Tim Christenson's 2024 Christmas Letter

150 Granite Drive

Whitefish, MT? 59937

[email protected]

Dear Family and Friends,

We began 2024 snowbird-ing in New Mexico. In Albuquerque, we got to see Glenda’s sister Ruth and her family and helped friends unload and distribute a semi-trailer of food at God’s Warehouse. Daughter Margit& Itty and Rio hosted us in Placitas before we headed to Santa Fe. Margit and Rio visited us there (twice), as did John, who flew in from San Diego. Upon returning to Whitefish, we found daughter Karin ensconced in our house, having flown in from San Franciso for some skiing. And son John really flew in for a few lay-over visits, piloting his Delta Airline 737! We also saw John in SoCal, along with daughter Erika&Kurt and Kaia, who told us how Max’s second-gap-year in Israel with Shevet Achim is going. Erika’s a licensed counselor since spring…and was diagnosed with cancer on 15 April (rather have a tax audit?). So we visited twice to help out a bit while she was in treatment—before being declared cancer-free this fall! Last month, we flew to Minneapolis (and took the train home!) to join daughter Grete&Andy, Trygve, Glen, and Adrian when they flew back from Switzerland for Andy’s father’s funeral. We’ll wrap up the year in Idaho seeing son Mark& Stephanie: They’re spending the holidays there with her family and invited us to join them for our 49th anniversary.

We had a big family reunion in July, with the six kids (including a virtual Erika), three of their four spouses (Itty had just begun his fellowship at the hospital in Albuquerque), and six grandchildren. Glenda’s sister Sally&Richard had their own reunion then nearby in Glacier Park with their son Isaac&Karina, their two little girls, and her folks. So when we all got together there were over two dozen of us grand-parents, -aunts, ?????-uncles, -nieces, -nephews, and first-, second-, and once-removed cousins! Great fun to have them all here, but it did remind us that cleaning a house with kids in it is like brushing your teeth while eating oreos.

At church, Glenda’s been running our community garden. Getting the work organized and then done was an effort, but it was a lot of fun.? Only a few of the 35 boxes were taken by church members.? The rest went to neighbors. It was neat to meet people like the young couple who came in and told her, “We just moved here and we’re in an apartment. We wouldn’t have been able to have a garden at all this year if we hadn’t seen your flyer.” All the weeding, mulching, sowing, watering, and harvesting also gave us an appreciation for our local farmers. As their bumper sticker put it, “Love your farmer. Without us, you’d be hungry, naked, and sober.”

Having turned the corner into my 70s, I’m unsure how to “act my age”; I’ve never been this old before. It does, however, sound dangerously close to when I should start doing jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table for excitement. But so far I’ve been surprised to discover that I’m having as much fun being 70 in the 20s as I did being 20 in the 70s—probably because I was married to Glenda both times. She tries to keep me young by encouraging me to eat more foods from plants and fewer from processing plants, and by reminding me to take my memory pills. As a result, I haven’t lost all my marbles—but there’s definitely a hole in the bag somewhere.

Glenda and I did decide to separate this year: Her hiking group flew down to Utah for a long weekend of exploring Zion and Bryce, followed by an overnighter to Many Glacier for day hikes in the Park. It’s a women’s hiking group, so I wasn’t invited…which is fine with me: My biggest fear about becoming a zombie is all that walking. Instead, I flew back to DC to join my neighbor on our annual baseball pilgrimage to see the Nats, Birds, Phillies, Mets, and Shakespeare; flew back home, grabbed my Stetson, and saddled up for a week riding trail in The Bob Marshall Wilderness with a few of The Boys. Yee-hah! We reunited to pedal the Hiawatha Scenic Bike Trail’s old railroad trestles and tunnels along the Idaho border one rainy fall afternoon, from which we recovered with a few recuperative soaks at a hot springs resort.

I was excited to get my first gig as a comedian this year when the speaker for a meeting at the NW Montana History Museum had to cancel on short notice. I volunteered to fill-in with a 45-minute presentation on Montana Humor. You can watch it on YouTube and judge for yourself if I have a future in stand-up:

“NW Montana Humor” ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88bfpdbfsfc&t=3s? and? ?“NW Montana Humor (Conclusion)” ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aegSHKQG3lo?

I got a lot of laughs that night, but perhaps it doesn’t come across on YouTube; I may not be remotely funny.

Looking back on 2024, it’s clear that, whether we’re here in Whitefish or on the road, we are richly blessed with family and friends. God bless you in the year ahead.

All the bes,?

Tim & Glenda