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A Very Merry 2005 Christmas From Our House To Yours!
Happy Holiday greetings to all of our friends and family, near and far! This year has been a time of sweeping life changes in the Asmundson household as we collectively traveled places, graduated, bought houses, and started jobs. As always we hope that life brings you good things and perhaps swings you over our way for a visit.
Ruth on the Great Wall of China
Ruth has been enjoying her second year
as mayor immensely. Throughout the year she has hosted several
delegations from Davis' sister cities of Inuyama in Japan, Munoz
in the Philippines, and Wuxi in China. Unfortunately in April
she got caught in the rounds of pneumonia sweeping through town.
One of the events she had to miss was the establishment of a new
sister city, Los Baños in the Philippines. Instead she sent her
daughters, Alinia and Vigdis, to do the honors. She recovered
well enough by the end of the summer to visit her son-in-law's
family in Elfin Cove, Alaska for the first time. After her too
short vacation, Ruth worked hard on the Covell Village project
but suffered the second campaign loss of her long political
career. In October, Ruth led a sister city delegation to Wuxi
in the Huishan District. Joined by Omen's mother, Mary Jo
Lord-Wild, as well as eight other Davisites the group toured
Beijing, Xian, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai and Wuxi.
Alinia and Omen at the
Mendenhall Glacier
Alinia and Omen have now made the move
to Davis official and bought a house on Fordham Drive. After
months of traveling — snowboarding trips with friends to the
Sierras in the winter, Borrego Springs to visit grandparents in
April, Omen to Alaska and Alinia to the Philippines in the
summer, Seattle and New Jersey for weddings — they managed to
settle down to the business of painting, moving in, and meeting
the neighbors. Of course, buying a house means paying for it
and so the two homeowners found themselves jobs. Alinia works
as a project manager in the marketing department at Intel in
Folsom; Omen consults on computer networks at a startup in town
called Cace Technologies. Alinia is extremely jealous of Omen's
biking commute, as are most Davisites nowadays. Alinia also
started an organization mabuhaybooks.org to send books from the
Davis area to schools and libraries in the Philippines.
Irena, Ruth, and
Grandma Uy at the
Stanford graduation
Irena finished her Ph.D. in Economics
from Stanford this year, successfully defending her thesis. In
September, she started a job with the International Monetary
Fund in Washington, DC. As an economist in the Asia-Pacific
Department, she has already been to Malaysia and will travel to
Brunei in the spring. Although she misses California, life as an
adult has its compensations. Irena bought a house with lots of
space and a comfortable commute in Silver Spring, MD and looks
forward to many visits from family and friends as well as
planting numerous fruit trees in her large backyard. This
month, the day before Christmas Eve, she will celebrate that
fantastically fabulous milestone — her 30th birthday.
Wil enjoying the sun and snow
Wil continued to enjoy time off:
snowboarding, perfecting his golf game by shaving 10 strokes
from his average and becoming a +40 handicap, and biking the
trails of the Bay Area. He has also enjoyed being closer to
both his grandmothers. Over the last year he worked on the
Cartano family house in Richmond: physically and psychologically
moving out decades of accumulation. As always Wil has continued
to immerse himself in Apple technology and recently passed the
Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist examination. He hopes to
find a job at Apple someday soon to fulfill his long love affair
with their gadgets. Vigdis earned her multiple subject teaching
credential from UC Davis in June and began work on her Master of
Education thesis this fall. She spent the summer in the
Philippines with Alinia, visiting family and signing an
agreement with Davis' newest sister city, Los Baños. Then she
went to SangJu, Korea for a month where she set up an English
teaching program. She returned to the Philippines in the autumn
to research the effects of reading and English Language Learners
in her mother's home village of Mabini. She quickly adapted to
village life and she and the students had a wonderful time
reading together in the village's new library. Back in Davis she
was invited into the fold at St. James School where she now
teaches 6th grade.
Jonas and Rose Winston,
a next generation musician
Jonas just celebrated his second
anniversary at Jazz at Lincoln Center where he develops and
manages jazz education programs in New York City and beyond,
most notably Essentially Ellington which distributes the music
of Duke Ellington to over a thousand high school jazz bands in
the US and Canada. In the past year, the mission of jazz
education has taken him to Oregon, Texas, and Illinois and
pleasure has taken him on a summer driving trip through the
Northeast culminating at the wedding of two friends on the coast
of Maine. Outside of the office, he continues to sing in a
semi-professional choir and, with friends, has recently founded
a new chamber choir for young and talented singers. Rehearsals
will start in January and their first concert is already
scheduled for March.
Uncle Rod, Sigrid, and Uncle
Michael at the UCD Law
School King Hall graduation
Sigrid graduated in May from the UC
Davis Law School, King Hall, where she was an Editor on Law
Review and received the Hopkins Award from the faculty for best
written Law Review article. Immediately after graduation she
studied for two months to prepare for the California Bar exam at
the end of July. After the Bar in August, Sigrid and her fiance
Tyler bought a house and then took a
month-long tour of Australia. This fall Sigrid began her new
job with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger in Sacramento,
where she works in the municipal law department, representing
cities and special districts throughout California. Just last
month, Sigrid was sworn in to the state bar and finally became
an attorney so that she may follow in her father's footsteps.
Leigh and Lyman as Joan de Arc
and her trusty steed
Lyman, Leigh, and Aunt Josie moved out
of the house this last spring and into a beautiful and centrally
located condominium that Hazel purchased in El Cerrito. While
we miss them all in Davis, their new home is conveniently
located to all of their needs, Hazel's work, and Wil and Grandma
Uy. Fortunately, they are also easy to visit as we did when we
celebrated a lovely and very grateful Thanksgiving together with
them.
So to end our litany of joy: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and much love and kisses. With the many climate changes in the news, both political and geological, we hope that you will have time to tell us of your own life's events, big and small. We always welcome visits both planned and unplanned and since we all now have our own places you have your pick of places to rest your head.
With Love,
The Asmundson Family
This file last modified Wednesday, May 6, 2015.