Christmas Letter 2008

Merry Christmas from the Reyersons!

ANOTHER year almost in the books. The kids are doing great, bringing home mostly A’s on their report cards, are about to trade their braces for retainers and are both as tall as Mom. Adrienne may be done growing, we’re not sure, but Collin is just getting warmed up. He is eating literally everything.

Last Spring, Collin was one of 16 recipients of the St. Louis Park Caring Youth Award. His Language Arts teacher Mr. Pollack nominated him for his work planting milkweed to preserve the monarch butterfly habitat on school grounds, and we were invited to City Hall to watch Collin receive a certificate signed by Governor Tim Pawlenty. No football this year, but he’s still a baseball player and had a fine summer at the plate to go with his very reliable glove. He’s also playing basketball this winter and we like watching him battle out there. I am also pleased to inform you that Ozzie the Lizard is still on top of Collin’s dresser basking under a heat lamp. 2 years and counting.

Connie and I have both observed that Adrienne is a 50/50 blend of our DNA: she looks mostly like Mom and acts mostly like her pop. A few months shy of her 14th birthday, Adrienne just adores babies, and got a few chances to perform some babysitting this year. She’s a natural, and watching her with young kids, I see a future pre-school teacher, although she’ll tell you that she wants to be a fiction writer. We’re just impressed that she’s thinking about that stuff…a lot of girls her age are far more fixated on the opposite sex. While boys are on Adrienne’s radar, she’s not going out of her way to capture their attention. Still plenty of time for all that nonsense.

What a year it’s been for Connie. Back in January, she was selected for jury duty. A bit apprehensive about driving and parking downtown, she took the bus back and forth and made her way around the big town quite nicely, finding the Hennepin County Courthouse with little trouble. Not bad for a gal who grew up in a town of 100. She served on a jury and had quite an experience. Connie still fills in at the elementary school here in St. Louis Park, and for a 7 week stretch this fall, she worked every day in Room #105, where the developmentally disabled kids are. And now with Christmas coming, she has transformed into a baking machine. Big shock, right?

For the second consecutive summer, we did not get in a week of fishing up north, but we did get on the road to connect with family. We spent a couple of nights in Davenport with Uncle Kurt and Aunt Jenifer, who moved to the Quad Cities not quite 2 years ago after 20 years in the Twin Cities area. Mom and Dad came down from Oelwein, as did Scott and April from Iowa City. The boys golfed, the girls shopped and we all went to the ballpark for a Quad City River Bandits game, which is not a bad way to spend a beautiful summer evening.

On the gridiron, my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes have had a roller coaster season, defeating Iowa State to go 3-0, dropping a few close games, then galloping into November with a full head of steam, shocking #3 Penn State at Kinnick Stadium. Was really something to watch the students flood the field after the game winning kick. Back on November 22, Collin and I had front row seats right behind the Iowa bench (about 20 feet away from Floyd of Rosedale), and cheered the Black & Gold to a good old-fashioned butt-whooping of border rival Minnesota, 55 - 0. We stayed around after the game, high-fived the guys, sang the fight song. Collin even got to touch Floyd! I can’t think of 2 or 3 sporting events where I had a better time.

Is there anybody besides me who is happy to see this election cycle end? What a filthy business politics is! There are so many crooks, it’s almost impossible to spot the few true public servants employed in Washington. I don’t trust any of them anymore, and while I’m thrilled we live in a country where the choice is ours, I’m not crazy about a lot of the choices. And don’t get me started on the collapsing journalistic standards of the news media. Regardless of which candidate you supported, if you watch much news, I’m sure you’ll agree that this last two years has been little more than an infomercial for Barack Obama. I didn’t vote for our President-Elect, but with the shape this country’s in, I’m sure as heck pulling for him now.

As far as holiday travel plans go, we have settled into a comfortable routine. We go to Iowa for Christmas (3 nights in Oelwein, 3 in Webster), and “Iowa comes to us” for Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad came up for their 5th consecutive Thanksgiving feast in St. Louis Park, staying for 3 nights, and weather permitting, we’ll be on the road to Iowa on December 22 to have Christmas with the whole family.

