Hello, from 2016

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from 2016 ! 

We’re back with an encore performance after taking the leap year off.  No – you weren’t taken off the Groscost Holiday Letter List because you were naughty.  Full disclosure – we were too busy with the Trump campaign to pen our thoughts.  The gamble paid off, so now we just kick back and celebrate the win (concession).  Can’t wait see how we move this great country forward through the tool of Twitter - I bet even the founding fathers of Twitter didn't realize their communication tool would form our future public policy.  Enough said.  To quote Curt’s dad – “I could expound on the results of the election, but like 98% of the population, we are pretty much bored”.  In the interest of time, (our writing, that is) it might be best to just read the 2014 edition and add two years to the kids (and 10 lbs each to the parents) where appropriate.  In case you’ve continued this far, here are a few updates:

Homestead and Family Life - here is the progress we have made in two years:

Our livelihood consultant reported that we have officially passed the Jones's - box checked.  No need to try keeping up with them any longer.  As good as the last two years were, it really didn't compare to the fruit flies’ - those Melanogaster’s nailed it.  In spite of all the celebrated perks, global warming does have pitfalls, as we have witnessed.

The Dru Bru is Angela's, not Ruth's

We picked up a house guest/subletter in 2015.  She prefers to call herself a “lodger”, but she doubles as a childcare technician, marriage counselor, political/financial advisor, math/English tutor, arc welder, home improvement apprentice, septic consultant, barista, pickle batterer, and beer-meister.  Tracey’s best friend Angela from college.  She was laid up this winter after a near death ski accident, but Ruth helped to rehabilitate her after surgery by bringing her pale ale’s and chocolate while she watched River Monsters from the comfort of the couch.  She will likely only stay another month or so.  Or so.

Halloween 2015

We celebrated (acknowledged) Curt’s semicentennial birthday.  He wouldn’t trade it for any other age (notwithstanding years 7 through 49).  Both Ed and Maritza also turned 50 this year so had had a few other old-timer celebrations where we got together with friends, family, family of friend’s and friends’ of family.  Then, to put 50 in perspective, we celebrated Tracey's father's 80th birthday at Anthony's Home Port in Edmonds - yep it's still there, in business with the same oak furnishings and floral carpet they opened with in the 70’s.

We’re both still receiving a more-than fair wage for the time we spend reenergizing away from home.  We keep talking about “when we retire” but if the truth be told, we really have no idea if we will ever retire.  We keep putting off visiting a financial planner for fear of finding out Tracey really doesn’t have any of the financial planning skills she is renowned for.

The kids in their babysitter's wedding party

We bought two new bikes for Si last year. The first one is on permanent loan to some local citizen (criminal) near the Entiat State Park campground. We have yet to receive a formal thank you from them.  Maybe they could just like us on Facebook and we can call it even.

We were fortunate enough to get to enjoy a night out for dinner with our dear friend’s Red and Colleen and their daughter Mari at the NBBG (that’s the North Bend Bar and Grill for you non-local folks) in 2016.  Living as far apart as we do, it nice to set some special time aside to see them once in a while and catch up on their year.  Each time we see them, it reminds us how much fortunate we are to have good friends.


Kids (still two – no surprises there):
We’ve got ourselves a teenager.  At 13 years old, Si is in his second year of middle school showcasing his PRUG (previously recessive underachievement gene).  Maybe it's just the party line for school teachers to report that a student isn't trying since the alternative would be even harder to stomach.  Just because his parents don't understand his math, doesn't mean he can't do better...  and what boy that age doesn’t love interpretive writing and gush with detail.  It’s safe to say he’s not going to be a writer or a planner…  or an accomplisher for that matter.  He participated in the school sports which was fun to watch: cross country, track and soccer, but no signs of a PGA or NFL career so we’ll continue to emphasize academics.  It was fun to see him compete against kids from his club soccer team from the others schools in different sports. 

During the last two summers, Si experienced his first (perhaps only) weeks of college while attending a soccer camp held at the UW.  Had to be fun, based on the reports of irresponsibility we heard afterward.  He locked himself out of his room after a night out with the team “partying”, so he seems to be building a resume for WSU after all.

