Other Fun Things We've Done This Year

Paul, Mia, Peter, Sarah, John and Kathy spent a lovely long weekend at the Miami Boat Show over the President's Day weekend in February. Lovely to leave Minnesota's harsh winter for a few days!

 Here's a link to more pictures from our trip:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28351151@N00/sets/72157626023715899/

The Travels of Odysseus

The purpose of this blog is to keep family and friends informed about our trip to the Mediterranean in June.

Here's a link to the site:

http://alumni.yale.edu/aya/yet/program/index.php?id=343

After the cruise, we'll spend four more days in Athens. Here are some photos we liked:

http://www.google.com/search?q=athens+greece&hl=en&prmd=ivnsum&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=2dnOTbXlDoX00gHdgM2UDg&ved=0CFoQsAQ&biw=1152&bih=526

Testing Again

We're going to try to post a video. Let's see if this works.

From JunekFamily.org

Evan and Peiing became engaged in February and anticipate a summer, 2012 wedding in NYC. Evan is happily working at JP Morgan Chase in New York and they live in an apartment about three blocks from where John and Kathy lived as newlyweds. Evan's hours are very long, but Peiling tries to ignore them by working on her own book project.  

Mark graduates on May 20 fromJuilliard's Actor Training Program. He looks forward to a teaching trip to South Africa and a part in Edinburgh's Fringe Festival over the summer

Paul is a new lawyer and working on bankruptcy projects. He's on a men's softball team and he and Mia both play on a mixed team. Mia finished her last year of law school and is planning on working on the bar exam this summer. 

Emily and Patrick are new home owners in a suburb outside Boston and live with dog Ada and cats Zero and One. Emily is teaching at a small private school outside Boston and Patrick has a great computer engineering job. 

 

Peter is finishing his sophomore year at Boston University in electrical engineering and is enjoying being on his own at last. He's planning to take some summer classes.

Kathy loves her work with the Anoka County public defenders. She's clerk of session at church and rings bells with the bell choir.  

John enjoys his role at Ameriprise Financial and works constantly to still support most of us. He's delighted to be a board member of Graywolf Press and to be on the Guthrie Theater board. 

Once you get into Flickr, just click on "sets" to see more photo albums. I like viewing them using the "slideshow" option.

John and Kathy spent an awesome several days in Ireland with Ameriprise' Chairman's Advisory Committee. Click here to see pictures.

John, Kathy and Peter spent a fun week in California in August. Pictures are in several sets. Click on "Sets" to see other groups of photos. A highlight was playing golf at the famous Spyglass course on Monterey. We played so poorly, we didn't even bother to keep score, but it was a spectacular day, there were deer everywhere, and we had a terrific time!

Over Memorial Day weekend, John and some of the boys went fishing with our dear friend Jim at the Lake Mansfield Trout Club. Kathy took the train to Chicago. We all had fun!

We visited both Boston and New York City during February, just to see the kids who don't live locally. Emily, Patrick and Peter are fine and we enjoyed a visit to Boston's art museum. Mark was in Juilliard's cabaret, a wonderful performance by his third year class. We had great fun sharing dinner and Sunday brunch with Evan and Peiling. A quiet walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and a stroll through Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood were also highlights.

During MLK weekend in January, Paul and Mia joined us for a train trip to Chicago. What fun! We saw more than thirty bald eagles along the frozen Mississippi and loved visiting the Aquarium, until it filled with strollers. John was reading a book about the Chicago's World Columbian Exhibition of 1893, and there was a beautiful photo exhibit of that White City at the Art Institute of Chicago, well worth the time and entrance fee. Here are the pictures.

This was one of our best winters yet for outdoor activities! We loved skiing and sledding in Frontenac. Before Peter went back to BU, we spent time at Frontenac State Park's sledding hill.

On December 26, we boarded a flight from Minneapolis to eventually land in Rome, Italy. Patrick, Peiling, and Mia joined us for the week and we had a wonderful time! We've split up the pictures into four segments: Florence, Rome 1, Rome 2, and Rome 3. A video from New Year's Eve is here (Sorry, still working on that). We uploaded a number of videos on YouTube (search "Junek 2009") but not all have made it yet. We'll keep working on it.  I hadn't realized until I was with the kids that Flickr's slideshow has a button on the lower right corner of the screen to make the pictures full screen, a great improvement.

Christmas was a blast, with all the kids home and Verne and his family joining us for Christmas dinner. Patrick, Emily's fiancé, sent us a dozen lobsters, which we very happily enjoyed on Christmas Eve. A video of Paul dunking the lobsters is here. Other pictures are here.