After moving 7 times in our first 8 years together, Connie and I have no regrets settling in St. Louis Park, buying the 3rd house we looked at, 12 years ago. Over the years, my job has taken me to a lot of big cities, but I still haven’t found one that I would pick over the Twin Cities area. Years from now, I envision a little house with a big porch in a little town, but for now, it’s a little house with no porch in St. Louis Park and we couldn’t be happier or more thankful.

Well, that‘s our year on one sheet of paper! If you’re ever in town, be sure to stop by. Our house is just a few minutes from downtown Minneapolis and we love to have visitors. We hope this letter finds you in good health and good spirits, and we wish you all a happy and safe holiday.

Warren, Connie, Collin & Adrienne

Welcome to Barack Utopia

As a committed conservative who last voted Democrat in 1984, I was very disappointed with the outcome of this year's Presidential election. I will readily admit that I wasn't crazy about either major party's nominee (McCain was my 4th choice coming out of the GOP behind Romney, Huckabee and Thompson), but evaluating the content of both their messages, thought the choice was very clear.

In my opinion, Senator McCain and his campaign made several mistakes that cost him votes, including avoiding the Jeremiah Wright issue, their mis-handling of Sarah Palin, and voting for the bailout. To be fair, I'm not sure that McCain could have won even with the "perfect campaign". 2008 will go down as the Year of the Donkey I guess.

In the end, Barack Obama won the White House at least partially through very skillful delivery of the standard boiler plate Democratic Party message: country's going the wrong way, Bush did it, we can fix it, blah blah blah. During the campaign, especially in the 3 debates, he came across as a "plausible" President among voters who had not yet made up their minds. The financial crisis that emerged in September pretty much sealed the deal for Obama and the Democrats.

The thing I like about blogging is it allows the blogger to establish a permanent, time-stamped record of what he's thinking at that very moment. The election is over, my guy didn't win, but here are 3 thoughts from a John McCain supporter 3 days after Senator Obama became President-Elect Obama:

1. Barack Obama will take office with a clean slate with me. None of this "not my President" garbage that we heard 8 years ago. I had my reasons for picking the other guy, but 60 million Americans have spoken, and I am ready to see what he can do. The voting record, the "spread the wealth around" comment, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Joe the Plumber are all in the rear view mirror, and none of it moves our troubled country forward. Clean slate. Clock starts NOW.

2. I want Barack Obama to succeed. If he can lead us out of this financial mess, keep our nation safe, respect and protect our freedoms, protect U.S. interests abroad and not tax us all into oblivion, I will be first in line to re-up President Obama for another 4 years. If it turns it into the Harry Reid / Nancy Pelosi / MoveOn.org Show, he's going to lose me fast and he will be a very unsuccessful one term President. We are a center-right country, and if President Obama has the courage to stand up to the far left moonbats who claim responsibility for President Obama, he has a chance to lead us to a better place.

3. Barack Obama demonstrated real class on the eve of the election when he offered very kind remarks about John McCain after McCain contacted him to offer sympathy after the death of his grandmother. He did not have to do that in the hours leading up to the opening of the polls, but doing so speaks to the kind of stuff I want my Prez to be made of.

100 Years of Misery

My dad, who is the biggest St. Louis Cardinals fan in the world, introduced me to the game of baseball at a very young age. I thanked him by pledging my allegiance to the Cardinals arch-rival, the Chicago Cubs.

Rooting for the Cubs came so easily to me. When cable TV came to my town, they were always on TV. I'd bust out of school and rush home to watch the last 3 or 4 innings and hear Harry Caray and Steve Stone break down the game. Harry and Steve were generally not very happy during the telecasts, because the Northsiders were pretty lousy.

Throughout my childhood, the Cubs' futility was one of those constants that helped assure a young boy in Iowa that there was order in the world. You could always depend on the Cubs. Always, that is, until 1984, when a young 2nd baseman named Ryne Sandberg came in and wrecked everything.

In 1984, I was a freshman at the University of Iowa, and I was still a rabid Cubs fan. All the Cub fans knew that the Sandberg kid was going to be good as soon as he joined the club in '82, but he was just one guy, as Dad reminded me, and it was still the Cubs. After all, they traded future Hall of Fame reliever Bruce Sutter away (to the Cardlinals no less), and got somebody named Leon Durham in return. With a roster full of has-beens and never-will-be's surrounding Ryno, most observers had no reason to believe that this team with one post-season appearance since World War II wouldn't be mathematically eliminated by Labor Day.