Ruth's ride in Mercedes convertible

Ruth had her 11th birthday in October.  It's good to have all family members in double digits.  Granted, that’s not a well-recognized benchmark, so it’s obvious we’re working with limited material here.  Here is a video she made from the party.  Don’t worry we got signed releases from all the families.   Click here to see Ruth's bday 10 second video  Such a change from our day of passing notes and making prank phone calls.  Ruth is a social media “machine” (disappointment emoticon here😞) - – Oovoo, music.ly, Instagram, SnapChat, texting, and everything else (hanging head emoticon here).   Hopefully it will SOMEHOW translate into SOME sort of SOME kind of useful or functional ability that has SOME meaning…  naw, it’s an unproductive waste of time (throw up arms in hopelessness emoticon here😬). 

Si earned his first legitimate paycheck refereeing soccer.   In reality he owes the sideline parents part of the fee for all the “assistance” making the calls.  Si got some great advice from his soccer coach before wearing the stripes out on the pitch:  To quell parent “input” just yell back “I AM ONLY ELEVEN” for everyone to hear.  It was a well-deserved $51 that we will gladly pay his taxes for.  I doubt we know anyone who would do it for half that.  Tracey tried to make Si feel better after his first game by saying “You did great Si.  I would have cried if I had to do that”.  Si retorted “I still might!” as we hustled to the car.  He did great but WOW, we really do give credit to the kids that referee the games.  And the parents that raised them!

Ruth had a week away from her family at “beach camp” with a friend– (set on an old oil dock in Edmonds on the Puget Sound).  The kids were in wetsuits every day jumping, diving, zip-lining and falling into the water so definitely on our Highly Recommend List – great activities, counselors and well organized.

Ruth, 45 lbs, is #9.  Opponents in red are 5'6'', 160 lbs.

Finding the right sport for Ruth has been hard.  She announced her retirement from Volleyball last year, in case you didn’t see the official posting in Volleyball International Magazine.  Any hope of a Libero scholarship to Stanford are fading.  Just a hint, this was two years ago when she played for the Under 12 team.  As you can see, she was slightly outgunned.   She took up a rec soccer league that she loves.  It is with the girls from her school and she really loves playing with them.  She’s a pretty thoughtful player and is also tough.  Wish we could get her to play on a club team so she could play all year long, but she is more interested in the social aspects of the sport.  We also enrolled her on an indoor team (warehouse futbol) for a season last February, so we had a warm, dry place to drink beer during the winter games.

Ruth's Neon Lightning game

So you've outgrown your snow gear

Academics are taking a back seat to life skills.  Good grades are not going to be enough around here.  Kids are being asked to contribute to the  workload, ie. clean up after themselves etc.  It’s been a tough transition. We need something in exchange for the taxi service.  We are transitioning into an EDHWL (Equal Distribution of Household Workload) arrangement so the kids receive wages for summer chores. We still need to refine our QC and enforcement, but we’re on the right track.  Our kids do not enjoy the Seattle minimum wage pay structure, nor will they ever under our roof.  

No more hiding the cookie jar.  The kids are nutrition devils when left unsupervised.  The pantry is the busiest room in the house since the unsupervised terms are more frequent and last longer.  Costco can’t keep enough Oreo’s in stock to satisfy us.  Ruth drinks virgin strawberry daiquiris like they are going out of style (yes, we know they are out of style).

How’s our Health?:
No complaints here (that you can prove).  Logged a few minor surgeries making use of our medical benefits and to ensure we used our Flexible Savings Accounts.  Kids both had gum grafts (sounds a lot worse than it really was) due to the poor gene pool from the Groscost side.  Ruth’s surgery was delayed a month because two days before she got her first registered concussion playing some sort of Zombie Tag in PE (remember, we are in public schools).  It also sidelined her from Rat City Roller Derby tryouts.  Maybe in 2017.

