Happy New Year from the Bajka Family!
Hah! Thought we totally flaked didn’t ya? OK, we tried to be on time 2 whole years in row but, the best laid plans…. Hope all is well with everyone. Here’s a slightly belated recap of last year’s events:
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2007 started on a very sad note. Doris’ best friend, after fighting a courageous battle with brain cancer, finally succumbed to the horrible disease on Jan 3rd. She had been unconscious for a few days but miraculously "awoke" when we arrived and Doris spoke to her for a short while. She fell back to sleep and passed away a few hours later. She had a very moving and well-attended military funeral complete with 21-gun salute and Taps played on bagpipes. We all miss her terribly but continue to stay in touch with her family. Her husband and two young boys are doing fairly well. The rest of the winter went as it always does; with lots of skiing and snowshoeing. Unfortunately it was not fueled by lots of snow. Overall the ski season was good but a bit shy in terms of snow pack. Didn’t keep the girls from skiing and going to races every single weekend. Mik also coached for the Squaw team again. Doris was the consummate "team mom" supporting the family in just about every way imaginable.
Doris’ folks celebrated their Golden Anniversary on (50 years for those non Ann Landers readers). They held a big bash at a Sacramento Hotel with lots of good food, dancing and general frolicking.
Our "Spring Fling" took us down south to Palm Springs where we base camped for the week. OK, the camp was actually a nice hotel with a pool and water slide so we weren’t exactly roughin’ it. We took day trips to drive around the Salton Sea and explore Joshua Tree National Park. In May we did actually do a little camping and hiking up in the Quincy area.
In June Kaycie completed 3rd grade and Nicole graduated 8th grade, "Magna cum laud". She was selected to speak as part of the ceremony and did a very nice job. Mik and several other parents worked for days to transform the school gym into "San Francisco" for grad night, complete with cable cars, bridges and Alcatraz. The next day Nicole and 25 of her friends had a graduation bash at Lake Combie including skiing, tubing, swimming, eating and all those fun things young teenagers do (well, almost all!).
In July, after the girls finished their swim season, we headed off on our summer trip. We were motivated to finally visit our good friends the Martins in York (with 2 girls the same age as Nicole & Kaycie) so we spent a month exploring the best of Northern England, Scotland and Ireland. We landed in Manchester and after spending some time in the walled city of Chester we headed to the Lakes District in NW England. It’s really a very picturesque area. We then picked up the Martin girls and spent a week tooling around Scotland. We explored Glasgow, Edinburgh, the Castle & Whiskey Trails, the gorgeous Scottish coast, Inverness, Loch Ness, Glencoe and Stirling (of William Wallace fame). We popped in to York, England just long enough to drop off the Martin girls and celebrate Nicole’s 14th birthday before flying over to Ireland. We toured Dublin for a couple of days then drove up to Northern Ireland. There we had a great time exploring Belfast (yes, it’s safe). The city is actually very pretty and calm. We hired a cab to take us through "the troubles" area, both the Catholic and Protestant areas which are separated by a 30 ft tall x 3 mile long fence. I.R.A. and U.F.F murals can be seen on many of the buildings there. We toured the spectacular northern Irish coastline before ending up in Londonderry, site of Bloody Sunday in 1972. We then cruised down to the west coast through Galway to view the dramatic Cliffs of Moher. We went through Limerick & Killkenny on the way to the south coast where Waterford is located and did a tour of the crystal factory. We wrapped up Ireland by driving back up to Dublin on the east coast and then flew back to England. We stayed with our very gracious friends in York again for most of the last week where they showed us around the ancient walled city of York as well as the beautiful Yorkshire Moors and Dales. Sadly we said our goodbyes to the Martins and spent the last couple of days exploring on our own again. We visited Alnwick Castle (Harry Potter’s Hogwarts castle) and stopped at various intact sections of Hedrian’s Wall. The wall spans the border between England and Scotland and was built by the Romans to separate the Empire from the "Barbarians" (i.e. the Scotts!) in the north. Overall we had a fantastic trip even though driving, especially in Ireland, was a bit challenging at times. We always rented manual transmissions, which are interesting to drive with the stick on the left and steering on the right. Crazy Brits, Scotts & Irish all drive on the wrong side of the road! Oh well, except for that everything was great and everyone we met was simply fantastic.
Just days after we returned home, school started for Nicole and 1-1/2 weeks later for Kaycie. Nicole is now a freshman at Colfax High School and Kaycie started as a 4th grader at Weimar Hills School. They both eased back into the school life pretty well although it took a while to completely let go of the summer vacation. Nicole took some pretty tough classes while trying to balance 2 sports (skiing & swimming) and Leadership. Both girls got to do a little more playing around on Lake Combie and did a tree-top ropes course before calling an end to the summer. Nicole also became interested in learning to ride a motorcycle (apparently wasn’t satisfied riding on the back of her dad’s) so she got some time in on her cousin’s 125cc dirt bike. She just loved it so she may have caught the "bug" that goes back a couple of generations in the Bajka family.
The fall season included Nicole’s first Homecoming dance. We may be a bit biased but we thought she looked stunning (if not a bit too grown up). We decided to celebrate Thanksgiving this year in Mexico again. Hadn’t been to Acapulco before so we set off for 9 days of fun & sun. We had a fantabuluous time beaching, pooling, quadding, boating/fishing, cliff-dive-watching, sightseeing, butchering Español and riding horses on the beach. We even took early morning strolls on the beach helping freshly hatched sea turtles find their way to the ocean for the first time. Our "fancy" Thanksgiving dinner consisted of an unplanned nighttime quad ride down the beach where some locals took us to a deserted fish shack for a really good dinner of fresh fish & local delicacies. Not so traditional but oh so tasty and fun.
December started off fairly slow with very little snow. Fortunately the snow flew in adequate amounts just before the holidays. They all went well by the way. Santa brought some fun toys and we had a fun New Years with our good friends up in Squaw (again). The girls are "off to the races".
Fortunately no major changes with the extended families except Mik’s cousin Rudy (from Slovakia, currently living in So Cal) got married to a great gal (named KC coincidentally) in mid-December in a lovely setting in Tiburon. It was a fabulous affair.
Mik is still staying very busy at TriContinent and Doris keeps overdoing things by taking care of the rest of the family needs. Besides being the kid’s "school bus", she carts them to all their other activities (swimming, water polo, piano, ski training, races, friends, doctors, shopping, etc…). Despite being ridiculously busy, we’re all happy and healthy. Wish we did a better job of staying in touch with our dear family and friends though. Don’t give up on us. We hope to be back to you soon???!!!
Wishing you and yours a fantastic 2008!
Mik, Doris, Nicole, Kaycie
(& Bodie)
Mik: mik.bajka@gmail.com
Doris: dkbajka@gmail.com
Nicole : sweetpeankb@gmail.com
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