As usual, fall has flown by! We've been on trips to Boston, New York, Vernon, NJ, and Hawaii, for different reasons. Links are to photographs of the various times that we've uploaded to Flickr.com. Mark appeared in the Juilliard black box theater in American Clock, a fairly unsuccessful play by Arthur Miller. It covers a lengthy period during the Depression and made us realize that we really aren't in one. We're very thankful that several of us are gainfully employed!

One of the most memorable parts of our trip to Lanai was watching a BASE jumper jump from the top of a cliff. We were on a tour on a large inflatable boat around the south end of the island when we came across a young man in an ocean kayak looking at the cliffs above. He said his friend was going to jump off the cliff. No one on our boat quite believed him, so we went on in our search for dolphins. As we were returning, we noticed he now had a video camera in hand, so we asked if we could stop to watch. We were afraid we were about to watch a suicide! Finally, a tiny human shape appeared at the top of the cliff - it was about 1,000 feet tall - then he almost immediately jumped. We freaked! About 150 feet into his fall, the parachute deployed and when we saw how gracefully he landed in the water, we realized he had done this many, many times before. About 300 times, we finally learned. We cheerfully towed them back to where their car was parked and returned to our resort, with a great story to remember. I didn't bring my camera on the boat ride, but other Hawaii pictures are here.

We had a lovely summer and pictures from our lake house are here. John's dear aunt Joan died at age 89 in early June and Kathy was able to attend her memorial in Cleveland Heights. Her pictures of the weekend are here. Peter graduated June 12 and pictures from his poster are here.

Emily graduated from BU on May 17, a drizzly but still delightful day. The night before, cousin Margaret hosted us all at her lovely Boston apartment. Pictures from the weekend are here. We visited NYC to watch Mark in his final play of his second year at Juilliard - Hedda Gabler. Mark played Jorgen Tesman in this Ibsen play. Pictures of the weekend are here.

Spring was lovely and late. Some pictures of our time in Frontenac are here. John's gift to Kathy for their 27th wedding anniversary was a new camera, and pictures from it begin here.

Christmas was wonderful, as always. How could it not be when all the kids are home? Unfortunately, we had a bad memory card and have no pictures at all. Sorry! We didn't travel this year, but several of the kids are going on trips. We'll post their picture links when they send them. The family's gift to mom was a kitten we named Luna. Pictures of Luna and subsequently-added Lincoln are here.

Juilliard's parents' weekend was the second weekend in December and we had a delightful time! Pictures from some of Mark's classes are here.

Thanksgiving was interesting and different, as we spent it in New Jersey; pictures are here and here. And, yes, that is Daniel Radcliff, AKA Harry Potter, on Emily's right. The weather wasn't great and we watched the lake freeze every night and thaw every day. Anne, Margaret and Annie came down for an afternoon.

An early November snowfall encouraged Kathy to play in the backyard. October photos were especially fun as the trees have been unusually beautiful this year. A drive around Lake Pepin is delightful and easier to do now that gas prices have fallen.

The Republican National Convention came to St. Paul in early September and, though not Republicans, we were able to get tickets for the final evening. It was fun!

Kathy had a big birthday in August and we partied hard. All the kids and their dates were here, making a party all on its own. We had a wonderful time vacationing in Frontenac in August. The spring was pretty quiet.

We changed our departure to Costa Rica to December 28, and had a wonderful time there! Pictures are here. The kids agreed that the best part was the raft trip, down Class IV rapids. The zip line was also fun, but very scary. See Emily here. We also went to a Costa Rican bullfight - where some 200 guys tease the bull, but do not hurt him. Paul's photos include some from the bullfight here. We spent the last 4 days at Playa Conchal, a video of kids is here.

Christmas didn't begin well. Kathy's dad died on December 22 (his obituary is here). He had had Alzheimer's for many years. The busy-ness of Christmas kept us moving, and it was wonderful that the kids were already here. Other than that, the holidays were great fun. The YouTube video with Verne baring his belly is here.

Thanksgiving found us all together and focusing on what we'd do for our Christmas picture. Our neighbors have a life-size bronze stag and we contemplated putting a red nose on it and arranging ourselves around Rudolph, but decided it just wasn't cool to deface someone else's art. We'll let you know what we come up with. The Abbey Road take-off didn't make the first cut, but was fun to do.

After Russia, the rest of October was pretty bland. We did have some excitement when the American Queen, the first paddle-boat we've seen on the river, passed by our beach about dusk one Saturday evening. We visited her as she waited in Red Wing the next morning and, wouldn't you know, she parked right where we usually park when we sidle up to the "wall." Apparently, the high and fast waters on the Mississippi have created sandbars that haven't been dredged yet so she could go no further upstream than Red Wing. Other October photos are here.