Christmas Day 2016

First, Tracey’s friend tricked her into the “Advocare” fad diet.  Then Tracey showed her though – they both wrote checks to 30-10 Weightloss for Life just to prove it really isn’t for Life.  Through this, Tracey has given up her “two glasses of liquid bread” (beer) before bed, and taken up what NBBG calls “skinny bitches” (vodka, soda and muddled orange and lime).  All this middle-age weightloss activity is a good fight.  Now Tracey has figured out that at least she had better exercise. She’s joined a gym in town that, even as hard as she tries, can’t find a reason to not go.  It’s close, convenient, and only 35 minutes out of her day.  So, she endures.  It’s a tough life.

Olive.... the other reindeer.

Speaking of health…. We are about to be down to one dog.  Olive will not be with us much longer as she has some sort of lymphoma that makes her not long for this world.  That doesn’t mean she still isn’t mean as a possum some days, and as sweet as a lamb others.   So, with her being our 4^th dog, we have started to learn.  She seems to be going well – we feed her tons of treats and kids spend extra time petting her.  She probably already thinks she is in heaven.... Curt is really hoping it is 2017 so that we can add another “3-year memory rock” for our dogs in the yard…  Jacoby died 2008, Sadie 2011, Copper 2014, Olive and Rocket – TBD.  Don’t know how Rocket will do without his buddy Olive.  The family has officially decided that Curt is not allowed to pick out the next dog addition.  He seems to love a dog with issues – as he does his women. So we wait for the right time to say goodbye.

Weathering the storm

Vacations - two years’ worth of vacations and holidays on the road sure does look like a lot! Appears we notched a few outings:

• One RV trip in the summer of 2015 to Long Beach, Alder Lake, and Cape Disappointment.  Much to Tracey’s disappointment, we didn’t get the RV out in 2016.  But the dogs completely shredded the RV cover when a small family of rodents took up shelter in it.
• Backpacked to Shi Shi Beach in 2015 with another family during a monsoon.  Trees down, power outages in Puget Sound, and us huddled up in a wet tent without any booze.  What a great time…  One hour long break in the rain when the sun came out.  Kids frolicked in the waves while the parents feverishly packed up their wet stuff to hike back out. 
•  Camping at Lake Entiat with friends.  Some boating, surfing and long boarding made the fun trip.  Getting Si’s bike stolen made it less fun.
• The BIG trip was celebrated with our friend’s, the DeGagne’s to Barbados.
  
  We celebrated their oldest daughter’s high school graduation (and Ruth’s 4^th grade graduation as well as Si’s 6^th grade, barely).  Checked out Rihanna’s home island in the Caribbean – wouldn’t go back….  until we’re ready to stay permanently (hollowed out Pineapple Rum drink with little pink umbrella emoticon here).   After racing through the Ft. Lauderdale airport to catch our connection home, we missed it (with much drama of 9 people running through the airport to the TSA check and having to throw away all our Caribbean rum and hair products.  Don’t think that when we didn’t make the flight (two of us did but they didn’t get on), that we didn’t just go back and pull all our treasures out of the garbage can). 
  
  We got to stay another 24 hours in Hollywood Beach with Maritza’s parents.  We just lounged at the beach all day.  Si was the only one that proclaimed “I just want to stay in the room – I don’t want to put on any more sunscreen”.  It’s tough being a Groscost.
•  Crabbing trip in Anacortes with Curt’s family.  Had 11 crabbing licenses and definitely got our catch limit.  Tacked on one night up at Orcas when we invited ourselves to a friend’s family reunion.  Also spent another weekend with the full Groscost clan celebrating our niece’s graduation from WSU.  As well as another successful halibut trip in 2016 for the Groscosts.