But then something bizarre happened. Something that had never happened for any sustained period in my lifetime. The Cubs started playing with skill. Veterans Ron Cey, Larry Bowa and Gary Matthews blended with younger guys Bob Dernier and Jody Davis. Closer Lee Smith was lights out and made us all forget about Bruce Sutter very quickly. Leon Durham was so good that the Cubs traded Bill Buckner to Boston, where he would make some history of his own a couple of years later. Meanwhile, Ryne Sandberg was having a season that would define his career. Everything, literally everything, was working, so how were the Cubbies going to screw this up?

On June 13, two days before the trading deadline, the Chicago Cubs were in first place, but needed to shore up the starting pitching if they were going to get through the dog days of summer. Prospects Mel Hall and Joe Carter were sent to Cleveland for righthander Rick Sutcliffe. A lot of Cub fans, including me, thought the Cubs gave up too much for a guy who was 4-5 with the Indians. Finally, we thought, the Cubs screwed the pooch, the spell broken, order restored.

Wrong. It went the other way. The Cubs caught fire after the Sutcliffe trade, winning 32 of 46 games during one stretch, including a thriller on June 23 where Sandberg homered twice off Bruce Sutter to beat the Cardinals 12-11. Sutcliffe went 13-1 in Cub pinstripes and was borderline unhittable. The Cubs went 18-10 in July, 20-10 in August, and on a cool September night in Pittsburgh, they clinched the National League Eastern Division. My beloved Cubs were 3 wins away from the World Series, and the only thing standing in the way were the San Diego Padres.

It was only after the Cubs clinched that I started to visualize what I hoped would happen next: Cubs sweep Padres and take the National League Pennant, I run through the streets screaming "THE CUBS WIN THE PENNANT!", something I had been waiting to do for most of my short life. Gratuitous abuse of alchohol, a lifestyle I discovered earlier in my college career, would almost certainly follow.

As I recall, winning the World Series wasn't even on the radar. The American League Champion Detroit Tigers, winners of 35 of their first 40 games that season, appeared invincible to me and most observers. So all I wanted was to get past the Padres and take our best shot the Motor City Kitties. Win or lose, flying the "National League Champions" flag over Wrigley for the first time since 1945 sounded pretty good to me, and certainly no team in those ghastly brown and yellow uniforms could stop us.

The first two games of the best of 5 National League Championship series were like a dream. Bobby Dernier led off Game 1 with a home run, Sutcliffe himself launched one onto Sheffield Avenue and shut out the Padres 13-0. In Game 2, lefty Steve Trout was sharp and the Cubs won again 4-2.

In my dorm room, watching the games on the TV my grandparents bought the day the astronauts landed on the moon in 1969 (the last year the Cubs were in the playoffs), I was beside myself. I imagined what it was like in Wrigley as they sent the boys off after the Game 2 victory. The feeling was overwhelming: this was the year. Padres are COOKED. Jinx over. Bring on the Tigers. It was almost too easy.

The Cubs left town with a very simple mission: win 1 out of the next 3 in San Diego, win the pennant, end the drought, but everybody knows what happens next. Padres take Game 3, Garvey homers in the 9th to tie series, Cubs blow a 3-0 lead in Game 5, Leon Durham makes 2 errors in a 4 run 7th, Padres never look back. Cubs lose, order restored.

Years later, I still cannot define with words the heartache I felt in the moments after Game 5. What I can tell you is that it has never been the same with me and the Cubs after that. I am and always shall be a fan, but after 1984, I have never pushed in my whole stack of chips on the Northsiders. So while I can tell you that it stung when the Giants and Will Clark did them in 5 years later in the NLCS, I lived. The playoff failure in '98? No sweat. The Steve Bartman Debacle of 2003? Handled it. And in 2008, with the Cubs galloping to the best record in the National League and getting swept (SWEPT!) by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Division Series, I watched quietly, shook my head and shut off the TV.

Nothing lasts anymore, but the Cubs have given us all a great gift that has endured 100 years: the rock steady feeling that in these uncertain times, there are a handful of things that you can count on. The Coyote never gets the Road Runner, James Bond always gets the girl and the Cubs will always find a way to spit out the bit. Reliable as the tides, predictable as a Disney movie. Someday the curse will end, and if I'm alive and still able, I will update the blog, but until then......