In mid-October, John and Kathy went to St. Petersburg, Russia, with some 120 Ameriprise advisers and other head office staff. It was spectacular! Pictures are here. September was terribly busy as several of us got back into the swing of school. Evan, Peiling, Mark, and Tom all made visits during the month. Photos are here.

We spent two weeks at the Frontenac house on Lake Pepin during August, but we were so busy we took very few pictures. John, Paul and Kathy aimed to ride all the way around Lake Pepin, some 70 miles, but time ran out on us. We did do nearly every inch of the trip, but on shorter rides. During a splendid July weekend we visited Vernon and spent a wonderful time with all the kids and friends. June in Minnesota was especially beautiful and we enjoyed our river house immensely. Some pictures are here.

May was a very busy month! Mark graduated from Columbia on the 16th and Paul graduated from Cornell on the 28th. We also celebrated Teresa's graduation from St. Kate's and Cheryl's from Iowa State. We're proud of all those graduates! Other May pictures are here.

Mark directed Columbia's Varsity Show the last weekend in April and, of course, we went to see it. It was very weird not seeing him on stage, but he claimed it was "his baby" from beginning to end. Naturally, it was fabulous, and we aren't the least bit prejudiced. Pictures from the short weekend are here.

We've had a quiet winter in Lake... oops, no, we're not there. It was a quiet winter in Minnesota, with little snow or precipitation of any sort. We've done more bicycling than skiing and were amazed, given the dryness, how much driftwood lands on a Mississippi River beach when the water finally begins to drop. Peter and the Rosemount High School Band went to China for Spring Break. His photos are here.

Early on 12/26, we headed to the airport for the long trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We had a marvelous time! Mom's pictures are here. Paul took many pictures on his new camera and they're here. Peiling sent us her photos when she got back to Oxford. We came back on the 31st to celebrate the Guthrie Theater's first annual New Year's Eve party. That, too, was a blast, though we clearly lowered the average age in the room considerably (and I don't mean John and Kathy!) Pictures are here.

Christmas was delightful, as always, and everyone seemed pleased with their gifts. Mark and Emily sang with Kathy and the church choir at the late Christmas Eve service, the dogs didn't eat any of the gifts, and the extended family came for Christmas dinner, including three-week old Leah and newly-engaged Matt and Cheryl. Here are some of the pictures.

Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, wrote a play entitled Beggar's Opera, based on John Gay's original opera of Mac the Knife, subsequently adapted as The Threepenny Opera. As part of Havel's stay at Columbia University, they decided to stage his play, albeit translated, much cut, and acted with puppets. We went for the performance on the 2nd and Havel himself attended. Mark, of course, was Macheath, the two-timing bard. Photos of the evening are here.

The Junek diaspora reassembled in Minnesota for Thanksgiving and Mama was delighted to put all the leaves back in the dining room table and fill it with kids! We split our time between Inver Grove Heights and Frontenac, with the kids playing some sort of rugby-related game in the afternoon and celebrating Red Wing's Christmas Stroll on Friday night. See pictures here.

MEA weekend in October is the absolute best time to visit New Jersey! Our cabin in Vernon remains a wonderful retreat and Evan and Mark were able to join us for a delightful weekend. The fall color was nearly neon, the Jolly Onion was happy to sell us some art, and it was just a terrific time. Here are the pictures.

The end of September found us visiting Boston to watch Emily in the BU-Radcliff women's rugby game. BU was defeated soundly, but the weather was glorious and we were joined by Anne, Tony, Margaret, Wags, baby Jack and two of Evan's friends, Steve and Scott.

In early September, Kathy played hooky for a week and we went to Venice with Ameriprise' Chairman's Advisory Council. It would have been wonderfully romantic if we hadn't shared the trip with about 250 business associates. Some of our pictures are here.

We closed on the lake house in Frontenac on August 3rd and spent most of John's two weeks of vacation in furniture stores. We did have lots of fun and have found we not only love the house (we knew we would!) but also historic Frontenac and charming Red Wing.

In mid-July we visited Nebraska City at delightful Lied Lodge for another McPherson family reunion. Everyone was there except Grandpa and our Mark, whose production schedule at Chautauqua prevented his attendance. Some of the pictures are here.

Here are some photos of our new toys, and our excuse for purchasing the lake/river house.

May was a busy month: over Memorial Day weekend we camped, and used rental boats from Ketter's, at Savanna Portage State Park "up north" near McGregor, MN. We had a number of celebrations during the month and a very special Australian dinner prepared by our interim pastor, John Hill.

Late April found us in  NYC to see Mark in the Varsity Show and spend the afternoon at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. After the show, long time friends Jim and Andi and Mark joined us and several from the cast at Sezz Medi for dinner. It was a delightful weekend! The pictures are here. We also enjoyed the premier for the movie Prairie Home Companion.