  

  Biggest fish from halibut trip

• Vegas Baby – the four of us celebrated Curt and Tracey’s 14-year wedding anniversary over April Fools.  Kids had a lot of fun at the beaches of Mandalay Bay and we rented a car to drive to the Valley of Fire.  We took the family to see Rod Stewart for fear that he might expire in 2016 with all the other of Tracey’s greats (Prince, David Bowie, and George Michael).  The kids were not impressed. 
• Spent three or four nights at Whistler skiing.  Everyone snowboarded, even Tracey.  Figured out having a drink at the bottom of the hill before heading up on the lift, then another drink at the top, and then trying to board down was not as much fun as it sounded.  Made for a long, slow ride down.  Kids seemed to spend most of the time in the outdoor pool.
•  Spent Labor Day with friends in their Chelan vacation home for summer fun.  Kids played super well and we some decent weather.  Rented jet skis for a few hours so the kids had a lot of fun. Si also got to go with friends to a rental house in the northeastern corner of Washington to Lake Palmer.  Again, fun on the lake with jet skis.  Seems that motorized watercraft could take off one day.

Life is good. Life is easy for a Groscost.  We got nothing to complain about and feel fortunate every day.  Seeing friends, family and others throughout the year – life is good.  Best wishes for you for 2017 and looking forward to seeing you all at some point in 2017.

Love –
            Curt, Tracey, Si, Ruth, Olive and Rocket

Holiday Cheer 2014ish!

It's been a long holiday season!

Time for our annual Holiday Blog, albeit post New Year’s. Thanks for all the meaningful feedback from last year.  As requested, we’ll keep this brief and to the point, including only what is absolutely essential to keep you up to speed in the Groscost Anthology.  Presenting 12 months of Facebook posts boiled down into one, shortish letter – you’re welcome. 

The Growing Gros-Squatches

For the Grows-Cost kids, 2014 has been none other than a series of remarkable achievements.  For starters: Ruth turned 9 and Si is 11 – no small feat considering it took a whole year for each of them. Their annual physicals revealed both of them continue to plummet in the length and mass stats compared to their less nutrition-oriented counterparts… but we’re not bitter.  We’re set to move them back up toward the middle of the lower pack now that Curt has conceded in his War on Big Sugar.  Yep, we’ve forsaken our “small, but healthy” motto and entered them in the race to Type II diabetes.  We have Wonder Bread and Nutella and we’re not afraid to use it. 

Headgear selfie

Ruth had her annual doctor’s visit and here are the stats – 7 percentile on weight, 7 percentile height.  Weighs 50 pounds and is 50 inches tall.  And just for giggles, her measurements are 23 x 23 x 23.  She is a perfect cube just like her mom, but with a quarter of the displacement. Ruth is in braces and head gear now. Should be out of them before college (if we can afford it now that we missed the sign up deadline for Obamacare).

Si’s birthday party (with 9 of his friends) was a raging success… literally.  That might be the last one of its kind unless we get in close with a drywaller and painter. 



Exploding RuthPaste

We continue to keep the kids enrolled in public schools so they can at least keep pace with the average… at least academically.  Si made a Leprechaun trap for the science fair this year.  Spoiler Alert:  We did NOT catch one.  It wasn’t a design flaw, but those pesky little devils did leave a lot of green tracks around to mock us.  Our kids’ naiveté might be at dangerous levels.  “Exploding Ruthpaste” was another science fair hit worthy of a few hundred YouTube hits, but don’t look for it there.





He's NOT a lineman

Si rarely changes into clean clothes and Ruth changes too often.  Which is ironic since we can’t get him in the shower or her out of it.  So we definitely have 1 boy and 1 girl….  and offsetting clothing and water use practices.



Wait.  Why does “wait” precede every question in our house these days?  If we  had more time to waste, we might actually wait to answer in order to foster patience and maybe get our kids to rethink this rather annoying new trend.



Si had a soccer game cancelled for a tornado…. and his team was ahead…. and the game was in Lakewood, not Kansas.  He is considering coming out of retirement from football and getting back playing – time will tell.  His real love is Parkour however.  Hopefully they’ll need an 11 year old for the next Spiderman movie.

Groscost Parenting Hints, Tips and Tricks

Ruth officially updated the swear-jar rates commensurate with national COLA indices.  The F word gets $5 and the C word 50 cents (she apparently hasn’t been introduced to the real C word so chalk up a victory for the parents on that one).  Good that she recognizes the need to be resourceful for income since allowance still isn’t approved.

