us by announcing that he is retiring from running and taking up mountain biking. We signed him up for a couple of week-long mountain biking camps this summer and he had a blast – despite crashing headfirst into a poison oak bush on one occasion. But he was undeterred and has stuck with it. He’s hoping to get a fancy new carbon-fiber bike at some point, but for the time-being he’s riding his dad’s 17-year-old, hand-me-down, heavy old aluminum bike (which John was riding before John Paul was born). But for now it suits him fine as it is quite sturdy and has survived numerous crashes as John Paul attempts to master increasingly treacherous jumps and steep descents. Luckily he has a good helmet!

Speaking of helmets and bike crashes, John went over the front of his handlebars at forty miles an hour while riding his bike this September and woke up in an ambulance after landing on the back of his head and being knocked unconscious. Miraculously, he and his bike were both relatively unscathed while his jersey is now a little more "ventilated" than before. Unrelated, John also had arthroscopic knee surgery this November to repair some issues with his right knee. The surgery went great and he's back on his bike. In his spare time John enjoys posing next to his vintage '68 VW bus. He's also -- for reasons that are still unclear -- started growing out a "vintage" handlebar mustache. 

We miss everyone! We're hoping that the COVID situation finally settles down next year so that we can do some air travel again and visit friends and family who we haven't seen in several years. Amy would love to get back out to Massachusetts to see her family, while John is hoping to visit his Dad in Michigan. Earlier this Fall we bought an old 1920's Victorian house in Sault St. Marie, Michigan (just a few blocks from where John was born) which John and his dad are fixing up. Technically John's dad is doing all the work, while John "helps" via video conference. "A little more to the left Dad. There you go. Perfect! Oh wait, nope it's still crooked."

Well... we hope you and your families had an equally exciting 2021. Wishing you a happy, peaceful, and hospital-free 2022.

Love,

John, Amy, John Paul, Lily (cat), Coco (cat) and Cupcake von Sprinkles (a neighbor cat who has moved in with us and now lives on our roof)