Merry Christmas 2025 from the Holwicks

Dear friends, 

As I write this, our Christmas tree and decorations are all up and the Thanksgiving leftovers are mostly eaten. Celeste makes Thanksgiving a big production with lots of food and lots of people (18 this year). And all of them stay for several days so our home is filled with excitement. But little drama – unlike most Hollywood movies, our clan gets along very well and I am very thankful for that!

I turned 70 this year which sounds pretty old to me. Since our health is holding up we have tried to do lots of stuff while we can. In January I helped out at the Word of Life snow camp with the Fowlie family from our church. Our cardboard sled, a lobster, disintegrated at the bottom of the hill but was fastest of the bunch.

February brought another trip to the region of Kitale, Kenya. We conducted another Vacation Bible School and toured the new dormitory that Daniel and the KenyaNow mission helped to build (later in the year they added a new school building). Celeste continues to teach biology and Bible to the kids every other week or so by Facebook Messenger and they love her. At the end of our trip we flew down to Amboseli National Park which is famous for its elephants. I love elephants and we saw tons of them, including the largest tusker in the world, Craig. Josiah got some incredible videos of him. At night Kara arranged for us to stay in a lux compound with grass huts and a watering hole where we saw a local elephant up close. It is an amazing continent but full of challenges.

In April I was able to do something I have wanted to do for years – Sean, Grant and I attended the reenactment of the beginning of the Revolution at Concord, Massachusetts. It was the 250th anniversary so it was very crowded but well worth it. I think we got up at 4:00 a.m. to get a good spot.

We did two grandchild vacations this summer. In July we took the younger ones in our RV to Assateague Island which is famous for its horses. Most of the horses seem to congregate in the campground so everyone was happy. In July we took the older boys out West. They enjoyed the ruins of Mesa Verde and sandboarding at Great Sand Dune NP, but especially the visit with Josiah and Julia. Josiah let them fly his drone and also took everyone to Casa Bonita, a restaurant with cliff divers, gold mines and an arcade. A big hit with the kids! He also took us to a real gold mine, now defunct, in Victor, Colorado. On the way back we toured two caves in Pennsylvania. Penn Cave is all by boat but even I was impressed by the experience.

New Englanders love lighthouses and we are New Englanders so at the end of the summer we did volunteer work at the Burnt Island Lighthouse in Boothbay Harbor. Celeste did the keeper house tour and I did the tower. It is a beautiful place and we got personal rides to the island by the Maine Marine Resources folks.

September was another trip out West. We drove to Ohio and flew with Ruth Brenneman to attend her granddaughter Danika’s wedding in Phoenix. While we were out there we took her to Las Vegas, Havasu City to meet Chris Riedel and his family, the Grand Canyon and Sedona. I like deserts more than Celeste.

October brought Autumn colors and a trip to Quebec City with Celeste’s sister Sara and her friend Kristin. It was a very European city and was very festive. We did our own walking tour and never mentioned Trump. On the return we stopped for two days in Franconia Notch and walked the Flume and Basin, topping it off with a drive up Mount Washington. Pricey but very cool. We toured the famous weather station up there and got a bumper sticker. Celeste got souvenir T-shirts for everyone and even herself, a first.

At the very end of November I got in my last kayak ride on the Cross River behind our house. It was cold but I had it all to myself, and saw two bald eagles to boot. The dock is now stored away with help from my super-competent wife and our aluminum boat is almost in – the motor died multiple times as I headed for the boat ramp so the boat will get hauled in the woods for the winter. A kayak is all I need anyway.

We wish all of you a Christmas filled with love and faith!