Flying the colors in
Canada

To get our kids to interact more openly with strangers, we’ve instituted a “who’s more assertive” competition.  They are rated by mom or dad after such communications.  The system is, of course, objective and completely scientific.  To date they have yet to argue a single rating.  Nothing like a little sibling rivalry to enact behavioral change. 

Curt unwittingly offered Ruth an iPhone if she made it to the State gymnastics competition.  So she did which made a Washington Redskin-giver out of him.  We re-negotiated to 10 Beanie Boos instead.  Little did we know that could cost even more. One month later, she quit gymnastics as abruptly as Russia took over Ukraine, so we feel a bit taken (NOT.  Actually it was more hassle and too much weekend sacrifice for her parents, so we let her think it was her idea – developing empowerment in kids, Parenting 102).

The Animals

The Big Smooth

We put Copper in the ground (electrician’s humor) for Spring cleaning this year.  He left just as our homeowner’s insurance was about to accept him for who he was.  The day we decided it was time to retire his jersey, he couldn’t wait until after the kids left for school.  He threw himself off the back of the couch in a grotesque swan dive seizure – another character building memory for the developing brains.  We preserved his ashes because we like the symbolism, but might have been better served to dress him out for that velvety pelt.



Over the cab in the RV

After three grueling months without a second dog, we reinvested in the canine market.  Rocket (aptly named for… ok nothing, really…  we let the kids pick it), pitched as a Great Dane/Mastiff by the pet rescue, at 7 months, has yet to convince us he’s anything other than a skinny yellow lab.  Not a shred of guard dog in him and will show his belly to anyone with two legs (so he might put up a fight if Pistorius tries to get in).  He is embarrassingly sweet and if you spend time seated at our house you’ll have the sticky knees and elbows to prove it.  He did arrive with some baggage however -  the Ol’ Southern Whipworm which put Rocket on some GI meds and the Groscosts on “Georgia-Ebola” alert.  

Olive and Rocket at work

Olive (our lab/hound blend) now has considerable seniority.  She switched gears with a new puppy around and started breaking out of the fortress.  One fine day (likely in the meat of hunting season – pun emoticon here), we found an elk head in our yard.  The laws of physics prevented it from fitting through the dog door into the house… but it did make it back from who knows where, then under the fence with a respectable rack of antlers (albeit, no longer very well attached).  To reward such admirable work, we updated our mudroom with a heated floor which immediately made the coldest room in the house, the warmest.  The dogs took to it like surfers to pot legalization.



Go Hawks!

We're steadfast in our turf war with the indigenous rodent population. The areas under dispute continue to be the attic and crawlspace (and anywhere they’re seen, heard or otherwise perceived to be). Since they've been denied access, their boundary penetration presence has become more robust.  Mother Nature will provide the next prong of our attack - owl farming.

Groscost’s Hit the Road 




Camping in the repair shop parking lot

Got the motorhome out of the country to see what Canadians charge for repair work for an RV on weekends in a remote village on Vancouver Island.  Turns out – quite a bit.  We did enjoy miles of scenic inside passage up to The Sunshine Coast stopping to “camp” along the way.

Hawaii kid clan

We revisited the 50^th state with close (before we left, that is) friends.  A few of the high and low points – Pearl Harbor, hike up Diamond Head, Waikiki, a few stings from some Man-O-War, swim with dolphins, surf lessons for all without life jackets, beach fun, etc. 

Pre-Man-O-War incident

One notable highlight was an “adventure hike” from Oahu Revealed that documents how to access the Haiku Stairs without the guard catching you.  We snuck by (ignored) him on the way in but he stopped us coming out to admonish us for trespassing.  He didn’t seem to mind that we took a 10-year-old boy in shorts, t-shirt and worn out, slip-on Vans on a hike 2,500 feet up a steep, unmaintained, rusty set of stairs in a monsoon at 4am.  Curt hasn’t received an exact ruling from DSHS on that yet. 




Haiku Hike Crew



We hope you had as wonderful of a 2014 as we did, and we look forward to seeing you in 2015.  Ta ta for now!


Love Always,

Curt, Tracey, Si, Ruthie, Olive and Rocket!